Burglar in prison after two years on the run
A MEMBER of a family-based organised crime group wanted for a string of house burglaries was caught after more than two years on the run when police arrested him for stealing catalytic converters from cars.
Michael Casey burgled a dozen houses in Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot in 2018 as part of a ruthless and organised gang responsible for scores of break-ins during which half-a-million pounds’ worth of gold and other jewellery was taken.
While other members of the group were arrested in January 2019, he disappeared – and after a manhunt involving police around the UK and in the Republic of Ireland he was arrested in Greater Manchester in April this year with a Mercedes car full of tools and stolen catalytic converters.
Casey was sentenced for both sets of Manchester offending and for the Welsh burglary spree when he appeared in court via videolink.
Ian Wright, prosecuting, said the first offence took place in Cheadle in Greater Manchester in June 2017 when Casey was part of a group of four masked men who forced entry to the home of the 78-year-old woman claiming to be police officers executing a search warrant. While the homeowner was detained and had rings and other jewellery ripped from her, others in the group ransacked her house looking for cash and jewellery.
The following August Casey took part in a series of burglaries in Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot which were part of a wider campaign of burglaries being run from the travellers site at Mill Stream Way on Swansea Vale. Between August 4 and 9 the defendant took part in 12 burglaries or attempted burglaries in Ynystawe, Llansamlet, Skewen, Morriston, and Aberavon.
During one burglary alone, at a house in Skewen, the gang stole gold and other jewellery items worth £70,000.
Five members of the family-based gang – Kieran, Patrick, Daniel, William and David Joyce – were later jailed for conspiracy to burgle following a trial at Swansea Crown Court in November and December 2019 but Casey and two other suspects went on the run. After an extensive manhunt all three were eventually caught, with Daniel Casey being sentenced in March this year, and Wayne Harty in September.
The court heard Michael Casey was arrested in April this year in Stockport in Greater Manchester after a high-speed chase of a Mercedes which at times topped 100mph in 30mph zones.
Eventually the car was abandoned and two men, one of whom was Casey, ran away. Both were subsequently caught – Casey was found hiding in a garden – and in the Mercedes police found a dozen stolen catalytic converters along with electric saws and drills, and a trolley jack.
Michael Lee Timothy Casey, aged 21, of Mynells Gorse travellers site, Leicester, had previously pleaded guilty to burglary – the 2017 raid on the house in Cheadle – conspiracy to burgle, and to theft, handling stolen goods, and going equipped for theft in relation to the catalytic converter offending when he appeared in the dock for sentencing.
Eugene Hickey, for Casey, said the defendant was part of the traveller community and had grown up in Limerick in Ireland where his mother had kept him away from crime.
However, at the age of 16 – as was the custom in the community, and like his father and grandfather before him – he went “travelling”, and moved to the UK. The barrister said that once away from home the impressionable teenager fell under the “entirely corrosive influence” of older and “more criminally inclined” uncles and cousins who “should have known better”.
Mr Hickey said Casey had written a letter to the court in which he expressed his remorse for his actions, and said he now just wanted to settle down, find work, and start a family.
Casey was sentenced to four years in prison, comprising 16 months for the Cheadle burglary, 30 months for the South Wales burglaries, and two months for the catalytic converter thefts, all to run consecutively.