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William McLennan, Clodagh Stenson and Martin Eastaugh
BBC England Investigations
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The functional toilet was called America
A gang has been convicted over the theft of a £4.8m gold toilet from an art exhibition at Blenheim Palace.
Thieves smashed their way in and ripped out the fully functional toilet, hours after a glamorous launch party at the Oxfordshire stately home in September 2019.
Michael Jones was found guilty of planning the burglary. Fred Doe was convicted of conspiring to sell the gold, while Bora Guccuk was cleared of the same charge.
The BBC can now reveal the full criminal history of the heist gang's kingpin James Sheen. He has been jailed at least six times since 2005 and has led organised crime groups that made more than £5m from fraud and theft - money authorities have largely failed to recover.
PA Media
(Left to right) Michael Jones, Bora Guccuk and Fred Doe have been on trial at Oxford Crown Court
Five men were seen on CCTV carrying out the heist, but only two - Sheen and Jones - have ever been caught.
Within days the artwork, called America, had been broken up and sold on, the court heard. None of the gold has been recovered.
Sheen, from Oxford, pleaded guilty last year after police found his DNA at the scene and gold fragments in his clothing. He was described in court as the "common denominator" - having been charged with planning and transferring criminal property, as well as burglary.
The 40-year-old, who has previous convictions for fraud, theft and a firearms offence, was arrested four weeks after the heist, on suspicion of planning it, but he was released on bail.
He continued his crime spree, including a similar raid eight months later at the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, Suffolk, where he stole gold and silver trophies worth £400,000, none of which have ever been recovered.
Watch the gold toilet seat being carried from the palace in CCTV shown in court
The court heard how the gang had meticulously researched the burglary at Blenheim Palace - a UNESCO World Heritage Site to the north of Oxford.
Jones visited the palace for a second time the day before the heist, and took pictures of the golden toilet, a lock on the door and a nearby window. Later that day, the artist Maurizio Cattelan hosted his launch party.
A few hours after guests left, the gang used two stolen cars to ram through palace gates, smash a window, wrench the toilet from its fittings and roll it out of the building, the court heard.
The BBC has discovered they exploited a series of security flaws at the palace - where there were no guards patrolling the exhibition or the grounds. Overnight, the artwork was locked behind a thin wooden door and was not monitored by CCTV.
External CCTV showed the gang were inside for less than three minutes. Palace chief executive Dominic Hare told the BBC the "facts speak for themselves".
"We took possession of this precious item and managed to lose it within a day," he said, because the thieves simply "drove through the gates, smashed through the window, they picked it up and they went".
Police arrived within five minutes of the alarm sounding, but the thieves had already left.
As a work of art, the toilet weighed 98kg (216lbs) and was insured for $6m (£4.8m). Gold prices at the time would have meant the metal alone was worth £2.8m, the court was told.
