Gavin Reilly and Michael Scanlon are not likely to get invited to this year’s criminal mastermind Christmas party.
Most good detective novels will tell you that the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime, but Reilly and Scanlon took it one step further by returning in the same stolen car they had used as a getaway vehicle less than two months earlier.
Their breathtakingly short memories led to a long stretch in prison, as they were jailed for 11 years each on Friday, August 29, 2014 .
The pair were members of a criminal gang that had carried out a four-month crime spree across the Midlands.
On Monday, October 28, 2013 the pair were clever enough to wear masks when they robbed the Co-op store in Tividale, West Mids, before getting away in a stolen white Audi A3.
But their cleverness had dried up by Thursday, December 5, 2013 when they returned – unmasked and driving the same Audi A3 – to buy beer and groceries.
CCTV cameras picked up the car’s registration number, which had also been used in three other almost identical shop raids.
Further DNA evidence linked Reilly to another vehicle after a discarded balaclava was found in another of the abandoned cars in Bilston, West Mids.
Reilly, 34, of Sedgley, West Mids, and Scanlon, 34, of Bilston, denied conspiracy to commit 23 robberies but were convicted by a jury on Thursday, August 28, 2014 after a three-week trial.
