When a terrified young woman told staff at her London hotel there was a drunken burglar in her room — a man who had tried to lure her inside — she says they refused to call the police at first.
‘I felt humiliated, as if I were making a fuss over nothing,’ says Kimberley Williams, 26. ‘But there was a man in my room and I’d felt threatened by him. It could have been far worse — and I didn’t want his next victim to be raped or murdered.’
Kimberley didn’t know it at the time, but her brave decision to ignore staff and insist the police were called was exactly the kind of break a dogged City of London Police detective had been hoping for in an unprecedented case — the theft of an American football legend’s Hall of Fame ring.
Andre Reed, 60, one of the sport’s most revered players, was awarded the Ring of Excellence after being inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014. Only 362 players have been honoured in this way in the history of the game.
But on October 7 last year, the personalised, jewel-encrusted ring was stolen, along with other jewellery, a £1,200 Gucci bag, clothing and passports, all from the same hotel as Kimberley’s, the £379-a-night Leonardo Royal near St Paul’s Cathedral.
NFL star Andre Reed, who played for the Buffalo Bills, poses with his 14-carat gold Pro Football Hall of Fame ring
The personalised ring, decorated with the former player’s name and 28 diamonds, was stolen on October 7 last year
Last week, Gary Towsey, a 42-year-old career criminal of no fixed abode, was jailed for just over two years for burglary, handling stolen goods and fraud by misrepresentation.
He appears to have been a regular visitor to the Leonardo because he also pleaded guilty to making off without paying for a room there on September 8 last year. His capture was a study in bravery and determination, and it provided closure for Kimberley, but only a measure of comfort for Mr Reed — because, so far, this story has only a partially happy ending.
When he was burgled, Mr Reed was in London with his wife, Theresa, to watch his former team, the Buffalo Bills, play the Jacksonville Jaguars at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
After the burglary, he was heartbroken and said he felt ‘unsafe and violated’. In a victim statement, he later added: ‘My Hall of Fame ring was totally unique and meant so much to me.
‘There was only one and it was so very special, having been made and presented to me in recognition of all my NFL sporting achievements. I am really proud of that and I cherished it as I know how much personal effort, hard work and sacrifice I had put into my playing career.
‘The ring is priceless. It was one of a kind and cannot be replaced.’
The 14-carat gold band featured 28 diamonds weighing a total of 1.75 carats, a central blue ‘spinel’ gemstone, similar to a sapphire, and customised engravings. It is valued at £35,000 — but, to any player who is awarded it, the Hall of Fame ring is worth so much more.
The man given the task of trying to catch the thief was Detective Constable Al Collins, a married 65-year-old grandfather with 23 years’ service. However, no useful forensic evidence was gathered from Mr Reed’s room, and the hotel CCTV had picked up only stills. So DC Collins knew what his man looked like, but not who he was. What was certain was that this was no ordinary ring.
‘I have no time to follow sport, and I don’t know anything whatsoever about American football,’ says DC Collins. ‘But quickly I realised that Mr Reed was a sporting VIP and what had been stolen was of significant financial and sentimental value.
Gary Towsey was captured on CCTV at the Leonardo Royal hotel near St Paul’s Cathedral
‘I tend to become obsessed by all the cases I’m involved in. I have up to 40 to investigate at any one time, and I go to great lengths to try to get justice for all the victims. This was no exception. I find it’s always worth doing that little bit of extra work because sometimes it pays off.’
DC Collins circulated the suspect’s picture to colleagues on the off-chance that one had had dealings with him, but nothing came back. He listed the ring on the National Mobile Property Register, a database that can be checked by potential buyers to be sure that goods haven’t been stolen. Again, there was no feedback.
‘Assuming the thief would want to sell the ring, I searched eBay, Gumtree and a lot of “open source” websites because I assumed it would be worth a huge amount of money to a collector,’ he says. ‘But the results were negative.’
DC Collins also checked time records for employees, cleaners and so on, to see whether any might be considered suspects, but concluded that none of them were involved.
Then he got the first of two breaks that were to crack the case. On October 23, two weeks after the Ring of Excellence was stolen, Towsey tried to sell it, first to a jeweller, and then to a pawnbroker, both in Leeds.
Neither would buy it. But then, in a series of actions still being investigated, staff from the pawnbroker and jewellers dismantled the ring for Towsey — even though it bore the name of Andre Reed and a simple search on Google would have revealed it was stolen. The pawnbroker and jewellers cannot be named while inquiries by West Yorkshire Police are ongoing.
Towsey was last week jailed for just over two years for burglary, handling stolen goods and fraud by misrepresentation
The day after, one member of the jewellers’ staff contacted Mr Reed through social media. He confirmed the ring had been stolen and alerted NFL security staff, who told DC Collins.
The detective travelled to Leeds and interviewed those involved, emerging with fresh evidence and CCTV footage of a man wearing the ring and carrying the Gucci bag that had been stolen from Mr Reed’s room. But the identity of the crook was still a mystery.
Then came the second break DC Collins needed. On December 1 at about 11pm, Kimberley had returned to the Leonardo with her father, Craig, 44, stepmother Amie Cavanagh-Williams, and little sister Wren, then aged five, after enjoying a performance of the musical Frozen in London’s West End.
‘It had been absolutely amazing and then we’d had hot chocolate at the hotel before going to bed,’ she recalls. ‘My father, stepmum and Wren were in a family room, and I had my own room one or two doors down. I went to put my keycard in the door and noticed that it was closed but not locked. I pushed it, and there was a man inside.
‘Instantly I said, “I’m so sorry. Is this your room?” And he said “Yes”. But then I looked at my key card, which had my room number on it. And then I looked at the door, and it had the same number. And I said, “This is my room”, and he said, “Yeah, it is” and put his hand on the door and opened it as if to ask me inside. It was like he had been waiting for me, which was very scary.
‘I just remember shouting “No!” and running and pounding on my family’s door. My dad was downstairs having a cigarette, so at first it was just my young sister, stepmum and me in the room, and I told them there was someone in my room and my little sister began to cry. We were terrified.’
Kimberley called reception and asked for security, but she says it took them ‘20 to 30 minutes’ to send anybody. ‘They took me to my room and the burglar had gone,’ she says. ‘There were empty bottles all over the place from the mini bar and a crash helmet on my bed, but my perfume was gone, about £1,000 in jewellery and some of my dirty clothing, including underwear. I found that very frightening’
Kimberley says the hotel staff tried to dissuade her from calling the police and told her the person responsible for CCTV would not be around until the next day.
Detective Constable Al Collins, a married 65-year-old grandfather with 23 years’ service, managed to track down the gems from Reed’s ring
‘The staff didn’t seem to take me seriously,’ she says. ‘My father told them that if they wouldn’t call the police, he would. But they didn’t make the call until he said that next time they could be dealing with a rape or murder.’
When I asked Leonardo Hotels to account for its staff’s behaviour, it refused to address Kimberley’s specific concerns, nor did it offer an apology.
Instead, it issued a statement via its PR company Reputation Inc: ‘The safety of our guests is our utmost priority.
‘We take all allegations of crime extremely seriously, and our team is always on hand to respond immediately to any concerns, and we will promptly notify the police if and when a crime is confirmed.’
When a member of Leonardo’s staff did finally call 999, the City of London Police were there within minutes and, fortunately for Kimberley – and, eventually, Mr Reed – their policy on gathering forensic evidence meant a scenes of crime investigator wasn’t far behind. Many police forces will not attend hotels for ‘volume’ crimes such as theft, as the constant turnaround of guests can interfere with evidence gathering. But City will.
‘The City of London Police is unique in that we go to every crime if there is an opportunity for a forensic retrieval,’ says Tracy Alexander, director of Forensic Services. ‘There are lots of forces across the country that wouldn’t even think of going to a hotel because they don’t have the resources, or they just think, “That’s going to be compromised because people use hotel rooms all the time, so how would it be evidentially valuable?”
‘Some forces don’t go to non-residential burglaries of any sort, so they wouldn’t go to an office even if somebody’s broken a window and there’s blood on it. Lots of forces don’t do forensics on vehicle crime or criminal damage. We’re the only force in the country that goes to every single crime scene where forensic retrieval might be possible.’
Scenes of crime investigator Millie Hood gathered forensic evidence, while DC Collins tried another approach.
‘The crash helmet was Harley-Davidson branded, and I figured that you wouldn’t have a Harley crash helmet if you didn’t have a Harley-Davidson bike – and I doubted a Harley-Davidson rider would drive home without a helmet,’ he says.
At Pentonville, a search of the possessions taken from the prisoner on arrival included an envelope containing all the gems from the Ring of Excellence
Andre Reed said he felt ‘unsafe and violated’ when his hotel room was burgled while he was on a trip to London with his wife
‘So I walked the streets and checked every motorcycle bay looking for this Harley that had been left behind, but there wasn’t one – it later transpired that our man had stolen the helmet before burgling Kimberley’s room.’
Scenes of crime investigator Hood found fingerprints at the scene that turned up a match for Gary Towsey, a South Shields-born criminal with 13 previous convictions for theft, taking vehicles and burglary.
DC Collins now had evidence that put Towsey in Kimberley’s room and CCTV footage of him with Mr Reed’s ring and his wife’s Gucci bag at the Leeds jewellers. All he had to do now was find him.
He got a court order to search Towsey’s last known address, a house near Hounslow, west London, but Towsey was no longer living there. To cover all the bases, DC Collins requested a search in a law enforcement database known as the Prisoner Intelligence Notification System, or PINS, to see whether Towsey was in jail … and, perhaps predictably, on March 6 this year, word came back that he was.
‘The PINS check showed that the day after burgling Kimberley’s room, Towsey had been caught driving a stolen vehicle and was serving time in Pentonville prison,’ says DC Collins. ‘I had him.’
The detective visited the thief, but Towsey refused to leave his cell. DC Collins again filled in legal paperwork, this time so he could have access to the prisoner’s belongings. First, he found that the stolen Gucci bag was with Towsey’s possessions at HM Prison Thameside in Thamesmead, where he had been held for a time.
And then, at Pentonville, a search of the possessions taken from the prisoner on arrival included an envelope … containing all the gems from Andre Reed’s Hall of Fame ring.
‘The envelope was in an HM Prison Service property bag, and my eyes lit up when I opened it,’ says DC Collins. ‘First, I saw the large blue gemstone, then all the diamonds that surrounded it on the ring. I was so pleased to have found Mr Reed’s gems – it’s what I’m paid to do, and it also gives me a lot of job satisfaction.
‘But I was gutted not to have retrieved the whole ring. I discovered that the ring itself had been melted down and sold. I’m just hoping it can be re-made with the original gemstones, but the band wasn’t just a piece of gold.
‘It had Mr Reed’s name on it, and the position he played. So maybe it can be remoulded with the gems we recovered.’
Because forensics and CCTV could not place Towsey in Mr Reed’s room, he pleaded guilty only to handling the gemstones, Gucci bag and so on, and not to stealing them. However, it would be an understatement to say he was the prime suspect.
How a career criminal could be admitted into the justice system with an envelope full of precious stones without being questioned requires investigation – but none of those involved seems keen to accept responsibility.
Towsey’s prisoner number was A7830DL and HM Prisons records show that he was checked in on December 5 with a ‘blue stone’ in his possession. There is no mention of any diamonds – they were either missed or not recorded. Yet they were all together in one envelope when DC Collins searched the prisoner’s possessions.
There is also a ‘Cashier’s acknowledgement of reception of valuable property’ form dated 16/12/24, so someone clearly realised that something in his possessions was ‘valuable’.
I asked the Ministry of Justice how Towsey could have been admitted to prison with two dozen diamonds without alarm bells ringing but it suggested I ask Northamptonshire Police, the force which had arrested him for the car theft.
In turn, Northamptonshire Police said it handed over Towsey to the Metropolitan Police the next day, and so the Met would be responsible. When I approached the Met, it suggested I contact the Ministry of Justice.
Whatever comes of this buck-passing extravaganza, one officer continued to do the right thing. On June 4, when Towsey completed his car theft sentence, DC Collins met him at the gates of Pentonville prison and rearrested him. Now he is serving time all over again.
A spokesperson for the NFL in the UK and Ireland said: ‘We would like to thank the City of London Police for their partnership in this investigation and their hard work and professionalism in bringing this offender to justice.’
If anything can be taken from this bittersweet story, it is that it takes more than a ring to make a legend.
