The 15-century oak panels were stolen in 2013 from the Holy Trinity Church in Torbryan, Newton Abbot, Devon. Intrigued, the Scotland Yard detectives dug deeper and discovered the oak panels were part of the Torbryan screen, stolen from a Devon church earlier in 2013 and considered of national importance because they were one of the few such artefacts to have escaped the destruction of the Reformation. He showed them two 15th-century oak church panels and an interesting heart stone, which would once have marked the spot where a holy person’s organ was interred. As a protected species, the movement of gorilla parts is tightly controlled.ĭetectives knocked on his door, talked to him about the gorilla and asked him if he had anything else they ought to know about. Operation Icarus began two years ago when Customs and Excise tipped off the Metropolitan police that a south London man was planning to import a gorilla’s head. Some of them may fetch tens of thousands pounds on the black market others go for £50, £60.” Some of the items that have been taken are described as priceless because they are unique. I never thought I’d be spending so much time learning about church artefacts. Detectives have executed warrants on addresses in London, Kent and Wales and found objects including statues, stained glass, stonework, friezes, brasses and bibles, seemingly systematically stripped from churches over the last decade.Ī major incident has been declared and detectives are hunting for the person or gang behind the thefts, searching for more stolen objects – including a cup that Christ is reputed to have drunk from at the Last Supper – and trying to puzzle out where many of the items it has already recovered belong.ĭet Insp Martyn Barnes of West Mercia police, which is heading what has been codenamed Operation Icarus, said it was a painstaking and sometimes difficult inquiry.
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