Luker Bros removals man who stole thousands of pounds' worth of antiques is jailed

Martin Bateman, 54, was branded a ‘consummate liar and a charmer’ by one of the 11 victims whose belongings were stolen between 2014 and 2019. Jailing him, the judge said he had made a ‘commodity’ of his victim’s memories.

The dad-of-one, who worked for removals firm Luker Brothers when the goods were taken, was said to have earned more than £5,100 from sales of the stolen items through Watlington auction house Jones and Jacob. 

The auctioneer’s described him as a regular seller, bringing £54,000-worth of goods from December 2013.

'Out of control'

Mitigating, Kellie Enever said there was a ‘culmination of factors’ that led to the thefts. An ‘out of control’ gambling habit led to the breakdown of his marriage. He moved in with his elderly parents and took over caring responsibilities for his older brother. His mother was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2016.

He was genuinely sorry for what he had done, she said: “To quote him, ‘I didn’t really appreciate the situation and the losses.’”

Bateman's fiancee was said to have halted plans for their wedding when he told her what he had done. He had said goodbye to his teen son on Wednesday morning knowing he was likely to be going to prison, his barrister said.

Jailed

Sending him to prison for two years, Judge Maria Lamb told Bateman: “It is impossible to say what the total financial value involved here was, although I am satisfied that it must have been considerable. 

“But this case is not really about the monetary value of those stolen items. I have read and we’ve all heard read out the various victim personal statements.” 

She quoted from the statement of one victim who described the stolen paintings like ‘old friends who shared my past and all my histories’. 

“The hurt is palpable in those statements that have been read out to the court.

“What you have done represents a gross violation of the trust which was placed in you by the individuals who left their belongings in your care. 

“You have, it is quite clear to me, made a commodity of their memories. 

“You have traded their treasured possessions without the slightest thought for the importance of what they attached to them because all of those things matter to people for various reasons and I am told now that all too late you realise that and you are sorry about it. 

“Behind this was financial greed to address the predicament into which you had got yourself. 

“The gain you had made, [it] seemed to me, was significant. The loss that you have caused is incalculable.” 

The bent mover

Prosecutor Alexandra Bull told Oxford Crown Court on Wednesday that Bateman’s thefts began in January 2014, when he was part of the crew that packed up a woman’s belongings in Oxford and took them to storage. 

It wasn’t until 2016 that she unpacked the boxes and realised two Chinese figurines, two sets of cutlery dating from around 1900, a silver sugar sifter and an ornament of a bear was missing. 

In a victim personal statement, the woman said the stolen items included family heirlooms. “I have little else to remember my parents by and Mr Bateman has robbed me of them,” she said. 

Over the next five years he was said to have siphoned off valuable paintings, jewellery and other antiques from 10 other removals organised by Luker Brothers.

The stolen items included an oil painting by French impressionist Pierre Adolphe Valette that had featured in two exhibitions at Manchester Art Gallery. 

The final victim arranged to have belongings moved from her home in Oxfordshire back to Switzerland, with a number of items kept in storage by Luker Brothers.

In December 2019 she was contacted by her brother after he spotted a number of her paintings being advertised for sale the following day at auction house James and Jacob. She contacted the company and managed to get the pieces removed from the sale. 

The items stolen from the woman included a bronze sculpture of her hands, an alabaster bust of a lady worth £1,500, an antique box of cutlery, 127-piece silver-plated canteen cutlery set worth £10,000, a still life painting, and a crayon drawing of Paddington Bear. 

The woman said in a victim personal statement read to the court that she felt ‘deeply sickened by the fact I welcomed Mr Bateman into my home’. She felt he must have seen her as ‘easy prey’ and was ‘clearly out to deceive me from the beginning’. 

Another victim said she had left a blank space on her wall for a missing painting inherited from her aunt, which was one of the heirlooms stolen in her house move. She said of the stolen artworks: “I miss them all like old friends who have shared my past and know my histories.”

One man said the Turkish carpets stolen by the removals man were part of a collection of ancient rugs begun when he and his wife worked and lived in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s.

Bateman was first interviewed by the police in 2014 after the first theft was reported. He was later challenged by Luker Brothers after the 2019 thefts were uncovered and claimed that he’d found items in a skip at the firm.

Anger

His victims were highly dismissive of Luker Brothers, saying in statements read to the court that their concerns had been brushed off by the firm. One said she had even been accused of ‘pointing the finger’ of blame. 

One woman said she had tried to report the matter to the police in 2018, when she went to Kidlington police station but was told they ‘could accept [her] report as they didn’t know if it was a civil or criminal matter’. She was put into a side room and a telephone number was dialled for her, but she ended the call when it wasn’t answered after a 10 minute wait. “I felt sick for several weeks after this,” she said. 

Previous convictions

Bateman, of High Street, Tetsworth, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court to 11 counts of theft. 

He had previous convictions dating back to the 1980s and 90s but had managed to turn his life around, the court heard.