A MAN who was accused of breaking into the home of rugby league couple Millie and Adam Elliott in 2024 and stealing the 28-year-old prop's NRLW premiership ring has pleaded guilty to lesser charges as part of a deal with prosecutors.
Lionel Gundy, now 26, was in the middle of a pre-dawn break-in spree across Merewether around the time that Millie Elliott confronted an intruder in the kitchen of her home about 5am on October 12.
Millie, an NRLW star and four-time premiership winner with the Knights, Roosters and Broncos, had been woken by a sound and got out of bed to find a man kneeling in front of an open cupboard.
She shouted at him, waking up her partner, Adam, and the intruder fled out the back door, according to court documents.
Both Millie and Adam gave chase, but lost sight of the intruder.
Adam found his keys and wallet in the backyard and called police while walking around nearby Gibbs Brothers Oval, where he found other items belonging to Millie scattered around.
But the intruder had disappeared with two handbags, a laptop, a bank card, $1000 in cash and the NRLW premiership ring that Millie had won with the Roosters about a week earlier.
The premiership rings are easy to identify because they are engraved with the players' jersey number and are valued at $10,000, according to court documents.
"If you work at a pawn shop at Newy and someone comes in with a number 8 premiership ring to swap for cash, please let me know," she wrote in the post.
"Because it's probably not theirs, they came into my house at night and stole it."
Meanwhile, Gundy, who had been spotted trying to break into three other homes at Merewether that morning, including two next door to the Elliotts' place, had headed to a shopping centre at Newcastle West.
CCTV footage captured him at 9.20am that morning using Millie's stolen bank card to buy a mobile phone.
Police were able to identify Gundy from the footage and issued a warrant for his arrest.
Police attempted to stop him, but he threw the laptop and ran towards a unit in Glebe Road.
Police gave chase and he was arrested.
Police recovered the laptop and discovered it had been stolen during the break-in.
However, despite searching a number of units linked to Gundy, police could not locate the coveted piece of jewellery.
It wasn't until November 8 when police received a call from a pawn shop in Newcastle that they recovered the ring.
Another man, 37, had purchased the $10,000 ring from someone and then pawned it for just $682.
The 37-year-old was arrested outside Newcastle courthouse about a week later when he arrived to face sentence for an unrelated matter.
He was charged with receiving stolen property, but ultimately pleaded guilty to a lesser stolen goods charge and last year was placed on a four-month intensive corrections order and told to perform 100 hours of community service.
Gundy had long denied being the man behind the spate of break-ins and was expected to face a trial in Newcastle District Court in December.
However, he was re-arraigned during the court's super callover and pleaded guilty to three counts of entering with intent to commit a serious indictable offence after prosecutors withdrew the most serious charges of aggravated break and enter.
As part of the deal with the DPP, Gundy did not admit to being the intruder who broke into the Elliotts' home and only pleaded guilty to using her stolen bank card and receiving stolen property in relation to her laptop.
The super callover is a process where defended criminal matters are funnelled into a list, negotiations are encouraged and deals are done to reduce the backlog of criminal trials.
The process can see some remarkable deals done for defendants, including recently when a man accused of attempted murder had the charge withdrawn in exchange for pleading guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Gundy will be sentenced on Friday.
