The closest that residents in the sleepy seaside town of Formby got to violent crime in 1977 was, the BBC solemnly reported, by watching Kojak.
So the mysterious disappearance of garden ornaments, replaced by sinister ransom notes, was big news. It led to a media circus as journalists were dispatched to investigate the “phantom gnome snatcher of Formby”.
Now, nearly 50 years, on the mystery has been solved. On Tuesday, a 62-year-old man calling himself Arthur went on Radio 2’s Vernon Kay show to confess – and apologise.
Arthur told Kay that he was 15 at the time and he committed the misdeeds with his five-year-old brother, Colin.“I still can’t remember what made me do it,” he said.
Arthur recalled seeing a gnome in a garden and wondering why people had them. “It just grew out of that,” he said.
“We went out that evening and looked around the neighbourhood and found at least a dozen gardens with gnomes in and made a note of them. And the next night, we went out and collected them, so to speak. We crafted some fairly amateurish ransom notes and left it at that.
“We checked the sort of locations we put in the ransom notes to put 25p on the phone box or behind the park bench and there was nothing there.
“So three nights later we put them all back again and thought absolutely nothing of it.”
Kay read one of the ransom notes out to Arthur: “Listen, your gnome has seven hours to live unless you wrap 25p and leave it at the car park at Safeways near the bowling green. This is no hoax.”
Another note, according to reports at the time, asked for the money to be left under the roundabout in the park.
Days after the thefts, 18 garden ornaments all mysteriously appeared together on the roundabout. The Liverpool Echo reported that it included eight gnomes, one Snow White, three frogs, two squirrels, one peacock, two toadstools and a rabbit, and an identification parade was held to allow householders to reclaim their ornaments.
Arthur made his confession after a woman called Jenny heard a Vernon’s Vault archive item from Nationwide about the thefts. “I know that culprit. He is in fact my cousin,” she said. “And he tells that story most Boxing Days and each time he gets a little bit wearier, you can see the weight of his conscience on his shoulders.”
Arthur admitted he was something of a wayward teenager. “It’s been on my conscience over the years that I did this terrible thing,” he joked. “The one thing I do regret is that, I think one of the gnomes was damaged when we lifted it, because it was concreted in and we actually broke it.”
Kay tried to assure Arthur that the nation would forgive the “harmless prank”. Arthur replied: “I hope the statutes of limitations have passed on this one, but I would like to beg forgiveness from all the families that I have caused grief.”
