A CLEANER used her vacuum cleaner to cover the noise of a theft from an 80-year-old widow.

Lucie Moran arranged for her boyfriend and an accomplice to steal a safe from her OAP employer.

She has been jailed for 30 months and the two safe-breakers have also been handed prison sentences.

Moran, who had only been working at the Brighouse home of the pensioner for a few weeks, used her vacuum cleaner to cover up the sound of her boyfriend Stuart Mallinson and accomplice Andrew Marum using a claw hammer to remove the safe from a bedroom cupboard while the victim was in her lounge.

Bradford Crown Court heard t the safe contained the victim’s grandmother's gold Victorian locket and a gold wristwatch belonging to her husband, who died less than a month before the burglary last November.

None of the items were recovered.

Moran, 33, of Hay Street, Brighouse, pleaded guilty to the burglary allegation when her case was listed for trial last month.

Mallinson, 28, of no fixed abode, and Marum, 36, of Malham Road, Rastrick, admitted their part in the break-in at an earlier hearing in February.

Mallinson and Marum were each jailed for two years.

Jailing the trio yesterday, Recorder Henry Prosser said the burglary involved a particularly bad case of deception and it was committed at the home of a recently bereaved lady.

“'I have also read the very harrowing victim impact statement made by your victim about this matter.

“This was on any view a callous and despicable offence and as bad a case of deception of a vulnerable victim as could be imagined,” added Recorder Prosser.