Burglar who 'targeted' Taylor-Joy's bedroom jailed

An armed robber who tried to prise open the bedroom door of Hollywood actress Anya Taylor-Joy while she was staying at a London mansion has been jailed.

Kirk Holdrick, 43, was one of two masked men who smashed their way into the luxury property, in what may have been a targeted raid, Wood Green Crown Court heard.

In November, Holdrick was jailed for 12 years for a home invasion in Dorset where a mother and daughter were tied up and threatened with violence. He was handed a further three-year custodial sentence after admitting burglary of the London home.

Holdrick, from Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, was described in court as a career criminal with convictions dating back to his teenage years.

Taylor-Joy and her husband, Malcolm McRae, were staying at the London property on 12 February 2023 when they heard the glass of a side window being smashed.

McRae confronted the intruders before barricading himself and his wife inside a bedroom, which they then tried to prise into.

Armed only with a lamp, he managed to scare off the men by bluffing that he had a gun, causing them to flee the scene empty-handed.

Prosecutors suggested that because the burglars did not simply steal expensive items and implied they had intended to target the celebrities personally.

The couple told police they had been traumatised by the ordeal and feared being targeted again.

The Golden Globe winner known for The Queen's Gambit, the Dune films and Peaky Blinders, appeared on the Baftas red carpet just a week after the ordeal.

Holdrick was arrested on 18 April 2023 after stepping off a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool.

He claimed he had been to the property previously as a guest at a party and suggested that was how his DNA had been left behind.

He later abandoned this defence and pleaded guilty to burglary in mid-December last year.

Nine days after the break-in at the London mansion, Holdrick took part in a second home invasion in which a mother and daughter were held at gunpoint, tied up and threatened with violence.

Holdrick and his accomplice, Ashley Fulton, disguised themselves as police officers during the break-in at a property in Sandbanks, overlooking Poole Harbour, Dorset where they targeted the home of wealthy businessman Mark Aitchison.

Aitchison's wife, Kerry, was told she would be killed if she did not open the family safe.

When their daughter Emily arrived home unexpectedly, she was also restrained and threatened.

The intruders told her they would shoot her in front of her mother and demanded to know where the iron was, saying: "We want to burn you."

The pair escaped with £200,000 worth of luxury watches, designer handbags, jewellery and cash, but left a trail of DNA behind.

Police traced the getaway car and recovered vapes from the vehicle.

Holdrick, who previously briefly dated one of the cast members from The Only Way Is Essex, was jailed for life in 2005 for armed robberies on a security van.

He was recalled to prison to continue serving his life sentence after his latest offences.

In November, he was jailed for 12 years for the Sandbanks robbery and a further four years on licence if he is released, after pleading guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court to two counts of robbery, possession of an imitation firearm and fraud.

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