A BURGLAR who has made a career out of exploiting and stealing from the elderly has been jailed for four years.

In his latest crime, Donovan Ross Clough, 24, burgled a Haxby widow on her 88th birthday and stole her dead husband's photo and purse.

He was on licence from a four-year sentence for duping elderly people as part of a cowboy roofer gang and from a six-month sentence imposed earlier this year for breaking an antisocial behaviour order designed to stop him continuing his crimes against the elderly.

He had conned pensioners in and around Selby, York and Wetherby out of thousands of pounds.

Passing sentence for burgling the Haxby widow, the Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, who had also sentenced him for the cowboy roofing offences, said: "The message has to be loud and clear. Those who target the elderly in this way must always go to prison."

Clough, of Sycamore Road, Barlby, pleaded guilty to burglary and criminal damage to a police station wall during a police interview. He has more than 100 previous convictions including three previous house burglaries.

York Press: York Crown Court - zxc

York Crown Court

Martin Sleight, prosecuting, described how Clough struck up a conversation with the Haxby pensioner's gardener when she was out, asking for details about her money.

The next day, when she was in, he got into her house by claiming the gardener had asked him to keep an eye on her and that she had known his father. While she responded to his requests for a drink, then for a cup of tea when she had offered water and to his tale of a cat or a hedgehog in her garden, he stole her purse and photo.

At one point he tried to get to her bedroom by claiming to need the toilet.

His record of more than 100 offences includes previous house burglaries and he had been released from jail just six weeks before the burglary on 30 August.

The judge said: "It is quite clear this was planned as a distraction burglary. Once again you resorted to the sort of patter you had used in the past to persuade her to leave the room or go into the garden. It is exploitation of an elderly person."

Detective Chief Inspector Allan Harder said: "Donovan Clough is a prolific offender who callously duped his way into the elderly victim's home with the aim to take whatever cash and valuables he could get his hands on. This is truly sickening and shameful behaviour. I hope the outcome at court will provide some comfort to his victim following her ordeal.

"I have nothing but praise for the police officers and staff involved in this case, particularly their outstanding actions which led to Donovan's swift arrest, guilty plea and sentencing at court in just over one month."

Clough's solicitor advocate Mark Thompson said he had spared the widow the ordeal of giving evidence by pleading guilty and had psychiatric problems for which his mother believed he should have received more help when an adolescent. He had fallen in with others who had led him into bad ways.