Cleaner jailed for stealing £23,000 wedding ring from millionaire’s Chelsea home

 
Marzanna Szysz (left) and the ring she stole (centre) from Bridget Harrison (right) (Pictures: Facebook/Elizabeth Gage/Tony Palmer)
Tony Palmer|Simon Freeman12 December 2014

A cleaner has been jailed for stealing a £23,000 wedding ring from her millionaire employer’s Chelsea home - after it emerged for sale at auction for a fraction of its true value eight years later.

Polish-born Marzanna Szysz, 42, was today beginning a nine-month prison sentence after a jury rejected her claim that the designer band had been a gift from the late actress and model Bridget Harrison.

Szysz, from Hanworth, was employed by the Harrison family at their £4.25m six-bedroom Chelsea townhouse in June 2005 when she snatched the ring, designed by master goldsmith Elizabeth Gage.

It was found to be missing after Mrs Harrison, who was battling breast cancer which went on to claim her life at the age of 67 in 2011, sent her jewellery collection to Gage’s boutique in Belgravia for cleaning.

The ring was not seen again until being snapped up at an auction in Chiswick on April 5 last year for just £3,000.

Police were called after the unsuspecting buyer took it back to Gage, who had been a friend of Mrs Harrison’s, for authentication.

Szysz claimed the ring had been given to her in 2009 but had been too big so she had asked her husband to put it up for action to fund renovations to their semi-detached home.

Judge Douglas Moore, sentencing Szysz at Isleworth Crown Court, said: “It’s undoubtedly a breach of trust, involving a high-value item, against a woman this defendant knew had cancer and the defendant took advantage of that situation.”

“I am not sympathetic at all. It was a wealthy household and it would have been as plain as a pikestaff to the defendant that this was not a woman who wore cheap jewellery.

“It was demonstrably of a high value.”

Read More

Mrs Harrison studied at the Sorbonne, Paris and London’s Trinity College of Music, appeared in two films directed by Italian Federico Fellini and was employed by the Aga Khan to run an exclusive yacht club in Sardinia.

She married wealthy Cumbria businessman Norman Harrison and the couple had three daughters, with the family dividing their time between an estate in Penrith and their townhouse in Cadogan Street where Szysz cleaned for three hours a week.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in