A Nottingham thief has been returned to jail after his fingerprint was found on a soft drinks bottle inside a stolen car.
The car was reported stolen from an address in Abbey Street, Dunkirk, on the morning of 12 July 2024 and was found abandoned on false plates the following day in Wilford.
Among several items of interest recovered from inside was a bottle of Lucozade.
After establishing that the bottle hadn’t belonged to the car’s owner, officers submitted it for fingerprint examination.
The single left thumbprint recovered was subsequently linked to known criminal Harry Morgan, who has a significant offending history.
Another print belonging to an associate of Morgan’s was found on the passenger-side door.
Morgan, aged 38, was also linked to the car by mobile phone data and by CCTV footage recorded after it was abandoned.
The errant bottle print also helped officers link him to another car that had been stolen later on 13 July – this time near the Holme Pierrepont Watersports Centre.
The victim recalled leaving such a bottle inside when she left the vehicle – a bottle that was no longer there when her car was recovered.
Although detectives were unable to prove it was the same bottle, Morgan was again linked to the vehicle by a mobile phone.
The device, left in the car when it was stolen, was tracked to a location where Morgan had been caught on CCTV.
Morgan entered guilty pleas at an earlier hearing to two counts of handling stolen goods – one count for each vehicle.
Morgan, of Booth Close, St Ann’s, also admitted separate charges of theft from a motor vehicle and fraud by false representation.
These charges related to the theft of a wallet from a car on 11 August and the subsequent use of the victim’s bank card in a shop.
Appearing at Nottingham Crown Court on Monday, he was jailed for three years.
Detective Constable Tim Townsend, of Nottinghamshire Police, said:
“Morgan is an experienced criminal with a long record of dishonesty offences.
“He clearly took some care to avoid linking himself to either of these two vehicles but was left to rue his contact with this particular soft drink.
“On its own, however, that would not have been enough to prove his involvement in these offences, so I am grateful to my colleagues for the many hours they spent trawling through phone data and CCTV footage.
“In the end, we were able to present a very compelling case that clearly linked Morgan to stolen vehicles and led him back to jail.”
• Images show burglar appearing from ceiling at a Sainsbury’s in Nottingham
