Gang jailed after botched kidnap led police to them

A criminal gang has been jailed for a total of 49 years after a bungled kidnap led police straight to them.

Franklin O'Dwyer, 25, Altan O'Connell, 27, Luke McInerney, 31, Nicholas O'Dwyer, 56, Dwain Stratford, 35, and Karl Houghton, 36, all from Swindon, Wiltshire, were sentenced on Tuesday at Exeter Crown Court.

O'Connell and McInerney kidnapped a 71-year-old from his home in Torquay, Devon, but abandoned the car due to its battery running low, allowing the victim to escape.

After the police linked the gang to similar crimes across the south-west, they pleaded guilty to various offences, including kidnap, false imprisonment, burglary, handling stolen goods and counterfeit currency.

Franklin O'Dwyer was sentenced to 10 years and five months for his role in the kidnap and burglaries, while O'Connell and McInerney were both jailed for 11 years and 10 months.

Nicholas O'Dwyer, Stratford and Houghton, who were involved in other burglaries, were jailed for six years and three months, four years and eight months, and four years respectively.

The court heard that at 01:00 GMT on 14 January 2026 O'Dwyer, O'Connell and McInerney broke into the victim's home and demanded he hand over his watches.

They had seen the watches in an Instagram video, which is how they often picked out their targets.

When the trio could not find any, they cable tied his hands, taped his mouth and put him in the back of his own electric car.

They planned to take him to an address in London where they believed more watches to be.

O'Connell and McInerney drove up the M5, but had only reached Bridgwater when the battery ran critically low.

The pair put the victim in the boot, abandoned the car in a country lane near Puriton in Somerset and fled.

The victim managed to free himself from the cable ties and used the last bit of battery to drive away and raise the alarm.

In a statement to the court, he said: "I became genuinely frightened and believed I was likely to die."

Detectives from the Devon and Cornwall Police began investigating and linked some of the group to a burglary in Southampton three days before.

Police seized stolen vehicles, multiple watches, jewellery, designer handbags, drones and cash.

The investigation found the gang used vehicles for their crimes that had been hired using their own names and bank details.

Police found Instagram searches on their phones linked to incidents in Torquay and Southampton, and believed they used open-source research to plan their crimes.

Det Insp Tom Canning said the case was a reminder of the risks of putting information on social media and how people can "use that information against you if they have ill intention".

"I would urge people to consider what they post on to social media and into the public domain," he said.

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