A Glasgow man has been been found guilty of terrorising staff at a Perth bookmakers by carrying out a masked raid with a knife.
Bryan Walter Seager (30), of Dumbarton Road, Glasgow, had burst through the door of the shop and held up two members of staff shortly before closing time, the High Court in Dundee heard on Monday.
Seager was convicted by a majority of the jury of, on February 19, 2009, with face masked, assaulting Christopher Logan and Rory McCulloch, both c/o Tayside Police, uttering threats, brandishing a knife, demanding money from them, compelling Mr McCulloch to place money in a bag and robbing them of £1440.78.
During the trial the jury was played CCTV footage showing the robbery at Ladbrokes in Leonard Street, Perth. There was only one customer in the shop a regular when the door was flung open and slammed against the wall and a man ran in wearing a balaclava and holding a knife.
He was holding a knife at shoulder height and, “He kept saying, ‘This is not a joke, this is not a joke’,” recalled Mr McCulloch.
Once he had the money, the man ran out of the shop. About an hour after the alarm had been raised police found a black balaclava, black gloves, a hooded jacket, a knife and a pair of trainers in a drain behind the Christian Centre about 250 yards from the betting shop.
DNA recovered from the items matched that of Seager, forensic biologist Susan Ure told the jury, and said there was less than a one in one billion chance that DNA on the balaclava and gloves did not come from Seager.
The court heard Seager had repeatedly maintained that he was wrongly accused of the crime, telling the jury it was “a total impossibility” that he had carried out the robbery. On that night he was working in a bar in Glasgow and had stayed after work for a drink, he said.
He told the jury that the balaclava had been made from a hat which, with the gloves, had been in a suitcase which he lost on a bus journey between Perth and Glasgow in 2007.
Lord Kinclaven deferred sentence until June 24 in Glasgow and remanded Seager in custody, telling him that despite having no previous convictions his status had now changed and he had been found guilty of the serious crime of assault and robbery.
Despite the successful conviction, it is unclear whether anyone is in line for the £10,000 reward money put up by the Association of British Bookmakers.
A spokesman said, “Our policy is to reward up to £10,000 to members of the public who provide information or do other things that help prevent betting shop crime or detect a criminal involved.
“We would never give out information about individual awards or communicate the amount of any particular reward.”
The branch of Ladbrokes at which the robbery happened is being refurbished and extended, although not as a result of the incident.
Neither Mr McCulloch, then the deputy manager, or Mr Logan, the customer services manager at the time, are now employed by the bookmakers’ chain.