Listener admits 1977 gnome kidnappings on Vernon Kay’s radio show

The mysterious culprit behind a series of gnome kidnappings in a Merseyside town has apparently been unmasked 47 years later.

The quiet seaside town of Formby was flooded by national and local media during the winter of 1977 as police puzzled over the disappearance of the garden ornaments.

Almost 50 years later, BBC Radio 2 presenter Vernon Kay solved the mystery after a listener named Jenny revealed that her cousin, who she called Arthur, was behind the crime.

Jenny contacted Radio 2 after Kay played a BBC archive clip of the infamous gnome kidnappings on his programme on Monday.

Arthur, who was just 15 at the time, claimed that he and his five-year old brother Colin crafted ransom notes demanding 25p for the return of the gnomes.

“We went out that evening and looked around the neighbourhood and found at least a dozen gardens with gnomes in and made a note of them,” he told Kay.

“And the next night, we went out and collected them. We crafted some fairly amateurish ransom notes and left it at that.

“We checked the sort of locations we put in the ransom notes to put 25 pence on the phone box or behind the park bench and there was nothing there.

“So three nights later we put them all back again and thought absolutely nothing of it.”

Arthur laughed when he shared his surprise that the local newspaper had run a piece on “gnome abductions” and was even more amused to see that BBC Nationwide had picked up the story a month later.

“It’s been on my conscience over the years that I did this terrible thing,” Arthur joked.

“The one thing I do regret is that, I think one of the gnomes was damaged when we lifted it, because it was concreted in and we actually broke it.”

Kay, laughing, read out the ransom note, which read: “Listen, your gnome has seven hours to live unless you wrap 25 pence and leave it at the car park at Safeways near the Bowling Green. This is no hoax.”

Arthur added: “I hope the statutes of limitations have passed on this one, but I would like to beg forgiveness from all the families that (I) have caused grief.”