There’s been something of a (very, very minor) controversy regarding a current TV2 show called ‘Catch a thief’ this features ‘reformed’ burglars as hosts, they break into a persons home and steal their stuff, and record everything they do, they then show the ‘victim’ how easy it was before getting in the experts to make the house secure with better locks, windows, alarm systems, etc. Then they try to break in again, and if the ‘victim’ has been following the new stay safe rules they’ve been given, it’s meant to be much more difficult.
The controversy isn’t that the show is basically an instruction guide for aspiring burglars who want to learn how to break in most quickly and easily, what to steal, and the expected price on the street. Though that ruction does exist, including a complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority.
No, indeed the controversy is that one of the ‘reformed’ burglar hosts doesn’t actually seem to be reformed. In fact while shooting the show co-host Veronica Jacomb was convicted and fined for her involvement in the theft of a digital camera from a Harvey Norman store on Victoria St in Auckland.
And now, in addition to her name being sullied all over NZ with articles in the New Zealand Herald, on Stuff and NZCity, and so on, her exploits are now entertaining people the world over, including mentions on popular sites like Yahoo & Altavista, here are a few samples all the way from China, the Netherlands, and Usania:
Taipei Times (China)
Reformed thief backslides
A woman described as a reformed thief who hosted an anti-crime TV program stole a camera from a shop while the series was being filmed, the New Zealand Herald reported yesterday. Veronica Jacomb, 28, pleaded guilty in the Auckland District Court on April 29 to stealing a digital camera in the final days of filming the series.LekkerDoelloos (Netherlands)
Presentator anti-diefstal programma is een dief
De presentatot van een Ani-diefstal programma in Nieuw Zeeland heeft na de laatste opname een digitale camera gepikt in een winkel, de presentator – vroeger een dief- zei te zijn bekeerd maar na de opnames kon Veronica Jacomb (28) het blijkbaar niet laten nog eens te stelen.Criminal Record Info (USA)
The host of TV2 programme To Catch A Thief was caught stealing at the time the show was being filmed. Veronica Jacomb pleaded guilty in the Auckland District Court to stealing a camera valued at $900.
But she’s not just a ‘former’ burglar, since 1997 she’s also been convicted for dealing P, assault, receiving stolen goods, and using a document.
What none of these articles tell you is the really important fact that she pashed me in a bus on the way back from camp in Rotorua in 1992, then asked me to be her ‘boyfriend’ about a week or two later.
Of course it wasn’t much of a relationship by adult standards – We spoke on the phone an awful lot and wrote letters and stuff, but we couldn’t meet very often, being young teenagers on the other side of the city (and me being incredibly unmotivated – even at the prospect of hot young girls that thought I was cool) so it didn’t last very long, and obviously didn’t really go anywhere.
She was a super-lovely girl, though, with a great family — as much as you can judge that sort of thing from the outside, here’s a post by her father on a forum for people with the surname Jacomb.
Here’s a really unfairly unflattering photo of her in my room, wearing my red ski hat and gigantic jeans. (In the background you can see my super eclectic tastes of the day, including basketball posters, cardboard skeletons, Jimi Hendrix fliers, and all manner of other junk.) Click for the bigness.
Unfortunately, she started hanging out with some real scumbags, and I guess this is where her slide started, a while after we broke up we went out with a couple of her ‘friends’ and, charmingly, one of them stole a camera I’d borrowed off a professional photographer friend, then bolted for his car while I was chatting away to someone (we were in an awesome full floor apartment in a building on Shortland Street), and drove directly to a gang run house to sell the camera to a fence.
Nice guy, eh?
Luckily for me, she was straight up with me about it when I asked, so I knew exactly what that fucker Matthew (a real dodgy piece of shit, so I didn’t make any effort to remember his surname) had done and where he’d taken it when I made my formal complaint to the police, it makes it really easy for them when you can give them names dates and addresses, so I did.
They busted the house, got the camera back, and charged that dirty little prick (and no doubt others involved in the greater organisation) – and recovered heaps of stolen gear, from memory including a couple of motorcycles and all of the sundry household electronics you’d expect.
Oh, a few months later he spotted me in the city with a group of friends and whined about how shitty it was for me to bust him. I’m usually only verbally abusive with fuckwits like this guy, but I just about busted him in the fucking jaw for that.
A couple of years later I heard that she was working as a prostitute and had gotten pregnant to the bouncer of a brothel, but by that stage I was well out of contact with anyone in her circle of friends, so that might just be spuriours rumour. (Though I note from one of the links above that she has a son named Dre, so who knows?)
Poor girl. I’m not kidding when I say she was lovely. She was really nice and friendly, and lots of fun.