The final chapter of a three-decade manhunt closed in a London courtroom yesterday as 67-year-old Margaret ‘Maggie’ Donovan, once dubbed ‘Britain’s most wanted woman,’ was sentenced to life imprisonment for a series of armed robberies that terrorised the South East in the early 1990s. The conviction draws a line under a case that had become a symbol of the Met’s inability to catch a ghost. Donovan, who vanished after a bungled jewel heist in Hatton Garden in 1995, was arrested in a rented flat in Margate last November following a tip-off from an informant.
Sources close to the investigation confirm that DNA evidence finally caught up with her after a discarded coffee cup was traced to her grandson. Her accomplices, long dead or disappeared, had maintained her myth. But as the judge declared, ‘No myth escapes the weight of evidence.
’ The sentencing marks a rare victory for the old-school detectives who never gave up, even as budgets were slashed and cases were shelved. Insiders say the case was reopened three years ago on the back of new forensic analysis. Donovan, who reportedly lived on a series of false identities, claimed she had repented.
The jury disagreed. For those who remember the fear of a woman in a balaclava wielding a sawn-off shotgun, justice has been a long time coming.
