One victim of the Night Watcher feared she would be raped and killed after he ambushed her at her £3.5million home.
Susan Morris was at her computer when the burglar pounced on her, yelling: ‘I want the jewellery, take me to the safe’.
The 61-year-old suffered a broken jaw and lost a tooth as he beat her into submission, binding her hands with cable ties.
Susan Morris (pictured left with her husband Stephen; and with her injuries, right) was at her computer when the burglar pounced on her, yelling: ‘I want the jewellery, take me to the safe’
Speaking last night, Mrs Morris said she believed he was professionally trained and knew how hard to hit her without knocking her out.
‘All I wanted to do is get him out of the house as quickly as possible, give him what he wanted and get him out,’ she said. ‘So I took him to the jewellery, gave him the jewellery but he said to me “get on the floor”. I thought he was going to rape me, I was very, very frightened.
‘I gave him a lot of jewellery from the safe and I said to him “You have got very valuable stuff there, now get out”.
‘But he wasn’t happy with that, he asked for more jewellery, I gave him some more jewellery and he then wanted more jewellery, and this is when he really got angry and started to hit me.
‘He hit me very hard on my face, not enough to knock me out, he knew exactly how hard to hit me, he hit me three times on my face, it was very painful, I couldn’t believe the blows kept coming.
‘He got very angry as he was hitting me. I couldn’t get one ring and bracelet off and I thought he was going to cut my finger off to get them. I was really frightened.
‘One point when he was hitting me, with the gun pointing at me, at that moment I did actually think, this is it, it’s all over.’
She said he spoke well, without an accent, and appeared methodical and intelligent.
Mrs Morris was at her computer when the burglar pounced on her, yelling: ‘I want the jewellery, take me to the safe’. She is pictured with a black eye after the raid
Describing the raid last November in Kingswood, Surrey, she added: ‘It all happened incredibly quickly, it is still very vivid though in my mind.
‘He came toward me and I realised he had a sawn-off shotgun and he grabbed hold of me, he was holding me the whole time of the burglary and never let go of me.
‘I have got bruises all over my body where he had hold of me.’
Her husband Stephen, who is a company director, arrived home to find her hiding in a bedroom still with her wrists tied.
He said: ‘It was pretty horrid and then you start feeling guilty that you weren’t there, it might have been a different outcome, it might have been worse, it might have been better.’
The couple have since upgraded the security on their home massively and are considering moving.
They lost valuables worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, including three rings which belonged to Mrs Morris’s mother-in-law. Mrs Morris said: ‘It’s not about what was stolen, there were some very emotional things that were stolen that will never be replaced, it’s more about the effect it has had upon our lives and our relationship.
‘It’s very tense and we have had professional help, but I am told we will always suffer, we will improve but you can’t take it away – the tension, the anxiety and fear will always be there.’
Mr Morris added: ‘He needs to be caught so he can’t do it to anybody else and ruin someone else’s life, and if anyone does know anything, although he’s obviously a very clever person, they really better say something because there are so many other people.
‘We were lucky in a way that no-one was killed or maimed.’
He added: ‘The only thing I would make a plea for is, politicians from either persuasion, to actually realise a lack of funding for police and emergency services is causing a crisis in the country.’
The Night Watcher took a brooch belonging to Mrs Morris’s mother, who died when she was only 17.