A “greedy” gardener addicted to cocaine stole £46,000 worth of jewels from his client’s dead mum’s collection.

Daniel Morgan, 40, looted the sentimental heirlooms from Sarah Wood’s safe and snatched the keys to a BMW belonging to the family while they were out.

“He was in a position of trust, he was part of our lives. My mother died, she had suffered a long illness and during that illness she worked out which family members she would give jewellery to,” Sarah Wood told a court.

Precious rings and necklaces inherited through generations were snatched.

The drug addicted alcoholic waited to strike until Mrs Wood and her husband trusted him with the keys to their Stelling Minnis home.

They had paid him £15 an hour as a gardener for a number of months, even feeding him for free.

Mrs Wood told Canterbury Crown Court: “I’m upset I can’t have a piece of my beloved mum with me when I wear my jewellery."

The court heard Mrs Wood turned sleuth, searching nearby pawn shops and finding a number of her precious jewels at Ashford’s Topp’s jewellers.

A worker identified Morgan as the seller and explained the thief claimed his own mother recently died - and also that he had a BMW to sell.

The revelation prompted the Woods to fork out £2,000 on changing the locks to their car and property fearing they'd be looted again.

Prosecutor Frederick Hookway added unemployed Morgan had stolen garden clippers and a strimmer from another client’s Folkestone home days before the raid.

Judge Mark Weekes jailed the thief, who could be seen weeping in the dock, for 14 months.

He said: “These were very mean offences indeed caused by your own greed. There was a significant breach of trust and a degree of planning.”

Paul Hogben, mitigating, argued Morgan was a family man who had lost control.

“These were offences where it was clear he was responsible, he did not think about anything further, not paying mind to the consequences to him.

“He committed them (the offences) because he was an addict, a functioning addict.

“It tells the court some insight what has happened here,” the barrister said.

Morgan, of Hawkins Road in Cheriton, pleaded guilty to two counts of theft and one of fraud by false representation at an earlier hearing following the crimes in June last year.

To read more of our in depth coverage of all of the major trials coming out of crown and magistrates' courts across the county, click here.

For information on how we can report on court proceedings, click here.

Read more: All the latest news from Folkestone