A GP and his opera singer wife who fell victim to a violent robbery have praised the police and courts after the two men behind the raid were convicted.

Dr Dudley Hubbard and his wife Christine were away in France when Kevin Williams and brother Daren Richardson burst into their home in Shaws Way, Rochester, in February.

The masked pair proceeded to tie up Australian housesitters Peter and Karen Lenz, threaten them and put pillow cases over their heads.

“They told told them they wouldn’t be waking up if they didn’t cooperate. It was absolutely terrifying for them,” Dr Hubbard said.

Mr and Mrs Lenz had been touring the UK doing housesittings in order to see the country and had befriended the Hubbards in the days before the incident.

Dr Hubbard said Mrs Lenz has since returned to Australia.

“I don’t think she’ll ever set foot in England again,” he added.

Williams and Richardson targeted the couple’s home after their cleaner, and Richardson’s partner, Tracey Clark, betrayed their trust.

She died after an illness earlier in the year before she could stand trial.

They stole a thousand items of Mrs Hubbard’s jewellery and made off in the Lenz’s Transit van before crashing into railings near Rochester Grammar School, in Maidstone Road.

DNA discovered at the scene and in the wreckage incriminated them and “almost immediately” they were arrested, said Dr Hubbard.

Stolen jewellery was found following an appeal in this paper and police then took several trips to the site and even used metal detectors, uncovering 800 items.

Mrs Hubbard said: “They’ve been brilliant from start to finish.

"The police couldn’t have been more thorough and caring and the witness service really looked after us.”

Other items were pawned and after the incident the Hubbards found out Clark had been stealing from them and selling it for some time.

Williams, 59, of Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, and 51-year-old Richardson, of Windmill Road, Gillingham, were convicted following a trial.

Williams went on the run before the trial but last Tuesday police caught up with him in Luton, Bedfordshire. They will both be sentenced on Friday, December 21.

“It’s been a massive burden on both of us ever since it happened,” said Dr Hubbard.

“It’s made us very security aware and until we knew they were both locked up there was always the threat of vengeance for us giving evidence.

"If they’d got away with it I think we would have had to move. Now we can start to relax again.”