A heartless mother and drug addict targeted a vulnerable widow in her 80s and helped steal precious black and white photographs of her late husband.

Thieving Lindsay Sprackling, 53, kept the pensioner busy at the front door of her Ramsgate home while an accomplice crept in and stole cash and the pictures.

Sprackling, from Hertford Street, Ramsgate, hung her head in the dock at Canterbury Crown Court as a judge heard how the 84-year-old victim was left "devastated".

We can reveal how the drug addict carried out four identical distraction burglaries on pensioners just three years ago in Folkestone.

Back then she was given a suspended sentence – but now a judge has jailed her for two and a half years after she admitted her involvement just minutes before she was expecting to go on trial.

Judge Simon James told her: “I am afraid that I am compelled to the conclusion that this vulnerable victim was deliberately targeted.”

Prosecutor Andrew Forsythe revealed how the pensioner, who lived in Northwood Road, answered her doorbell in March last year and was confronted by Sprackling.

The convicted thief told her she was trying to get gardening work for her husband, as her accomplice entered the property through the garden.

The prosecutor said it was only later the victim discovered her purse and handbag missing, which contained photos of her late husband, £140 cash and her disability badge.

The devious duo were caught on CCTV and recognised by a police officer and Sprackling’s accomplice, Christopher McDonash, 42, was found hiding inside a foldable sofa.

He admitted the burglary and will be sentenced later this week.

In a Victim Impact Statement read to court, the pensioner told the judge how was left feeling “violated” on discovering that strangers had seen the photographs, which were later returned.