Third man is convicted of robbing Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish and his model wife Peta of watches worth £700,000 in knifepoint raid at their home

• Jo Jobson, 27, convicted at Chelmsford Crown Court of two counts of robbery 

A third man has been convicted of robbing Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish and his model wife Peta of watches in a knifepoint raid at their home. 

A balaclava-clad gang, armed with large knives, threatened the couple and took two Richard Mille watches worth a total of £700,000 on November 27, 2021.

In February, two men were jailed at Chelmsford Crown Court for their role in the robbery in Ongar, Essex.

A third man who was wanted by police, Jo Jobson, handed himself in at Chelmsford Police Station in June of this year, 18 months after police first issued a photo appeal identifying him as a suspect.

The 27-year-old, of no fixed address, denied two counts of robbery but was found guilty following a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court.

A balaclava-clad gang, armed with large knives, threatened Olympic cyclist Mark Cavendish and his wife Peta took two Richard Mille watches worth a total of £700,000

Jo Jobson, 27, denied two counts of robbery but was found guilty following a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court 

Jurors returned their verdicts on Monday after under two days of deliberation.

Two others – Ali Sesay, 28 of Windsor Road, Croydon and Romario Henry, 31, of Bell Green, London SE26 – have already been jailed for the robbery. 

Seasy admitted two counts of robbery and was jailed for 12 years. Henry was convicted of two counts of robbery and put behind bars for 15 years.   

Prosecutor Edward Renvoize described the raid to jurors as a ‘well-orchestrated and executed, planned invasion of a home of well-known individuals with the intention of grabbing high-value timepieces’. 

He said one of the intruder’s took Peta Cavendish’s mobile phone and it was later found outside their property, which he said was a ‘significant error in what was an otherwise carefully executed plan’.

He said DNA recovered from the phone was attributed to Ali Sesay, and police then ‘traced a phone attributed to Mr Sesay’.

‘It was from the communications data from that telephone belonging to Mr Sesay that police were able to identify a number of other telephone numbers that appear to have been involved in the offence.’

He said one such mobile phone number was ‘attributed to’ Jobson.

The defendant claimed the phone was not his, but his account was rejected by jurors.

The prosecutor read a statement from Peta Cavendish in which she said an intruder threatened to stab her husband demanded he ‘show me the f****** safe’.

He also read a statement from Mark Cavendish, 38, in which the athlete described the intruders ‘screaming where are the watches’ and ‘demanding to know where the safe and the money were’.

The robbers took items including two Richard Mille watches with a combined value of £700,000

His tearful model wife told a previous trial in February the couple were considering selling their home due to the ‘continuing fear’ after the knifepoint raid.

She said the robbery had ‘turned a loving family home into a constant reminder of threat and fear’.

Mrs Cavendish said she was ‘in the early stages of pregnancy’ at the time of the robbery, and a time when she ‘should have been happy and excited was then transformed into a period of stress and worry’. 

The Olympic cyclist announced in May that this would be his last season in cycling ahead of what was meant to be his final Tour de France in July.

However, his race was prematurely ended after he broke his collarbone in a crash on stage eight. 

Earlier this month, he performed a U-turn and agreed a new one-year deal with Kazakh outfit Astana-Qazaqstan after talking it through with his family. 

This is a breaking news story. More to follow. 

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