A York serial burglar has been jailed yet again after sneaking into a plush hotel room and stealing a businessman’s luggage containing his laptop and clothes.
Lee Kenneth Moore, 43, walked into the four-star Milner Hotel next to York Station and snuck into the guest room of a businessman on a one-night stay in the city.
Moore – who hit national headlines last year as ‘the bat burglar’ after a couple found him hanging upside down in their York home – was charged with the hotel raid but denied the offence in the teeth of overwhelming CCTV and forensic evidence.
He appeared for trial at York Magistrates’ Court on Friday (19 December), after denying burglary involving theft.
Prosecutor Mr C Booth said that the victim, who had travelled from Scotland for a business trip in York, checked into the Grade II-listed Milner Hotel, formerly The Principal, at about 7pm on 17 September.
He went out to meet colleagues for a meal, leaving his wheelie suitcase-style bag just behind the door inside his room and forgot to take his key card, which was left on a side table.
When he returned three hours later with a new key card, his bag was missing and the original key card was on the floor. He noticed that the wardrobe was slightly open, as was the window.
The named victim reported the theft to reception staff who noted that a man had been spotted on CCTV walking around the hotel’s car park earlier in the day looking inside parked vehicles.
The footage then showed Moore, who was clearly the worse for drink, “stumbling” through the hotel’s front doors, up some stairs, through the lobby and then turning into a corridor where the guest rooms were.
It showed Moore, with bottle of beer in hand and wearing a green Adidas baseball cap and a Berghaus fleece top, leaving the victim’s room with his suitcase and then heading for a fire exit on the Leeman Road side of the hotel.
Moore, a prolific shoplifter with over 100 offences on his record including six burglaries, was soon identified by police from the CCTV footage.
Crime-scene investigators were called to the scene and found fingerprints on the window inside the victim’s room, but it’s still unclear how Moore got inside a room with a self-locking door.
In a statement read out by the prosecution, the victim said his luggage contained a Samsung laptop worth about £1,000, as well as clothes, toiletries and keys for his house and motorbike.
Moore’s solicitor Andrew Craven defended a man with 60 previous convictions for 117 offences, of which 70 were “theft and kindred”.
His last conviction was in December 2023 for a burglary at a woman’s flat in York city centre where the victim and her partner were asleep as Moore crept through their living-room window.
They were woken by “somebody moaning and groaning” and found “intoxicated” Moore in the living room – hanging upside down by his shoelaces after getting them snagged in the window frame and his foot struck in the lock.
For that offence, he was jailed for two years and four months but was released from jail partway through his sentence.
Following his arrest for the hotel burglary in September, Moore was recalled to prison to serve the remainder of that jail term.
Mr Craven said that Moore, who was unemployed and had a drink-and-drug problem, would be given a methadone script upon his eventual release from prison.
He argued that there was no forensic evidence linking his client to the hotel room, but magistrates found Moore guilty as charged.
Moore was given a nine-month jail sentence and ordered to pay the victim £1,060 compensation for the loss of his belongings. The money would be taken out of Moore’s benefits.
