Grieving Doncaster widower devastated by theft of late wife's treasured Land Rover

The red Land Rover Discovery which had been Katy Duffy’s pride and joy was taken from outside husband John’s home in Armthorpe on Sunday, April 10, at around 11pm – just three months after she died from dementia, aged 74, on January 8.

Their daughter Emma Kilner told how the car, with the personalised number plate Y15 KTY, had been one of the few things John had to remind him of Katy, and its loss had plunged him even deeper into grief.

“It was the one thing that kept Dad going. He used it to drive to the shops on a Wednesday and to Armthorpe Air Cadets, where he volunteers. He’s lost without that routine,” she said.

"She’s gone, the car’s gone. He's just left in that empty shell of a house. To the thieves it’s just another car but to him this theft is life-changing, it’s another piece of my mum being ripped away, and I’d appeal to them to show a conscience and hand it in.

"I’d also ask anyone who heard or saw anything to please contact police.”

Emma told how her parents had been foster carers, with her dad also working for British Steel, and they had ‘worked hard all their lives’.

Katy had made John promise to keep the car once she had gone, added Emma, who said the theft would have ‘broken’ her mum had she still been alive.

She described how a white car had been caught on CCTV dropping off the thief, and that the same car – possibly a BMW Series 1 – had been spotted at the scene of other Land Rover thefts in the area.

When she reported the theft to police,she said, officers had told her the scale of Land Rover thefts not just in Doncaster but across the UK was ‘astonishing’, and she advised other owners to consider taking additional safety precautions like installing tracking devices or steering wheel locks.

Anyone with information is asked to call South Yorkshire Police on 101.