A burglar whose young victims came to fear him as the “bogeyman” is back behind bars after creeping into a Swansea family’s home as they slept and driving away in their car.
Kevin Granville Harmon, 50, of Westbury Street, Swansea, was on prison licence for drug dealing when he entered the house on Gwili Terrace in Mount Pleasant in the early hours of 14 July.
While the homeowners slept upstairs, prosecutor Alycia Carpanini told Swansea Crown Court, Harmon helped himself to phones, bank cards, cigarettes and car keys, then drove off in the family’s car from outside.
The family woke that morning to discover the burglary, and officers identified Harmon from video doorbell footage on the street and CCTV in the area. Arrested, he answered “no comment” to every question.
In an impact statement, the householder said the burglary had caused her family great distress, that they no longer feel safe in their own home despite installing extra security, and that they fear Harmon will return when he is released. Losing the car hit hard too, as she and her husband both used it to get to work.
Harmon admitted burglary and taking a vehicle without consent, offences 147 and 148 on a record built over decades: 45 previous convictions for 146 offences spanning burglaries, assaults, vehicle taking, going equipped, thefts and handling stolen goods.
It is a record with the same shape repeating. In 2008 he was jailed for 30 months for breaking into a home in Melin, Neath, in the dead of night while a mother and her young daughter slept, eating from their fridge before ransacking the kitchen and taking the television, bank cards and the first drawing the girl had ever made for her mum.
The family’s car was found burnt out nearby, and the court heard then that the daughter was left terrified the “bogeyman” would come back.
In 2021 he got three years for burgling two houses in Margam in one night, taking watches, jewellery, a laptop, games consoles, aftershave and a Kia Sportage he crashed into parked cars near Taibach Memorial Park, with children in one of the houses left scared the bogeyman would return while they slept.
His most recent sentence, 48 months in 2024, was for supplying cocaine and possessing heroin with intent to supply, and he was out on licence from it when he broke into the Gwili Terrace house.
His barrister John Allchurch said Harmon had been recalled to prison on the drugs sentence after his arrest, and has ADHD, anxiety, depression and a personality disorder for which he is medicated, though at the time of the burglary he had stopped taking his medication and was using street Valium.
Judge Paul Thomas KC said Harmon had spent most of his life committing offences of one kind or another and was before the courts “yet again” for burgling someone’s home.
The real harm of burglary, the judge said, lay not in the value of what is taken but in destroying a victim’s sense of safety in their own home, something he was sure Harmon had heard from judges many times before. He told him that “unlike you”, his latest victims went out to work and earned their money honestly.
With a third off for his guilty pleas Harmon was jailed for 34 months, to run concurrently with his recall, with the judge noting it was unlikely to extend the time he is already serving.
He was also banned from driving for 29 months.
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