Kathy Stephens (in the pink jacket) hides behind lawyer Christina Hallaway prior to a hearing last year at the High Court at Auckland to address name suppression. Photo / NZME
Kathy Stephens (in the pink jacket) hides behind lawyer Christina Hallaway prior to a hearing last year at the High Court at Auckland to address name suppression. Photo / NZME
A former private investigator and fashion aficionado who says she was tricked into buying stolen clothing in the days following the high-profile burglary of Dame Trelise Cooper's Auckland styling room acknowledged on the witness stand today that the offer might have seemed too good to be true.
Jurors at the Auckland District Court took Kathy Yu-Jen Stephens at her word, finding her guilty of receiving over $1000 of stolen property after about three hours of deliberation.
Stephens, 45, now faces up to seven years' prison. Judge Brooke Gibson remanded her on bail to await sentencing.
"Yeah, maybe," Stephens responded on the witness stand when Crown prosecutor Frances Gourlay asked her if a loose acquaintance showing up at her house late at night with two suitcases full of high-end fashion seemed at the time to be too good to be true. "I guess. I can't remember."
The man, Nicholas James Bush, was sentenced earlier this month to two years and five months' imprisonment after pleading guilty to the burglary of Cooper's Newmarket office in October 2020, pilfering about 2000 high-fashion clothing items valued at roughly $750,000.
New Zealand fashion designer Dame Trelise Cooper lost $750,000 worth of clothing during a burglary of her Auckland office in October 2020. Photo / Ted Baghurst
Police executed a search warrant at Stephens' Onehunga home one month after the heist, recovering 18 items of stolen clothing that they valued at about $12,200.
Stephens declined to talk to police after her arrest. On the witness stand, however, she said she had no idea the Trelise Cooper office had been burgled and she didn't know the items at her house were stolen until her arrest.
Prosecutors were tasked with convincing jurors that Stephens either outright knew the items were stolen or she acted recklessly - taking an unreasonable risk that the clothes were stolen and going ahead with the purchase anyway.
Stephens described herself on the witness stand on Wednesday as "quite a gullible person".
"Isn't your job to be literally the opposite of gullible as a P.I. [private investigator]?" prosecutor Gourlay asked as Stephens continued her testimony Thursday morning.
Kathy Stephens told jurors she had no clue the $12,200 worth of Trelise Cooper clothing items she bought from an acquaintance were stolen. Photo / Instagram
"I don't like to get to know people's private things unless I'm getting paid," the defendant responded. "I have so much going on in my life I actually don't have space in my brain to store stuff that doesn't relate to me.
"I don't like to know people's things."
Stephens said she paid Bush $600 cash for some of the items on the night he showed up at her doorstep, but over the course of five weeks she gave him roughly $3-4000 worth of free rent and her own clothing that he then resold.
She said she felt sorry for Bush that night after he said he got in a fight with his girlfriend and was kicked out, grabbing the two suitcases as he left. But prosecutors suggested that the story, even if taken at face value, also should have been a red flag - indicating that the clothing was at least stolen from Bush's girlfriend.
"If they were being together I don't know who paid [for the clothes]," Stephens responded. "I didn't ask. That's between them."
Nicholas Bush was sentenced earlier this month to more than two years in prison. Photo / NZME
Stephens later insisted that she hadn't followed Trelise Cooper clothing in years.
"I thought her brand was more for middle-aged women," she said. "I didn't really have much of a motivation of wanting to go buy from her."
Defence lawyer Christina Hallaway told jurors during closing arguments that her client's admission the offer "maybe" was too good to be true wasn't strong enough evidence on which to base a criminal conviction.
"Being gullible is not a crime," she said, pointing out that her client was a divorcee who when not working was a "mummy taxi" for her three children - too busy to read a newspaper or watch the news. "Trying to help a friend out in a time of need is not a crime."
Prosecutors, however, pointed out that Stephens already owned Trelise Cooper-, Louis Vuitton- and Gucci-branded clothing and accessories, and that she worked with fashion labels during her previous career as a cake maker. Her cake business was called Vanilla Coco, which Stephens testified "could" be a reference to designer Coco Chanel.
Her background and experience with fashion would have made it "implausible and fanciful" to suggest she had no clue the clothes were stolen, the Crown argued.
Only 11 jurors remained in the courtroom on Thursday to decide the case. A twelfth person who was empanelled on Wednesday was excused after requiring to isolate due to being a Covid-19 close contact.
Stephens' guilty verdict comes just days after florist Andrea Edwards pleaded guilty to receiving $137,000 worth of the stolen clothing. Edwards is set to be sentenced in April.
