Veron thug's terror trail

The full criminal history of the burglar who terrorised football star Juan Sebastian Veron in his home is exposed today. Wayne Harley, 36, is serving life for breaking into the Chelsea player's house armed with a machete and threatening to kill his young family.

He was jailed four times for knifepoint burglaries, made two attempts to escape from prison and reoffended within months of release. But despite an extraordinary record, the longest sentence Harley received was six years.

Now he is back behind bars, and although eligible for parole in four years, police said they are happy the self-confessed drug addict has finally been given a life sentence.

A source said: "This is the result we have been looking for.

Harley was a notorious criminal. He was well known to police for a string of violent and aggressive crimes in the south-west of London. He's got what he deserved."

Harley lived with his girlfriend Sabrina Naudeer and their baby daughter in Wimbledon, where he worked as a builder. His victims were almost all from the surrounding area.

During the Christmas period last year, two weeks after his girlfriend had given birth to their child, he was working on a building site near Veron's ?2.5 million home in Barnes. He noticed the expensive cars in the drive - and cased out the property.

In the early hours of 11 January Harley broke into the house armed with a machete. The raid lasted almost an hour as he made his way from bedroom to bedroom and threatened to kill the Argentina captain's son, aged three, and two-year-old daughter.

Veron's wife, Maria Vinaccia, was ordered to take off her wedding ring before Harley forced all of the family to put pillowcases over their heads and bundled them into a bathroom.

It was only by chance that he was arrested after he crashed his getaway van close to the player's home. Police found he was more than three times over the drink-drive limit.

Harley's criminal history dates back to 1982, when he was 14. In 1986 he was sentenced at the Old Bailey to three years in a young offender institution for an aggravated burglary in Wandsworth in which he stole more than ?8,000 worth of jewellery.

He struck again in 1991 when he broke into the Wimbledon home of David and Sandra Walsh with an accomplice. Mr Walsh was tied up in his bedroom with a telephone cord in a terrifying raid. Harley was sentenced to four years.

Within months of his release he was jailed for another six years for climbing up the drainpipe of a detached house in Weybridge and threatening the owner with a large kitchen knife.

Harley was last caught by police four years ago, when he tried to break into a house in Putney.

He wore socks on his hands to avoid leaving fingerprints as he again climbed through a first-floor window, but was disturbed by the owner who was hiding behind the curtain. Police arrested him as he tried to escape back down the drainpipe. He was jailed for 30 months.

Police said Harley had also escaped temporarily from jail twice - once from a prison van and another time from an open prison.

Harley's family are renowned in Fulham. "The Harleys moved here around eight years ago and soon made a name for themselves," one neighbour said.

"They are notorious. You get any bother around here and say you're a Harley and you'll be left well alone."

Harley's father, John Frederick Harley, ran the notorious Glen public house in the late Nineties in Stephendale Road.

The pub was sold to Mark Dyer, the former bodyguard of princes Harry and William, and was renamed the Too So Bar in 1998.