Thieving vicar hands himself in to police after four days on run

A vicar whowent on the run while waiting to be convicted of stealing thousands of pounds has handed himself in.

Simon Reynolds, of Farnham, Surrey, did not return to Sheffield Crown Court on Thursday and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

South Yorkshire Police had even contacted global criminal organisation INTERPOL, in the hope of tracking down the 50-year-old clergyman, who they believed may have fled to Europe.

Senior clergy including the Bishop of Wakefield, Tony Robinson, had appealed to Reynolds to turn himself in. “Never forget we are praying for you”.

The first three related to fees he should have sent to the Wakefield Diocesan Board of Finance, for marriages, funeral and churchyard monuments respectively.

Monuments for 23 burials and 50 cremation plaques or inscriptions were found in the grounds of the church and graveyard, but there were no records of these burials and cremations.

A vicar thought to have fled to the continent before the verdict could be returned in his theft trial has been arrested.

He should have given the money to the diocese and the parochial church council, the court was told.

Mr Storey said an investigation by the church, then the police, showed he had only passed on a fraction of what he should.

The court heard that suspicions about Reynolds began after he left Darton, in March 2013, to take up a new post in Surrey.

The defendant denied all the charges.

Ordained at the age of 35 after a career understood to involve a spell in publishing and broadcasting, he has served in parish in Devon and South Yorkshire as well as St Paul’s before taking up his most recent ministry in Surrey.