Vicar Goes On The Run After Stealing £24k

A vicar from Farnham has gone on the run from court just hours before he was due to be found guilty of stealing around £24,000 wedding, funeral and graveyard memorial fees.

Simon Reynolds, 50, went out for lunch as the jury at Sheffield crown court retired to consider its verdict, and did not return.

South Yorkshire police have issued a warrant for the vicar’s arrest.

As priest in charge he was paid a stipend – or salary – and his responsibilty was to make a monthly declaration of all fees he had received for services and hand them over to the church authorities.

Judge Julian Goose QC said Reynolds had disappeared from court at lunchtime even though his bail rules did not allow him to leave the building.

He was found guilty of four offences of theft by a jury after a week-long trial.

The Bishop of Wakefield has now urged Reynolds to return home.

He added: “For someone to abscond in this way they mustn’t be in a great mental state and we want to assure Simon that we’ll do all we can to support him”.

The first three involved sums he should have sent to the Wakefield Diocesan Board of Finance, for marriages, funerals and churchyard monuments.

The fourth count of theft relates to payments for monuments that should have gone to the parochial church council.

Opening the case for the prosecution last week, Tom Story told the court it had been discovered “that in some years the defendant has not paid any fees for weddings or funerals over the Diocesan Board of Finance“.

The church began an investigation after Reynolds left his post in 2013 when it became apparent some cheques had been made out to him personally.

However, the police also said in a statement they are following “a number of lines of enquiry”.

The church treasurer, Anthony Warden, estimated that £14,600 should have been handed over in respect of weddings and funerals and a further £9,726 should have been paid for burial and cremation plaques or monuments. He told police he was “disorganized” and “certainly had not kept it intentionally“.

The Archdeacon of Pontefract, the Venerable Peter Townley told the jury the “one thing that was never a problem” with Reynolds, was his administration of his parish.

“We deeply regret any further pain caused to those families who paid fees to Simon for funerals and our hope is that this conviction now affords some peace“.

‘The consequences of Simon’s actions have been felt far and wide, not least by parishioners here in Darton but also in Farnham, Surrey, where he moved to in March 2013.

“It is of course a matter of deep disappointment when a member of clergy acts in anything other than an exemplary manner.”

Police say Reynolds, from Farnham, Surrey, is around 5ft 10in tall and heavy built.

South Yorkshire Police urged anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts, to contact police on 101 quoting incident number 864 of 23 July 2015.

‘Simon remains suspended, pending sentencing.’.