By Brendan Rees
A thief who allegedly stole plants from a garden bed at Cranbourne Public Hall has returned to the scene of crime to leave an apologetic hand-written note.
Cranbourne Public Hall treasurer Aaron Grant never expected to hear from the heartless thief after she was captured by security cameras ripping up and taking the plants on Sunday 12 November at 7.27pm.
Mr Grant said a woman was filmed on CCTV leaving an apology note under the door on Tuesday 21 November at 4.58pm, with a promise to reimburse the hall for the plants.
The letter, which was signed ‘Deep regrets, Shamed Cranbourne plant thief,’ starts with the remorse:
“I’d deeply like to apologise for my stupid actions of wrongly taking those plants that evening; clearly I wasn’t thinking straight, I truly am sorry and I’d like to pay the $47 back to you on Thursday, so you can replace them”.
The letter continued by saying: “It was a bad choice of mine at the spur of the moment. Money forwarded to you in an envelope under the front door by 9-am Thursday morning.”
Mr Grant said the letter came as a shock, but added the thief still hadn’t left any money as promised by Thursday 23 November.
“I didn’t expect it, but I was hoping she would’ve done the right thing and unfortunately once again she didn’t.”
“I read it and I thought, ‘what the hell’ she actually came back and wrote a letter. I thought I’ll send it to a few people I know in the hall and said, ‘she’ll be back tomorrow and she’ll pay us the money.’”
He said members of the Cranbourne Public Hall decided to give the green-fingered thief the benefit of the doubt, but added: “She still obviously hasn’t done the right thing.”
“(She’s) trying to make herself look like she’s apologetic, but really she’s not.”
The theft left Cranbourne Public Hall $47 out of pocket and Mr Hall decided to take to social media, posting CCTV footage on Facebook’s Casey Crime Page to hunt down the culprit.
But since the thief hasn’t bothered to leave any reimbursement, Mr Grant decided to again post CCTV footage of the thief leaving an apology note under the door at Cranbourne Public Hall on Facebook.
“She’s had her chance, and she doesn’t obviously want to return the money so stuff her,” he said.
Mr Grant thought the apology note seemed “quite legitimate”.
“Once we read it, we decided amongst ourselves if she returns the money we’ll let it go and we’ll not do anything about it.”
“If she doesn’t obviously come back with the money, then we may take further action.”
He said no contact phone number was left on the note. “She obviously doesn’t realise once again we have CCTV and we’ll capture you.”
