
Chelsea icon and Aston Villa manager John Terry and his wife Toni are selling their £5.5million Surrey mansion after they were left traumatised by burglars defecating at the foot of their bed during a £400k raid.

Their family home was targeted and burgled by four Arsenal fans back in February 2017 after John, 39, shared an Instagram picture from the family's skiing holiday.

A friend of the family told The Sun: 'The home is a reminder of a night of horror they want consigned to the past. The fact one of the men left John a dirty protest at the end of the bed particularly upset them.

Time to move on: Chelsea icon John Terry is selling his £5.5m Surrey mansion after he and wife Toni were traumatised by burglars defecating on the floor during £400k raid back in 2017

A friend of the family has said: 'Poor Toni couldn’t unsee the image. They began looking for a new home straight away'

'Poor Toni couldn’t unsee the image. They began looking for a new home straight away.'

A spokesperson for John Terry declined to comment further to MailOnline.

The six-bedroom home has a pool and an outdoor kitchen and John paid £2.5m for it.

Darren Eastaugh, 30, Joshua Sumer, 27, Roy Head, 28, and Oliver Hart, 25, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit burglary between February 1 and March 27.

The conspiracy involved seven burglaries across Surrey and Sussex earlier this year, with a total lost from all of them was £600,000. All four were jailed for a total of 27 years and 11 months at Kingston Crown Court.

Mansion: The six-bedroom home has a pool and an outdoor kitchen and John paid £2.5m for the home which used to be owned by golfer Colin Montgomerie

A fifth man, Kye Hardy-King, 25, pleaded guilty to one count of handling stolen goods when some of the stolen property was found at his home. Police were able to trace them using DNA from the excrement left at the scene.

They struck after the footballer posed for pictures on the slopes of the French Alps with his wife Toni, 37, boasting to his 3.4million followers that he was having a 'great few days away skiing with the family'.

But while the couple happily shared photos and videos of their lavish holiday, they didn't realise the posts had attracted the attention of a ruthless gang of prolific burglars.

The men spent hours ransacking the property, swiping designer handbags worth £126,000 and rare signed first edition Harry Potter books valued at £18,000.

Victims: Burglars struck after the footballer posed for pictures on the slopes of the French Alps with his wife Toni, 37, boasting to his 3.4million followers that he was having a 'great few days away skiing with the family'

Referring to the Terry burglary, Judge Susan Tapping said: 'It might have been a mistake to post a family photograph on social media to show he was away on holiday.

'As a result his home was deliberately targeted and the master bedroom suite was ransacked.

'They spent some time searching for items to steal. Not content with the original haul they returned with a third man and an angle grinder determined to get into the safe.'

Sentencing them at the time, the judge said: 'Over a period of about one month earlier this year four of the defendants together with others unidentified, set out on a series of carefully planned burglaries.

'By the time police surveillance was in place, some defendants were seen spending time looking for suitable homes to be targeted.

Oh dear: The former Chelsea captain and his wife regularly posted pictures on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook revealing their lavish lifestyle

'Large detached houses were only considered because of the expectation high value luxury goods would be available.

'In fact it was a very successful campaign and during the the course of seven burglaries £600,000 worth of luxury items were stolen. Four of the defendants are experienced, if not professional burglars.'

She said the gang made away with nearly £400,000 in either items stolen or damaged out of the seven burglaries this was 'most profitable', and none of the items have been recovered.

Not all of the burglaries were at night and some were carried out while someone was in the house, including a recently widowed woman who found one of them in her kitchen.

The court heard she has now been left feeling 'nervous and isolated in her own home'.