The crime was all the more shocking for having been committed in such a genteel location.
It was carried out suddenly last week in a single garden on a leafy avenue in Chiswick, the affluent West London suburb.
A favoured locale of BBC executives and television stars home to actors David Tennant and Colin Firth, Left-wing activist Vanessa Redgrave, TV presenters Ant and Dec and supermodel Cara Delevingne houses here easily cost £3 million and even a small flat can set you back £1 million.
The criminal or criminals struck at night: deadheading the beautiful tulips of a devoted pro-cycling campaigner.
The Mail has established the victim is Karen Liebreich, a designer, horticulturalist and former BBC producer. And it was another BBC celebrity broadcaster Jeremy Vine who first revealed the terrible deed to the world.
Jeremy Vine
Credit: David M. Benett
Jeremy Vine has been reported to the BBC for using social media over claims that he has “bullIed and intimidated” campaigners opposed to low traffic neighbourhoods by alleging they had “decapitated garden flowers” belonging to a keen cyclist.
In a row nicknamed “Tulip Gate”, the Radio 2 presenter posted an image on his Twitter account of flower heads laid out on a doormat at the home of a neighbour in West London.
The broadcaster, a cycling campaigner, wrote: “A woman in my area has been relentless in arguing the case for safe cycling. She has had much abuse from the local anti-cycling group which is raising £50,000 to get our new cycle lane torn out.