Lionel Gundy has pleaded guilty to lesser charges after police accused him of breaking into the Merewether home of rugby league couple Millie and Adam Elliott in 2024. The plea follows a case that began when Millie Elliott confronted an intruder in her kitchen about 5am on October 12.
Gundy, 26, entered the deal with prosecutors after being accused of a burglary that stripped the home of two handbags, a laptop, a bank card, $1000 in cash and Elliott’s NRLW premiership ring. The ring was one of the Roosters’ championship pieces, valued at $10,000, and engraved with the player’s jersey number, number 8.
Millie Elliott, a 28-year-old NRLW star and four-time premiership winner with the Knights, Roosters and Broncos, shouted at the intruder when she found him in the kitchen and he fled out the back door. She and Adam Elliott chased him but lost sight of him. Adam later found his keys and wallet in the backyard and called police while walking around nearby Gibbs Brothers Oval.
The ring was stolen just a week after Elliott won it with the Roosters, and the theft quickly became a race to trace what had been taken. Later that day, she posted on Instagram urging pawnbrokers to watch for the ring, writing: “If you work at a pawn shop at Newy and someone comes in with a number 8 premiership ring to swap for cash, please let me know” and adding, “Because it's probably not theirs, they came into my house at night and stole it.”
CCTV footage later captured Gundy at 9.20am on October 12 using Elliott’s stolen bank card to buy a mobile phone, according to police. Investigators identified him from that footage and issued a warrant for his arrest.
Police then spotted Gundy walking through Hamilton South at about 6.30am on October 16 carrying a silver laptop. When officers tried to stop him, he threw the laptop and ran towards a unit in Glebe Road. Police recovered the computer and found it had been stolen during the break-in.
The burglary was not the only offence police linked to him that morning. Gundy had also been spotted trying to break into three other homes at Merewether, including two next door to the Elliotts’ place, placing the case in the middle of a pre-dawn break-in spree that alarmed the suburb.
His guilty plea narrows the case to lesser charges, but it does not change the core facts of what happened that morning: a home invasion, a stolen premiership ring that carried personal and sporting value, and a trail of surveillance footage and police sightings that helped identify the suspect. For Elliott, the central question is no longer who took the ring. It is whether anything of value from the burglary can still be recovered.
