Neighbours wage 'Scrooge-like' vendetta against father's Christmas light show

After all, Christmas was still nine months away.

And what he left behind was a message distinctly lacking in seasonal goodwill: black paint daubed over three suburban homes causing £600 worth of damage.

The finger of suspicion did, however, point towards the victims' neighbour Vic Moszczynski, a 51-year-old former firefighter, who was embroiled in a long-running feud with them over the 22,000 fairy lights with which he festooned his mansion in upmarket Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire.

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The festive scene at Mr Moszczynski's house draws in coachloads of visitors every year

His Yuletide extravaganza had so annoyed them that, after enduring 18 years of his yo-ho-ho antics, they could take no more and protested to the council and police about the disruption it caused to their lives when coachloads of visitors turned up to admire it.

They complained their lives were being made a misery by people shouting, and that petty crime in the road had soared because of the influx of visitors.

Some even claimed they were forced to take sleeping pills to blank out the disturbances.

As a result, Mr Moszczynski, whose lights have raised £55,000 for charity, had a court injunction served on him last year forcing him to scale down his decorations to 300 lights, four 7ft tall inflatable cartoon characters, eight 30-ft strips of rope lighting and two light moulds in the ground in his front garden.

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After the paint was daubed on three of his neighbour's homes, Mr Moszczynski was charged with causing criminal damage, the motive supposedly being retaliation for their part in pulling the plug on his lavish Christmas lights display.

A central raft of the prosecution was grainy CCTV footage taken from the home of one of the victims, Gordon Jones, who suffered £400 worth of damage to a garage and wall during the attack on April 9 last year.

On the same night, it was alleged that Mr Moszczynski also caused £50 pounds worth of damage to a garage owned by Alan Williams and £150 pounds damage to Richard Daly's gate post.

But today Mr Moszczynski walked free from court after District Judge Terry English said there was not enough evidence to convict him, despite two policemen saying they were '100 per cent' sure it was him.

The CCTV footage, which was shown to the court, showed a shadowy figure dressed in a hat and coat on the driveway. PC David Thomas said he was certain it was the defendant.

"I have known Mr Moszczynski for approximately three years due to the Christmas lights that have been shown every year in West Drive," he said.

"When I have seen Mr Moszczynski in the past he has come out wearing a similar hat as that this person his wearing."

He added that the manner in which the defendant walks also mirrored that of the mystery vandal.

"Mr Moszczynski walks in a way where he leans forward slightly, the way he walks stands him out from a lot of other people," PC Thomas said.

"I can say that is Mr Moszczynski, everything fits. I believe it 100 per cent that is Mr Moszczynski."

Sergeant Tim Woolford, who was in charge of operations to maintain order at the Christmas lights display for the last four years, said the defendant's bulbous nose also linked him to the CCTV footage.

"He [figure in the CCTV] has got a rounded nose similar or the same as Mr Moszczynski," he told Reading Magistrates Court.

"But it is all to do with the whole picture. When you put it all together I am 100 per cent convinced that is Vic Moszczynski."

But, Ruth Paley, representing Mr Moszczynski, said that the only evidence the prosecution had was the footage, the quality of which she described as being 'outrageously bad."

She said it was impossible to tell the ethnicity, height, build and age of the man in the video and said: "It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest someone was 100 per cent sure it is Mr Moszczynski."

After retiring to review the CCTV again, Judge English then acquitted the defendant saying: "I do not think in any way, in any court, anyone could consider convicting you. The charges against you are dismissed, you are free to go."

Afterwards, married father of two Mr Moszczynski, the technical sales manager with Danish metal and rubber manufacturers KE-Burgmann, slammed the prosecution as a complete waste of time and money, and accused his neighbours of waging a Scrooge-like vendetta against him.

Mr Moszczynski, who had spent £5,000 pounds on flights to and from the Middle-East where he works 200 days a year, to attend court hearings, said:

"This is all part of the conspiracy of West Drive to get an ASBO enforced on me. An ASBO would have banned me walking in West Drive.

"It was not me on the CCTV and it took 18 months and thousands of pounds worth of costs, for what? It is a farce."