An elderly couple who were tied up and threatened during a violent raid on their country home have spoken how they are “determined not to be broken” by their terrifying ordeal.

Retired Army major Tom Williams, 75, and his wife Sarah, 69, were in court to see Wolfgang Schmelz and Christopher Doughty jailed for 17 years each.

The couple were tied up and blindfolded and could hear the sound of splintering wood as grandfather clocks were smashed up in their home.

Jewellery, silver, carriage clocks and barometers were among the £400,000 haul loaded into the couple’s car and driven away.

The couple revealed they have only just been able to bring themselves to use the rooms they were held hostage in during their six-hour ordeal.

Speaking outside court, Mrs Williams said: “I think this will mark the point when we can begin to put this behind us.

“We now know they will not be able to do it to anyone else for a very long time.

“At one point we contemplated selling up and moving away but we are not going to do that.

“We are determined not to be broken by what happened and want to get on with our lives.”

A major investigation is now under way into an attempt to nobble the jury that convicted Doughty and Schmelz.

The Argus has been unable to reveal the details until today for legal reasons.

Armed police arrested Schmelz and Doughty four days after the raid at Aldsworth House, near Chichester.

They were forced to the ground at gunpoint as they dropped off their haul at Phillip Capewell's flat in Hove on June 8, 2006.

Four days earlier Schmelz, 58, Doughty, 48, and a third robber had burst into Aldsworth House wearing balaclava masks.

The gang leader threatened to pull out Mr Williams' fingernails one by one with pliers if he did not reveal where the keys to his safe were.

A jury at Hove Crown Court yesterday found Schmelz and Doughty, both from Southampton, guilty of staging the robbery.

It was the second time they had stood trial after an earlier jury failed to reach a verdict in April last year.

The Argus can reveal that a deliberate attempt to nobble the jury was made on February 13, during the second week of the retrial.

A man wearing a balaclava and ski goggles approached two jurors as they queued outside a sandwich bar in Western Road, Hove, during a lunch break.

He thrust a printed flyer trying to influence the verdict into their hands.

A probation officer standing behind them was mistaken for another juror and was struck hard in the chest as a flyer was thrust at her.

The three were left shocked and shaken by their ordeal but immediately returned to court and reported what had happened.

They were ordered not to tell the other ten jurors what had happened.

It is the first time in modern legal history that a deliberate attempt has been made to tamper with a jury in Sussex.

Detective Sergeant Paul Sellings said: “We are taking this very seriously and a full investigation is underway to find out who is responsible.”

The arrest of Schmelz, Doughty and Capewell in 2006 led detectives to a haul of stolen antiques from ten other country house burglaries across Sussex and the South.

Capewell was jailed for five years last April (08) after he was convicted of handling stolen property from some of the raids found in his lock-ups in Hove and Suffolk.

However, there was nothing to link the Aldsworth House robbers to those burglaries and they were never charged in connection with them.

Schmelz, described as the “mastermind” behind a failed £11million security van raid in 1995, was jailed for 17 years for his part in the Aldsworth robbery.

Doughty, who admitted to the jury he is a career criminal and a “daily” handler of stolen goods, was also sent to prison for 17 years.

Judge Guy Anthony told them: “The threat to use pliers was cold, calculated and callous in the extreme.”