Sergeant Mike Bell walked into the kitchen of a high-end French restaurant carrying a black crate that held the latest surprise in a case full of them.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he told the owners.

Over the previous five months, the two had taken in a string of surreal events: two strangers talked their way into a tour of the restaurant’s wine cellar – he wore a toupee and long overcoat, she spoke in a pleasant English accent – before stealing several bottles, including a US$24,000 ($40,825) pinot noir. A foot chase ensued down a Virginia highway, ending with the woman captured by a waiter while her companion zoomed off in a getaway car. Authorities later identified the man as a Serbian national who boarded a flight for Vienna and disappeared.

Now, Bell was in front of them. “Here’s the wine that was stolen,” he said.

Celeste and Alain Borel were stunned. Inside the crate were two bottles encased in clear bubble wrap: the prized pinot and another they’d valued at US$7000. The Borels had assumed both were long gone – maybe lifted off for Vienna or sold to a high-end collector in New York or consumed at a dinner party in Hong Kong.

“This story is just getting nuts,” Alain Borel recalled thinking.

A big part of that story concluded on Monday. The woman who was arrested, Natali Ray, 57, pleaded guilty in a Clarke County courtroom to charges of grand larceny, possession of burglary tools and defrauding a restaurant or inn. Circuit Court Judge Alexander R. Iden sentenced her to 12 months in jail. Ray is expected to receive six months of credit for time already served.

State prosecutors had requested three years, citing all the planning of the heist.

Ray’s defence attorney had requested her release.

“Ms Ray has no prior criminal history and has been an upstanding and productive member of society in England prior to this,” assistant public defender Eric Angel wrote in court filings, saying she wants to return to Britain to care for her elderly, blind mother.

A major issue before the sentencing was the return of the bottles – how it happened, what their five months away did to their value and whether their return should affect Ray’s punishment.

The bottles resurfaced after someone who had them contacted Ray’s oldest son, who helped get the bottles delivered to the public defender’s office. They were then turned over to the sheriff’s office. Ray’s attorney said in court documents that the effort, which Ray participated in, shows her desire to make the victims whole.

Not everyone agreed. “There is nothing in the law that says you can steal something temporarily and bring it back and be absolved of all wrongdoings,” Clarke County Sheriff Travis Sumption said.

Nikola Krndija is suspected of taking part in a wine heist in Virginia, according to authorities, who say they are still searching to locate him. Photo / Clarke County Sheriff's Office

The Borels say they are far from whole.

In the world of high-priced wine, bottle storage conditions are paramount – approximately 13C, 60-70% humidity, darkness, lying on their sides – and assurance that those conditions were maintained matters. Because the two bottles were missing for 145 days, the Borels say, there is no way to know how they were handled.

“Nobody is going to pay US$24,000 not knowing how the wine was kept,” Alain Borel said.

“It’s like not knowing the chain-of-custody for evidence,” Celeste Borel added. “Once you don’t have it, the value goes away.”

The second suspect, Nikola Krndija, 57, remains a fugitive. There have been signs he has been following the case.

Earlier in the case, according to Clarke Commonwealth’s Attorney Matthew Bass, someone claiming to be Krndija’s attorney contacted the courthouse asking whether Krndija could appear remotely, ostensibly from Serbia.

“That’s not how things work here,” Bass said. “As far as we’re concerned, Mr Krndija is welcome to return to the United States and surrender himself to authorities.”

Theft of high-end wine has become a lucrative international crime, fuelled by restaurants and shops that tout prized wine lists online, even as they’ve been slow to properly secure their facilities; the ease with which bottles can be transported; willing buyers; and a thriving black market of thieves and middlemen.

Authorities say Ray and Krndija arrived on November 19 at L’Auberge Provençale Inn & Restaurant in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley wine country 100km west of Washington. The woman introduced herself as “Stephanie Jacobs”, a personal assistant to the chief executive of a Canadian finance firm who was interested in hosting a lavish dinner, according to surveillance video and audio. It was the kind of outing, the owners knew, that could bring in more than US$20,000.

Ray has said little during her court hearings but a court filing submitted last week outlined details of her life.

Ray was raised in Leicester, England, and later moved to a coastal area that by the 1990s was taking in refugees from the Balkan crisis. Ray started a charity for orphans. She owned and ran a restaurant and a hotel in Herne Bay that eventually ran into debt. After divorcing and gaining custody of her three children, she enrolled in college at age 45 and, within five years, earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Kent.

“I found Natali to be immensely inspirational and fascinating,” a long-time friend wrote in a letter submitted to the court.

Ray worked as a theatre teaching assistant, published poetry and translated Serbian literature into English. For the past decade, according to her attorney, she has battled a rare blood cancer and has continued chemotherapy while jailed in Virginia.

Prosecutors say the burglary tools charges stem from wigs that were allegedly worn by Krndija and Ray and an overcoat with deep interior pockets allegedly worn by Krndija to hide the wine.

Early in the investigation, the Borels’ son, Christian Borel, a sommelier and co-owner, believed six bottles had been stolen. Two were recovered near the getaway car. Later, he discovered two of the supposedly missing bottles had actually been moved to another shelf in the cellar weeks earlier. “I’ve learned to better secure things,” he joked.

It was April 13, according to the Borels, when Bell arrived with the recovered wines. They appeared authentic: a 2020 Romanée-Conti and 2019 Richebourg, both from the legendary Domaine de la Romanée-Conti estate in Burgundy, France. The Borels matched the serial numbers to their records, even as they concluded that the wines’ value had collapsed.

Before the heist, the Borels had expected the price of the two bottles to rise with time. “They were investments to me,” Celeste Borel said. “To me, they’re almost worthless now.” The Borels said they can’t know for sure that they haven’t been tampered with.

A French restaurant in Virginia, USA, was targeted in a months-long wine theft case involving highly valuable bottles, including a US$24,000 Romanée-Conti pinot noir.

“I don’t even know if they’re any good, Mike,” Celeste Borel recalled telling the detective.

Sumption, the sheriff, confirmed the Borels’ general recollections of the reunion.

In an interview after Monday’s hearing, Ray’s attorney, Angel, said the case was as unusual as any he has handled in his six years of criminal defence work.

“The whole case was strange. The wigs. The coat with specially sewn pockets. The return of the bottles. It was like an episode of Scooby-Doo,” he said.

Regarding the bottle delivery, Angel said an older man arrived at the public defender’s office and spoke with what sounded like an Eastern European accent. No attorneys were in at the time. The receptionist called Angel and asked for guidance. He told her to accept the bottles and call the sheriff’s office.

The attorney said that by the time he got back to the office, the man was gone, having stayed for no more than five minutes.

Bass, the prosecutor, said he never learned where the bottles had been or who delivered them.

“Might it have even been Krndija himself? I guess we’ll never know,” Bass said.