Hours earlier Adam Brooks, 33, had helped dying Jackie White MBE get into an ambulance after she had a fall.

The 83-year-old’s family released the footage showing Brooks rifling through her belongings at Hawthorns retirement village in Northampton in August last year.

Jackie’s son, Martin, installed a secret camera days before his mother’s death to keep an eye on her because she had been diagnosed with dementia. He looked at the footage to see if he could learn more about his mother’s fall, but instead he saw Brooks going through her jewellery and drawers.

He spotted the camera and moved it to point away from him, but he had been rumbled.

Instead of starting the grieving process Jackie’s family were talking to police about what had happened.

Martin was joined in court by siblings Kevin and Susan to watch as Brooks was jailed for more than two years.

‘It is hard to describe the absolute shock and horror I felt when I saw Adam calmly burglarising my mother’s flat less than two hours after he had watched her being carried out of it by the ambulance crew,’ he said.

‘My sister did not believe me when I said what I was seeing. The last two hours of my mother’s life were spent with the family in absolute shock as we watched the video and tried to make sense of what we had seen rather than us quietly saying goodbye to her.

‘We were told by the medical staff that one of the last things to go is hearing and I pray and worry still whether my mother was aware of what was happening in that room at the end.

‘We all had a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with the fact that someone who was considered a friend could take advantage of us all in the cool, calm and collected manner that showed on the CCTV.

‘It did not appear to us that he was at all uncomfortable with what he was doing.’