Artist impressionsHEARTLESS distraction burglars targeted four elderly people in two towns within an hour.

Police believe the same two men were responsible for the burglaries, in which one elderly person lost over £300 and another was confronted by a man who let himself into her sitting room.

Det Sgt Pete Auburn of Trowbridge CID said: "It is very distressing for people to be conned in this way and they are very upset by it.

"It is a despicable crime to clearly target vulnerable, elderly people in this way."

A 73-year-old woman from Longfield Road, Trowbridge lost a handbag and its contents, worth £325.

At about 5.25pm on Thursday she opened her door to a man who told her there had been some damage to his mother's car and his mother wanted to talk to her.

She was suspicious and, after a short conversation, told the man to leave.

All the windows in her home and the back door were locked but when she later went into her bedroom to find her handbag she found the window had been forced and the bag stolen.

She said: "I was gobsmacked because I had got rid of him and everything was locked. I just could not believe it."

The woman, who asked not to be named, was the third person to be targeted.

In the first incident, just before 5pm in Sandridge Road, Melksham, a 64-year-old woman spotted a man outside her kitchen window at the back of her home.

She went outside to talk to him and when she went back to the house she found someone had tried to break in through a back window.

In the next incident, at about 5.10pm in Barn Glebe, Trowbridge, a 65-year-old man opened the door to a man who said he had lost his keys in the garden.

After a search of the garden the man walked into the house uninvited and the victim later discovered two wallets had been stolen.

Half an hour later an 86-year-old woman was in the living room of her home in Yarnbrook when two men walked in. They left when she asked them to and she does not believe anything was taken, but was left shaken by the ordeal.

The man who knocked on the doors is described as about 6ft, between late teens and late 20s, clean shaven with short brown hair. He wore a baseball cap in some of the incidents.

His accomplice was slightly shorter and chubbier, wearing dark clothing and a baseball cap and was wearing dark clothing.

All the victims described the first man as 'mumbling' and police believe he deliberately made himself hard to understand in order to prolong conversations and give his accomplice more time to carry out the burglaries.