A BURGLAR received the shock of his life when he broke into the flat of a conceptual artist and found himself face to face with what appeared to be a severed human head in a jar.

Richard Morrison, 37, had constructed the head from bacon and put it in a sweet jar full of formaldehyde. When the thief broke in and saw it, he was so traumatised that he fled the property and alerted Merseyside Police to the existence of what he believed was a real-life Hannibal Lecter.

Detectives obtained a search warrant and kicked down the door to Mr Morrison’s flat to search for evidence of a gruesome murder, but found only the product of a student’s art foundation project.

When Mr Morrison returned to his home in Wavertree he found that his flat had been broken into twice in a few days, first by the burglar and then by detectives.

Mr Morrison, who is a part-time artist and works for the Criminal Records Bureau, has received a full apology from the police and a promise that they will pay for a new front door.

He said yesterday that he was quite proud of his “naive conceptualist” creation, inspired by the work of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

“I made the mask — of bacon sewn together over a wire frame which I’d pressed over my face — when I was on an art foundation course two years ago. It just seemed like an interesting concept. It’s obviously a very macabre piece of work and I suppose at a glance it looks like a head, but I never expected it to get this reaction,” he said.

“Two CID officers turned up and explained what had happened. They told me that the burglar was terrified,” he said. “He had a crisis of conscience and confessed his crimes to his mother.”

Mr Morrison added: “I gather the police were bracing themselves for a Silence of the Lambs moment when they broke into my flat.

Chief Inspector Stephen Naylor, of Merseyside CID, said it that would have been “a dereliction of duty” if the police had not followed up the allegation made by the burglar, who had been arrested for a separate offence.

A police spokesman added: “He thought he saw a head in a jar. It was obviously a very serious allegation and it was important that we investigated.”

The burglar, who has not been named, had taken items worth hundreds of pounds, including a digital camera and tape recorder, before being scared off by the mask.

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