Megan McKenna, star of The Only Way is Essex, has revealed she left the UK after her home was broken into by burglars armed with machetes. The 33-year-old reality TV personality now lives in Germany with her footballer husband Oliver Burke, 29, after the incident left her too scared to stay in England alone.
McKenna spoke about the ordeal on Jamie Laing's podcast, Great Company. She said: “I don’t talk about this with a lot of people because I was worried and scared at the time because people were in prison for it, and when there was a trial going on, so I wasn’t able to talk about it.”
Break-in after honeymoon
The break-in occurred shortly after the couple's honeymoon in Montenegro. They had married in June 2025. Burke, a Scottish footballer who plays for Union Berlin, had to return to Germany the day after they landed in the UK, leaving McKenna alone in their Essex home.
McKenna fell asleep around 11pm and woke to find the house “shaking”. She said: “I was such a disorientated mess. I was like, ‘What?’ And then I just knew that it was happening to me, and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”
Three masked intruders
She described the terrifying moment: “I get goose pimples now thinking about it. They were inside my house, but I lock my bedroom door every night because I always worry about something happening to me when I’m on my own.
“The next thing I know, my mirror has come off my wall, and they’re hacking a hole through my wall with a baseball bat. They’re three masked men with machetes and baseball bats, and they managed to hack a hole in my wall because it was a fake wall going onto my dressing room, linked to my bedroom.”
Police response and aftermath
Fearing for her dog's life, McKenna called the police, who were at her house for seven minutes. She recalled: “It was the longest seven minutes I’ve ever experienced in my entire life, and the police were saying to me, ‘Don’t speak to them.’ I said, ‘I can hear they’ve got weapons. They’re hacking my wall down,’ and they were like, ‘We’re on our way.’
“And I was like, ‘No, they’re hacking my wall down.’ And they were like, ‘Please don’t talk to them.’ I said, ‘If I don’t go and talk to them and ask them what they want, they’re going to come in and kill my dog.’”
McKenna approached one of the men, who was wearing a balaclava, and he took her jewellery before leaving with the others. She said she felt “obviously targeted” for her jewellery and that the incident left her feeling “not safe in my own home” and that the experience “changes you forever”.
