Former TOWIE star Megan McKenna has revealed she decided to move to Germany after machete-wielding intruders broke into her UK home while she was alone in bed, in a burglary that took place two years ago.
McKenna, 33, splits her time between the UK and Germany, where she lives with footballer husband Olivier Burke. Burke previously played for Werder Bremen before signing with Union Berlin last year. The couple share a 22-month-old son, Landon.
Speaking on the Great Company With Jamie Laing podcast, McKenna said she had not spoken publicly about the burglary before because people were later put on trial for it. "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," she said. "I was robbed really badly in my own home. It scared me so much to be in the UK and to live in the UK on my own, because obviously Ollie's in Germany."
She explained that Burke had to fly back to Germany after a holiday together, leaving her alone in the UK home with her dog. She fell asleep around 11pm and woke to find the house "shaking."
Three masked men with machetes
"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'," McKenna said. "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."
She said her mirror came off the wall as three masked men armed with machetes and baseball bats hacked a hole through what turned out to be a fake wall connecting her dressing room to her bedroom.
A tearful McKenna said she called the police, who told her not to speak to the intruders while they made their way to the house. "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,'" she said. "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.'"
Confronting the intruders naked
McKenna said she defied the police because she feared the men would kill her dog if she did not go and speak to them. She approached the group naked, having already cut her foot, leaving blood "everywhere."
"I went over to them. I was naked. I was talking to this man in a balaclava, and he grabbed my hand and he took jewellery off of me," she said. "Like I actually was holding hands with the robber, and they had a conversation outside the wall, and they made a phone call. I was shaking. I'd cut my foot. There was blood everywhere. It was like a bloody murder scene. And then I'm standing naked, and they just left with nothing, with nothing else."
McKenna told the podcast her home had been "obviously targeted."
IVF, a trial and early release
She said the burglary happened while she was going through IVF treatment to conceive Landon, and that police had wanted her to take part in the trial of those arrested. "I just said to them, like, I actually can't physically do that. Go through it," she said. "They got caught, and then they went on trial, and and then a year later, they just got let out. They're just roaming the roads."
A second burglary, years apart
The 2026 revelation follows an earlier burglary in 2017, when McKenna was starring on TOWIE. She returned home from a night out at the Essex venue Faces to find her flat ransacked, with thieves making off with thousands of pounds worth of jewellery, designer handbags, sunglasses and sentimental items. It was reported at the time that the thieves may have learned where she lived from watching TOWIE, on which she often filmed scenes at home.
McKenna has since quit reality TV and is now pursuing a music career, as well as working as a content creator from her home in Berlin.
