The Real Story Of The Puppet Master | Conmen Case Files | Real Crime

there's a way to make an entrance my destiny it was now a conspiracy of witches download veli today [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] con men the most devious of all criminals charming cool and calculating they betray trust and devastate lives yet remain a complete enigma we are about to explore the mysterious world of these master criminals giving an unprecedented insight into the workings of the complex minds of some of the world's most cunning con men and women we will reveal the detail and the intricacies of their elaborate crimes and uncover how they were dramatically brought to justice in this show the story of a con man who shot the nation to its core robert hendy fregaard lied and convinced his prey that he was an mi5 secret agent believing the ira were paying for their blood his victims paid the ultimate price for his bogus protection not simply money but his complete control over their lives [Music] robert hendy freegard to me i think is just in a class of his own as a con man for a decade robert hendy freegard controlled his victims like puppets acting out his twisted and sick james bond fantasies to seduce degrade and humiliate his pawns while making a million pound fortune from them i'm in mi5 spy but you can't tell anyone he'd take money for them yes but it wasn't just about the money it was about control robert hendy freegard's evil spy game was so merciless sadistic and cruel the press crowned him king kong he was probably britain's best con man robert hendy freegard as he infamously became known was born simply robert friegard on first of march 1971. he grew up in derbyshire and from an early age there was a difference between freegard and the other boys and girls at school as his primary school teacher rita taylor remembers all too well it did seem quite odd compared with the other boys in the class i must admit and i was always aware of him looking as always staring i always got a fixed look on his face and his eyes never finished and unusually with boys you don't get that in a class you know the but he would sit there and just fold his arms and just look at me and never flinch robert was a charming little boy really it was very good looking beautiful curly hair and yes he'd smile at you as he went through the door and it seemed as though he could play up to anybody if he wished but he did say to his friend michael that one day he would be very important and do something very important in his life freegard left school at 15 without any qualifications and drifted for much of his early life working as a manual labourer by 1992 his first girlfriend allison ended their relationship after he stole 600 pounds from her well hendy freegard obviously started quite early his first relationship that we know of wasn't without problems he stole money from his girlfriend and he was also charged with incitement to kidnap her he became obsessed with her apparently so here clearly is a guy who feels entitled and wants to control somebody he wants to control her finances he thinks he's entitled to that and he wants to control her the charges against freegard never resulted in a custodial sentence and a year later in january 1993 the drifter found himself working in a pub in newport this is the location where he would conceive his con man persona the utterly fictitious character of an undercover mi5 agent tracking ira terrorist cells in this sleepy town at this unassuming pub freegard laid the seeds for his twisted con that ten years later would see him dubbed by the press the most evil con man ever the pub was a pub that was frequented by john atkinson maria hendy and sarah smith robert friegard more or less took over being the landlord at one stage and then befriended these students and started the extraordinary con on them well here's a group of people that he's met and he obviously sees some sort of vulnerability in them you know they come from a small agricultural college he thinks that he can manipulate them and he's right freegard's unbelievable con did have a plausible foundation against the backdrop of uk society at the time in 1992 the ira bombed london three times killing four and injuring 124 people in december 1992 just a month before freegard began his sixth spy game the ira detonated two bombs in manchester city centre injuring 60 people and killing two even the seemingly sleepy town of newport had their own reasons to be afraid a harper adams student had been discovered to be an ira gun runner after he was killed in an ambush the terrorist threat was part of everyday life and very real and friegard took advantage of the students fears and paranoia obviously being an agricultural college you have access to fertilizer which is the basic constituent of a bomb and so frigard was there not really as a landlord he was there undercover working as a public because then he could get to know the students who the mi5 were watching and he's very very lucky in some respects because the college has been used for some sort of ira activity so already there's a plausible story there's an in for him and he uses that in to really good effect we're talking about 1993 we know at about the same time the ira was very active in that area and the ira terrorist cells were were concern for the uk and he capitalized on that he capitalized on that fear and he capitalized on that publicity of the times and over a decade he perfected it he became a master so he's combined fact and fiction together which is very compelling and you can see how people perhaps in that environment and that atmosphere could have started to feel that he was actually the genuine article but the key to his success was that before freegard set about spinning his web of lies he befriended his first victims students maria hendy sarah smith and john atkinson not only did he spend time with the trio but he began a relationship with maria and employed jon at the pub and freegard quickly drew john into his warped fantasy world of undercover spies and terrorist cells it was john who he first told about the fact he was a spy and you need me to get john to watch various members of the of the other students um who who freegard said were suspected of being ira those were young people going through university you know prospect of perhaps working within the farming community not the most exciting job in the world and suddenly you've got a guy saying i'm an mi5 agent i work for special branch you know spying they've probably watched james bond movies all that sort of thing and it probably did seem quite glamorous quite exciting and a different world that they would not normally have access to freegard's powers of persuasion worked on john atkinson john believed his new friends outlandish lies and seduced by the idea of fulfilling his patriotic duty agreed to join the bogus james bond's crusade but the student's willingness to buy into the intricate fiction soon meant that freegard could revel in the power his twisted lies gave him he set about humiliating and abusing john under the guise of ensuring the student had what it took to work as an undercover spy free guard actually asked these students particularly john to take part in very strange initiation ceremonies or actions you know in fact at one stage actually beat him up to see how resistant and resilient he was bizarre as it may sound it's his way perhaps of testing the water seeing how much manipulation and control he could exert over these young people his first victim john he put him through a series of humiliating trials a lot of which had to do with john's sexuality making him dress effeminately and tell other people that he was gay this was all very amusing to robert hendy freegard and undoubtedly he must have got a sexual kick out of it as well if he tells you any different i think he's lying fregaard was discovering just how much power his lies had over jon and was abusing his control to sickening extremes so boasted by his initial success freegard turned his attention to the girls sarah smith and his new girlfriend maria hendy it was time to trap them with his mi5 con coming up in addition to sick kicks and power play freegard uses his warped fantasy to make money when he twists his james bond con into something much more sinister and dangerous my car has been blown your cover's been blown because you you're associated with me the ira hitmen are after you the assassins on your tell now we have to we have to go now this case is in the real meaning of the word unique robert hendy friegaard is the twisted con man who invented the persona of an mi5 agent in order to subjugate his victims to his every whim and his every command because he made them believe they were being hunted by the ira he was a professional he was a professional con man it's not only stealing money it's stealing bits of people's lives he's a psychopathic sadistic fraudster in 1993 robert friegard had befriended three agricultural students he had successfully bewitched one of the students with his lies john atkinson believed freegard was an mi5 spy monitoring ira terrorist cells located at his college having full control of john atkinson freegard's twisted ambitions grew and he wanted to indoctrinate jon's friends maria hendy and sarah smith into his warped and fictional world just before their exams were starting he told john that the ira had found out about him and by association with about john and about maria and sarah john believed his life and by proxy the lives of his friends were in mortal danger in reality it was all a figment of freegard's sick imagination but jon desperate to save his friends sarah and maria followed freegard's sick instructions to lie to the girls and tell them he had terminal cancer he was ordered by frigard to go on to say that his dying wish was to take a final holiday with them and the girls obviously their friend was ill they wanted to take part and help him and spend some fun time with him and you could understand that but once they were all away from their safe home environments the the places they were familiar with he was then able to really start putting the pressure on freegard had successfully removed the three students john sarah and girlfriend maria away from their comfort zones and now isolated and away from home he told his cruelest lie so far claiming that the real reason for their trip was that there was a price on their heads they were being hunted by ira hitmen so they couldn't go home and instead had to go on the run it was all complete and utter lies as audaciously far-fetched as the tale seems freegard had a perverted one of good fortune his revelation was literally followed days later by the ira bomb attack on warrington which tragically killed two children isolated scared and frightened the students believed freegard's cruel lies and he told such an extreme lie that they probably felt that they had to believe it that it was so bizarre that it couldn't be anything other than true why would anybody go to those lengths he told them actually my car has been blown your cover's been blown because you you're associated with me the ira hitmen are after you the assassins on your tell now we have to we have to go now we have to go into a safe house now and so he would deadline them in that sense and they'd be pressured into what in a sort of cold lighter day if you had time to sort of sit and think about it are obviously ridiculous things but you don't have time to think about it you're under pressure the only person who could help them and they could trust was our man and that's the hook he had on them there was nowhere else they could go no one else they could turn to at that point other than him now hiding out in sheffield freegard had complete control over his prey and could start to make massive amounts of money off the students through his lies freegard told the students if the government directly funded their mission then the money trail could lead the ira straight to them so until the danger passed the students had to contact their families and beg for funds and the students begged as if it was for their lives in total john atkinson ended up handing over 390 000 pounds of his family's money and sarah smith gave freegard her 188 thousand pounds inheritance the students were led to believe they would be refunded the money with interest but in the meantime it would help to keep them safe and more importantly alive when you read the news reports about these poor suckers you got scammed into it how could they fall for this ridiculous story well because it was exciting and i guess obviously we want a bit of a romance and adventure excitement in our life and of course once you start down that road that it's hard to get out of where he started to gain some sort of something positive out of this whole scam was when he actually persuaded these young people to go to their families and start taking out huge some cases sums of money his story was that they were in a witness protection program but the government couldn't be seen to be giving money for this witness protection program so he needed money from them for their living expenses as they were going along he was keeping account of how much money that they were giving him and then in a few years time the government would pay back the money because if they were that the story seemed to be that if the government gave them money then that money could be traced and then they could be traced sarah would say that he knew things which made her believe him so for example he knew that she had an inheritance he apparently knew how much or more or less how much the inheritance was which made her think that he was getting his information from somewhere so either he was very lucky very prescient or or um he managed to find out from sarah for example in a way that she didn't realize he had he had found out they were held in fear they were going to do whatever it took for their own survival so they thought but also for his because he was the person who was controlling them and in their mind keeping them safe by june 1993 maria was pregnant with frigard's first child and he had found sarah and john menial jobs in sheffield to fund their protection everything the two students earned was handed over the free guard and they were forbidden from discussing their situation even with each other as far as they were concerned freegard saw everything knew everything and was everywhere his power over the students was absolute he even made sarah open a bank account in maria's name so every penny sarah earned went straight to freigard and she was left living in poverty he actually set them up in jobs and in a flat i think just outside sheffield where they actually run assumed names so he was even to an extreme extent of distance distancing them so far from their previous lives they probably got to the point they almost forgot what those lives were about and they were completely living in that new life that he'd created for them sarah was working in a number of jobs she was working under the name of maria hendy and the money was being paid directly into a bank account in the name of maria hindi which then fregaard would take the money from because maria wasn't allowed to have any money for herself freegard also began to adopt a double-barrelled name incorporating maria hendy's surname fregaard did not take money from maria maria lived as freegard's common law wife a virtual prisoner in their flat while her lover lied to her saying he was away on mi5 missions maria gave birth the free guard's first child in 1994 and the con man's cruelty toward her came in a completely different form maria and handy freegar's relationship is going to have characteristics that are common in any relationship that is characterized by domestic violence she is being controlled she is probably walking on epic shells wondering what to do to keep him happy and also she thinks that keeping him happy is keeping her alive that's very very powerful the poor girl probably didn't know which way was up at that time and also she's got children by him she wants to keep those children as live as well she's in an impossible situation in many respects with maria completely isolated from her two friends it wasn't long until friggar decided to separate sarah and john freegard moved john to derbyshire and sarah remained in sheffield now freegard's prey were completely isolated and alone he had them exactly where he wanted them puppets to feed his ego and fund his fantasies the students were so dependent and scared that freegard could play out his twisted mi5 delusions indefinitely enjoying the power and the funds the students gave him for the following five years fregaard had sarah and john working in the shadows of society and maria a virtual recluse now raising free guards to children the bogus spy had done the unbelievable manipulated and abused three intelligent adults until he held them completely in his wicked thrall once he had those young students under his control and the fact that they would do his bidding every time he asked them whatever he asked them to do the fact that he had these puppets that he could control must have been an incredible power trip for him all he cared about was what he was getting and actually what he was getting was a really nice lifestyle that allowed him to be more convincing as this mi5 agent you know he was able to use the money to get the suits get the cars but also you have to wonder was he a little bit convinced himself because he was getting deeper and deeper into the fantasy he was growing into i guess his james bond persona and he would have flash suits and flash cars and that's all part of what's called putting on the dog is where you adopt persona and then makes you much more plausible he looks the part and that's half the battle after decimating sarah and john's savings freegard had money to spend at will and could extravagantly live out his perverse james bond fantasy life all the while his victims lived in squalor maria was living in fear a virtual prisoner with frigard's two children and similarly john and sarah were trying to be invisible not stand out scared for their lives you have to think about the psychological perspective what did he deny them well he denied them access to family he denied them access to friends he denied them access to their past to their employment to their finances he changed the way they looked he changed he changed what they ate where they lived who they socialized with who they could talk with so in the end he they saw themselves through him he was their only reference point and of course as a spy he had access to deadly force he would threaten them he would threaten to kill them or have them killed by other operatives if they didn't do exactly what he said so the combination of control and denial to what's familiar to you and then threats to kill is very powerful you can almost see him um i think developing his powers his cut his scamming powers as he goes along you can almost sort of see him realizing the extent of his power and pushing the envelope of it because he starts off with okay it's a big lie but you know it's only so far and then i think you can imagine him sort of thinking well they bought that you know i can say anything i want and i'll buy it i can i only have to say it it becomes true almost freegard began working as a car salesman and the location proved to be a fertile hunting ground in 1996 unbeknownst to maria friegard met and began affairs with several other women seducing them with his evil con of these women free guards seemed to enjoy a malevolent level of pleasure from making 22 year old elizabeth bartholomew suffer elizabeth was bewitched by freegard believing him to be an mi5 spy and took out two loans for him amounting to 14 500 pounds but it was the sadistic control free guard had over elizabeth that was the most disturbing he would prohibit her from using makeup and even ban her from using sanitary towels to simultaneously degrade her and test her loyalty to his fictitious cause and such was his power that she would comply there was a level of cruelty towards elizabeth which was unseen in the other people that he dealt with he told her for example that she couldn't go back to her flat because there was a sniper trained trained on her block of flats and if she went back in the day time she'd be shot and if she went back in the night time and turn the lights on she'd be shot so if when she did go back to her flat once or twice it would be at night and she'd have the lights off and she'd be crawling around on the floor avoiding someone who she thought was about to take a shot at her from another block of flats he had her change her appearance he had her bleach her hair he had to wear a sari so she was a blee a white woman with bleached blonde hair wearing a sari he took her other clothes away from her he had her at one time stripped naked for him in a park public park all these sorts of strange and cruel tests that he was performing and in terms of her he'd already got money from her there was no financial gain at that stage in relation to her it was a very cruel test and a very cruel set of instructions he was giving her for no other purpose than seemingly for their cruelty it's quite clear isn't it that people to hendy freegard weren't sentient creatures with you know with emotions that are to be valued they're just things to be manipulated objects if you like people can be manipulated for kicks and that's what he did he picked people up along the way had a bit of fun with them he would have her um wait for him in places that would be her test she he would say to her i'm i'm dropping you off here wait for me i'll be back in however long i think one time he left her there for four or five days maybe a week on a park bench waiting for him with just a mars bar to eat he'd do the same with sarah he'd ask her to wait tell him tell her to wait for him in a particular place once fregaard even drove sarah to an airport and left her there with instructions to wait for him friggard did not return for three weeks and sarah obeying the man she believed was a spy had to sleep rough in the airport and scrounge for food freegard's cruelty was becoming infinite it knew no limits or control she was homeless for large periods of time he had her waiting she was waiting in heathrow airport having to live in heathrow airport moving around being moved on by the security guards so she was very isolated taken away from her family who her father was very suspicious didn't believe free guard at all probably from the outset and and caused a number of investigations into free guard which sarah was instructed by frigar to stop because it was blowing their cover coming up as freegard ensnares new victims with his vicious mi5 con he also set off a chain reaction of events that brought about his demise scotland yard had a surveillance several surveillance teams as a matter of fact stationed all over heathrow airport watching for free guard robert hendy freegard is probably the most sophisticated the most sinister con man i've ever come across in my career robert hendy fregaard redefined the term con artist in terms of scale ambition cruelty and malice he was an mi5 operative that they were under threat from the ira a lot of the women they would say he was a very good lover he's attractive to ladies he's attracted to men as well he's got the ability to suck people in he could have anyone believe anything by 1998 freegard had controlled and conned sarah smith john atkinson and the mother of his children maria hendy for five years but that year he lost control of john a man who in half a decade had given the fake spy whom he believed was keeping him safe around four hundred thousand pounds of his family's money john atkinson when asking for money had always promised his family that he had met freegard's superiors but in reality he had only ever dealt with one man evil free guard after five years jon finally confessed the shocking truth to his family who then convinced him to come home but he was seemingly too shell-shocked and afraid to go to the police freight's disturbing control was still in place one of the interesting things about free guard's backstory was it was very useful to him because it had built into a block hustle and a block hustle is a kind of element of a scam where um you build into it um something that stops the mark from going to the police and so the way he built the block hustle into it was because of course his whole story was that their lives were in danger they had to stay undercover this is all the secret services the assassins were on their trails so of course they couldn't break cover couldn't go to the police although frigard had lost jon he still had sarah and maria to play with and he had acquired a new toy in the form of elizabeth his victims were dotted around the uk giving him money and obeying his every command by 2000 frigard was working as a car salesman in london and before long he found his next victim renata kister he was working in a car showroom and she came in to buy a car and they became friendly he then had her i thinking invest an amount of money in a number of different cards because he was going to start a car fleet of some kind he probably took about 20 000 pounds from renata she also ran a cleaning business so he had sarah working for renata although telling renata that sarah was south american didn't speak in english and was a witness i think in a drug trial and was undercover for that and fregaard began to play even more games with his victims and lovers even though he had secured all of sarah smith's trust fund fregaard's cruel abuse continued while pretending to be an undercover spy she also at one stage was staying in a in a house where she was looked in the bathroom and in fact renata was downstairs in another part of the house i think he told her that there was someone else downstairs but that they shouldn't meet it would have compromised her safety and her being undercover so for days she was living in a bathroom just drinking water and being brought food by him by the end of 2001 frigard's long-term relationship with maria hendy finally came to an end maria had been living like a recluse raising the two daughters she had with freegard after eight years of fear and torment maria finally fled to her parents after the bogus spy reportedly viciously attacked her but freegard still had elizabeth renata and sarah to manipulate for money's sex and his twisted power games but freegard had seduced another woman a london-based solicitor called caroline cooper after a whirlwind romance freegard had wooed caroline with his charm and lies and she believed like many of his other victims that she was going to be his wife in reality he was using her to fuel and fund his fantasy stealing 14 000 pounds from her building society account and also borrowing thousands of pounds with no intention of paying it back the women that robert handy free guard got involved with weren't stupid women you know they were intelligent they were professional and i think that some of them really really were taken in and i think they were the ones who were held in some sort of fear but others i think were taken in so far and then started to smell a rat caroline's family were becoming concerned about their future son-in-law and robert hendy fregaard in a bid to put their minds at ease inexplicably made the utterly bizarre and ultimately fatal error that would lead to his downfall freegard arrogantly gave caroline cooper's family the telephone number of someone who could vouch for his good character and reliability only the reference he offered them was maria hendy's father a man who for eight years had been powerless while his daughter was used abused and beaten by the bogus mi5 spy obviously he didn't vouch for him when they went to and asked him what about this guy freegard he probably wasn't that complimentary and so the relationship ended but of course then then then he reneged on he took money from caroline didn't give it back to her she then went to the police and eventually after some time managed to persuade the police it was a crime rather than simply a civil debt that was going on here and of course she then provided the link from herself to maria which is a trial that the police then followed and spoke to maria and then from maria they went to he and peter smith sarah smith's father so in effect he created the chain that caught him out friggar's bizarre error set off a chain reaction he was completely unaware of the investigation and by september 2002 fregaard moved on to his last known victim an american child psychologist living in the uk called kimberly adams who had fallen hook line and sinker for his thrilling tales of being an undercover spy this fantasy appealed to her and his the charm and the persona of a james bond image that went with it made her fall in love with him everything was quite wonderful because spies go to very nice restaurants they drive very fabulous and fancy cars buy you very expensive gifts take you on very nice weekend trips but once she became involved in his life and accepted the fact that he was a spy and that she was going to live a life with a spy all of that train changed drastically he changed her appearance he told her that sacrifices would have to be made he told her that contacts with her family would be limited that she would need to change her employment so essentially he took over her life he found out that her stepfather i think had just won the american lottery so had just won 20 million dollars i think on the american lottery so obviously that was a he probably saw that there was a potential of getting money there so that they quickly made contact with her american family freegard was making kimberly beg her parents for money telling them that the money was funding their spy school education he was telling them that they'd they'd both taken the exams and that she'd failed one of the exams and had to pay some money in order to retake the exam at spy school of course he hadn't failed he'd passed his exams and it's interesting her family became suspicious because kimberly had never failed any exams before they then contacted the fbi to find out if he was telling the truth the thing he didn't count on was that his victims had people who loved them and who would look out for them caring about another human being is so beyond his experience he was so inhumane himself that he didn't count on other people doing what humans do to look out for each other with the potential of unlimited funds being provided by kimberly's lottery winning family free guard's lies were being relayed across the atlantic but little did friggard know that the phone calls to the usa asking for money to fund his bogus spy life were being monitored by new scotland yard and the fbi led by special agent jacqueline zappacosta mr frigard we learned had been operating as such not with kimberly but with seven other women and a man for over a decade this was a very powerful person this was a person who had mastered his craft this was a formidable opponent even for the fbi and even for a new scotland yard so what we thought of well let's use robert hendy freegard to catch himself i sent out an urgent communication to field offices where both parents lived in iowa and in arizona and tasked them with cultivating the parents to help us once we convinced the parents to work with us they both did a fabulous job and both of them allowed us the fbi to tape record conversations with kimberly so for six weeks we ran 24 7 the fbi and new scotland yard in a partnership across five time zones and we studied the phone calls we studied freegard's reaction when talking to the parents we studied kimberly's reaction when talking to her parents and little by little through kimberly's mom we convinced them that the only way kimberly's mother would give robert freegard any more money was to meet him and kimberly at heathrow airport and that she would fly in with 20 000 in u.s cash and would gladly hand it over to robert if kimberly's mother could make sure she was safe so we held out the bait freegard accepted the bait the u.s and uk police had to ensure the sting would work keeping kimberley's mother safe without arousing the mi5 con man suspicions the met police and the fbi flew kim's mother in the night before hid her in a hotel room in central london briefed her throughout the night as to safety aspects evidence gathering how she should walk how she should behave how she should talk when she was with him we were very concerned about kimberley at that stage because we knew that he tended to hide people so we were concerned that if we got him that we wouldn't be able to get kimberly we wouldn't find kimberly so we were we impressed on kimberly adams mother the importance that she shouldn't hand over or say that she was going to hand over any money until she'd seen her her daughter the next morning we secreted her back into heathrow airport scotland yard had a surveillance several surveillance teams as a matter of fact stationed all over heathrow airport watching for freeguard he met kimberly's mother engaged her in conversation kimberly's mother gave certain signals to the met police who were watching her and they were followed to a car park in heathrow airport where kimberley was waiting in a car for him and as soon as the officers knew that kimberly was there and she could be rescued they swooped and arrested him robert hendy freegard was finally in custody after 10 years of cruelty kimberly was safe but the police had to unravel the extent of the bizarre con and locate sarah and elizabeth who were hiding from the ira he'd left caroline and he had left renata as far as i'm aware sarah was still missing we didn't know where sarah was when he was initially questioned by the police he made no comment to any of the questions that they were asking and i think there are about two or three hours of them asking questions about the various people he could have told us where sarah was he could have told us where elizabeth was but he didn't so there was absolutely no no remorse and no compassion towards people he was having sexual relationships with coming up with free guard in custody the police have to locate the missing victims and finally break the spell the con man held over them for a decade she was found in an emaciated state absolutely terrified robert hendy freegard had pulled off a massive massive deception for ten years robert hendy fregaard cruelly convinced his victims that he was an mi5 spy in order to seduce them and scare them into giving him money he's pushing the envelope he's testing the limits of his power he did what was necessary to feed his own sadistic urges some of them were forced to sleep in bathrooms these were people he was having intimate relationships with these women lived in airport terminals for weeks at a time he's a kind of james bond figure they would sleep on park benches they ended up being very much their puppet master because he controlled their whole world in 2003 robert hendy freegard was in custody and not talking the police were building the case and desperate to find his missing victims we put the pieces of the puzzle together we found passports of other women we found letters and cards from other women we found photographs of other women and through the next several months the police literally rescued women who had been in hiding for years well actually the secret of hendy fregaard's success is the fear that he held his victims in so when police did come to them and say hey you know you've been manipulated here we need to talk to you their first response was oh just a minute i was warned that this was going to happen i'm ready for this and so their defenses came up but sarah smith who had been under free guard's control for a decade was still missing believing her life was in danger we were most concerned about sarah because she'd been with him since 1993 she had she'd lost all contact with her parents for about a year a year and a half we were very worried about it because we knew that he tended to put people in very difficult positions by a stroke of luck one of the documents uncovered led them to renata one of three freeguard's casualties who in turn would become invaluable in helping find the victim freegard had abused for a decade she was the person who led us to sarah because she was employing sarah as a cleaner she thought sarah was south american was under witness protection scheme the officers then were told where this lady who it turned out to be sarah smith was cleaning and the police faced the daunting challenge of convincing sarah smith that her world had been a work of free guards fantasies she was initially very resistant to obviously having effectively invested 10 years of her life in what would turn out to be a lie but she was taken to the police station to prove the bona fides of the of the officers that were speaking to her and then the whole story came out about what she would have been happening to her and this woman really did suffer she was found in an emaciated state absolutely terrified he had her completely under his control to the extent that he controlled you know where she lived what she ate i don't think you could have any more total control over a person unless you have them in physical restraints with the key victims located a formidable case was building against free guard and his bogus mi5 con robert hendy freegard was charged with four counts of kidnap and numerous counts of theft and deception although it did not stop freegard from denying the charges and applying for bail he applied for bail and i did the bail bail application and i said to the judge who actually was the trial judge eventually we're very concerned about him not quite sure what's going on he's going to run away not quite sure why he's done all these things and the judge at that stage said to the defense counsel the first defense counsel i'm certainly not going to consider bail until he has a psychiatric report now he refused to have a psychiatric report so kept was kept in custody infected was kept in custody for 18 months waiting for or just over a year waiting for trial in october 2004 pleading not guilty freegard's case came to court and after eight months the jury found robert hendy freegard guilty of two counts of kidnap ten counts of theft and eight counts of deception the judge at that stage said i'm thinking of imposing a life sentence as you could for kidnapping but if you if you have a psychiatric report that might help you it might help me give you a lesser sentence and once again after consulting with his counsel he initially refused to have a psychiatric report a few hours later in the day he said yes i'll have a psychic report and so the sentencing was put off for four weeks pending the psychiatric report um when they came back the defense had obviously seen me a psychiatric report but didn't want the judge to see it and so knowing that the only alternative would be a life imprisonment at that stage they would rather have that than have the judge see whatever the psychiatric report said so your guess is as good as mine as to what this architectural report said but it can't have been good for him what was in the psychiatric report remains a complete mystery the life sentence was a bittersweet victory for his victims but short-lived when fregaard appealed against the verdict and overturned the kidnapping charges the sentence was shockingly reduced to 10 years well the charges of kidnap were dropped because hendy freegard didn't use handcuffs he didn't use locks and keys he didn't use ropes to bind people but what he did use were his manipulative skills to actually hold people very very tightly in psychological bonds if you like now i think that those psychological bonds are just as severe as ropes ties you name it and in fact i think that the the the damage that he's caused is incredible those people are probably still tied up and still enmeshed in some kind of grasp of his but the law doesn't see it that way after a decade of cruelly playing the mi5 agent frigar's legacy of destroying lives with his twisted and warped illusions will not quickly be forgotten what is most extraordinary about this particular con man is that the length of time he carried out this this appalling appalling set of crimes we're talking 10 years robert hendy freegard has gone on record as saying if you tell a lie make it a big one he seems actually proud of the lengths that he's gone to and just how deceitful he has proved that another person can be it was about being in control and almost seeing how far you could push somebody he could convince people that he was someone else to the point where not only could he just take their money but he could rule their lives astonishingly friggaard is now walking free after serving just five years in prison just half the time he cruelly abused and manipulated his victims fregaard's victims are rebuilding their lives sarah smith has started a career as a photographer and john atkinson is now a teacher although he has not beaten them the victims have to live every day with the mental scars from the ordeal he put them through it must have been a huge thing for them to be able to wrap their heads around and actually they would have to build new identities for themselves and start all over again and i imagine that that must have been incredibly difficult

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 133,934

Keywords: Real Crime, con artist documentary, conman true story, crime fiction documentary, criminal behavior analysis, criminal code deciphering, criminal deception methods, criminal investigation, criminal justice ethics, criminal justice system, criminal mastermind, deception and deceit, financial exploitation, financial scams exposed, fraud prevention strategies, law enforcement strategies, psychological manipulation, psychological warfare, scam artist, true crime storytelling

Id: kA-s8HR09hY

Length: 46min 14sec (2774 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 19 2022