Nigel Blundell - Crafty Crooks & Conmen

I t is hard to believe that anyone could allow a chance encounter with a total stranger to turn their lives into a humiliating charade of fear, exploitation and degradation. But that is exactly what happened to the victims of Robert Hendy-Freegard. The former barman met people seeking excitement in their otherwise very ordinary existences then drove them to the brink of madness.

While he was power-mad, they became powerless. As he took charge of their every waking moment, they became more and more subservient. It was make-believe in the hands of a maniac. For ten years, Robert Hendy-Freegard carried out one of the most elaborate and audacious frauds in British history; his motto: Lies have to be big to be convincing.

Like everything else about him, Robert Hendy-Freegards name was a creation. Born Robert Freegard on March 1, 1977, he added the Hendy later in life a particularly cruel testament to one of his female victims. His humble birthplace, a small village near Whitwell, in Derbyshire, could not contain Hendy-Freegard for long. He was, he felt, cut out for a more rewarding life. And alongside the rather mundane occupations of working behind bars and selling cars, that is what Hendy-Freegard found when he added conman and impostor to his CV.

He excelled at both, first terrorising a group of students with claims that they were being hunted by the IRA, then seducing a series of women across Britain, all the while revelling in how easily people believed his claim to be a spy. Once a friendship was established, Hendy-Freegard would reveal his role as an undercover agent for MI5, Special Branch or Scotland Yard, win his victims over, ask for money and then, quite literally, rule their lives. He even managed to get them to sever family links, abandon friends and undergo cruel loyalty tests. Evil Hendy-Freegards mind games caused mental and physical suffering almost beyond belief.

Even before he became a professional conman, Hendy-Freegard used those who trusted him. A girlfriend, teacher Alison Hopkins, lent him 1,500 after he told her a string of stories lying also about the qualifications he had acquired at school. It was only after the couple split up that Alison realised Hendy-Freegard had been stealing money from her account, using her cash card and memorising her PIN number.

Things took a more sinister turn when Alison was stalked by her former lover and she took the desperate step of moving to Shropshire to escape him. In 1993, Hendy-Freegard was convicted at Nottingham Crown Court of three counts of theft from Alison, with a conspiracy to kidnap charge left on file relating to an incident in which he allegedly tried to have her snatched by two accomplices. He was given a conditional discharge.

None of this was known, of course, as Hendy-Freegard continued in his job at The Swan, the pub in Newport, Shropshire, where he had gone to pursue his fleeing former girlfriend. Hendy-Freegard charmed his customers especially the female ones. Learning that IRA gun-runner Kevin ODonnell had studied at a local agricultural college two years earlier and had been killed in an SAS ambush in 1992, the callous conman hit upon the basis of his brainwashing schemes. He played on the college students fears, telling them he was a spy. Fellow bar workers laughed at him behind his back but the impressionable young people were taken in.

Three of these students, Maria Hendy, Sarah Smith and her boyfriend John Atkinson, were amongst the pubs regular customers and Hendy-Freegard quickly fell into conversation with them. He told them he was a secret agent. Over the next few years, they endured poverty, carried out bizarre missions and lived in terror. They were told not to see their family or friends because this would put them in danger; they also could not use the lavatory before him.

Both young women were seduced by Hendy-Freegard. Maria had two children with him. Was it this cruel sense of humour that had him adding her surname to his own? What is known for sure is that Maria and Sarah were persuaded to join Hendy-Freegard on a tour of Britain along with Mr Atkinson, whom they believed was suffering from a terminal illness. Once he had them on their own, Hendy-Freegard told them there was now no going back, for they were involved in an undercover operation designed to save their lives. Contracts had been taken out because of their association with him. They had to stay on the run to avoid detection.

By now, brainwashed and confused, the three allowed themselves to be moved into a safe house in Peterborough. Sarah was ordered to ring home and tell her parents she wasnt going back to college because she had been offered a job with the Commercial Union insurance company.

More temporary accommodation throughout the country followed, with Hendy-Freegard feeding the three false information about each other and their families. The conman also managed to get all three to part with their cash. By the time Hendy-Freegards crimes were discovered, he had defrauded Sarah Smith and her family of 300,000 and Mr Atkinson and his family of 390,000.

While his victims led gruelling, isolated lives under Hendy-Freegards control, he led a much more pleasant one, holidaying in five-star luxury and buying expensive meals and designer suits with their cash.

Sarah Smith, who remained in the cruel conmans clutches for ten years, was once so hungry that she ate left-over chip batter in the fish and chip shop he had ordered her to work in. My world was turned upside down, she later said. When I challenged Bob on why I had to work there, he told me his bosses thought I needed bringing down to earth. I had been told my boyfriend was dying, that I couldnt see my friends and family and now I had to work in a chip shop. I coped by switching off.

When employed in a hotel, Miss Smith was only allowed to keep her tips. She would also be forced to wait at service stations and airports for up to a fortnight at a time, with as little as 10 to live on. She endured being driven around with a bucket on her head to keep her destination a secret, and noting down endless car number plates to make sure the IRA were not on to her. She was ordered to pawn jewellery which had belonged to her grandmother and to empty her bank accounts to avoid being traced.

Miss Smith said: He told me so many lies using a mixture of charm and menace that I never knew which way was up. He knows what makes you tick and how to make you do what he wants. Thats why hes so dangerous.

On a rare meeting with their daughter, Jill and Peter Smith noted how subdued she was. She was tearful and difficult to talk to. She looked as if she had been mentally whipped into place, said Mr Smith. She was in a bad state and sobbing. Time and time again, we begged her to come home but there was a hold and we couldnt break it.

Wealthy farmers son John Atkinson could only agree. He spent three years on the run, fleeing from imaginary Republican gangs. Hendy-Freegard ruined my life and many other peoples too. He put me through hell. It was degrading and humiliating. Hes very good at what he does but his motives were so pathetic and contrived you could never make it up.

Hendy-Freegard led Atkinson to believe he was being recruited to fight the IRA. He was put into training and forced to perform spurious jobs. Sometimes he would have to wait for days in a certain place for a non-existent assignation. At one point, the terrified man allowed himself to be beaten black and blue to toughen him up. He was then ordered to pretend he was dying from cancer and to flee his college course. Another time, he was ordered to get a job as a barman at the same Swan pub as his tormentor and to turn up for work with his hair dyed orange and wearing a dress. Like his fellow victims, Mr Atkinson had to hand his wages straight over to Hendy-Freegard.