Love and Lies Pt.2: The Captor
In 2015, Robert Hendy Freegard disappeared with Sandra Clifton. Robert's shocking past is uncovered in the search to find her, including the story of a woman he held captive for a decade.
CW: Emotional abuse, kidnapping
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SOURCES
Benstead, Sam. Johnson, Gareth. The Puppet Master: Hunting The Ultimate Conman. By Benstead, Sam. Johnson, Gareth. Netflix. 2022
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/nottinghamshire/3393951.stm
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jun/24/ukcrime.rosiecowan
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, Hauntings and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore.
Last week, I told you the story of Sandra, who in 2011 started dating a man who called himself David. David was isolating Sandra from her friends and family until she ultimately disappeared. If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, I highly suggest you do before diving into this one. It ended with Sandra’s ex husband Mark, learning about another woman that David, whose real name was Robert, had disappeared with in 2002, a woman named Kim Adams.
Today, I want to start at the beginning of Robert’s story, because Sandra was not the first woman that he had vanished with. She wasn’t the second or third either. This was a disturbing pattern that he had been repeating for nearly 20 years.
Before we jump in I have some exciting news–we’re off next week–that’s not the exciting part, but while we won’t have a new episode we are launching an Apple subscription for the show–this will let you listen ad free, get the extra monthly bonus episode and the archived episodes all from within the apple podcasts app. It’s called Heart Starts Pounding Premium and the sub will be $4.99 so an entire 1 cent cheaper than the base Patreon tier which gives you all the same stuff. I know a lot of you don’t use Patreon but may still want the extra content and ad-free listening, so stay tuned for that. And if you’re already listening ad free on Patreon–awesome! Thank you Rogue Detecting Society members, especially those who have joined the High Council and are getting the new weekly Footnotes episodes. In this week’s footnotes, we talk more about this story and we talk about scams that you guys told us you’ve fallen for, as well as ones that we’ve fallen for ourselves. And of course if you’re listening to the ad supported version of this podcast, thank you also, because our sponsors make the show possible.
Alright, let’s dive straight back in, and as always, listener discretion is advised.
Music
Our story starts in England, 1993. At the Harper Adams Agricultural college, one of the leading Agricultural programs in the world.
In a pub off campus, two students, Sarah Smith and Maria Hendy, arrive to grab a drink with Sarah’s boyfriend, fellow student John Atkinson. He had called them in a panic earlier that day saying they needed to meet, he had something to tell them. Sarah nervously fiddles with her drink waiting for him to arrive. it wasn’t like John to do something like this, and Maria keeps trying to calm her down. It’s fine, he’s probably just stressed about finals. The door to the pub swings open and John walks in. He looks pale and anxious. Not his usual chipper self. He sits down, takes a sharp breath and gets right to it.
I’m terminally ill.
The words hit like a ton of bricks. You’re joking, Sarah says, shocked. But his facial expression stays somber and serious.
This can’t be happening, Sarah thinks. When did John go to the doctor?! He had never even told her about feeling sick in the first place. And now, what, she was just supposed to accept that he was going to die?
How long do you have? Tears started welling in Sarah’s eyes. “Just a couple of weeks” John says, looking at the ground.
“But” he explains, “there’s something I want to do with the time I have left. I want us all to take one last trip as friends, a road trip”
Sarah and Maria still had classes. What about finals? But ultimately they decided that this was far more important than any test. They agreed, went back to their dorms, packed their bags, and went to go find John's car.
This day had already been shocking to Sarah, she was still trying to make sense of what was happening, so maybe that’s why she didn’t say anything when she brought her bags down to John’s car and there was a stranger waiting there with John. A tall guy with dark hair and bushy eyebrows, around their age.
This is my friend Robert, John said. He’ll be joining us.
Sarah and Maria don’t know anything about Robert Hendy Freegard, he hasn’t become the man that Sandra met in 2011 yet. But their trip with him shared some strange similarities to Sandra’s trip to Spain.
During that entire trip, Robert drove the car and played a Duran Duran cassette tape on a loop. Sarah remembered feeling nauseous listening to the same songs over and over and over again. But she put on a brave face for John, she wanted to make these last few weeks of his life special.
Robert’s behavior during this trip was strange. If John wanted him there, that was his decision, but Sarah would have preferred it just be the three friends. He never wanted to be in any of the pictures being taken, instead he insisted that he be the one taking the photographs. And then, sometimes in between replays of the one Duran Duran tape, he’d throw on the radio to catch news about the IRA’s attacks on England. In the 1990’s, the Irish Republican Army had taken up arms against England again to end english rule in northern ireland. The news at the time was mostly stories of outbreaks of violence as the IRA fought for independence. carbombings, kidnappings, shootouts. Whenever the group heard anything about Irish terrorists being captured in England, John and Robert would give each other these knowing looks. It was hard to tell what they were thinking.
10 days into the trip, Sarah started wondering how much longer this was going to go on for. She was starting to miss her family but she didn’t want to leave John. it was on that day, Robert pulled over to the side of the road and got everyone out of the car. He had something he wanted to tell them.
We’re not able going back to college. Robert told them. It’s not safe.
What do you mean, sarah asked.
John took a deep breath, and what he said next shocked the girls. I’m not really dying of cancer. I needed to tell you something that would get you away from campus, you wouldn’t have understood. We’re not safe there.
The truth is, I’m an MI5 agent, Robert jutted in. Tasked with catching irish terrorists near campus. It’s no longer safe for us to go back.
Sarah didn’t know what to make of this, so she started pacing back and forth, unable to process this new information. Can you prove any of this? Prove that you’re MI5? Prove that we can’t go back to campus? Anything?
Robert told her that he knew exactly how much money she had in her bank account, and that was because he worked for the government. That seemed to be the only proof he could offer at the time.
John could see how anxious the two girls were so he decided to start at the beginning, tell them how he got them into this mess.
Music
Earlier in 1992, a student at their University named Kevin O’Donnell was killed in the Clonoe (cla-know) ambush. He had been part of a small group of IRA volunteers who attacked a security base, and then were killed by the British army while trying to escape. Before that, Kevin was found near campus with bombs and ammo in his car. It was terrifying to John to think that Irish terrorists were that close to campus.
Shortly after, one of his Irish friends took his own life.
So one night, John was drinking in a pub near campus when he started chatting with the barman, who was Rob. John mentioned his friend dying and how nervous he was that IRA terrorists could be infiltrating their campus. Robert confirmed all of his fears. He told him that he was an MI5 agent tasked with finding IRA sleeper cells and confirmed that they were on campus. He also told him that his friend didn’t take his own life, he was murdered.
It sounds unbelievable, but Robert was a really convincing guy. He told John that because his school was for agriculture, it had massive amounts of fertilizer on campus. What do you need to make bombs? Often times Fertilizer. To John, it made sense that there would be terrorists on campus trying to gain access to their supply.
Robert then recruited John to help him hunt terrorists, teaching him how to take a punch and tasking him with writing down all the license plate numbers near the fertilizer reserves on campus. If you’re wondering how Rob taught John how to take a punch, well, he punched John a LOT.
John lived in a house with three other people, Sarah, Maria, and his friend Jeff. one day, Robert told him that Jeff was suspected of being an Irish terrorist. It was no longer safe for them to be living in that house, and John needed to convince the girls to leave by any means necessary. Jeff must have told other IRA volunteers that John was training with Robert, and now there was a bounty on his head. That’s why I told you both I was dying of cancer, he tells Sarah and Maria on the side of the road.
You may be thinking, this is wild, how could anyone believe this guy. And I’m not going to lie, it’s hard to understand why, after hearing all of this, Sarah gets back in the car with Rob and John. I don’t know if she knows, either. It all sounded so ridiculous, but her boyfriend was pleading with her, he looked legitimately terrified that people were out to kill him. and she didn’t have any reason to not trust him. She had heard about the Irish bomings on the radio. She knew that their school had supplies to make bombs and was a target.
Sarah didn’t know that this decision was going to alter the trajectory of the rest of her life, but in that moment, she hopped back in the car, starting to believe she was on the run from the IRA.
Fade out music
BREAK
Back in 2015, Mark, Sandra’s ex- husband, had figured out that David Hendy was really Robert Hendy Freegard, an international conman who had disappeared with the mother of his children.
So he decides to pick up the phone and call the police, but there’s a few problems with this. The biggest one being that Sandra is an adult who seemed to have left on her own accord. The police were not really interested in investigating this since it didn’t seem like Sandra was kidnapped.
Mark pleads with the police, you don’t understand. She’s being manipulated and financially abused. Eventually he gets the police to take him seriously and they’re able to locate Sandra in France. When they find her, they inform her that David’s name is really Robert Hendy Freegard, and he is a convicted conman.
A few days later, Mark gets a phone call letting him know that they found Sandra. He’s thrilled, he can’t wait for her to come home and be with her children.
She said she knows who he is and doesn’t want to leave. The police tell him. And with that, they close her case.
Back in 1993 now, Robert is still driving non stop around the countryside with the three college students. Sarah’s father, Peter, waits anxiously by his door. He’s been worried- He hasn’t heard from Sarah in a while and her university has called him to notify that Sarah hasn’t been in classes. Her car has been sitting untouched in the parking lot.
But earlier that day, Sarah had called him. She told him she needed to see him and that She’d been traveling around with some friends and they wanted to stop at his house to talk to him. Of course, Peter says.
All of it was so unlike her, and her father couldn’t help but think something was up. that fear was confirmed when she arrived around midnight.
Rob got out of the car first and introduced himself. He did most of the talking that evening, and Peter couldn’t help but notice that Sarah hardly spoke. John cut in and got right to the point. He tells Peter that he’s dying of cancer and that he’s taking a trip with some friends in his last weeks.
Now, Peter was a farmer. He had worked with animals his whole life. He knew what it looked like when an animal got sick and didn’t have much time left. John looked, comparatively, perfectly fine. How bad is it? Peter asked.
John couldn’t answer, he just sat there, looking for something to say. So instead, the group got up quickly and took off. Peter said if he had more time to think he wouldn’t have let Sarah leave, but he was confused by what was happening. He watched as the car took off into the night with a sinking feeling in his chest.
Remember this was the early 90’s, Sarah didn’t have a cell phone. There was no way for Peter to get in touch with her unless she gave him an address or phone number for where she’d be, but she didn’t
One thing Peter did have, though, was her credit card statements, because he still paid her cards. And when the first one comes in the next month, he notices a strange pattern.
Sarah is making all sorts of expensive purchases all over the entire country. She’d buy a mens suit in one location, and then charge a hotel room hundreds of kilometers away just a few hours later. It seemed like she was constantly moving, never staying in one location for longer than one or two nights. It also appeared she was paying the way of the whole group.The debt was racking up, which was not typical behavior for his daughter.
And then, weeks later, Sarah calls Peter and tells him she’s not going back to school ever. She doesn’t plan on graduating. Actually, she got a really good job at a top firm and will be starting that soon, so he doesn’t need to worry.
But Peter IS worried. Sarah sounds nervous and rehearsed as she’s telling him this.
What was really happening, was Robert stood over Sarah as she made that phone call. He had scripted something for her to tell her father so he’d know she wasn’t returning to school. No Robert had other plans for her.
For the last few weeks, Robert had been telling Sarah and the group that they were being closely followed by the IRA and their lives were at risk. He couldn’t use any of his own money or credit cards, of course, so he needed Sarah to put everything on her card. All of the meals, hotels, new clothing Robert needed for disguises.
Finally, after months of that, he told them he was taking them to a safehouse that was bugged by MI5, so they should be safe there. However, they’d have to completely change their identities. So sarah cut her hair into a messy pixie cut, dyed it white blonde, and started going by Betty.
Robert was also hyper controlling of the group's routines. John described it as he would wake up early, go to work, wait for Robert to pick him and the two girls up from their waitressing jobs they got, and then Robert would drive them around for hours to get the IRA off their tracks until midnight, when he would let them come home and sleep. Then that would repeat for days and days on end. The group was so sleep deprived they had trouble thinking. It was making them delirious.
Sleep deprivation is a tactic that’s used by many high control groups to maintain their control over people. It’s clear at this point that Robert was exuding an extreme amount of influence over this group. At this point, none of them had made contact with any other agents at MI5, or had any run ins with IRA terrorists, and yet they still believed every day that their lives were in danger.
Jim Jones, leader of the Jonestown cult that committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978, once told one of his followers ‘Let’s keep them poor and tired, because if they’re poor they can’t escape and if they’re tired they can’t make plans.” Many of his followers gave him all of their money before moving with him deep into a remote jungle. There, They were forced to work grueling hours and weren’t allowed to get more than a few hours of sleep each night. Though the conditions were terrible and life in the cult was largely without benefits, hardly anyone left.
But while Robert is doing this to the group, an officer at Scotland yard, Bob Brandon, starts looking into Robert. He had gotten a tip from a woman that Robert had defrauded her out of 30 thousand pounds by convincing her he was an MI5 agent. It takes detective Brandon less than a week to get a letter from MI5 confirming that Robert is in fact, not a secret agent.
He’s heard about the missing students as well and that they were last seen with Robert. So he starts looking around Hendy-Freegards past. Calling contacts and old places of employment. And the stories he hears are shocking.
He hears about Lesley Gardner, a woman he defrauded for 16 thousand pounds over the course of six years.
And Caroline cowper, a woman he had woo’d with expensive trips and lavish gifts. He had convinced her to give him money to lease a car for her, but the car never showed up. He told her that the polish mafia had stolen it. Robert also had stolen 14 thousand pounds directly from her bank account.
D Brandon also hears about the time that he had a woman named Elizabeth Richardson so brainwashed, that she slept in a public park and survived off nothing but slices of candy bars and water from public toilets. While this was happening, Robert was buying himself extravagant gifts with the money she was giving him from loans she had taken out.
This is bigger than he thought, and he launches an official investigation into Robert. But Robert moved locations every few days and hardly ever used the same sim card. Though he wasn’t MI5, he was acting like a spy which was probably even more convincing to the women. It was going to be a challenge just finding him…
music
What started as a few weeks on the road slowly morphed into months, which turned into years. Years of moving locations, changing names and styles. 5 years into the college students being on the run, Robert made the group separate and kept them on their own. Sarah sat in a house by herself all day while Robert told her what she could wear, where she could go, and collecting all of the money she made from her job. At one point he convinced her she needed to get her two hundred thousand pound inheritance from her parents for her protection. This would be necessary to keep her and her friends alive. She didn’t even know where they were, what if something had happened?! After months of calling in tears and begging her parents, they finally agreed to give her the money, but then cut off contact with her afterwards.
What Sarah didn’t know, was that Maria was being kept in another “safe house” under Robert’s control, where she gave birth to two of Robert’s children, fully believing that they were in a relationship. Roberts tempers were also becoming more erratic and violent. He broke one of Maria’s teeth and brought her to the dentist, but forced her to tell the dentist that she had fallen down the stairs. If the students weren’t going to leave before when they were together, it was going to be wayyy harder to leave now that they were separated, cut off from the outside world, and living in fear of Robert’s wrath
As for John, well he was tasked with continuing to ask his family for money to ensure his protection. Robert would use this money to keep them in a protective program to ensure that the IRA would never find them. If they did, they’d be killed.
John’s family only ever heard from him when he was in dire need of money, and they were scared for him. They could hear in his voice how afraid for his life he was, so They sent over large amounts at a time, 15 thousand pounds, 20 thousand pounds, 40. How much do you think John’s family paid Robert? How much would your parents pay if they thought your life was at risk? All in, John believes his family gave Robert around four. Hundred. Thousand. Pounds.
But this all changed when, after a few years, Robert let John visit his family farm for a time. John fully believed that while he was there, the IRA would come kill him. He spent every moment on the farm looking over his shoulder and waiting for Robert to call with further instructions.
But days went by and no one ever showed up. And Robert never contacted him. That’s when it finally sunk in for John that none of this was real. This was devastating for John. He had his family send all of their money to this guy for his protection, he even roped in his girlfriend and her friend, had them running around the country for years. It was years of his life they’d never get back. They never graduated, never hit any big life milestones. While their friends were out going to pubs, hanging out, and moving on with their lives, the three of them were locked away in a fake safe house convincing their families to send money to Robert.
John figured that Robert was done with him. Perhaps he had found a new group of young impressionable college students he could dupe. Whatever the reason, John needed to help Sarah and Maria, he needed to try and make right some of the damage he had done. the only problem was he had no idea where they were. So he did the only thing he could think to do, and he wrote Sarah’s dad a long letter explaining everything. The fake cancer. The fake MI5 training, The fraud, the mind control, and how now, they needed to save sarah.
BREAK 2
When Sarah’s father received word from John that confirmed Robert, the man she had been missing with for, at this point, 9 years, was a fraud, he called detective Bob Brandon. Peter hadn’t spoken to his daughter since she demanded her 200,000 pound inheritance so she could give it to Robert. But now he had confirmation that she was being manipulated and intimidated into doing whatever Robert wanted.
There’s not much information out there on what exactly happened, but we know that at some point in the 8th or 9th year of being held captive, Maria left with the two kids she had with Robert. So now, Sarah is the only member of the group left in Robert’s captivity. She’s being held alone, though, so she doesn’t know that John and Maria have gone back to their lives.
She also doesn’t know that Bob Brandon has gotten to work finding where she is. He’s able to find Robert’s mothers house, and in the driveway is a car that’s registered to another home in London. The owner of that home is a man named Simon, and he tells Brandon that he doesn’t know where Robert is, but he thinks that his ex girlfriend, Kim Adams is with him.
And that brings us to where we were at the end of the last episode. Kim, an American woman who told her job she was dying of cancer, is off somewhere in Europe with Robert. So while Sarah was being held captive, he was recruiting more victims. Was Kim being held captive somewhere like Sarah? How many other women were locked away if that was the case?
What made Kim’s case a little different from Sarah’s, though, is that Kim’s parents were still in contact with Kim and Robert. Every now and then they would hear from the two, usually when Kim needed money, remember, they were telling Kim’s parents that she was failing her MI5 tests and asking for more money. maybe that’s why Robert hadn’t cut them off completely. Bob Brandon, along with the FBI, knew they could use this to their advantage.
As they start tracking the calls that come in, however, they realize that Robert and Kim are constantly moving around. They’ll be in one country for a night, and end up in another the next evening. Police were never going to be able to travel to him. They were going to have to bring him to them.
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On may 23rd, 2003, Kim’s mother gets off a long haul flight from Phoenix to London Heathrow. She couldn’t sleep at all on the plane, or for the nights leading up to this trip, really. The anxiety of what she was about to do was crippling.
When she gets off the plane and enters the airport, she looks up at one of the security cameras inside the terminal. She can’t see them, but right now dozens of agents, both FBI and Scotland yard are watching her every move.
Bob Brandon is outside the airport in a surveillance truck. Another truck of FBI agents idles in a parking lot, hooked up to radio, listening intently. As Kim's mother starts walking to baggage claim, she can sense about a dozen plain clothes men trailing behind her, dragging roller bags filled with nothing. They’re undercover metropolitan police.
Kim’s mom clutches her bag. It’s not full of 10 thousand dollars, but she needs to appear as if it is. Earlier, she had arranged a meeting with Robert, at the encouragement of the FBI. She told him that she’d bring ten thousand dollars cash to Heathrow, in hopes that she’d be able to see her daughter. Robert took the bait and agreed to meet her.
Things were not going as planned that day. Kim’s mom didn’t know it, but as she was walking over to the Starbucks they agreed to meet at, Robert and Kim still hadn’t arrived. The FBI was getting anxious, what if he had caught onto their plan and fled again? They waited and waited, until finally, someone saw a tall man with dark hair and bushy eyebrows moving towards the starbucks. He seemed anxious and shifty and more importantly, he was alone. Where was Kim? She was supposed to be with him. What if she was in a fake safehouse somewhere like Sarah, what would they do then? How would they ever find her?
Brandon told everyone to stand down. Even though their target was in sight, they couldn’t do anything until they knew where Kim was. Her mother greets robert, gives him a hug and then snuck off to the bathroom and called Brandon. Robert told her Kim was sitting in a car on the top level of the parking garage. She was going to leave the airport with him to go see her.
Undercover officers drove to the parking garage, and sure enough, a woman matching Kim’s description was waiting inside of a parked car. Robert walked her mother over to the vehicle, her daughter looked worried and thin. She had bags under her eyes like she hadn’t been sleeping. She looked, in that moment, just how her mother looked after over a year of constant worrying about Kim. And that’s when she heard the sound of two dozen officers stampeding behind her, drawing their weapons, and screaming for Robert to put his hands behind his head.
A few officers helped Kim out of the car and started explaining everything to her. Robert wasn’t an MI5 agent. He was a con man. She wasn’t actually in any danger, she was safe now. Kim didn’t say anything. She just looked confused and overwhelmed, it was like the look some people get right after a concussion, like their brain is trying to figure out what just happened. She stayed silent as she was carted off with her mother.
Robert was brought to the police station, and the police ask him where Sarah is located. But robert wont tell them, he insists he has no idea what they’re talking about. But on him are two important pieces of evidence. There’s a scrap of paper with the name Ronnie and a phone number written on it, and a key for the Buffalo Hotel in the French Alps. When Scotland Yard and the FBI arrive at the room associated with that key, they find the locked suitcase full of other women’s passports.
One of the passports they find is for a woman named Renata Kister. Renate. Renate…. Could that be who Ronnie is from the scrap of paper, they cross their fingers and call the number, and a woman with a thick eastern european accent answers. It’s Renate.
She agrees to come down to the station and meet with police, though years ago she had been told that if anyone ever asked her about Robert Hendy-Freegard she was supposed to pretend she didn’t know who he was.
She tells Brandon that she met Robert in 2000 when he was a car salesmen and he had convinced her to buy a new car that she couldn’t afford. He then went on to tell her that he was really an MI5 agent, and over the course of the next 3 years, he stole more than twenty thousand pounds from her. And then, one day, he just disappeared.
A little over a year later, though, he gave her a call. He told her that he knew a woman that was down on her luck and needed a place to live. Her name was Carrie, and if Renate took her in she’d act as her housekeeper. Renate agreed, and Carrie came to live with her.
Carrie was strange and quiet, Renate told the police. She never wanted her picture to be taken, but she did have one photo where Carrie could be seen in the background. In that photo, Carrie can be seen with her hands in her pockets and her head down. She has a shaggy mid length hair cut that’s been box dyed red. It all looks like it was done in a bathroom sink impulsively. And though her hair is different, when the police see this photo, there is no question in their mind that this is Sarah.
Renate takes them to her home, and sure enough, Sarah is inside. She said it was jarring when she opened the door and Brandon said “hello, sarah”. She hadn’t been called that in almost a decade. They asked her to get her belongings. She was going home. she had nothing with her besides the clothes on her back. Though she hadn’t spoken to her parents in years, and they hadn’t seen her since 1993, 10 years ago, they welcomed her back with open arms
music
On September 5th, 2005, Robert was sentenced to life in prison. It felt like a huge win for the victims. Maria, Sarah, Renate, and Kim actually all went and got drinks together to celebrate.
It was an important part of their path towards healing, but at least now they knew that Robert wasn’t going to do what he had done to them to any other women.
But if that were the case, then we wouldn’t still be wondering where Sandra was, would we?
Robert’s case was appealed and it was ultimately ruled that each of the women had left on their own accord. There was no kidnapping that had taken place. His life sentence was revoked and in May of 2009, Robert was released. It would be just over 2 years later that he’d meet Sandra.
But it would be Sandra’s family’s persistence that would eventually lead to some of the justice that victims were looking for. See, Mark, Sophie and Jake’s fight was not finished. More after the break
BREAK 3
After the police told Mark that Sandra chose to stay with Robert, he didn’t give up. He spent the next 8 years fighting for answers,
Eventually, he found out that her phone had been pinging somewhere in France. He didn’t know exactly where and without the help of the police, it was going to be nearly impossible to find.
So he got to doing his own research, scrubbing through the internet to find any trace of Robert and Sandra in France, and one day he gets a hit.
He sees a picture of a man with dark bushy eyebrown holding a purebred Beagle that he had bred for dog shows. He learns that Robert was is in the business of buying and selling pedigree dogs for shows. One woman who knows Robert gets in touch with Mark. She has some information that Mark might want.
The woman had been selling beagles online when a man named Robert Clifton reached out to tell her that the dogs weren’t very good quality. He told her he could help her improve the quality of her puppies by bringing her thoroughbred Beagles from france.
The woman agreed to get into business with Robert, but soon after, Robert told her the dogs he was bringing her were sick and needed lots of trips to the vet. He kept requesting money for Vet visits, 100 pounds here, 300 pounds there.There were DNA tests the dogs needed, five hundred pounds gone. The woman paid the fees, but she told Mark that she had never a formal invoice from the Vet. It wasn’t until her friend raised an alarm that she had any idea she was being scammed.
But when she told Robert she was going to call the police, he told her that Sandra worked high up in the police and wouldn’t take her call seriously. Sandra has never worked for the police in her life.
The woman had never interacted directly with Sandra, but was instructed to send the money to her account. So Mark knew that Robert was in France, but he had no proof that Sandra was safe or even alive. What if she was being held hostage like Sarah?
Well, in 2020, Jake saw his mother on a zoom. He had tried to keep her old home in the family, he didn’t want to give control of the house back over to his mom and Robert because he knew that Robert would sell it and pocket the money.
Sandra chose to take him to court in the middle of the pandemic, and when Jake logged on, there his mother was. She hadn't spoken to him in about 7 years, and there she was, on zoom, accusing him of trying to steal her money. Ultimately, the judge decided in her favor, and within a few weeks, the house was sold.
The family was running out of options. They knew where Robert was they just had no way to get him. The police still felt that Sandra was there of her own accord and wouldn’t take any action. And eventually, the pandemic restriction started subsiding, making travel easier again. Mark knew how much Robert moved around and he doubted he would actually be able to find him now if he were to go to France. The whole thing was looking impossible, sandra might really be gone forever.
Music
But then, in 2022, there was a break in the case
On August 25th, 2022, French police officers and animal rights inspectors were heading to Robert’s property to investigate a tip they had gotten about an illegal dog breeding facility.
When they got there, they came upon a run down house in the middle of the forest, isolated from the community. They found Robert, Sandra, and 30 Beagles that they had been illegally breeding. The group had a chat and it was decided that Robert and Sandra would need to drive with them down to the nearest police station for more questioning. Robert said he would take his own car and follow them, but when he and Sandra got in the vehicle, they sped off, hitting two officers during the escape.
One of the officers became attached to the bumper and was dragged 100 meters by the car, breaking his nose in the process.
The officers weren’t able to catch up to Robert and Sandra, so what followed was a full fledged investigation into the attempted murder of a public servant.
Neighbors were reportedly shocked by the whole thing. They didn’t really know what was going on at Robert’s property, but they did know that he had a LOT of dogs, and a girlfriend that no one ever saw. Sandra stayed in the house all day every day while Robert would make frequent trips to England.
On September 2nd, Belgian Police near Brussels recognized a car that matched the description of the vehicle that hit officers in france driving on the E40 motorway. When they pulled it over, Robert was immediately arrested.
He is currently awaiting sentencing but could face over 30 years in prison for the attempted murder charges. Nothing he is convicted of relates to his conning or the damage he did to Sandra. The women he abused may never see justice for his crimes. And last year, the French police put out an article saying they believe that more victims may be out there. There may be women falsely imprisoned in other fake safehouses, who do not know that Robert has been arrested. If that’s the case, they may stay in their safehouses until they starve, too afraid to leave.
As for Sandra, the last update we have on her is that she did return home to the UK after Robert’s arrest
Conclusion:
So be careful, everyone. We live in an age where scamming is easier than ever, and it’s common to think that this could never happen to you or your loved ones. But it does. Each of these women were just like many of us. Some were college educated, some had good jobs, some had strong and healthy family connections, and all of them fell into the trap of a con artist.
if you want more information on the case, you should check out The Puppet Master on Netflix. It’s a deep dive into the crimes of Robert Hendy Freegard, and some of the victims are able to tell their stories. It’s still an ongoing case and it was hardly talked about until the documentary came out a few years ago.
Anyways, happy Valentines day!