[microphone feedback]
[interviewer] If your mum was here now,
what message would you want to give to her?
-Like, "Mum, if you're listening…" Or…? -[interviewer] Yes.
[gentle music playing]
[interviewer] Imagine the camera is your mum.
[clears throat]
Mum, if you are watching this,
you should know that, no matter what happens,
we will always be there for you.
[interviewer] What do you want your mum to do?
I don't know. It's…
It's very hard after…
Seven years? Seven years?
I don't even know.
Do you think Mum would recognize us?
Would we recognize her?
Mum, if you're listening to this right now,
it doesn't matter what we've been through.
We still love you, and we want you back in our lives.
[unsettling music playing]
[woman 1] The difficult thing is, this is still going on,
and it's happened before.
And there may be people out there that he could have done anything to.
[unsettling music continues]
[reporter] The secret MI5 agent
is described as a continuing danger.
[siren wailing]
[man 1] He controlled everything in my life.
[woman 1] He wants her all to himself.
[woman 2 speaking]
[man 2] Who is this guy? What does he want?
[man 3] He's after the money.
-[man 4] He wanted sex. -[man 5] He's a psychopath.
[man 6] He lives off of the radar.
-He lives in the shadows. -[man 7] It was like chasing a ghost.
[woman 3] He's in the background pulling her strings.
[reporter] …nicknamed "The Puppet Master."
[gentle music playing]
[woman] This is probably my favorite one of Mum.
And so many people who have seen it have gone,
"Wow, you were so blonde when you were younger,"
and I'm like, "That's my mum."
[laughs]
Growing up, my friends would always say, "I wish my mum was like yours."
"I wish my mum would sit and sing in the car with us."
Like, even just on a shopping trip,
she'd be singing all the songs me and my friends were singing.
Everyone thought she was cool.
[man 1] Mum was very kind, very caring.
You know, everything she did was for us.
Being with my mum, you know, I was a mummy's boy.
[Sophie] I love that. Dad looks so young.
Sandra was my first real love.
I met Sandra when I was 14.
We got married at 20, and then Sophie arrived.
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
[man 2] Sadly, as the years went on, we drifted apart and got divorced,
but remained very, very good friends,
and between us, we brought the children up.
[Sophie] Mum was so young when she met Dad, and it didn't work out.
But that didn't mean it couldn't work with anyone else.
My mum decided to start online dating.
I remember Mum showing me her profile and her pictures.
And you're just sort of thinking, "This is… This is an advertisement."
"We have a new job if you'd like to take it."
"Someone to love my mum and also maybe us."
[laughs]
Mum had a few boyfriends here and there, you know.
None of them were the right ones for her.
[phone ringing]
[Sophie] But one night, there was a phone call.
[ringing continues]
Then it became a thing.
"Oh, it's this guy I'm chatting to. His name's David."
[Jake] He worked in the media,
and he sold advertising space to large companies.
David loved cars.
He loved expensive things.
Mum had never had a new car.
My first impression of this brand-new blue Audi was "swanky."
It was so exciting for her to be able to say she had this.
And she was getting it in a custom color.
It felt like she finally was getting something she deserved.
["Ordinary World" by Duran Duran plays]
[Jake] David had planned for us to all go to Spain.
So, I was very excited, because I had been on holiday before,
but I'd never sort of been to Spain.
♪ I turned on the lights, the TV… ♪
[Sophie] The beginning of the trip seemed normal.
We checked into all the hotels we were supposed to.
But after that, we were in the car all night and all day,
hardly stopping.
Only David drove.
Listening to Duran Duran the whole way.
♪ But I won't cry for yesterday ♪
♪ There's an ordinary world ♪
♪ Somehow I have to find… ♪
[Sophie] When we were going through having our passports checked,
David was behaving so strange.
He didn't want us to see his passport.
I asked him for his second name,
and he said, "Oh yeah, don't worry about that."
And I was sort of like, "What? Why are you hiding your last name?"
You know, "What's the deal there?"
I had no idea what was going on. I just knew it was strange.
-[unsettling music playing] -[clock ticking]
[Sophie] It got to the stage where David was always staying over,
and then he just never left.
[clock ticking]
[Sophie] The more we saw him, the more he became part of our lives.
He often hinted at the amount of money he had.
And he was always telling my mum about the things that he could buy her.
He said that, you know, he's a busy man, that he had this job,
but he was always at my house.
I never saw him go off to work.
It seemed more like he was unemployed.
To me, it just didn't seem quite right.
[foreboding music plays]
[Mark] If I knew then what I know now, who David really was…
[foreboding music continues]
…then there's no way he would have continued
to be around my family and my children.
[unsettling music playing]
[men speaking indistinctly]
-[coughs] -[man speaks indistinctly]
[interviewer] So, um, what's your name?
Uh, my name is John Atkinson.
[interviewer] So we're just gonna talk about the time period
-before all of this happened. -Okay.
[interviewer] When you're at university, the first time you met this guy,
and your whole life changed.
[tense music playing]
[John] I was a student at the top agricultural college in England.
But it was a horrible time.
In the early '90s, the whole nation was kind of wary,
uh, of the fact
that the Irish Republican Army had declared war.
[reporter 1] The bomb, 100 pounds of explosives,
had been packed into a van parked in a narrow side street.
[reporter 2] The Irish Republican Army is taking credit for today's mortar attack
that landed in the British prime minister's backyard.
[reporter 3] Caught in a storm of flying glass and debris,
the shocked and bewildered victims were taken to St. John's...
[reporter 4] Today, the IRA warned that this weekend's attacks
would be followed by more bombings
as long as the British government continued to occupy part of Ireland.
Among us were terrorists who were planting bombs
to disrupt our way of life.
There was a large Irish population at the college,
and the college was under some sort of surveillance or suspicion
because a student was gunrunning for the IRA.
[reporter] The 20-year-old student from the Harper Adams Agricultural College
had been stopped by the police.
They found two Kalashnikov rifles, 100 rounds of ammunition,
and traces of five different types of explosives in his car.
[John] It seemed a bit surreal
that this terrorist had been found in our midst.
After that, completely out of the blue, one of my Irish friends committed suicide.
[unsettling music plays]
[birds chirping]
[gunshot]
Why on earth would such a great guy, uh, do that?
[indistinct chattering]
-[John] I went to the pub. -…of the IRA.
[bell rings]
[John] I was talking to the new barman, Rob.
[tense music plays]
[John] I'd got to know him in the last few weeks.
[TV continues indistinctly]
I told Rob about my friend's death,
and he said,
"You really think your friend committed suicide?"
"Your friend didn't commit suicide. The IRA shot him."
[gunshot]
"He saw something he shouldn't have."
[bird squawking]
"Well, what did my friend see?"
He said, "You know how to make a bomb, don't you?"
I was like, "Um, not really, no."
"The main ingredients are fertilizer and diesel."
"Where do you get fertilizer and diesel?"
"They're both used on farms."
"The student here that was running guns, do you think he was acting alone?"
"These people work in cells, and there's still a cell to find."
Of course, I asked, "Well, how do you know this?"
"I'm not who you think I am. This is all just a cover."
"I'm an MI5 agent."
[unsettling music plays]
Rob said what they need is somebody in the college
to help expose this… this IRA cell.
"We've seen your record, and it's clean. We're gonna use you."
There was a bit of me that was excited.
The idea of taking some terrorists off the street?
Sure. I'm… I'm all in favor of that.
He said, "How many fights have you been in?"
And I said, "I'm not a fighter. I avoid conflict."
It became apparent that, uh, I needed some training.
Rob showed me how to jab.
As well as training me to throw a punch,
Rob trained me to take a punch.
[dramatic music playing]
"You need to be able to take it from whichever angle it comes from."
[unsettling music plays]
-[blow lands] -[groans]
I can't remember how many times he punched me.
[grunts]
And I had a small sense of relief that I'd taken it,
that I was passing the test.
I was tasked with writing down the number plates of all the cars
in one particular part of campus, closest to the nitrogen-fertilizer store.
And then Rob had me write down a list of names of people I was suspicious of,
who had access to fertilizer.
My housemate, Jim, was on that list.
Rob and his bosses suspected Jim.
"Jim's one of them."
[unsettling music plays]
The idea that Jim was involved with the IRA
was shocking and hard to believe, definitely,
but not beyond belief.
[unsettling music continues]
Me and Jim lived in the same house as Maria and Sarah.
Sarah was my girlfriend.
Rob said his bosses were telling him
it was not safe for us to be there anymore.
"We're in grave danger, and we need to go now."
"Not just me and you, but the girls as well."
So, I said, "Are you gonna tell the girls as much as I know?"
"No, it's too dangerous. They could put the operation in jeopardy."
"How on earth are you gonna get the girls to go then?"
"You're going to have to lie to them to save their lives."
[foreboding music plays]
Maria and I were summoned to the pub because he needed to tell us something.
And he sat us down,
and said that he'd got cancer and that it was terminal.
The thought of him dying, yes, it was very, very sad.
Not only was he my boyfriend at that point, but he was also a friend.
[John] They were devastated.
Sarah, particularly.
And I had that sickening feeling
of having just told the most disgusting lie.
It's definitely the worst thing I've done in my entire life.
[unsettling music plays]
I told them that I had a bucket list.
To go around the country and see things that I wouldn't have a chance to see.
[clock ticking rapidly]
[Sarah] Your boyfriend says that he is dying of cancer.
You say, "Is there no treatment?"
"Absolutely no treatment." "Are you sure there's nothing?"
You know, you go into all the what-ifs and everything else.
But at the end of the day, if he says, "I only have a few weeks to live…"
would you say no?
♪ Somehow I have to find… ♪
["Ordinary World" by Duran Duran playing]
[Sarah] I absolutely despise Duran Duran.
Rob played "Ordinary World" nonstop.
[song ends]
It would finish.
[song begins]
He'd play it again. It would finish.
[song stops]
He'd play it again, all the way.
[song continues]
If I hear a couple of bars of that,
I'm back where I was at that point in time.
["Ordinary World" by Duran Duran continues]
♪ Came in from a rainy Thursday… ♪
[Sarah] Myself, John, Rob, and Maria were traveling from town to town
all across the UK.
Whenever we tried to take a photograph with Rob in it,
he'd always take the photos to make sure that he wasn't visible in the photograph.
-[camera clicks] -[waves crashing]
There was a degree of fun to traveling around the country with your friends.
But there's always something in back of your mind going,
"Well, but he's dying."
[John] The lies were awful.
At the end of the day, they were justified because people's lives were at risk.
[reporter] A gunman is being hunted after a policeman was shot and seriously injured
last night in Cheshire.
Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch…
[Sarah] We were ten days into our trip
when Rob told us that we weren't able to go back to college.
It was something a whole lot more serious.
[tense music plays]
He allowed me to tell them that I wasn't dying of cancer.
I was told it was all a lie.
Rob said that, "You have to stay here
because you're involved in something
that's gonna put you and your family in danger."
[tense music continues]
Sarah was not happy at the situation.
"Can you prove you work for MI5? Can you prove that we can't go home?"
"Why can't we go home?" I asked them numerous times.
But he knew how much I had in my bank account at the time,
where there were various bits of family land.
Rob said he had that information because he worked for the government.
We just needed to follow instructions.
When I got back into the car…
looking back, it was a momentous decision
because it was completely pivotal to what happened.
That decision changed the next ten years of my life.
[tense music playing]
[Mark] My relationship with Sandra was changing
once David was involved in her life.
Sandra became distant with me.
If I called, she wouldn't always answer. She wouldn't return text messages.
It just seemed very odd and very strange to me.
[keyboard clacking]
Mum wasn't going out anymore and seeing her friends.
[Jake] She only spoke to David.
[Sophie] We weren't having family time.
We were all living very separate lives.
[Jake] She would get more and more angry with us.
She was distancing herself from us.
And we're her kids.
Like, I just felt that I didn't know who she was becoming.
[muffled arguing]
[Jake] David had brought my mum a bracelet.
Then one day, my mum comes running at me, screaming.
David sort of stood behind her. She was like, "You've stolen my bracelet."
And I was just like, "I'm your son, Mum. I would never steal from you."
We're a close family. We trusted each other.
And now, suddenly, her own son, she can't trust in her house.
[Sophie] That was just the start.
David told my dad, "Your son's gay. Your son's gay. He's not told you."
My dad pulled me aside and asked me. "If you wanna be gay, that's fine."
And I said, "Dad, that's not who I am. I… You know, I'm not."
[Sophie] You don't tell someone that they're something,
and that's what David was doing.
It upset Mum. It upset Dad. It upset Jake.
My mum bought me a smart pair of shoes to wear to school…
and I went through the heels a bit too quickly.
So David said, "Don't worry. I'll sort it."
Came back, and it had a massive metal lump on the back.
And I said to them, "What's this all about?"
They were like, "Until you learn to walk properly, you need to have this."
-[school bell rings] -[students chattering]
[metal clicking]
-[Jake] So I wore them to school. -[students laughing]
[metal clicking]
[Jake] People's eyes were diverting towards me.
And being at that age, you do feel self-conscious.
-[metal clicking] -[students laughing]
He knew that putting that on the bottom of my shoe would make my life a misery.
So, I felt like I was being controlled.
[door closes]
I came back from school.
Realized they had locked me outside.
-[door closes] -The first couple of times this happened,
I would stay out and come back later.
[door closes]
-It happened… -[door closes]
…one too many times.
[lock clicks]
[knocking]
[tense music playing]
-[doorbell ringing] -[banging on door]
He's banging on the door. He's been locked out of the house.
It's not a mistake. It's quite deliberate.
I started shouting, "Is anyone in?"
-[doorbell ringing] -[banging]
David told my mum, "Don't answer it."
[Jake] I went to the back door.
I just let out a fit of rage.
I hear a loud bang.
I looked up, and I saw my sister there, panicking.
She had never seen me like this before, beating down a door.
I told her, "Let me in. I'm getting my stuff and going."
And she's crying. She was saying, "You can't go."
And I was just saying, "Sophie, I need to go."
It wasn't until my head started clearing
that I realized all of it started when David came in.
"Why is this happening? Why would someone want to do this?"
"Who is this guy? What does he want?"
[unsettling music playing]
[tense music playing]
Rob was saying the IRA were following us and that we had to keep moving.
[reporter] Today, Warrington city center was the target of IRA terrorism…
[John] Two days after we left Warrington,
there was two bombs in the middle of the city.
We needed to be off-grid and to not be traceable.
For me, the worst thing was not being able to be in contact
with my family and friends.
That really troubled me.
I knew they would worry
because, obviously, nobody's got mobile phones at this point in time.
[man] We hadn't heard from Sarah for a while, which was out of character.
So, I phoned up Sarah's college.
They said, "She's not there, and we don't know why."
When she was at college, she worked on a farm.
And the farmer was concerned as to what had happened to Sarah
because her car had been left, dumped with them.
And then, of course, you immediately start getting worried
as to what's going on.
I was inclined to call the police when the phone rang.
[phone rings]
It was Sarah.
It was a relief to hear from her, but she'd sounded a little off.
"Dad, we'd like to call in and just see you. There's four of us."
[Sarah] My father was asking questions about my disappearance.
MI5 was concerned about my father talking to the wrong person
and potentially giving information to the IRA unknowingly.
And so, Rob said we needed to visit my parents to allay their fears.
[Peter] They arrived at midnight.
This was out of character.
That was the first time we met Rob.
Rob was confident? Yes. You might say he was cocky.
Rob had been very, very specific that we had to stick to this cover story.
Sarah was not very forthcoming.
Again, that was not like her at all.
[John] I told them that I had liver cancer,
and that I had this idea of going on a holiday
with my… my last few weeks.
[Peter] Well, I'm a farmer.
If you've got a herd of cattle, you pick out the one that's ill
by the way they're walking or by the way they behave.
It shows.
Well, it didn't show with him.
Mr. Smith came out with a question for me.
"How ill are you?"
I just kind of froze and started shaking.
The whole body shook.
I mean, it was as if he was really scared.
I was perhaps a little on edge
and didn't altogether believe what I was being told.
They knew something wasn't right.
And so, Rob lied to my parents.
He said, "Don't worry about it."
We were going back to college in two weeks' time.
[Peter] After that, they left fairly quickly.
[sniffles]
Yeah, you hug… hug your family goodbye,
and I didn't know when I was gonna see them again.
Knowing that things weren't right, I should have blocked them.
Not let them go.
I've regretted ever since that I didn't hold them back.
[tense music grows to crescendo]
[birds twittering]
[cow lows]
[Peter] We waited for several weeks.
Sarah didn't return to college.
And at that point, you know you have to do something.
[tense music playing]
I paid her credit card.
You could see that if she bought something in Cheltenham, she'd been in Cheltenham.
That gave me an idea.
I was able to trace where they'd been.
[dramatic music playing]
Where they went and the date was all plotted on the wall map.
[dramatic music continues]
[Peter] We knew they'd been all over the country,
and likely to go to the south,
the same day, go right up to the north and then back again.
[dramatic music continues]
And there's no great sense in it.
I would go through the statements and see the biggest lumps that were paid
or the ones that looked interesting.
She bought a suit for the man that was with them.
They stayed at a hotel and left in a hurry.
[dramatic music continues]
I felt Sarah was spending too much money.
She always looked after money,
and she would never go and spend it wildly at all.
We were feeling unsettled about what was going on.
[dramatic music continues]
[phone rings]
[Peter] But then Sarah called.
She said…
"I've got to postpone my graduation for a year,
because I'm no longer interested in farming."
"Commercial Union, an insurance firm,
have offered me a place on their graduate traineeship,
paying £25,000 a year."
[Peter] When she said she wasn't going back to college,
we then knew that things had gone out of hand.
[tense music playing]
I phoned Commercial Union, and there were no jobs like that on offer.
The figure was far more than they would pay
for an untrained person.
This was a total put-up.
None of this was normal.
Sarah didn't tell lies.
[unsettling music playing]
[Sophie] I was living at the house with Mum and David.
I felt like my mum was a completely different person.
[tense string music playing]
Jake had already left and was living with Dad,
and I wasn't speaking to either of them.
[tense string music continues]
I felt abandoned.
And the only guidance that I was receiving was from David.
I remember David saying my dad had let my mum down,
things my dad had done to my mum in the past,
things about their marriage, things about their divorce.
The progression was very subtle and gradual.
David told me, "You never wanna see your dad again, do you?"
"You don't wanna speak to your dad again, do you?"
"You don't wanna speak to your dad again. You don't wanna see your dad, do you?"
"You don't. You don't. You… don't."
"You don't ever wanna see your dad again, do you?"
Every day. Multiple times a day.
And then, eventually, I started disassociating from the name.
Mark Clifton was the name of a stranger, not of my dad.
He was a scary figure who would hurt me and my family.
[unsettling music playing]
[family singing] ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
[Mark] I wrote to Sophie many times. Texted her many times.
♪ Happy birthday, dear Sophie ♪
[Mark] Told her how much I loved her, how much I missed her.
Tried to, um, get things back to the way they were.
[birds chirping]
[Sophie] Every time I got a letter, I put it in the same envelope,
and on this envelope had the title, "Lies and Slander from Mr. Mark Clifton."
And it was pinned up on my old pinboard.
I didn't speak to my dad for two and a half years.
It became very evident that David was behind a lot of this,
but I couldn't work out why.
[keyboard clacking]
[Mark] I just thought, "What is going on here? Who is this guy?"
I tried doing some local research on him, looking on the internet.
I knew him under the name of David Hendy.
I looked in local directories and local searches.
Couldn't find anything on him.
He was like a ghost.
[tense music playing]
[melancholy music plays]
[Peter] I'd phoned the police.
They said Sarah was over 18.
She was a free woman to make her own decisions.
"Why are you wasting police time?"
I had to find her myself.
I knew Sarah was missing.
I knew she was probably with Robert.
But where?
It was a question of going through all the places they could have stayed at.
But you're following a trail, which may be cold.
You might have 100 different places,
and you check each one to see if they've stayed there.
[dramatic music playing]
"Hello. This is Peter Smith speaking."
[ringing tone]
-"Hello?" -[over phone] Hello? Good morning.
-"Please, can you help me?" -[over phone] Can you help me?
"I'm looking for my daughter."
[ringing tone]
[over phone] Her name is Sarah.
"Good morning. I'm Sarah's father."
[over phone] My name's Peter Smith.
"I'm looking for information. Can you help me?"
-[over phone] I've got a problem. -"I'm trying to trace what's happened."
"My daughter's gone missing."
[echoing] Missing. Missing. Missing. Missing.
When we arrived at the safe house, everybody was tense, Rob especially.
[tense music plays]
Rob had found out that Sarah's dad was trying to track us down.
One track leads to another, leads to another, leads to another.
A farmhouse, a room to let, whatever.
[tense music continues]
[Sarah] Rob sent me out looking for cars.
I needed to log what cars were parked in certain places
so his superiors could run checks on number plates.
[Peter] You've got to work through stage by stage.
And if you plod through each stage carefully,
eventually you get a break.
[tense music continues]
[Peter] Sarah was sighted coming out of a house in Peterborough.
So I said, "Well,
what's the address of the house?"
[dramatic music grows to crescendo]
[dog barking]
[car door opens, then closes]
[tense music playing]
[Peter] I don't call out. I don't make a lot of noise.
The last thing I want to do is to alert them that I'm looking for them
because they might run.
-[unsettling music plays] -[dog barking]
How do you get into a house that is locked?
You walk around the back and you look for a hole.
If you can't find a hole, you have to make one.
You don't stay totally within the law
when you are trying to find things out.
Otherwise, you don't get very far.
The Peterborough house was totally empty,
except for one room where there was John's and Sarah's belongings.
It looks as if their stuff had been just put there,
and then, "We've gotta move."
I picked up one note amongst the papers.
"Listen, I've got some really good news for you."
[Peter and Sarah] "Commercial Union, an insurance company…"
"…have offered me a place on their graduate traineeship,
paying £25,000 a year."
[Peter] That was a sledgehammer blow.
It was what she had told me over the phone, word for word.
Sarah had been scripted what to say.
At that point, I knew there's got to be someone that is pulling the strings.
I cannot prove it, but I'm pretty certain it's Robert.
[unsettling music playing]
We ended up in Sheffield at the new safe house on Dorothy Road.
[Sarah] Rob said the house was bugged
so that MI5 could actually monitor the security of the building.
[dog barking]
[unsettling music continues]
I had to change my appearance.
My hair had to be about an inch long,
and it had to be blonde, as in white-blonde.
[unsettling music continues]
[John] Rob gave us very strict instructions
not to give our real names.
So, I became Jamie.
[bird squawking]
[John] I was told, "Don't disclose anything about yourself or your past."
"Don't make any close attachments with people around."
As a cover, Rob arranged for me to have a job as a barman.
[Sarah] I worked in a fish-and-chip shop
-under the name Betty Smith. -[bell dinging]
-[alarm blaring] -[clock ticking rapidly]
[John] My life consisted of getting up, getting a bus ticket,
working my six or eight-hour shift,
waiting,
getting driven around till 12 o'clock at night,
surveillance, sleep, do it all again.
-[alarm blares] -Get up, get my bus ticket,
work the shift,
wait…
[Sarah] Weeks and weeks of stress.
[reporter 1] There were five shots, and the policeman was hit twice.
[reporter 2] Three people died in the blast.
[John] Get up, bus ticket…
Constant not knowing what's happening.
[John] …wait for hours, long drive…
Not knowing who's following you, worrying about what's going on.
-[John] Get up… -[alarm blares]
Here we have death again.
It builds so much that you're stressed all the time.
[John] Get up, bus ticket.
[reporter] Casualties were taken to local hospitals.
[John, echoing] Work my shift, wait for hours,
long drive, sleep.
[alarm ringing]
[Sophie] Every day would be the same.
-Wake up in the morning. -[John] Get up…
David would take me to work.
-I'd work. -[John] Wait.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
David would pick me up. I'd go back to sleep.
-[alarm rings] -I'd wake up, and the same repeats.
Again and again.
[tense music playing]
[blow dryer whirring]
[Sophie] I was working as a hairdresser, as an apprentice.
I had to pay £300 of rent every month,
even though I was only earning just over 400.
Mum started having less and less say.
It started being, "Give the money to me. I'll give it to your mum."
"I'll take your mum's rent."
[alarm rings]
[Sophie] I had a savings account with £10,000 in it.
And when he found that out, he started laughing.
[tense music continues]
He was so…
almost proud of himself.
[tense music continues]
[Sophie] David convinced me to go into the bank, and lie,
and say I was taking the money out to buy my first car.
I took the money out. It was in an envelope. I gave it to David.
And I never heard of it again.
[tense music continues]
[tense music deflates]
One night after work, David never came and picked me up.
When I spoke to him on the phone in the morning,
I said it wasn't right.
I said, "You don't do that to people."
"You don't leave me in my professional working environment
to sleep on the floor."
[melancholy music playing]
I needed to leave for my own health.
I told my mum I was sorry, I couldn't be there anymore.
After living on my own for a year,
I eventually got back in contact with Jake and my dad.
I walked into my kitchen, and Sophie was standing there, and, um…
Yeah. We both hugged and cried.
It's amazing how quick you put things back behind you when you love somebody.
[dramatic music plays]
[Sophie] When I left, I started to really understand what he was doing.
I think it was to get me out of the way.
He wants her all to himself.
[melancholy music playing]
In 2014, two years after they first started dating,
Mum and David left the house.
Nobody knew where they'd gone.
[Mark] When Sandra left, I didn't think
that that would be the last time that me or my children would see her.
[door closes]
[Mark] I went back into the house to get the house ready for sale.
I was completely horrified and shocked to see that, on the master bedroom,
there was a huge, industrial-sized padlock.
That's the kind of lock you have on an outside garage or a lockup.
The door would give way before the lock would.
That is to keep a person in or out of that room.
There was newspaper,
completely covered the whole window in its entirety.
So nobody on the outside could see through what was happening inside this room.
[unsettling music playing]
I just think it's very disturbing and sinister
that you would go to the extremes to,
A, block the inside of the house from outside,
and, B, put that substantial a lock inside a house.
[unsettling music continues]
I was surprised of the mail that was at the house.
There was absolutely every single bill and red letter of final demand
and court summons that you could imagine.
There's so many letters here.
Bills from the electricity company, from the phone company,
from the local borough council.
Penalty for a parking fine, tax credits, where they're recovering the money back.
Credit card details, more parking fines.
Here's one about the mortgage company.
So the mortgage hadn't been paid for many, many months.
Wow.
Sandra didn't have an overdraft or credit card before she knew him.
So, this sad state of financial affairs,
in my opinion, has been brought on by David.
The car that your mum and David had been driving.
Finance on the car not paid.
You're talking about a £35,000 car. It was top-of-the-line.
[Jake] The car was a present for my mum, but financed in her name.
Effectively given a car that she had to pay for.
He always told us that he was doing very well for himself
and, you know, buying flash cars, having, you know, expensive watches.
And looking through this, it was all faked.
[tense music plays]
[Mark] I did some more research.
I had already tried looking, but I looked further and I looked harder.
I still couldn't find anything on him.
[keyboard clacking]
Then I just had a brain wave
of just putting the words "David Hendy conman."
Up came a website describing a man who went under that name,
but also under the name of Robert Freegard.
"The conman who stole my life."
"Police branded him evil and said he was in a class of his own."
"Robert Freegard, 'the Puppet Master,'
as he's soon to be dubbed by the British tabloids."
"Masquerading as a James Bond-style agent, Freegard had already scammed
nearly two million dollars in cash from his victims."
Then I clicked on "images."
Bang. David Hendy is Robert Freegard.
He's the same man.
[unsettling music playing]
Utterly shocked. And the crimes he's carried out are horrific.
This man was around my family and we didn't know who he was.
[tense music playing]
[dramatic instrumental music playing]