[tense music playing]
[man] It's like a needle in a haystack.
You hope you will see Sarah again, but you don't know.
She's out there somewhere.
[dramatic music plays]
[woman] The only person in the world that knew where I was, was Rob.
I had no friends, no family, no money, no identity.
You're left just following instructions.
You have no free will.
Rob told me there was still a threat out there,
and he was now gonna take me to this MI5 safe house,
but I wasn't allowed to see where it was.
-[car whooshes] -[dramatic music continues]
[car door opens]
I was told that I was gonna have to stay in the bathroom…
and that I wasn't allowed to make a sound, and he was gonna lock me in there.
[lock clicking]
[tense droning]
[fly buzzing]
[tense music playing]
[Sarah] It had small windows high up.
It had just about enough space to lie down on the floor beside the bath.
It was a prison.
Everything's being ripped away layer by layer.
[fly buzzes]
I had burned every bridge with everybody that I love.
[phone ringing]
If I'd had any way of committing suicide, I probably would have at that point.
[flies buzzing]
Imagine the most hunger that you've ever felt and multiply it.
[flies buzzing]
And then, one day, Rob turned up to the bathroom.
[keys jangling]
[door unlocks]
[door creaks]
He asked me if I'd like to be his girlfriend.
Basically, he wanted sex.
Right, if you've been deprived of food,
and freedom,
and any free will,
the possibility, just a glimmer of hope that you might get treated better
is worth a punt.
Nothing to lose.
[tense music playing]
[door creaks]
[dramatic music plays]
Any normal person would have a footprint.
They'd go to a doctor or a dentist.
They'd have a job, an income, bank accounts.
Sarah had nothing. No trace of where she might be.
She had no footprint at all.
[dramatic music continues]
At the same time, Kim Adams, a US citizen, was planning to marry Robert Freegard.
And then she suddenly cut ties with her friends,
and no one knew where Kim was.
I came up with a plan to start recording the telephone conversations
between Freegard, Kim, and her parents.
At first, Freegard wasn't responding to any of their calls.
But then, he picked up.
[line rings]
Robert Freegard told them that he was a security agent for MI5,
and he was planning to take Kim under his wing
and train her to be a spy as well.
Kim was enrolled in spy school.
Kim didn't just fail the test once. She failed it twice.
So, at this point, Freegard sets the hook.
It's what he's been leading up to.
[Robert speaking]
[Jaclyn] That is just pure craziness,
that Freegard's lies are so completely
off the grid
that they're almost believable.
Freegard claims that he's paying the lion's share of Kim's spy school.
And he's using that as leverage to get Kim's parents to pay their part.
So, this is where I give Kim's parents direction
not to give him money.
Freegard became more and more desperate,
and so his desperation is voiced through Kim.
Things become a little bit more concerning.
Kim is in distress.
There were little flaws in her conversation.
Some of her remarks seemed…
scripted.
[Jaclyn] And then the story flip-flops.
Now she needed money for car repairs,
and she tells her mother
the service mechanic had taken her passport.
The situation is becoming more volatile for her, more dangerous.
The picture that was emerging from the wiretaps
was that Freegard and Kim were somewhere in Europe.
[tense music playing]
And also, Sarah was still missing.
She needed to be found.
[dramatic music plays]
Freegard had been circulated as being wanted.
But somehow, he was traveling from country to country undetected.
It could be that he had false documentation that he was showing.
We didn't know.
We were monitoring bank accounts,
and we could see where money was being spent.
In Germany, and Austria, and France, and the UK.
[Jaclyn] Freegard and Kim were going from city to city, country to country,
staying at each place for only a night or two.
It was obvious that Freegard wanted to keep her moving
so that law enforcement couldn't catch up to them.
If he was in one town, he wouldn't withdraw cash from his bank account.
He'd drive to another town.
[Jaclyn] They would use aliases.
They wouldn't register under their true names.
We couldn't find Kim and Freegard, so it was time to lure them to us.
So we come up with a plan to a face-to-face meeting
on the premise of being handed over $10,000.
But it was a trap.
Kim's mother, Ann, would travel to London and meet Freegard and Kim at the airport,
and the plan was for us to arrest Freegard and rescue Kim.
The way we were gonna find Sarah was to find Freegard himself.
And who knows how many other victims.
The shark took the bait,
and they agreed to return to London.
[Jaclyn] "Can I give you a hug?"
Totally makes my skin crawl.
At that moment, Freegard throws a curveball.
[Jaclyn] This was alarming.
If a mutual friend shows up, then where is Kim?
Is she safe?
But at that point, we had committed to this plan,
and we had to see it through.
[dramatic music plays]
[tires screech]
[Jaclyn] Kim's mother flew over to London.
She was understandably nervous.
But we had every confidence that she would be able to pull this off.
[dramatic music continues]
[indistinct radio chatter]
On the day of the operation, there was basically two teams deployed.
I was in a patrol vehicle with the head of the surveillance team.
[indistinct radio chatter]
I was in a car. I could only listen to everything on the radio.
[indistinct radio chatter]
The Met Police had about a dozen police officers
following Kim's mother through the terminal.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Jaclyn] There were other police officers in cars.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Jaclyn] Another dozen or so police officers in plain clothes
keeping an eye on the Starbucks
where Freegard was supposed to meet Kim's mother.
The plan was that Kim's mother would walk through into the arrivals hall,
and Kim and Freegard would be there to greet them.
At that point, the arrest team would move in
and arrest Freegard and recover Kim.
[Jaclyn] But the plan went a little…
wonky.
[Bob] Kim's mum had waited in the baggage area.
I heard on the radio that Ann was walking through the terminal
with other passengers that had just arrived from Phoenix.
[tense music playing]
Police officers were at the Starbucks trying to pinpoint Freegard.
[tense music continues]
He might have been hiding,
watching to see if Ann was with anyone like law enforcement.
[Bob] All the other passengers who'd arrived on that flight
were now going through the arrivals hall.
There was no sign of any Freegard,
and I had to make a decision whether I'd send her through.
[indistinct radio chatter]
And the answer was yes.
Everybody was in place. Everybody was ready.
It had to carry on.
[Jaclyn] Ann is getting closer and closer to the Starbucks,
and no Freegard.
We were really concerned that he wasn't going to come.
[unsettling music playing]
[Bob] One of the surveillance team radioed to say
that there was a guy acting really strangely and suspiciously
in the arrivals hall.
[sinister music plays]
Looking at reflections in shop windows.
He was clearly feeling vulnerable.
The guy acting strangely was identified as Freegard.
[Jaclyn] We do see Freegard, but it's obvious that Kim's not with him.
Where is Kim?
[unsettling music playing]
Then Kim's mother and Freegard meet.
[unsettling music continues]
[Jaclyn] And unexpectedly,
Kim's mother decides to excuse herself from Freegard.
This was totally off script.
She was walking towards the bathroom.
Did she lose her nerve?
We just didn't know.
Kim's mom called me from the toilet.
[phone rings]
[Bob] She was clearly distressed.
She was not doing what she had been briefed to do.
The situation was getting too much for her, really.
Freegard had told her that Kim was in the car park
on the upper deck, waiting in the car.
[Bob] I didn't know whether that was true or not,
but we'd put in months of planning,
and here we had Kim's mom going off script.
[Jaclyn] The longer that Kim's mom is out of sight,
he could get increasingly suspicious.
He could flee.
I calmed her down. I told her, "Just go with Freegard."
[dramatic music plays]
[Jaclyn] Then Kim's mother does emerge from the bathroom and joins Freegard.
They left the airport terminal,
and they headed straight towards the car park.
[Bob over radio] Keep following at a safe distance.
[Jaclyn] But we still weren't sure if Kim was actually there.
I moved my arrest team into the car park.
[woman] Hold your positions now. Hold your positions now.
[tense music plays]
The surveillance team said that there was a woman in a vehicle, waiting.
[tense music continues]
I heard Bob yell into his walkie-talkie…
[Bob over radio] Go, go, go!
[tense music grows to crescendo]
[indistinct yelling]
[Jaclyn] Freegard was put into handcuffs.
And Kim was helped out of the car by another officer.
This is the first time I've ever seen Kim Adams in all of these weeks,
and she seemed upset.
She seemed confused.
I'm not even sure she knew who we were. But she did see her mother.
As Freegard is being led away,
he turns around and calls out to Kim, "I love you."
After months of investigation and planning, he was finally with us.
-[siren wailing in distance] -[tense music playing]
I prepared for the interview for days.
I knew all the evidence against him.
[Bob speaking]
[Robert speaking]
[Bob speaking]
[Robert speaking]
[Bob speaking]
[Robert speaking]
[Bob speaking]
[Robert speaking]
Freegard thought by answering no questions,
we'd release him, and he'd be out on bail.
[Robert speaking]
The police asked, "What happened to Sarah Smith,
who's been gone for ten years?"
[tense music playing]
[Bob] He refused to tell us where Sarah was.
When searched at the station,
Freegard was found in possession of a scrap of paper
with a telephone number named Ronnie,
and there was also a set of keys from the Buffalo Hotel in the French Alps.
[dramatic music plays]
That meant something to me,
because I knew there'd been some telephone calls
from that hotel that had been traced by the FBI.
We were on our way to the French Alps.
[camera clicks]
[Bob] The room was packed.
[camera clicks]
[Jaclyn] Designer men's shoes.
[camera clicks]
[Jaclyn] Expensive watches.
And they also find a locked suitcase.
And in the locked suitcase,
Scotland Yard finds passports, letters,
credit cards, driver's license belonging to other women.
[dramatic music playing]
There was a whole treasure trove of evidence.
The instinct was that there are other women out there
that maybe need to be saved, maybe need to be rescued.
[Bob] Amongst the papers was documentation relating to a Renata Kister.
We put two and two together,
and we decided that Renata was probably Ronnie…
who was on the scrap of paper with the telephone number.
[dialing]
[line ringing]
[woman] One day, I got a call from Scotland Yard.
Bob has asked me, do I know a man called Rob Freegard?
My heart was pumping.
I have been instructed by Robert,
if anyone contacts me and mentions his name,
I should deny any contact.
[Bob] We tried to encourage her to come into the station to talk to us,
but she was really, really reluctant.
He said, "How do you explain that we've got your documents,
we've got your passport, ID?"
She agreed to come in.
At the police station, I explained that I met Robert Freegard
in a car showroom in the year 2000.
He persuaded me to buy a brand-new car.
Robert told me that his real job is being a spy.
Over three years, I have lost about £20,000 to him,
which Rob promised to pay me back, but he just disappeared.
And then, one day, the phone rings, and it's Rob,
and he said he had this friend,
and she needs to stay somewhere safe.
He managed to persuade me that she'll be a good help to me.
So, I agreed for this lady to come and live with me.
Renata told us that Freegard had brought a woman to her house.
[vacuum cleaner whirring]
[Bob] And that woman was now working for her as a cleaner.
She said her name was Carrie.
[Renata] When Carrie turned up, I didn't know anything about her.
She didn't have ID.
If she saw me having a camera, she would be just avoiding a picture.
It was just odd.
But I did manage to take this one picture of her.
[camera clicks]
[Bob] When Renata showed us the photograph of Carrie,
you could kind of see a face, but not completely clearly.
But the color of the girl, the height, the age,
it all looked like it could have been Sarah.
But we weren't 100% sure it was.
[Peter] You never give up.
And you wait, hope for a lead,
but you never give up.
[tense music playing]
[Bob] We needed to speak to Carrie.
We suspected that she wouldn't answer the door,
so we had Renata telephone her.
[phone line ringing]
And I said, "Hi, Carrie. I locked myself out."
"Can you please open the door and give me the keys?"
[tense music playing]
My heart was pumping like mad.
It's a very, very stressful situation, lying to somebody.
The pressure was really high.
Whatever happens, I've got to be ready to deal with it.
[knocking]
I just didn't know if I'm sending her to prison or I'm saving her life.
[tense music continues]
I really didn't know what was gonna happen the next few seconds.
[tense music grows to crescendo]
I decided to say just two words, "Hello, Sarah."
[gentle music playing]
I hadn't been Sarah for some considerable number of years.
I'd been all sorts of other names, but not Sarah.
It was programmed into me to make my excuses and get out of there.
It was purely because Renata was there that it anchored me.
I just overwhelmed her with information about how the whole thing had been a lie,
how he was never a spy,
and that the whole thing hadn't been real from the very first,
and that she was coming with me.
Complete information overload.
[unsettling music plays]
I had my entire world turned upside down and the floor ripped out from underneath.
You've wasted everything for nothing.
[echoing] Can you prove you work for MI5?
[phone ringing]
[echoing] We just needed to follow instructions.
Yeah, I think it wasn't
until they actually took me to a police station
and told me, "This is what Rob's done."
"This is how many other people are involved,"
that I could conceive that what they were saying was real.
And I realized, "You've thrown away your career,
your family, your friends
for no good reason."
There's just no words to describe
how completely annihilated you feel.
[melancholy music playing]
And then they phoned up my family.
I was worried that they wouldn't want me or that they wouldn't forgive me.
What I'd put them through was…
unacceptable, unforgivable.
[voice breaks] And they were happy.
And my brother came and picked me up from the police station.
And I couldn't believe that he was there and that they still wanted me.
[melancholy music continues]
[Peter] As she came in,
she looked terrible.
All her…
confidence had been drained out of her.
She'd wore what she had.
She had a bag
with a moldy crust of bread in it
and very little else.
-[melancholy music continues] -[bird squawking]
After all I'd put them through, they still wanted me back.
You can't be angry, though. She's part of your family.
She's your own
flesh and blood.
And it was…
a relief at the end of ten years
to have actually got there.
Our subsequent investigations revealed Robert Freegard had many other victims.
[dramatic music plays]
Elizabeth Richardson, he starved her and made her live on the streets.
Leslie Gardener spent six years with him on and off,
and he milked her for money.
And there was a Brazilian woman's belongings at Hotel Buffalo,
and we never found her.
Maria Hendy.
They were together for nine years.
She had two children with him.
He was abusive and violent towards her.
He punched her. He punched her so hard that he knocked her teeth out.
[Bob] There is a possibility there's other women out there
who we just never had a lead onto.
[unsettling music plays]
[reporter] Freegard denies charges of kidnap, assault, and theft.
His alleged victims are to give evidence over the next few weeks.
[Sarah] I was worried about testifying,
but he wasn't gonna do it to anybody else if I could help it.
From the questions that his defense were asking,
uh, it was very clear he was trying to put the blame on me.
[Sarah] He always managed to twist the truth.
We held hands as we heard the verdict.
A conman who posed as an MI5 spy
to steal almost a million pounds from his victims has been jailed for life.
The judge said 34-year-old Robert Hendy-Freegard
had used his devious charm
to drive his victims to the depths of despair.
[somber music playing]
All of us were united in the feeling that, actually, the legal system worked.
We went and had drinks together
and celebrated that he'd been locked up.
[cameras clicking]
[John] He ruined my life and ruined many other people's lives,
and he gets everything he deserves.
I felt that this was not something that was going to determine who I am
or what I am for the rest of my life.
And my family have not paid nearly half a million pounds
for me to live a miserable life.
By pretending to be a spy, he has power and control over people.
He wasn't a spy. He was a sad, cruel individual.
But then the case went to the Court of Appeal.
[unsettling music plays]
[reporter] His lawyers have told the Lord Chief Justice
that his victims were never kidnapped at all.
They were free to go whenever they pleased.
The Court of Appeal said that in order to be a kidnapping by fraud,
there needed to be some sort of unlawful imprisonment.
[newsman] Robert Hendy-Freegard has had his convictions for kidnap overturned.
His life sentence has also been quashed.
Because Freegard had psychologically entrapped them,
not physically entrapped them,
then the verdict was that he was not guilty of that offense.
[unsettling music continues]
On a technicality, he was released,
which is a travesty of justice.
Absolutely absurd that somebody so blatantly guilty
could be released into the general public.
[Jaclyn] Did he learn his lesson?
Freegard was not a one-dimensional mastermind.
He used coercive control over his victims.
He's a psychopath.
He only knows one way to live a life,
and that's by lying, and deceiving,
and abusing other people, and using their money.
I had a real fear that he would do this again.
[unsettling music playing]
Mum is still with Robert.
The police had questioned Mum, and she said she knew exactly who he was.
Maybe she's happy, but I had some of Mum's friends message me.
They want to know if she's okay.
One friend in particular was very worried.
Said there'd been contact and my mum had been asking for money.
Almost desperate.
And this friend responded, saying he wouldn't give her any money.
But if she was in trouble, he would come pick her up,
he would help her, he would get her out of any situation.
Mum cut off ties with him completely.
I don't know what I can do.
All we've ever wanted was our mum to be safe and happy.
[melancholy string music playing]
[man] I might be the ex-husband, but I'm not the ex-father of the children.
I'm the one that looks at my children and sees them without a mum.
And if I'm not fighting for Sandra, who is?
She doesn't have any brothers or sisters. Her mum and dad are both sadly dead.
Um, you know, I think it falls on me to do it.
Hello. Wonder if you can help me. My name's Mark Clifton,
and, um, my ex-wife has been missing for a few years
with what I've now found out to be a very serious conman.
I'm very worried for her safety.
Now I know who he actually is and what he's actually capable of.
Possibly in the north of England, but I don't know any more than that.
[Mark] I spoke to a detective agency.
They managed to track their mobile phone,
which the children have had the odd, once-a-year-or-so call from.
It's been tracked twice to a French telecom network.
I strongly believe that Sandra and Freegard must have been in France,
but I don't know what part.
I have done a bit of investigation myself.
What I'm looking at now is some photographs
of Freegard showing beagle dogs.
I believe Freegard is involved
in the buying and selling of pedigree dogs.
[tense music playing]
It's a small world, and everybody knows everybody within that community.
I've now been put in contact with somebody that's genuinely concerned over Sandra,
knows some up-to-date information.
This person doesn't want to be on camera or their face to be seen…
but is willing to meet me face-to-face, which I think is a very brave thing to do.
[knocks]
Hi, it's Mark.
-[woman] Hiya. Come in. -[Mark] Thank you.
-[woman] Sit down. -[Mark] Thank you.
So, how did it all start, meeting this man?
[woman] I had an advert for a litter of puppies on the internet
and received a text from him.
He introduced himself as David Clifton.
He went on to tell me that my beagles weren't good quality,
and he could help me improve the quality of my puppies.
I do find it insulting he uses my surname.
[woman] I think he's running under a lot of names.
[Mark] Yes.
[woman] I started going into business with him.
And I was never allowed to be in contact
with the people I was buying the dogs from.
He's bringing dogs backwards and forwards from France.
Sorry. From France?
[woman] I'm pretty certain about…
Sorry. The France bit's just made my brain whirl around 100 miles an hour.
[woman] That's basically a list
of all the transactions that I've made to him.
I would forward him the money,
do a bank transfer
to Sandra Clifton's account.
£237 for a vet bill.
£323 for a vet bill.
£478 was for a dog that I was buying off him.
Sandra Clifton, £1,000.
Sandra, £750.
Sandra, £800 for a beagle.
Sandra Clifton, £2,345.
But the only communication I've had with Sandra is through texts
or on an email.
So I've never actually spoken to her.
[Mark] It does seem a little bit suspicious, yeah.
And these vets bills, some of them,
did you ever see invoices for them or anything?
[woman] No. I asked for them,
but most never turned up.
Towards the end, he was asking for money all the time,
but I was getting to the point where I had no more money left to give
without proof that the money had been spent.
I then phoned a friend.
She just said, "You need to Google this person."
I Googled, obviously, this person. It was Robert Hendy-Freegard.
It was surreal.
I went to the police.
Did they take you seriously?
[woman] Not as seriously as I would like them to have done.
And then the next time I spoke to Robert Freegard,
he said Sandra worked very high up in the police,
so would, therefore, know exactly what I was saying to the police.
Sandra, from school, worked at a hotel in the housekeeping department
right up until he got her to leave.
Um, never been in the police.
It's just a pack of lies.
[woman] But I did start recording conversations with him.
[tense music plays]
[Robert] You told me you'd not spoken to the police, but you had.
[woman] I haven't spoken to any police.
[Robert] Well, I don't know then. On your record, it says that you…
you were spoken to by police last week.
So are you basically saying
that you have not made any complaint against us whatsoever?
[woman] No.
I need to walk out.
[tense music continues]
[Mark groans] Fucking hell.
[sighs]
I haven't heard that voice in six and a half, seven years.
It just brings back
unpleasant memories
and pain.
[woman] I don't know anything about Sandra other than I was told
that she's disappeared,
and her family haven't seen her for six years.
[tense music continues]
I can't imagine not wanting to see your children.
And it has to be something pretty awful…
[shaky exhale]
…to stop you coming home.
[tense music intensifies]
[somber music playing]
[Sophie] Mum is still out there with Robert.
I need to meet some of the people that he's done this to.
It will help with working out what to do now.
Maybe they know something that can help us, that can help my mum.
[Jake] How long did it take
for you to come to terms with what happened to you?
Honestly, it's…
It took a very long time.
And there's times it still haunts me.
-He is very persuasive. -Yes.
[Sarah] And it doesn't matter who you are. He can do it to anyone.
And that's what the hardest part for us is,
because as much as we now know that's the case, that…
-You've got to get your head around it. -Exactly.
We know what happened at that time,
and all we can do is think that it was them doing it to us.
-But it was all him. -Yeah.
You've got to try and find a way to not blame your mum.
[Sophie] Yeah.
I could have walked away, but I couldn't.
And I think probably she could walk away, but she can't.
[Sophie] Yeah.
[Sarah] I bet she has no freedom.
I had no passport, no driver's license.
Wow.
[Sarah] No way of getting a bank account.
Wow.
And if your mother's abroad…
I think he's definitely got her passport.
…she may or may not have a passport that's hers.
[Jake] Mm.
[Sarah] When you've realized the truth of what you've been living is a lie…
Your mum will need a grounding point.
The only thing is, you know, both of her parents are now gone,
so she doesn't have much of a family to ground her
when she does eventually come back.
-[Sophie] Yeah. -[Sarah] Yeah, but she's got you.
Um, one of my greatest fears was the fact that something might happen to my parents
whilst I was away,
and I wouldn't have the opportunity to set right…
[Sophie] Yeah.
-…the things that I'd said and done. -[Sophie] Yeah.
I think it's really hard to think
that my granddad passed away clutching this little silver pig
that he was so desperate to give to my mum,
and I said I would give it to her.
He said, "No," and wouldn't let go of it, and…
One of the last times I saw him…
he died wishing to see his daughter.
[melancholy music playing]
[Jake groans]
[Sarah groans]
[sighs]
[sniffles]
If her situation is anything like any of the rest of us,
she will have been convinced that she can't leave.
Sadly, I think it's a waiting game, really.
Anything I do or say will play into his hand.
I think the only thing I can do is wait for something to go wrong, or…
For him to make a mistake.
I don't think as simple as a waiting game, 'cause I think you'll wait forever.
This is a case of there's something very wrong here.
Don't ever give up on her.
[sniffles] Oh, my God. [chuckles]
[inhales sharply] Oh.
[melancholy music continues]
[Jake] After the death of both my grandparents,
my mum stood to inherit a house worth £300,000.
My plan for the property
was it to be kept in trust with me and my sister,
as I feared that Freegard may get his hands on it.
[tense music playing]
But a few months after, as I was looking after the property,
she took me to court.
Due to a global pandemic,
all of the court hearings had to be done by video link.
It was just sad that after seven years, that was the only way I got to see her.
Throughout the court case, my mum wholeheartedly believed
that I was stealing the money.
But I was just trying to protect it for her.
The case wasn't quite cut-and-dry.
The judge, although he seemed to be siding with me,
legally, he had to hand it over to my mum.
[interviewer] Jake, I put it to you that Freegard has served his time,
and maybe your mum is happy.
Do you think that is a possible reality?
David, in the past,
took someone, alienated everyone around them,
then controlled everything they did.
If it's the case that David is just a man trying to have a life,
why has he done the exact same thing all over again?
[Sophie] I don't know what the right thing to do is.
All I know is that
telling people about what we've gone through,
sharing it alongside what's happened to Sarah and all the other victims
is really important
because people need to know who he is,
because this needs to stop.
Robert David Hendy-Freegard,
David Clifton,
whatever name he goes by,
this man should be known because of the damage he's done.
I don't care how long it takes.
We will never give up.
[unsettling music plays]
[dramatic instrumental music plays]