Mom who vanished with merciless ‘puppet grasp’ conman posing as a spy is tracked down in France

When Sandra Clifton moved into the tiny French hamlet she now calls house, her close-knit Gallic neighbours instinctively felt there was one thing amiss concerning the British expat.  

For a begin, there was the very fact the 49-year-old was dwelling alone in the course of nowhere, with no automotive and no identification papers. And apart from a really occasional go to from a dark-haired man, no pals or members of the family ever came visiting her ramshackle semi-detached home.

After they tried to talk to her, to welcome her to the group and to supply their help, the frightened-looking ‘Anglaise’ merely grabbed her cell phone and known as the identical mysterious man, asking him what she ought to do and what she ought to say.

That was earlier than one of many villagers sat down to observe a brand new Netflix documentary, The Puppet Grasp: Looking The Final Conman, a few lacking British girl who had fallen prey to a prolific prison trickster who posed as a undercover agent on the run from the IRA.

{A photograph} of Sandra flashed up on the display screen and the puzzle was solved. Or was it? For, because the Mail found this week after monitoring Sandra right down to one of many least populated areas of France, the thriller concerning the mother-of-two’s disturbing relationship with Britain’s most infamous fraudster, Robert Hendy-Freegard, is way from over.

Why did the as soon as devoted mom from Wokingham, Berkshire, lower herself off from her two grownup kids and seemingly disappear with out hint two years after Hendy-Freegard got here into her life in 2012?

And what’s the nature of her ongoing relationship with the 51-year-old, who was jailed in 2005 for ‘kidnap by fraud’, theft and acquiring cash by deception, after duping seven clever ladies and one man; reducing them off from their pals and family members and, in some instances, fleecing them to the tune of £1 million.

This week, the Mail discovered Sandra strolling her canines on a rustic lane close to her French hideaway. Casually wearing a navy fleece, black hat and yellow wellies, this, lastly, is the lacking girl whose {photograph} has been beamed into tens of millions of properties for the reason that hit Netflix documentary about Hendy-Freegard and the girl believed to be his newest ‘sufferer’ first aired in January.

A nervous-looking Sandra insisted she was conscious of Hendy-Freegard’s prison previous ‘from the start’ of their relationship. Chatting with him by cell phone as she walked, she put him on loudspeaker so he may very well be heard telling her: ‘Don’t say the rest.’

If it weren’t for her relationship with the convicted conman and ‘achieved liar’, as one policeman described him, it will be straightforward to take at face worth Sandra’s insistence that she is aware of all about her companion — who lives in Berkshire in a home believed to have belonged to her late mother and father, whereas she lives like a hermit throughout the Channel.

However her devastated son and daughter — Sophie, 28, and 25-year-old Jake, who function within the Netflix documentary — suspect their estranged mom is being coercively managed by Hendy-Freegard, who satisfied his earlier victims that he was an MI5 agent and their lives have been underneath risk.

If the couple have been merely main their very own lives, the siblings level out, why would their mom want to chop off all contact along with her household and pals?

Requested within the The Puppet Grasp ‘What in case your mom is comfortable and Hendy-Freegard resides a brand new harmless life?’, Jake replies: ‘Why has he accomplished what he has accomplished to us then?’

Sandra’s kids’s fears have been echoed to the Mail this week by involved villagers in France, together with one who has visited Sandra and says she is ‘not properly’.

‘She stays at nighttime so I’m going and see her,’ the villager mentioned, including that Hendy-Freegard hadn’t been seen visiting Sandra since final July.

‘I’m positive she’s frightened of him, thinks he’s a undercover agent, so doesn’t need to depart,’ the neighbour added.

‘She appears to depend on supply drivers, has no automotive or identification papers. We don’t understand how she eats. It’s severe. We’re actually involved for her. Day by day I test to see if she’s alive.’

An official from the native mayor’s workplace chargeable for the hamlet the place Sandra lives, advised the Mail this week that villagers had tried to assist her however had been rebuffed.

‘Once we communicate to Sandra about something, she calls a person. She doesn’t make any selections for herself. She’s afraid,’ mentioned the official.

The native gendarmerie additionally mentioned ‘contact had been made’ along with her.

Sandra’s deeply worrying scenario bears a chilling similarity to that of Hendy-Freegard’s earlier victims — specifically Sarah Smith, who went lacking for ten years after he satisfied her he was an spy working for the federal government. He moved her across the nation between varied ‘protected homes’ that she felt too terrified to go away.

As soon as he had brainwashed her, separated her from her household, worn out her identification and turn into her solely protector, she was solely at his mercy. She additionally handed over her life financial savings of £180,000.

Hendy-Freegard’s different victims, stretching again to 1993, included a solicitor, a psychologist, an organization director and a civil servant. 

A number of of them went into hiding, handing over their financial savings to him for ‘protected protecting’ after believing they have been IRA targets as a result of they knew him.

His solely male sufferer was overwhelmed recurrently to ‘toughen him up’, supposedly whereas coaching to be a undercover agent. 

Freegard took sadistic pleasure in humiliating his lovers and making them perform more and more weird duties, which he advised them have been exams set by his ‘spymasters’. 

One was ordered to outlive on rations of 1 Mars bar per week. One other needed to stroll 110 miles for a non-existent assembly with an ‘MI5 contact’, whereas a 3rd needed to wait at a motorway service station for weeks with just a few kilos to reside on.

They have been additionally ordered to take menial jobs — Sarah Smith give up college and labored at a chip store, the place she was so hungry because of Hendy-Freegard’s strictures that she ate uncooked batter.

Whereas they have been pressured to offer their wages straight to Hendy-Freegard, he lived a James Bond fantasy life-style, staying in high inns, having fun with luxurious holidays, driving flash automobiles and shopping for Rolex watches and handmade garments from Savile Row.

Hendy-Freegard was lastly arrested in 2003 in a joint £2.5 million operation with the FBI, after his remaining sufferer, solicitor Caroline Cowper, went to police after dropping £50,000 in financial savings and discovering the existence of his different victims. 

By then, a few of them have been so in his thrall that they believed the police have been both IRA assassins or MI5 brokers, despatched to check their resilience.

In 2005, Hendy-Freegard was jailed for all times for 2 counts of kidnap by fraud, ten counts of theft and eight of acquiring cash by deception.

However throughout an enchantment listening to two years later, in 2007, the 2 kidnapping convictions have been overturned as ‘unsafe’ on the grounds that the victims had not been disadvantaged of their bodily liberty. The brand new verdict was described as ‘tragedy’ by one sufferer. Coercive management grew to become a criminal offense within the UK solely in 2015.

However again to the story of divorcee Sandra Clifton who met Hendy-Freegard through a courting app in 2012, three years after his launch from jail.

Calling himself David Hendy, he advised her he bought promoting area, though, in line with her then teenage kids, he by no means appeared to go to work. The previous automotive salesman swiftly wormed his means into her life, shopping for her a flashy automotive and taking the household on vacation to Spain.

Jake, then 16, left house to reside together with his father after Hendy-Freegard insinuated he was homosexual and had stolen jewelry — and went on to lock him out of the home.

For a time, Sophie was estranged from each her brother and her father, saying she was brainwashed into believing her father was harmful, her brother had ‘made his alternative’ and speak to was not good for her.

In an interview with The Instances in January, she mentioned that it was solely after leaving house, and because of the affect of a pal, that she was ultimately reunited along with her brother and father.

‘I’d been completely brainwashed. Day by day, David [Hendy-Freegard] would say: “You don’t ever need to communicate to your dad once more, do you?” Once more and time and again. It was like a drill.’

By 2014, her mom, Sandra, had vanished. The next 12 months, after her ex-husband and kids had voiced their issues, police made contact. However regardless of them telling her that her companion was a conman, she dismissed their inquiries, saying she was completely comfortable.

In response to son Jake: ‘The police don’t technically have any grounds to say or do something as a result of so far as they’re conscious she is comfortable and wholesome. Sadly, the legislation doesn’t do quite a bit for folks like my mum.’

Within the years which have handed since, Sandra didn’t attend her mother and father’ funerals, regardless of the very fact she was an solely little one and, by all accounts, had been a lot beloved.

And when, in 2020, Jake tried to get the home she inherited from them put into belief to make sure Hendy-Freegard didn’t get his palms on the proceeds, his mom challenged him in courtroom and accused him of theft. Sandra gained the case.

In February, simply after the Netflix documentary was launched, the siblings made an emotional TV plea to search out their mom on Good Morning Britain, revealing they hadn’t had in-person contact along with her in ‘seven or eight years’, as an alternative talking to her solely through phonecalls they imagine have been managed by Hendy-Freegard.

When contacted by the Mail this week about their mom’s whereabouts, Jake and Sophie launched a joint assertion saying: ‘We love our mom very a lot. We’re happy her neighbours are looking for her and hope she is protected and properly.’

As for Hendy-Freegard, he has used a number of aliases since his launch from jail, most just lately going by the identify of David Clifton and showing at Crufts in 2015 with pedigree beagles known as Watson and Holmes.

The Mail contacted Hendy-Freegard this week, providing him the prospect to place his aspect of this disturbing story. 

What adopted was an aggressive, rambling e-mail by which he questioned the integrity of Sandra’s kids and the Mail reporter who visited her in France.

Apparently oblivious to his personal previous, and to the Netflix documentary about him, he warned the Mail to ‘assume very rigorously about printing an article that simply isn’t true’, earlier than sending a grainy image of our reporter, taken on Sandra’s cellphone exterior her home in France, in a seemingly veiled risk.

For TV viewers, Hendy-Freegard’s life story is undoubtedly a gripping topic. He may also be the topic of a biopic film starring James Norton and Gemma Arterton.

It’s not exhausting to see why film-makers are eager to put the conman centre stage. For Jake and Sophie Clifton, nevertheless, their mom’s disappearance and, now, her obvious reluctance to reunite with them is an ongoing hell.

In January this 12 months, certainly one of Hendy-Freegard’s first victims, Sarah Smith, advised how she had just lately met with Sandra’s kids and had tried to clarify how she had been managed by Freegard, in order that they wouldn’t blame their mom for her ‘unusual and unfair behaviour’.

‘My hope is that sooner or later Sandra is delivered to actuality, as I used to be,’ mentioned Smith. ‘I need her to be delivered again to the arms of her loving kids, however I concern they may have to be affected person as a result of this may occasionally take time.’

Extra reporting: Susie Coen