The Psychopath: A True Story(16)

Whilst the guard was away ‘checking’ if the toilet was being cleaned, the lady in the next dressing room came out and we decided to sit together and chatted. The ‘special’ programme was supposed to be about victims of con men so we knew we had something in common.

This lady – Renata – had been a victim of the infamous MI5 con man Robert Hendy-Freegard. This was a story I was all too familiar with because Deceived, a memoir by another of his victims, Sarah Smith, was one of the many books I’d read on the subject.



Robert Hendy-Freegard had convinced three students that he was an MI5 operative and that all three (two girls and a boy) had become the target of an IRA assassination plot.

He was working as a barman in 1992 when he met the three students – Sarah Smith, Maria Hendy and John Atkinson. A fourth student, and friend of theirs, had just committed suicide with a shotgun and Hendy-Freegard overheard them talking about it, which set his plan in action. Hendy-Freegard told the students that he was a Special Branch police officer who was working in the bar undercover to catch members of an IRA cell that was operating there. He convinced all three students that their friend had not committed suicide but had actually been murdered due to having witnessed something the IRA were doing. What’s more, MI5 and Special Branch had uncovered a plot to murder all three of them too.

Robert Hendy-Freegard took them all into ‘safe house’ protection under his control and submitted them to bizarre abuses including having to prove their loyalty in various brutal ways. He persuaded them to cut ties with family and friends to alienate them, and then got them to elicit money from their families as well. He managed to convince John and his parents to give him ￡300,000 whilst John was put into ‘training’.

Maria stayed with him for eight years, giving birth to two of his daughters and living in dire poverty whilst he swanned around in expensive cars and designer suits. After some time John left, and then Maria, but with no contact with the outside world the last victim, Sarah Smith, remained under his control for ten years, hiding in attics and basements, living in fear and believing that he was her only chance of survival. He would leave her for days at a time, once locked in a bathroom with no food.

He duped a woman called Lesley Gardner in Newcastle and milked her for ￡16,000 over six years, claiming he had to pay off IRA killers who had been released after the Good Friday Agreement. He also sold her car and kept the money.

Hendy-Freegard met Elizabeth Richardson, a newly married PA working in a Sheffield car dealership, and forced her to change her name and go on the run with him. She spent seventeen months spending nights on park benches and surviving on slices of Mars Bars and water from public toilets. He also persuaded her to take out loans of ￡6,500 and ￡8,000 which he pocketed. Eventually Elizabeth was discovered by the police in a hovel in Leicestershire, emaciated and covered in sores.

Hendy-Freegard also targeted Renata when she was buying a car at the same dealership. Renata was heavily pregnant when they met and had recently split from her partner. After selling her a car and striking up a relationship, Hendy-Freegard told her he was spying on someone at the car dealership and eventually convinced her to take out a ￡15,000 loan for him. Renata also helped house Sarah Smith, who was supposedly in a witness protection program. Hendy-Freegard told Renata that the woman only spoke Spanish so that they wouldn’t speak to each other.

Meanwhile Hendy-Freegard was having multiple other relationships. He seduced a high-flying lawyer called Caroline Cowper from whom he stole ￡14,000: they became engaged, but her family intervened. And in 2002 he became involved in a relationship with an American child psychologist called Kimberley Adams, at which time he ‘admitted’ to her that he had infiltrated a criminal network and killed a criminal who had threatened to expose him. He even asked Kimberly to marry him but said there was a condition: she would also need to become an agent and cut off all contact with her family. It was her family who called in the FBI, something which eventually led to Hendy-Freegard’s arrest.

Kimberly’s mother promised to give him the ￡10,000 he had asked for but would only hand it over in person, saying she would fly to the UK to ensure her daughter was safe and well. When Hendy-Freegard arrived at Heathrow Airport to meet Kimberly’s mother and pick up the money, the police arrested him. He claimed innocence and proclaimed it was all part of a conspiracy right up to his trial.

In June 2005 he was convicted of two counts of kidnapping, ten of theft and eight of deception. In September 2005 he was sentenced to life in prison. However, he appealed his kidnapping conviction and astoundingly won his appeal in April 2007 – just four months before I met Renata in the studio – reducing his life sentence to just nine years. To my astonishment, the judge said that his victims were not physically restrained and it was therefore not ‘kidnapping’.



I had known Sarah Smith’s story having read her book, but had been unaware of the large number of other victims Robert Hendy Freegard had targeted. Clearly, here was another psychopathic predator. I told Renata what I had learnt about psychopaths. She was intrigued and said she would do further research herself.

When the daytime TV official came back from checking the bathroom, Renata and I were already deep in conversation and he grudgingly allowed us to share a dressing room. We had a very interesting chat before she was taken through to the studio. It was truly fascinating to talk to another victim of an intricate psychopathic plot.