The man suspected of having overthrown two gendarmes, Thursday August 25, in the Creuse would be none other than Robert Hendy-Freegard, famous British scammer who was the subject of a documentary series broadcast on Netflix at the beginning of the year. Portrait.
The scenario is worthy of an incredible detective series. This Thursday, August 25, a man knocked down and seriously injured two gendarmes in Vidaillat in the Creuse. The forces of order of several departments are now on the heels of the fugitive, who is however already well known to the police services … in the United Kingdom.
“The Puppet Master”
Robert Hendy-Freegard is a 51-year-old Briton who has lived in France since 2015 with his partner, but who has had an incredible life across the Channel. The fugitive is indeed very well known to the police services of the United Kingdom for acts of fraud on several women, which earned him prison time.
The notorious British scammer posed as an English intelligence agent in the 1990s. He targeted his victims, all students, telling them they were in danger because a student at their university had been arrested for arms trafficking in connection with the IRA, the Irish Republican Army. Some of his victims did not return home for more than ten years, reports The Guardian. The scammer was able to extort large sums of money from them.
According to the British daily, the man was sentenced to life in prison in 2005 for a series of offenses before being cleared on appeal two years later for the most important of them, kidnapping, and released.
It was the subject of a three-part documentary series on Netflix called The Puppet Master: Handling lessons, recounting his hunt.
“Something was wrong”
Martine Laporte, the mayor of Vidaillat, where the British scammer lives, reacted to our colleagues from France Blue and expressed his concerns: “The inhabitants of the Forest-Belleville very quickly understood that there was something wrong. It’s been at least two, three years that we’ve been ringing the alarm bells speaking of a complicated situation”.
On Thursday, the man was checked in a dog farm run by a British couple by the Departmental Directorate for Employment, Labor, Solidarity and Population Protection (DETSPP), supported by the gendarmes. “While the gendarmerie asked one of the spouses to go to the nearest brigade to carry out the usual checks, the individual started his vehicle then hit the two soldiers before fleeing”, indicates the prefecture of Creuse in a press release.
An investigation was opened by the Guéret prosecutor’s office for “attempted intentional homicide on a person holding public authority”.
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