Victim tells of life with conman

One of the victims of conman Robert Hendy-Freegard, who recruited his victims in a Shropshire pub, has recalled how the former barman destroyed her life in a new book.

Hendy-Freegard, 36, who was jailed for life in June 2005 for commandeering the lives of a string of victims in a decade-long charade, could be freed as early as November after the Court of Appeal quashed his convictions for kidnap by deceit.

Now former Harper Adams student Sarah Smith has told of her ordeal.

The story, told for the first time in full, begins in Shropshire, where Miss Smith was coming to the end of her course at the Edgmond agricultural college.

Hendy-Freegard, then just Freegard, was living and working at the Swan Inn, Newport, having followed an ex-girlfriend there from his home town of Worksop.

In an earlier glimmer of his power-mad personality he had previously planned to kidnap the woman, named as Alison, knocking her out with a hammer.

But weeks after crossing paths with Miss Smith, along with her housemates John Atkinson and Maria Hendy, he began a much more ambitious plan.

And at the centre of his scheme was his unnerving ability to lie - and to do it convincingly.

Over the next 10 years Hendy-Freegard would tell his victims to follow his every word or they and their families would be in danger from terrorists. He moved them around and financed his lifestyle with money they got out of their parents.

The compulsive liar was only eventually arrested - and Miss Smith freed from her solitary, manufactured existence, which culminated in her living rough and working as a cleaner in London - in the summer of 2003.

Thanks in large part to the efforts of Miss Smith's father, Peter, of Kent, Hendy-Freegard's lies eventually caught up with him and he was caught as he planned an escape to Europe.

Deceived: A True Story is available now from Orion Books priced £14.99.