Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 55: Love and Lies Pt. 2: The Captor

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

In 2015, Robert Hendy Freegard disappeared with Sandra Clifton. Robert's shocking past is uncovered in the search to find her, including the story of a woman he held captive for a decade. CW: Emotional abuse, kidnapping Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to ad-free listening and bonus content. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after show called Footnotes. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. We have a monthly newsletter now! Be sure to sign up for updates and more. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Become your own soulmate, whether you’re looking for one or not. Visit BetterHelp.com/staycurious today to get 10% off your first month. This episode is also brought to you by Rocket Money. Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/hsp Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore

This Wednesday, audience is a-raping. Bob Marley is electrifying. It's the film good movie of the year. Bob Marley Wundlove, Wednesday. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore. It starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore.

Last week, I told you the story of Sandra, who in 2011 started dating a man who called himself David. David was isolating Sandra from her friends and family until she ultimately disappeared in 2015. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, I highly suggest you do so before diving into this one. It ended with Sandra's ex-husband, Mark, learning about another woman that David,

whose real name was Robert, had disappeared with in 2002. A woman named Kim Adams. Today, I wanna start at the beginning of Robert's story because Sandra was not the first woman that he had vanished with. She wasn't the second or third either. This was a disturbing pattern that he had been repeating for nearly 20 years.

And before we jump in, I have some exciting news. We're off next week. That's not the exciting part. I'm actually pretty bummed about that. But while we won't have a new episode, we are launching an Apple subscription for the show. This will let you listen ad-free, get the extra monthly bonus episode

and the archived episodes all from within the Apple Podcast app. It's called Heart Starts Prouding Premium and the sub will be $4.99. They wouldn't let me round up to $5 so it is an entire cent cheaper than the base Patreon tier, which gives you all the same stuff. I know a lot of you don't use Patreon, but you may still want the extra content and ad-free listening, so stay tuned for that on the Apple podcast app. And if you're already listening ad-free on Patreon,

that is awesome. Thank you, Rogue Detecting Society members, especially those who have joined the High Council and are getting our new weekly footnotes episode. In this week's footnotes, we talk more about this story and we talk about the scams that you guys told us you've fallen for, as well as ones that we've fallen for ourselves.

And yes, of course, if you're listening to the ad supported version of this podcast, thank you also, because our sponsors make the show possible. Okay, all of that aside, let's dive straight back in. And as always, listener discretion is advised. Our story starts in England, 1993, at the Harper Adams Agricultural College, one of the leading agricultural programs in the world. In a pub off campus, two students, Sarah Smith and Maria Hendy,

arrived to grab a drink with Sarah's boyfriend, fellow student John Atkinson. He had called them in a panic earlier that day, saying they needed to meet. He had something to tell them. Sarah nervously fiddles with her drink, waiting for him to arrive. It wasn't like John to do something like this. And Maria keeps trying to calm her down. It's fine, he's probably just stressed about finals. The door to the pub swings open and John walks in.

He looks pale and anxious, not his usual chipper self. He sits down, takes a sharp breath, and gets right to it. I'm terminally ill. The words hit like a ton of bricks. You're joking, Sarah says, shocked. But his facial expression stays somber and serious. This can't be happening, Sarah thinks. When did John even go to the doctor? He had never told her about feeling sick in the first place. And now, well, what? She was just supposed to accept that he was gonna die?

She had so many questions, but the first one she got out was, is there no treatment? Sarah asks, but John explains that there's nothing doctors can do. Sarah doesn't buy that. Surely there's something, a second opinion they can get. She'll go with him to the doctor's visits, whatever he needs. John just says no.

He's come to terms with the diagnosis. How long do you have? Tears started welling in Sarah's eyes. Just a couple of weeks, John says, looking at the ground. But he explains, there's something I want to do with the time I have left. I want us all to take one last trip as friends. a road trip. Sarah and Maria still had classes. What about finals? But ultimately they decided that this was far more important

than any test. So they agreed, went back to their dorms, packed their bags and went to go find John's car. The day had already been shocking to Sarah. She was still trying to make sense of what was happening. So maybe that's why she didn't say anything when she brought her bags down to John's car and there was a stranger waiting there with John.

A tall guy with dark hair and bushy eyebrows around their age. This is my friend Robert, John said. He'll be joining us. Sarah and Maria don't know anything about Robert Hendy Freegard yet. He hasn't become the man that Sandra met in 2011, but their road trip with him shared some strange similarities to Sandra's trip to Spain.

During the entire road trip, Robert drove the car and played a Duran Duran cassette tape on a loop. Sarah remembered feeling nauseous, listening to the same songs over and over and over again. But she put on a brave face for John. She wanted to make these last few weeks of his life special. She thought that Robert's behavior during this trip was strange. If John wanted him there, that was his decision, but Sarah would have preferred it just be the three friends. Robert never wanted to be in any of the pictures

being taken, instead he insisted that he be the one taking the photographs. And then, sometimes in between replays of the one Duran Duran tape, he would throw on the radio and catch news about the IRA's attacks on England. The Irish Republican Army had taken up arms against England again to end English rule

in Northern Ireland. The news at the time was mostly stories of outbreaks of violence as the IRA fought for independence, car bombings, kidnappings, shootouts. Whenever the group heard anything about Irish terrorists being captured in England, John and Robert would give each other these knowing looks. It was hard to tell what they were thinking. 10 days into the trip, Sarah started wondering how much longer this was going to go on for. She was starting to miss her family, but she didn't want to leave John.

It was on that day, Robert pulled over to the side of the road and got everyone out of the car. He had something he wanted to tell them. We're not able to go back to college, Robert said. It's not safe. Wait, what do you mean? Sarah asked. John took a deep breath

and what he said next shocked the girls. I'm not really dying of cancer. I needed to tell you something that would get you away from campus. You wouldn't have understood, but we're not safe there. The truth is I'm an MI5 agent, Robert Juddidin, tasked with catching Irish terrorists near campus. It's no longer safe for us to go back.

Sarah didn't know what to make of this. So she started pacing back and forth, unable to process this new information. Can you prove any of this? Prove that you're MI5. Prove that we can't go back to campus, anything. Robert told her that he knew exactly how much money she had in her bank account, and that was because he worked for the government. That seemed to be the only proof he could offer

at the time. John could see how anxious the two girls were getting, so he decided to start at the beginning and tell them how he got them into this mess. So earlier in 1992, a student at their university named Kevin O'Donnell was killed in the Clinno Ambush. He had been part of a small group of IRA volunteers who attacked a security base and then were killed by the British Army while trying to escape. Before that, Kevin was found near their campus with bombs and ammo in his car. It was terrifying for John to think

that Irish terrorists were that close to campus. Shortly after, one of John's Irish friends took his own life. So one night, John was drinking at a pub near campus when he started chatting with the bar man who was Rob. John mentioned his friend dying and how nervous he was that IRA terrorists could be infiltrating their campus. Robert confirmed all of his fears.

He told him that he was an MI5 agent tasked with finding IRA sleeper cells and confirmed that they were on campus. He also told him that his friends didn't take his own life. He was murdered. It sounded unbelievable, but Robert was a really convincing guy. He told John that because his school was for agriculture, it had massive amounts of fertilizer on campus. And what do you need to make bombs? Oftentimes,

fertilizer. A lot of it. To John, it made sense that there would be terrorists on campus trying to gain access to their supply. Robert then recruited John to help him hunt terrorists, teaching him how to take a punch and tasking him with writing down all the license plate numbers near the fertilizer reserves on campus. If you're wondering how Rob taught John how to take a punch, well, he punched John a lot.

John lived in a house with three other people, Sarah, Maria, and another one of his friends, Jeff. One day, Robert told him that Jeff was suspected of being an Irish terrorist. It was no longer safe for them to be living in that house, and John needed to convince the girls to leave by any means necessary. Jeff must have told other IRA volunteers

that John was training with Robert and now there was a bounty on his head. And that's why I told you both I was dying of cancer. He tells Sarah and Maria on the side of the road. You may be thinking that this is wild. How could anyone believe this guy? And I'm not gonna lie. It's hard to understand why after hearing all of this,

Sarah gets back in the car with Robert and John. I don't know if she knows why she did that either. It all sounded so ridiculous to her. But her boyfriend was pleading with them. He looked legitimately terrified that people were out to kill him, and she didn't have any reason to not trust him. She had heard about the Irish bombings on the radio. She knew that their school had supplies to make bombs and was possibly a target. Sarah didn't know that this decision was going to alter the trajectory of the rest of her life,

but in that moment, she hopped back in the car, starting to believe she was on the run from the IRA. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. I'll be the first to admit that some of the relationships I'm most proud of in my life take work to maintain. There's this misconception that relationships have to be easy to be right. But anyone who has a family knows that not every relationship is easy. Sometimes the best relationships are the ones that both people actively work on. And therapy can be a great place to do that.

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That's better help H-E-L-P dot com slash stay curious. Back in 2015, Mark, Sandra's ex-husband, had figured out that David Hendy was really Robert Hendy Freeguard, an international con man who had disappeared with the mother of his children. So he decides to pick up the phone and call the police. But there's a few problems with this. The biggest one is that Sandra is an adult who seemed to have left on her own accord. The police were not really interested in investigating this since it didn't seem like Sandra was

kidnapped. Mark pleads with the police. You don't understand. She's being manipulated and financially abused. Eventually, he gets the police to take him seriously, and they agree to try and find her. And within a few weeks, he gets a phone call. The police relay that they were able to locate Sandra

and they told her everything Mark told them. And what did she say? Mark asks. She says she knows who he is and doesn't wanna leave, the police tell him. And with that, they close her case. leave the police tell him. And with that, they close her case. Back in 1993 now, Robert is still driving non-stop around the countryside with three college students. Sarah's father, Peter, waits anxiously by his door. He's been

worried. He hasn't heard from Sarah in a while and her university has called him to notify him that Sarah hasn't been in classes. Her car has been sitting untouched in the parking lot. But earlier that day, Sarah called him. She told him she needed to see him and that she'd been traveling around with some friends and they wanted to stop at his house to talk to him. Of course, Peter says. All of it was so unlike her,

and her father couldn't help but think something was up. That fear was confirmed when she arrived around midnight. Rob got out of the car first and introduced himself. He did most of the talking that evening, and Peter noticed how confident he was, almost cocky. He sat there sipping coffee like he was on a late night show. Peter also noticed that Sarah hardly spoke.

John cut in and got right to the point. He tells Peter that he's dying of cancer and that he's taking a trip with some of his friends in his last few weeks. Now, Peter was a farmer. He had worked with animals his entire life. He knew what it looked like when an animal got sick and didn't have much time left.

John looked, comparatively, perfectly fine. How bad is it? Peter asked. John couldn't answer that. He just sat there, looking for something to say. So instead, the group got up quickly and took off. Peter said if he had more time to think it through, he wouldn't have let Sarah leave, but he was confused by what was happening. He watched as the car took off into the night with a sinking feeling in his chest. Remember, this was the early 90s.

Sarah didn't have a cell phone. There was no way for her father to get in touch with her unless she gave him an address or phone number for where she'd be, but she didn't. One thing Peter did have though, was her credit card statements, because he still paid those for her. And when the first one comes in the next month, he notices a strange pattern. Sarah is making all sorts of expensive purchases all over the entire country.

She'd buy a men's suit in one location and then charge a hotel room hundreds of kilometers away just a few hours later. It seemed like she was constantly moving, never staying in one location for longer than one or two nights. It also appeared she was paying the way for the entire group.

The debt was racking up, which was not typical behavior for Sarah. And then, weeks later, Sarah calls Peter and tells him she's not going back to school, ever. She doesn't plan on graduating. Actually, she got a really good job at a top firm and will be starting that soon, so he doesn't have to worry about her. But Peter is worried. Sarah sounds nervous and rehearsed as she's telling him this.

Because what was really happening was Robert stood over Sarah as she made that phone call. He had scripted something for her to tell her father so he'd know she wasn't returning to school. No, Robert had other plans for her. For the last few weeks, Robert had been telling Sarah and the group that they were being closely followed by the IRA

and their lives were at risk. He couldn't use any of his own money or credit cards, of course, so he needed Sarah to put everything on her card, all of the meals, all the hotels, new clothing that Robert needed for disguises. And finally, after months of that, he told them he was taking them to a safe house that was bugged by MI5, so they should be safe there.

However, they'd have to completely change their identities. So Sarah cut her hair into a messy pixie cut, dyed it white blonde, and started going by Betty. Robert was also hyper-controlling of the group's routine. John describes it as, he would wake up early, go to work, wait for Robert to pick him and the two girls up from their waitressing jobs they got, and then Robert would drive them around for hours to get the IRA off their tracks until midnight when he would finally let them go home and sleep. That would repeat for days and days on end.

The group was so sleep deprived that they had trouble thinking. It was making them delirious. Sleep deprivation is a tactic that's used by many high control groups to maintain their control over people. It's clear at this point that Robert was exuding an extreme amount of influence over this group.

At this point, none of them had made contact with any other agents at MI5 or had any run-ins with IRA terrorists, and yet they still believed every day that their lives were in danger. Jim Jones, leader of the Jonestown cults that committed mass suicide in Guyana in 1978, once told one of his followers, quote, let's keep them poor and tired. Because if they're poor, they can't escape. And if they're tired, they can't make plans.

Many of his followers gave him all of their money before moving with him deep into a remote jungle. There, they were forced to work grueling hours and weren't allowed to get more than a few hours of sleep each night. Though the conditions were terrible and life in the cult was largely without any benefits, hardly anyone left. But while Robert is doing this to the group, an officer at Scotland Yard, Detective Bob

Brandon, starts looking into him. He had gotten a tip from a woman that Robert had defrauded her out of 30,000 pounds by convincing her he was an MI5 agent. It takes Detective Brandon less than a week to get a letter from MI5, confirming that Robert is in fact not a secret agent. I know, shocking.

He's heard about the missing students as well and that they were last seen with Robert. So he starts looking around Hendy Freegarde's past. He calls contacts and old places of employment. And the stories he hears are shocking. He hears about Leslie Gardner, a woman that Robert defrauded for 16,000 pounds over the course of six years, and Caroline Cowper,

a woman he had wooed with expensive trips and lavish gifts. He had convinced her to give him money to lease a car for her, but the car never showed up. He told her that the Polish mafia had stolen it. Robert had also stolen 14,000 pounds directly from her bank account. Detective Brandon also hears about the time that he had a woman named Elizabeth Richardson

so brainwashed that she slept in a public park and survived off nothing but slices of candy bars and water from public toilets. While this was happening, Robert was buying himself extravagant gifts with the money she was giving him from loans she had taken out. This is bigger than Detective Brandon thought

and he launches an official investigation into Robert. But Robert moved locations every few days and hardly ever used the same SIM card. Though he wasn't MI5, he was acting like a spy, which probably was even more convincing to the women. It was going to be a challenge just finding him. What started as a few weeks on the road slowly morphed into months, which turned into years. Years of moving locations, changing names and styles,

five years into the college students being on the run, Robert made the group separate and kept them on their own. Sarah sat in a house by herself all day, while Robert told her what she could wear, where she could go, and collecting all of the money she made from her job. At one point, he convinced her she needed to get her 200,000 pound inheritance from her parents

to give to Robert for her protection. This would be necessary to keep her and her friends alive, he said. She didn't even know where her friends were. What if something happened to them? After months of calling her parents in tears and begging them for the money, they finally agreed to give her her inheritance. But then for their own well-being, they cut off contact with her.

What Sarah didn't know was that Maria was being kept in another safe house under Robert's control, where she gave birth to two of Robert's children. Robert's tempers were also becoming more erratic and violent. He broke one of Maria's teeth, and when he brought her to the dentist, he forced her to tell him that she had fallen down the stairs. If the students weren't going to leave before

when they were together, it was going to be way harder to leave now that they were all separated, was going to be way harder to leave now that they were all separated, cut off from the outside world and living in fear of Robert's wrath. As for John, well, he was tasked with continuing to ask his family for money

to ensure his protection. Robert would use this money to keep them in a protective program and make sure the IRA would never find them. If they did, they would all be killed. John's family only ever heard from him when he was in dire need of money, and they were really scared. They could hear in his voice how afraid for his life he was, so they sent over large amounts at a time. 15,000 pounds, 20,000 pounds, 40. How much do you think John's family paid Robert?

Who was, mind you, using all of this money to fund his lifestyle? How much would your parents pay if they thought your life was at risk? All in, John believes his family gave Robert around 400,000 pounds. But this all changed when, after a few years, Robert let John visit his family farm for a short amount of time. John fully believed that while he was there, the IRA would come kill him. He spent every moment on the farm looking over his shoulder

and waiting for Robert to call with further instructions. But days went by and no one ever showed up and Robert never contacted him. That's when it finally sunk in for John that none of this was real. It was devastating. He had his family send all of their money to this guy for his protection.

He even roped in his girlfriend and her friend, had them running around the country for years in fear. It was years of their lives that they would never get back. They never graduated. They never hit any big life milestones. While their friends were out going to pubs, hanging out and moving on with their lives, the three of them were locked away in fake safe houses,

convincing their families to send money to Robert. John figured that Robert was just done with him. Perhaps he had found a new group of young impressionable college students that he could dupe. Whatever the reason, John needed to help Sarah and Maria. He needed to try and make right some of the damage he had done. The only problem was he had no idea where they were.

So he did the only thing he could think to do, and he wrote Sarah's dad a long letter explaining everything. The fake cancer, the fake MI5 training, the fraud, the mind control, and how now, they needed to save Sarah. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. So the other day, my husband was looking at our bills and he was like, why do you subscribe to insert random newspaper here?

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Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com.hsp. That's rocketmoney.com.hsp. Rocketmoney.com.hsp. When Sarah's father received word from John that confirmed Robert, the man she had been missing with for at this point, nine years was a fraud, he called Detective Bob Brandon. Peter hadn't spoken to his daughter

since she demanded her 200,000 pound inheritance so she could give it to Robert. But now he had confirmation that she was being manipulated and intimidated into doing whatever Robert wanted. There's not much information out there on exactly what happened, but we do know that at some point in the eighth or ninth year of being held captive, Maria left with the two kids she had with Robert.

So now, Sarah is the only member of the group left in Robert's captivity. She's being held alone, though, so she doesn't know that John and Maria have gone back to their lives. She also doesn't know that Bob Brandon has gotten to work finding where she is. He's able to find Robert's mother's house, and in the driveway, there's a car registered to another home in London. The owner of that home is a man named Simon, and he tells Detective Brandon that he doesn't know where Robert is, but he thinks that his ex-girlfriend, Kim Adams, is with him. And that brings us to where we were at the end of the last episode.

Kim, an American woman who told her job she was dying of cancer, is off somewhere in Europe with Robert. So while Sarah was being held captive, he was recruiting more victims. Was Kim also being held captive somewhere like Sarah? How many other women were locked away if that was the case? What made Kim's case a little different from Sarah's though, is that Kim's parents were

still in contact with Kim and Robert. Every now and then, they would hear from the two, usually when Kim needed money. Remember, they were telling Kim's parents that she was failing her MI5 tests and asking for more money. Maybe that's why Robert hadn't cut them off completely. Bob Brandon, along with the FBI, knew they could use this to their advantage. So they start tracking the calls that come into Kim's parents.

However, they realize that Robert and Kim are constantly moving around. They'll be in one country for a night and then end up in another by the next evening. Police realized they were never going to be able to travel to Robert. They were going to have to bring him to them. On May 23rd, 2003, Kim's mother gets off a long haul flight from Phoenix to London Heathrow. She couldn't sleep at all on the plane, or for the nights leading up to the trip really. The anxiety of what she was about to do was crippling. When she gets off the plane and enters the airport, she looks up at one of

the security cameras inside of the terminal. She can't see them, but right now, dozens of agents, both FBI and Scotland Yard, are watching her every move. Detective Bob Brandon is outside the airport in a surveillance truck. Another truck of FBI agents, idols in a parking lot, hooked up to a radio, listening intently. As Kim's mother starts walking to baggage claim, she can sense about a dozen plain clothesmen trailing behind her, dragging roller bags filled with nothing. They're all undercover metropolitan police. Kim's mom clutches her bag. It's not full of $10,000,

but she needs to appear as if it is. Earlier, she had arranged a meeting with Robert at the encouragement of the FBI. She told him that she would bring $10,000 cash to Heathrow in hopes that she would be able to see her daughter. Robert took the bait and agreed to meet her. Things were not going as planned that day. Kim's mom didn't know it,

but as she was walking over to the Starbucks they agreed to meet at, Robert and Kim still hadn't arrived. The FBI was getting anxious. What if he had caught onto their plan and fled again? They waited and waited until finally someone saw a tall man with dark hair and bushy eyebrows moving towards the Starbucks.

He seemed anxious and shifty. And more importantly, he was alone. Where was Kim? She was supposed to be with him. What if she was in a fake safe house somewhere like Sarah? What would they do then? How would they even find her? Brandon told everyone to stand down. Even though their target was in sight, they couldn't do anything about it until they knew where Kim was. Kim's mom greets Robert, gives

him a hug, and then sneaks off to the bathroom to call Brandon. Robert told her that Kim was sitting in a car on the top level of the parking garage. She was going to leave the airport with him to go see her. Undercover officers drove to the parking garage and sure enough, a woman matching Kim's description was sitting inside of a parked car. Robert walked her mother over to the vehicle. Her daughter looked worried and thin. She had bags under her eyes like she hadn't been sleeping.

She looked in that moment, just how her mother looked after over a year of constant worrying about Kim. And that's when she heard the sound of two dozen officers stampeding behind her, drawing their weapons and screaming for Robert to put his hands behind his head. A few officers helped Kim out of the car and started explaining everything to her.

Robert wasn't an MI5 agent, he was a con man. She wasn't actually in any danger, she was safe now. Kim didn't say anything. She just looked confused and overwhelmed. It was like the look some people get right after a concussion, like their brain is trying to figure out what just happened. She stayed silent as she was carted off with her mother. Robert, on the other hand, was brought to the police station

and the police asked him where Sarah was located, but Robert wouldn't tell them. He insists that he has no idea what they're talking about. But on Robert are two important pieces of evidence. There's a scrap of paper with the name Ronnie and a phone number written on it and a key for the Buffalo Hotel in the French Alps. When Scotland Yard and the FBI arrive at the room associated with that key, they find the locked suitcase full of other women's passports. One of the passports they find is for a woman named Renata Keaster.

Renata. Renata. Could that be who Ronnie is from the scrap of paper? They cross their fingers and call the number, and a woman with a thick Eastern European accent answers. It's Renata. She agrees to come down to the station and meet with the police, though she tells them that years ago,

she had been told that if anyone ever asked about her and Robert Hendy Free Guard, she was supposed to pretend she didn't know who he was. She tells Brandon that she met Robert in 2000 when he was a car salesman, and he convinced her to buy a new car that she couldn't afford. And then he went on to tell her

that he was really an MI5 agent and over the course of three years, he stole more than 20,000 pounds from her. And then one day, he just disappeared. A little over a year later though, he gave her a call. He told her that he knew a woman that was down on her luck and needed a place to live. Her name was Carrie.

And if Renata took her in, she would act as her housekeeper. So Renata agreed and Carrie came to live with her. Carrie though was strange and quiet, Renata told the police. She never wanted her picture to be taken, but Renata did have one photo where Carrie could be seen in the background.

In that photo, Carrie stands off to the side with her hands in her pockets and her head down. She has a shaggy, mid-length haircut that's been box-dyed red. It all looks like it was done in a bathroom sink impulsively. And though her hair is different, when the police see this photo, there's no question in their mind that this woman is Sarah.

Renata takes them to her home and sure enough, Sarah is inside. She said it was jarring for her when she opened the door and Detective Brandon said, hello, Sarah. She hadn't been called that in almost a decade. He went on to tell her that she wasn't under any threat, that Robert was a con man, not a secret agent, and that her friends were safe and back with their families. They asked her to get her belongings. She was going home.

She had nothing with her besides the clothes on her back. She hadn't spoken to her parents in years and they hadn't seen her since 1993, 10 years ago at this point, but they welcomed her back with open arms. All was forgiven. On September 5th, 2005, Robert was sentenced to life in prison.

It felt like a huge win for the victims. Maria, Sarah, Renata, and Kim actually all went and got drinks together to celebrate. It was an important part of their path towards healing, but at least now they knew that Robert wasn't going to torture any other women. But if that were the case, then he wouldn't have been able to take off with Sandra,

would he? Robert's case was appealed and it was ultimately ruled that each of the women had left on their own accord. There was no kidnapping that had taken place. His life sentence was revoked and in May of 2009, Robert was released. It would be just over two years later that he would meet Sandra. But it would be Sandra's family's persistence

that would eventually lead to some of the justice that victims were looking for. See, Mark, Sophie, and Jake's fight was not finished. More on that after the break. after the break. After the police told Mark that Sandra chose to stay with Robert, he didn't give up. He spent the next eight years fighting for answers.

Eventually, he found that her phone was still pinging somewhere in France. He didn't know exactly where she was though, and without the help of police, it was going to be nearly impossible to find. So he got to doing his own research, scrubbing through the internet to find any trace of Robert and Sandra in France.

And then one day, he gets a hit. He sees a picture of a man with dark, bushy eyebrows holding a purebred beagle that he had bred for dog shows. It's Robert. He learns that Robert was in the business of buying and selling pedigree dogs for shows. One woman who knows Robert gets in touch with Mark. She has some information that he may want.

The woman had been selling beagles online when she met a man calling himself Robert Clifton. He reached out to her to tell her that the dog she was selling weren't very good quality and he said he could help her improve the quality of the puppies by bringing her thoroughbred beagles from France. The woman agreed to get into business with Robert. But soon after, Robert told her all of the dogs he was bringing her were sick and needed lots and lots of trips to the vet. He kept requesting money for vet visits, 100 pounds here, 300 pounds there.

There were DNA tests the dogs needed, 500 pounds gone. The woman paid the fees, but she told Mark that she never had formal invoices from the vet. It wasn't until her friend raised an alarm that she had any idea she was being scammed. But when she told Robert she was going to call the police, he told her that Sandra worked high up in the police force and wouldn't take her call seriously. Sandra, mind you, has never worked for the police in her life. The woman had never interacted directly with Sandra,

but was instructed to send the money directly into her account. So Mark knew that Robert was in France, but he had no proof that she was safe or even alive. What if she was being held hostage like Sarah? Well, in 2020, Jake saw his mother on a Zoom call. He was trying to keep her old home and the family. He didn't wanna give control of the house

back over to his mom and Robert because he knew that Robert would sell it and pocket the money immediately. Sandra chose to take him to court in the middle of the pandemic and when Jake logged on to Zoom, there his mother was. She hadn't spoken to him in about seven years and their first interaction in that time was her accusing him of trying to steal her money. Ultimately, the judge decided in her favor and within a few weeks, Robert sold her house. Now the family was running out of options. They knew where Robert was,

they just had no way to get to him. The police still felt that Sandra was with him of her own accord and wouldn't take any action. And eventually the pandemic restrictions started subsiding, making travel easier again. Mark knew how much Robert moved around and he doubted that he would actually be able to find him

even if he was to go to France. But then in 2022, there was a break in the case. On August 5th of 2022, French police officers and animal rights inspectors were heading to Robert's property to investigate a tip they had gotten about an illegal dog breeding facility. When they got there, they came upon a rundown house in the middle of the forest, isolated from the community. They found Robert, Sandra, and 30 beagles they

had been illegally breeding. The group had a chat and it was decided that Robert and Sandra would need to drive with them down to the nearest police station for more questioning. Robert told them he would take his own car and follow them, but when he and Sandra got into the vehicle, they sped off, but when he and Sandra got into the vehicle, they sped off, hitting two of the officers during the escape. One of them became attached to the bumper and was dragged 100 meters by the car, breaking his nose in the process.

The officers weren't able to catch up with Robert and Sandra, so what followed was a full-fledged investigation into the attempted murder of a public servant. Neighbors were reportedly shocked by the whole thing. They didn't really know what was going on at Robert's property, but they did know they had a lot of dogs and a girlfriend that no one ever saw. Sandra stayed in the house all day, every day, while Robert would make frequent trips to England. in the house all day, every day, while Robert would make frequent trips to England.

On September 2nd, Belgian police near Brussels recognized a car that matched the description of a vehicle that hit officers in France, driving on the E40 motorway. When they pulled it over, Robert was inside and he was immediately arrested. He's currently awaiting sentencing, but could face over 30 years in prison for the attempted murder charges.

Nothing he is convicted of relates to his conning or the damage he did to Sandra. The women he abused may never see justice for those crimes. And last year, the French police put out an article saying they believe that more victims may be out there. There may be women falsely imprisoned in other fake safe houses who do not know that Robert's been arrested.

If that's the case, they may stay in their safe houses until they starve, too afraid to leave. As for Sondra, the last update we have on her is that she did return home to the UK after Robert's arrest. So be careful, everyone. We live in an age where scamming is easier than ever, and it's common to think that this could never happen to you or your loved ones. But it does.

Each of these women were just like many of us. Some were college educated, some had good jobs, some had strong and healthy family connections, and all of them fell into the trap of a con artist. If you want more information on the case, you should check out the Puppet Master on Netflix. It's a deep dive into the crimes of Robert Hendy Free Guard and some of the victims are able to tell their stories. It's still an ongoing case and it was hardly talked about until the documentary came out

a few years ago. Okay, as a reminder, we're off next week but if you want more content, you can check us out on Patreon or Apple subscriptions, and I will see you the week after that. And as always, have a great Valentine's Day. This has been Heart Starts Pounding, written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Sound Design and Mixed by Peach Tree Sound.

Additional producing by Matt Brown Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jornigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. And a special thanks to all our new Patreons. You will be thanked in the monthly newsletter. Have a heart pounding story of your own or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. That's also where you can sign up

for the monthly newsletter. Until next time, stay curious.