How victims fell for the bogus spy

He first persuaded the watchmaker to provide a temporary roof over her head before switching to his favourite subject - his “hush, hush” espionage work.

“He tried to enrol me into an organisation and offered me a job as well as certain training. Yes, I was interested in doing government work like this. Of course I was. It was every schoolboy’s fantasy. Later he sent me on the training - numerous different tasks.”

One involved being sent to Manchester to buy a £1.25 can opener from a particular shop. He was given detailed instructions about which buses and trains to take, the doors and escalators to be used, and warned he would be under constant surveillance.

Mr Young thought he had passed with flying colours. Hendy-Freegard said he had failed. Next he was ordered to buy a copy of the Gay Times and read it openly on the train to London. Unfortunately, Sheffield coach station had sold out.

Nevertheless, he still headed for the capital...armed with the can opener. Following his orders to the letter, he went to a West End pub, approached the barman and asked for a particular person.

Told there was no-one of that name there, but thinking it was all part his MI5 evaluation, he desperately tried to figure out what a top spy would do. Then it came to him. Handing the surprised barman the can opener, he said: “Well, when you see him, give him this.”

Proud of his quick thinking, he returned to Sheffield and told Hendy-Freegard how he had managed the tricky situation.

Even the arch conman could not keep a straight face. Only then did the jeweller begin to suspect it was all a trick.

But to make sure he demanded a meeting with Hendy-Freegard’s bosses. A rendezvous was arranged but, not surprisingly, Mr Young was the only one there. “By that time I disbelieved everything he said,” he added.

The expectant mother

Company director Renata Kister was seven months pregnant and had just separated from her partner when she became another casualty of the conman’s “car showroom” charm.

She told how she quickly fell for his over-used chat-up lines of marriage and spy claims.

Neither did she doubt him when he insisted his MI5 bosses had ordered him to “watch someone” in the Sheffield VW dealership he was working in.

Perhaps the best treated of all his victims, she recalled: “He was extremely well-mannered, a true gentleman. And he was so funny.”

But she was still conned. First he persuaded her to buy a better car, but kept the £10,000 he got for her old one. Then he convinced her to take out a £15,000 loan for him.

Whenever she asked him for the money, he kept insisting he had not yet been paid for his secret assignment.

Miss Kister, who is Polish, said that she was also persuaded to let Miss Smith stay for a while and let her work as a cleaner. He told her the woman had fled her violent husband and was on a witness protection scheme.

But to prevent them comparing notes he said her guest was Spanish and could not speak a word of English. And he warned the former student to pretend she could not understand anything said to her for security reasons. As a result they never exchanged a word in three months.

Police found Miss Kister’s telephone number among Hendy-Freegard’s papers. But Hendy-Freegard had so thoroughly brainwashed her she initially thought the officers were part of an MI5 “loyalty test” and refused to have anything to do with them.

“It took us a long time to convince her to come to the police station,” said case officer Detective Sergeant Bob Brandon.

“And when she did and we showed her a picture of Sarah Smith she at first said she didn’t know her. It was only later she called us back to say she did.”

Finally she handed over the address of the missing woman, whose only income was cleaning other people’s homes.

The civil servant

Leslie Gardner succumbed to his advances in a Newcastle nightclub in November 1996 - and spent six years being milked of money.

Although the civil servant, now 37, was the only one not tempted by his talk of marriage, she still lost more than £16,000 to claims of IRA blackmailers, execution threats from bombers released under the Good Friday agreement, and having to buy himself out of the police.

Some of the money was supposed to kick-start a new life as a taxi driver, while one handout was apparently to help his gravely-ill mother. On one occasion she even sold her car because he needed cash to “buy off some killers”.

Later he presented her with a new VW Golf she did not really want. Three months after assuring her it had been paid for, a finance company got in touch and said unless she started meeting the £260-a-month bills, the car would be repossessed.

She felt she had no choice but agree. In the meantime, Hendy-Freegard happily pocketed his salesman’s commission. Miss Gardner is still paying.

The unfaithful wife

Newlywed Elizabeth Bartholemew was another bedroom conquest. During her “horrifying eight-year nightmare”, she betrayed her husband, risked her health, destroyed her self-respect, and lost £14,500.

It was 1995, she was 22, and her marriage just six months old when she met Hendy-Freegard.

At the time she was a sales administrator at a Vauxhall dealership in Sheffield. He was a regular customer and as their friendship grew would look after his children while he test drove a string of top-of-the range cars.

“I would not say I pursued him. It was a 50-50 ball game.”

But he gave her the attention and affection she did not get at home and bought her expensive perfume. Not only that but he “was very good in bed.”

“When he was in a good mood he was charming and couldn’t do enough for you,” she recalled. “But everything had to be precise with him. If his shirt was even slightly creased he would take it off and throw a temper tantrum. “It was like he had a trigger switch. He was like Jekyll and Hyde, a freak of nature.

“It got to the stage where his anger would make me so scared.”

Then he revealed his “other life as a secret service spy”. He told her she was in danger from IRA terrorists and ordered her to sever contact with family and friends.

On one occasion he took photographs of her naked and warned if she ever disobeyed him he would show them to her husband, whom she eventually left anyway.

He also forced her to change her name to Richardson, and tell the deed poll officer it was because she had been molested as a child.

She loved him desperately, but was told she would have to undergo various “loyalty tests” to satisfy MI5 she was worth his hand in marriage They included becoming a blonde, going without make-up and sanitary towels, sleeping in Heathrow airport for several nights at a time, and living on park benches in Peterborough for weeks during winter.

“Sometimes I could not sleep so I would just walk around to keep out of danger.”

Once he confiscated her jacket, leaving her shivering in just a T-shirt and jeans. After that she spent most days in libraries to keep warm. Another time she celebrated her 31st birthday waiting 14 hours for him at a “bitterly cold” Kettering railway station. He never turned up.

It was just another example of the “mind games” he relished.

Allowed only £1 a week to live on, Miss Richardson often survived on nothing more than a cheap loaf of bread. Because it had to last, it was often mouldy by the time it was finished.

“Then there was the time when I was living on a Mars bar a week. I cut them in slices and rationed myself to a piece a day.”

Another test involved walking through London in a full Indian wedding sari, complete with bangles and a bindi. “Everyone was gawping at me,” she recalled.

Miss Richardson, who once had to pretend to be a Jehovah’s Witness, said she was also told MI5 had given them a choice of three towns to settle in. Her mission was to tour each one, visit shops, pubs, doctor’s surgeries, and hospitals and then write an extensive report.

She finally tried to escape his clutches.

“I was scared of his temper, he intimidated me. He was like a shadow. I could never shake him off.”

Despite moving to Leeds, getting a new job, and changing her phone number, he tracked her down, warning she could never get away. Later he took her to London where the sadistic tests continued.

On his orders she took out two loans for him, the first for £6,500, the other for £8,000. Both sums were handed to him at pre-arranged meetings. Each time he pocketed the cash, announced his “MI5 superiors” wanted to see him urgently, and drove off. Eventually Miss Richardson was ordered back North.

Park benches and libraries again beckoned. Then, one day, a Good Samaritan spotted her wandering amongst the books and offered her lodgings in Dunton Bassett, Leicestershire. To the police who found her there it was a “hovel”. To Miss Richardson it was heaven.

She was emaciated and covered with eczema. And when she pulled off her boots for the first time in a month, her feet were covered in bleeding sores.

Although she finally had somewhere to live, Hendy-Freegard claimed a sniper was targeting the place. So she not only spent every evening in the dark but crawled from room to room to make it more difficult for the killer she was convinced was there. The torture continued.

“He always had such nice shoes. I never once saw him with mud or dirt on them - he was so immaculate and well-groomed - yet I had just the one pair of boots, one of which had no heel.”

By the time police found her, Hendy-Freegard had been arrested for months. Reluctantly recalling her long ordeal, she said: “I never talked to anyone about my plight.

“I was told people would be watching my every movement. I was just waiting for him to say his bosses had given the word for us to live together. But he kept saying I had failed the tests and until I passed we couldn’t even have a sexual relationship again.

“If I had known there was no truth in this MI5 thing I would have told him to f*** off. I would never have left Sheffield in a million years. I had a good job, I had friends.”

Pausing for a few seconds, she then added: “This has all been so traumatically painful for me for so long now I can’t even remember what normal life is actually like.

“He has totally ruined me, broken me. My confidence is nil. “I still have nightmares. I keep seeing his face every time I fall asleep.”

The solicitor

Four years ago Caroline Cowper was 34, a successful lawyer, drove a Mercedes and generally enjoyed life. One summer’s day she and her sister decided to splash out on new cars.

Having both set their hearts on VW Golfs, she strolled round to her local dealer - Normands, in Chiswick High Road, west London - to see what was available.

The smiling salesman not only seemed all charm, but was most definitely good-looking, she decided. She paid £20,000, traded in her £16,000 car, and gave him her phone number.

It did not take long for Hendy-Freegard to seduce her with promises of love, happiness and marriage - by now a well-tried cocktail of deceit designed to con her out of every penny she had.

She was not only swept off her feet, but so captivated by his bedroom prowess that when asked in a VW customer satisfaction form to describe the salesman’s approach she wrote “in bed”. Requested to rate his technique she replied “11 out of 10”.

Shortly afterwards he proposed and she accepted. They went shopping for an engagement ring in Hatton Garden, central London.

The diamond-encrusted creation cost £6,500 and she was impressed when Hendy-Freegard paid without batting an eyelid. She was unaware that he had secretly pocketed half the trade-in value of her old car.

Blissfully unaware she was just one of several women - including several other “fiancees” - he was sleeping with at the time, she regarded the ring as a glittering expression of his love.

Not long afterwards he borrowed £1,500 from her. To pay her back he offered her a desk of the same value. But he doctored a receipt to add a further £1,700 to its value and made her pay the balance.

Another financial fly in the ointment of romance came when her sister decided she did not want a new car. Miss Cowper asked for a refund. It never came. Then she learnt about the Mercedes money.

Nevertheless, she clung to his repeated promises that she would be refunded in full once he had received a six-figure salary cheque from his MI5 bosses.

Penthouse holidays abroad, including Brazil, followed. Her money paid for those as well. He also persuaded her to give him cash for another car which was to kick-start a leasing business she had agreed to run with him.

When the vehicle did not appear and she asked for the money back, he mentioned something about the car being used by the “Polish Mafia”.

Then, a year after their “engagement”, she discovered he had secretly plundered her building society account of nearly £14,000.

Furious, she told him it was over. By now £41,000 the poorer, she first took him to the Small Claims Court and won. Then she made him bankrupt.

But she had not finished yet. She turned detective and tracked down Maria Hendy, the mother of Hendy-Freegard’s two children, who dumped the conman after discovering his affair with Miss Cowper.

She also learnt he had targeted others, and after “piecing together bits of the jigsaw” finally went to the police.

The psychologist

By that time Hendy-Freegard had already ensnared his last victim - American Kimberley Adams, a child psychologist and author, who still has nightmares about her ordeal. The film producer’s daughter met him in August, 2002, at the west London VW dealership.

When he discovered she had a stepfather who had recently won more than $20 million (£11 million) on the lottery, he decided he had finally struck gold, and lost no time regaling her with tales of spy missions and IRA terror cells.

And just to make sure she believed him, he proudly showed off his James Bond-style Omega Seamaster timepiece, and claimed he owned an Aston Martin. After several dates the mother-of-one, whose young son attended school in America, agreed to go on holiday with him to Scotland.

She little realised she was about to join the Casanova’s growing “harem” of sexual and financial conquests.

Just weeks into the 14-month relationship came the now-very-familiar marriage proposal. She was 31, in love, said “yes” and spent £405 on a wedding dress.

As time passed he began to feed her more details about his life as a spy. “He said he was working undercover, infiltrating a very dangerous criminal network,” she recalled.

“I had no doubt he was telling the truth. He said he needed to be violent on the job and boasted about murdering a man who had discovered he was working undercover and had threatened to expose him. So he shot him in the head.

“He said he was also present at a kneecapping, and when others held another person down and drilled into his skull.”

He told her life with him would mean she, too, would have to be a spy. She barely hesitated, even though it was made clear she would have to resign from her job in Reading and be forbidden contact with her family without permission.

The psychologist was also denied post, and once had to watch as her anti-depressant pills were flushed down the toilet, never suspecting he was simply tightening the mental thumbscrews of control.

The indignities she suffered to feed his ego and lifestyle were starkly portrayed when “Get Well” cards from former colleagues were found amongst Hendy-Freegard’s belongings after his arrest. She saw them for the first time during her evidence and promptly burst into tears.

She said that when he first outlined her new life he also told her she would have to be thoroughly vetted, with MI5 and Scotland Yard examining and evaluating everything she had ever done. And that meant telling him about all her sexual encounters in detail.

When she confessed she had once happened to kiss her landlord’s friend after meeting Hendy-Freegard, he lost his temper.

“He was really furious. He said he was going to kill Paul (Heffner) and that I would have to cut off his balls. He also said I was such an awful woman it would be much better for my son to die than for me to be a mother,” said Dr Adams.

“He said if I refused to kill my son he would have to bury him alive.” He also claimed to have taken out a contract on her and the youngster.

Another time he told her she had “sacrificed my son’s life with my lies, and that by the end of the night I would be glad to be dead. I was completely terrified, physically shaking.”

There were, she said, many death threats. Hendy-Freegard decided the psychologist needed to be “taught some humility because of my behaviour with other men”.

So he sent her to live with “my very humble” mother for three months at her then home in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.

Her penance done, talk turned once more to spying. He explained that once they were married they would live in a Hebridean lighthouse for 25 years, monitoring Russian submarines in the North Sea.

But Hendy-Freegard said she would first have to undergo various “tests” and have a new identity. At first she agreed, but then began having second thoughts about the lengthy lighthouse vigil.

She told Hendy-Freegard, who said as all the arrangements had been made she would have to repay the state £80,000. But he added that if she provided £20,000 he would fund the balance.

So she phoned her father, John Adams, in Omaha, Nebraska. He flew over, but was told the money was for his daughter’s course at “spy school”.

Because he did not have the money, he turned to his ex-wife Anne Hodgins, and his daughter’s wealthy stepfather in Phoenix, Arizona. The money was quickly handed over, and ended up funding a luxury 12-week European tour for Hendy-Freegard and his fifth “fiancee”.

But by that time another lover, solicitor Miss Caroline Cowper, had become suspicious and complained to the police. Their investigations eventually unearthed Miss Adams’ name.

After discovering her stepfather’s wealth, they knew Hendy-Freegard would never let her go.

But when local Met officers approached him and her parents, they refused to co-operate. The conman had warned them such contacts would be either double agents, or MI5 agents testing their reliability.

So Scotland Yard was called in and the FBI contacted. The Bureau’s “special agent” Jaclyn Zappacosta, with 20 years experience with fraud and other white collar crime, was assigned to the US Embassy in London to help hunt the conman and his latest victim.

Case officer Detective Sergeant Bob Brandon briefed her. “He told me a story that was so extraordinary I had no option but to believe it,” she recalled.

With Dr Adams’s parents and stepfather finally on side, bank account withdrawals were examined and the couple’s phone calls from Europe taped for weeks. But neither yielded any clue as to where the pair might be.

“He was such an accomplished fraudster those avenues were dead-ended,” said Ms Zappacosta.

“This Hendy-Freegard provided quite the challenge. During all these recordings Kimberley was crying, but she would not say where she was.”

The breakthrough came when she rang to say Hendy-Freegard had told her she had failed spy school and needed £10,000 to re-sit exams.

“We worked with Scotland Yard to come up with a plan, to create a scenario,” said Ms Zappacosta. “We would provide the money as bait. Kimberley’s mother would say she would bring it to London on condition she could see her daughter was safe.”

A few days later, in May 2003, she flew into Heathrow and spent the next 24 hours being briefed and fitted with a tape recorder and transmitter.

The next day Hendy-Freegard drove to the airport, thinking she had just arrived, and took her to his car, where Kimberley was waiting. Hendy-Freegard was promptly arrested and Kimberley rescued.

“But for hours she refused to accept we were police officers,” said Met Family Liaison Officer PC Cathy Harrison. “She was immensely traumatised and found it very difficult to accept her relationship with Hendy-Freegard had been based on a complete fraud.”

Meanwhile, Hendy-Freegard refused to tell police where Sarah Smith and Elizabeth Richardson were.

Fortunately Dr Adams, who only then realised how thoroughly she had been duped, remembered the defendant kept important documents in a locked briefcase at the Chambery ski resort in the south of France.

That provided police - who feared for the safety of the other two women - with a much-need breakthrough.

First it led them to Renata Kister’s west London home, and eventually to Sarah Smith’s nearby flat, although when officer’s called round she was doing the dusting at an international rugby player’s home.

Finally, five months after Hendy-Freegard’s arrest, the paperwork helped police trace Miss Richardson. At first she, too, believed the officers were an MI5 loyalty test. It took them a long time to convince her she had been conned.