A British conman who featured in a Netflix documentary will go on trial on Thursday accused of deliberately ramming two French police officers with his car as he attempted a getaway.
Robert Hendy-Freegard, 53, nicknamed the Puppet Master because of his career as a serial swindler, made his escape after injuring the gendarmes at his home in the Creuse in central France.
He was later arrested in Belgium and extradited to France, where he has been held in jail since 2022.
Hendy-Freegard was convicted and given life imprisonment in the UK in 2005 for kidnapping and fraud, including cheating a number of women out of more than £1m.
He convinced his victims he was a secret agent for MI5 and was on the run from terrorist organisations. He was freed in 2009 after his conviction for kidnapping was overturned by an appeal court.
Some time around 2015, he moved to a remote house in village of Vidaillat in the Creuse, and established himself as a dog breeder with his British partner, Sandra Clifton.
When French workplace and animal rights inspectors, accompanied by gendarmes, visited the property on 25 August 2022 to inspect the kennels after complaints from neighbours that he was running an illegal business, Hendy-Freegard allegedly jumped in his Audi A3 in an attempt to escape, hitting the officers in the process.
An injured female officer, reportedly carried 100 yards on the vehicle bonnet who suffered a broken nose, was signed off work for 21 days and her male colleague for six days. Hendy-Freegard was arrested two weeks later after his car was stopped by Belgian police on the E40 motorway at Grand Bigard near Brussels.
While at the kennels, the officers discovered his partner, Clifton, living at the property. Neighbours had previously alerted the authorities over a woman being held in “awful conditions” at the house but as the woman told police there was no cause for concern, inquiries were dropped.
Clifton is believed to have since returned to the UK and declined to press charges.
Hendy-Freegard, the central figure in Netflix’s 2022 documentary, The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman, who also inspired a fiction film called Rogue Agent starring James Norton and Gemma Arterton, faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted of deliberately injuring the law enforcement officers.
During an earlier hearing, Hendy-Freegard’s lawyer Juliette Magne-Gandois said he had “always denied any intent to kill anyone”, a charge carrying a sentence of up to 30 years. AFP reported Magne-Gandois has since stopped representing him.
During his London trial, the court was told Hendy-Freegard lived by the motto: “Lies have to be big to be convincing.” One of his victims recalled him taking her from a supposed “safe house” with a bucket over her head, having to hide in cupboards to avoid visitors, and spending three weeks in a locked bathroom with little to eat.
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