A younger person getting together with an older (and often, more affluent) person and wanting to get their hands on the older person’s money is nothing new. We have terms for it, like ‘gold-digger’. What makes this story rather more unusual is the sheer, contemptuous and unalloyed greed, coupled to the heartless contempt. It seems that Field’s victims meant nothing to him at all.

As my account here will attest, this criminal seems not to have any shame, any empathy or indeed any interest in anyone but himself: Everyone else on the planet appears merely to be there for him to exploit. …

The forces of law and order were looking into a possible case of people smuggling. A Police Officer with great instincts spotted something else along the way. Following up that hunch has resulted in Police Officers bringing a different criminal to book. The criminal detected along the way is Thomas Maher, a prolific international drugs smuggler.

Background to the story

In October 2019, news organisations worldwide reported the tragic story of 39 apparent migrants being found dead in the back of a truck at Byfleet, Essex in England. …

In a joint operation between Netherlands, French and British Police in 2019/20, the authorities were able to ‘break’ the EncroChat encrypted communications system, compromising the security and gaining access to the network’s traffic.

Police officers in all three countries have declined to give much information on how they achieved access to this secured traffic.

There were 60,000 users of the system. While some were undoubtedly innocent of any crime, there were European and probably other criminals using the system to discuss, plan and execute crimes. …

One partner finding it hard to accept when a relationship breaks down is not that unusual. There can often be shouting, tears and unkind or downright unfair things said, and sadly, sometimes even physical violence. In that respect, this is just another case, but this case illustrates different behaviour.

In the early hours of the morning of New Years Day, 2020, Rhys Hancock went to his mother’s house in Duffield in the English county of Derbyshire. Hancock woke his mother up, wanting to talk to her.

He wanted to discuss his estranged wife, Helen Hancock. Helen, a PE teacher, was still living in the marital home on New Zealand Road, Etwell, whilst Hancock, a headmaster at a Special School, had moved back in with Denise Hancock, his mother, after separating from his wife. …

At almost the same time on opposite sides of the Atlantic, two people wanting to see their significant others crossed the water to get to them, headed to remote islands and ended up in jail. In both cases, the British-territory islands were under COVID restrictions, and the visitors fell foul of local rules and regulations. Also, in both cases, the visitors ended up in jail.

On November 27th and after a negative COVID test before departing and another negative test on arrival, 18-year-old American Skyler Mack flew from the USA to Grand Cayman, the largest island in the British-territory Cayman Islands in the western Caribbean. …

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the White House

Not a creature was stirring, not even a POT-US

No Rudi sleigh’d in, bringing legal good cheers

As his face melted fast (Don II slayed the reindeer)

And as FLOTUS just flounced and did wardrobe unpacking

So POTUS sent Tweets about Cabinet sackings

FLOTUS sipped at mulled wine in the re-worked Rose Garden

Whilst POTUS just whined and mulled on self-pardons

And while Kayleigh announced POTUS’s hundred millions

Of votes had been flipped, by machines from Dominions

But law suits were lost fast as immigrants kids

And the chances of winning were now on the…

The Dorset Constabulary Police Officer, Timothy Brehmer, was 41-years-old when he got into an argument with his long-term lover. It was about 3 pm on May 9th, 2020. Claire Parry, had been looking through his phone, purportedly looking for messages from another woman who she thought Brehmer was sleeping with (and she was right — there were others). She was taking the opportunity to text “I’m cheating on you from Brehmer’s phone to his wife, Martha, who was a detective officer in the same force as her husband.

Police Constable Brehmer and Nurse Claire Parry sat in his Citroen C1 car, in the car park of a pub, the Horns Inn at West Parley, Dorset. Brehmer had told his wife that he was going out to buy steak for a barbeque dinner they were planning, but he was secretly going to meet his lover. …

Who is Joseph McCann?

Joseph McCann had convictions stretching back nearly 20 years when the then 34-year-old began his ‘spree’ campaign of cocaine-and-vodka-fuelled rapes in 2019.

His previous convictions, which had resulted in prison time, included violent offending as well as a property crime such as burglary. The Courts had not convicted McCann of any sexual offences. Critically, however, the Probation Service and Prison Officers failed properly to share or act on information that should have warned of his propensity to commit such crimes.

Personnel changes, inexperienced probation staff, weak management and poor handoffs, with other mistakes, allowed this man largely to disappear after his early release from prison. He began a ‘spree’ of offences including eight rapes, sometimes of children, as well as threatening victims with extreme violence. He had been released from prison only in February 2019 and was committing these offences in April and May of the same year. …