Robber is granted jail wish

A MAN who robbed two men and told one of them he was going to kill him so that he could go back to prison to study, was granted his wish at the Old Bailey yesterday.

Peter Robert Hughes, 42, an alcoholic, posed as a house buyer and lured James McFarlane, an estate agent, to an empty flat before producing a fake handgun and gagging him. Then he waited for the flat owner, Stefan Buddin to return then told him: 'You are an evil man. I've been sent to kill you because you're gay.'

After gagging and handcuffing both men, Hughes, from Tolworth, Surrey, stole Mr McFarlane's wallet and car, and Buddin's personal organiser and credit-card holder. But he turned himself in the next day, telling police that he had planned the operation because he could not cope with life on the outside.

Sentencing him to 10 years in jail, Judge Henry Pownall QC, said: 'You are devious, manipulative and above all, dangerous. The quicker you are out of circulation the better.'