‘Sadistic’ drug dealer tortured captive woman
A drug dealer “bully” who held two women captive and tortured one of them has been jailed for 19 years after being extradited from Thailand to the UK to face justice.
Durham Crown Court heard Vincent Agar, now 80, used knives, boiling water, cigarettes and tools to carry out “sadistic” acts against a woman in Middlesbrough between 1998 and 2000 and threatened to shoot another.
Both women have since said they were disturbed by his actions.
Agar, who was previously jailed for injuring his partner, denied the crime but was found guilty of offenses including causing grievous bodily harm with intent and false imprisonment.
Prosecutor Rebecca Brown said Agar was a crack cocaine dealer in his 50s who targeted the first woman, a vulnerable drug addict in her 20s, for “revenge” after stealing from her.
The court heard the attacker tied her unconscious to a house on Clarendon Road and began attacking her with weapons.
Brown said that in addition to attacking her, he also threatened to smash her hands with a wrench in behavior tantamount to “sadistic” and “torture”.
Agar also pretended to make phone calls, saying that the woman’s dead body would soon be ready for collection.
The court heard that after Agar went out to buy drugs, the woman managed to escape about eight hours later by climbing out of the window.
But the court heard her attacker captured her again at a later date and detained her at his home in Parliament Road for a further three days, attacks that left her with burns and other injuries.
Brown also cut off locks of hair that “could only be part of sadistic behavior.”
Vincent Agar was jailed at Durham Crown Court [BBC]
Brown said Agar imprisoned a second woman to “stop her talking” after seeing a young woman, a presumed “sex worker”, tied to a radiator at his home in Parliament Road.
He threatened to shoot her if she told anyone what he saw before being allowed to leave about an hour later, the court heard.
In statements read to the court, the first woman said she was a low-level drug addict when Agar appeared to her as a “knight in shining armour” offering her free drugs.
But the court heard he “greatly increased” her addiction and eventually took her captive and tortured her.
He said the violence had a huge impact on his life and that this was “a start.” [her] downward spiral”.
The woman said learning that Agar had been sentenced resulted in her “best night’s sleep in years.”
“These events have haunted me for years and I finally feel like I can move on with my life.”
‘Decades-long’ guilt
The second woman stated that her “biggest regret” was not being able to get help for the “girl” she saw tied up in Agar’s apartment, and that she was afraid of the threats Agar made to silence her.
He also said he was a “vulnerable” drug user at the time and “didn’t have much confidence in the police”.
“I lived with this guilt for decades and always hoped that the girl would get out of here alive.
“If I could meet him, I would apologize and try to explain why I didn’t do anything.”
He said the prison sentence made him unable to trust people and created a fear of being locked in any building.
The court heard Agar had 40 offenses on his criminal record, including wounding a woman he held in custody for three days and harming two other women, for which he was sentenced to four years and five months in prison.
The appeals court judge unsuccessfully appealed that conviction, saying his actions constituted “systematic cruelty” and were “nothing short of barbarism.”
‘Psychological terror’
In mitigation, Sophie Johnstone said that Agar’s life was controlled by “incessant use of crack cocaine” at the time, but that he “kicked his addiction” and moved to Thailand, where he started a family.
Before his extradition, he lived in Maret on Koh Samui, which is part of Surat Thani province.
Judge Richard Bennett said Agar was a “violent and sadistic bully who thrived and enjoyed having power over some of the most vulnerable women in our society”.
He said Agar used his position and reputation as a drug dealer in central Middlesbrough to “exert control over vulnerable women”, his “sickening and cruel” actions against the first woman using “psychological terror”.
In the second incident, he held her captive for days in his “fortress” in an apartment, leaving her permanently scarred and cutting off her hair to “humiliate and humiliate her”. said the judge.
The judge said Agar had “got away with” the “brutal” crimes he committed over more than 20 years, but his crimes had “now caught up with him” and the 80-year-old man would either die in prison or be released at an age where he “no longer poses a threat to anyone”.
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