FLEMING: WIFE CLEARED OVER MURDER PLOT

A woman accused of trying to murder her husband by drowning him in his yatch has walked free after a judge branded the main witness a ‘pathological liar’.

Mandy Fleming, 47, had been accused of masterminding two separate plots to carry out the killing after the couple split up and she began seeing co-defendant David Brown, 50.

She was sunk husband Adam Fleming’s £90,000 yacht, the Double Dragon, by drilling holes in its hull while it was moored in Brighton Marina in February 2004.

But an Old Bailey judge halted the prosecution after evidence sugguested that police informant Gary Smith, who claimed to have been hired as a hitman was a fanticist.

Psychiatric reports said Smith, whose false accounts as a police ‘supergrass’ led earlier this year to the collapse of a murder trial over the death of private investigator Daniel Morgan, had a tendency to tell ‘pointless lies’.

Following his conviction in 2008 of 20 crimes including conspiracy to murder, bribing police, blackmail, firearm possession and dealing cocaine, a 27-year jail term was reduced to three years because of his role as an informant.

Rejecting his evidence, Judge Richard Hone QC said his account was ‘not just unreliable but false and highly dangerous.’

He said: ‘Gary Smith is a person who is capable of inventing detailed accounts of events which never happened and shows either blatant untruthfulness or alternatively self-aggrandisement.

‘By the time the summing up of Gary Smith’s evidence of unreliability, fabrication and fantasy had conluded, it would be impossible to find a sufficient bedrock of truth upon which a properly directed jury could convict any of these five defendants.

‘Gary Smith told the police of the conspiracy and the police had no other evidence apart from what they were told.’

In the first plot, Mrs Fleming was alleged to have sunk husband Adam Fleming’s £90,000 yacht, the Double Dragon, by drilling holes in its hull while it was moored in Brighton Marina in February 2004.

The vessel sank on Valentines Day while Mr Fleming was not on board.

Smith told police that, following the botched attempt, he was hired as an assassin to carry out the killing in November the following year.

He claimed he was given money to buy a gun and a vehicle, and given a photograph of Mr Fleming, but said he backed out of the scheme after deciding the intended victim was ‘a nice chap’, while on another occasion saying the plotters were ‘too pushy’.

But his story started to unravel after he repeatedly changed details – variously telling detectives he was to be paid £3,000, £3,500, £5,000 or £15,000 for the killing.

Smith initially claimed he bought a Browning handgun and ammunition for the shooting from co-defendant David Camp, paying £500.

He later claimed the weapon was a Beretta, with no bullets, which he had bought for £250.

After telling police that he hurled it into the Thames from Chelsea Bridge upon deciding to back out, divers scoured the riverbed and recovered a jammed pistol that could fire only ball-bearings and not real bullets.

Investigators also realised that Mr Camp had lived in Lee on Solent, Hampshire, since 1999 by the point that Smith claimed he bought the gun at the dealer’s home in Carshalton, Surrey in October 2005.

In a near-identical story police discovered he had also used following a robbery in 1999, he said: ‘I threw it off Chelsea Bridge, I got a coffee and a burger and walked over the bridge with the gun under my coat.

‘I just flicked it over th ebridge on the downstream side, which is on the Battersea side.

‘I’m sure the gun was wrapped in paper with tape round it – I didn’t want my prints on it.’

Judge Hone said: ‘It is the specificity of detail in this statement which is so potentially dangerous from a pathological liar.

Throughout October and November, when he claimed the plot was taking place, medical records also revealed that Smith was being treated as an inpatient at Sutton Hospital.

A psychiatric report said he suffered from anti-social personality disorder, told ‘pointless lies’, and had a ‘proneness to lie well beyond that of an ordinary person’.

The court heard that Smith told an ex-girlfriend that his mother had died years beforehand and how he had tricked people into paying contributions towards her funeral, despite the fact that she was alive and well.

He was also said to have falsely claimed he had served in the navy and confessed to crimes that had not taken place, including beating a man with a baseball bat and burgling a warehouse.

The alleged hitman also wrongly believed that Mandy Fleming’s first name was Denise, and thought that Mr Fleming was Irish despite the fact he was from the East-end of London.

Judge Hone said: ‘I was shown a witness statement of Theresa Pierce, a blind lady, who met Gary Smith on a psychiatric ward and described him as unstable, a big story teller, and a compulsive liar.

‘Whilst living as a guest in her house, he stole money from her and assaulted her.’

Fleming, of (177) High Street, Sheerness, Kent, Brown, of (236) Middleton Road, Carshalton, south London, Camp, of (188) Milton Road, Waterlooville, Hampshire, and Hanson, of (25) Reigate Way, Wallington, Surrey, were charged with conspiracy to murder.