Brian Pead and the Tony Martin connection

Yesterday Neelu Berry was due to find out whether she faces charges in regard to breaches of her restraining order; we’ve still not heard the outcome of that, but will bring it to you as soon as it becomes available.

Meanwhile, though, while we’re on the topic of restraining orders, it seems that Sabine and Neelu aren’t the only ones who have difficulty accepting—and obeying—them.

We’ve spoken here about Sabine and Belinda’s friend Brian Pead, aka William Brian Freeman. He’s the counsellor working in an agency for vulnerable youth, who was convicted in 2010 of offering to pay a 14-year-old girl £300 for sex; however, the ‘teen’ turned out to have been an undercover police officer. Mr Pead later claimed his actions had been undertaken in the name of “research”, but the judge didn’t buy it.

Mr Pead was placed on the sex offenders’ register, prevented by a sexual offences prevention order from being in contact with children, and had to attend a community sex offenders’ treatment programme.

It seems that in November 2011, Mr Pead was convicted of harassing his daughter and granddaughter. At that time he was issued a restraining order preventing him from contacting them.

However, he breached the order multiple times, and in 2015 was remanded in custody due to several concerns: the likelihood that he might abscond; the likelihood that would re-offend; and the possibility that he might interfere with witnesses. The court was also concerned about Mr Pead’s past failures to obey court orders.

On 17 April 2015 Mr Justice Mostyn refused Mr Pead’s application for the issue of a writ of Habeas Corpus. He appealed, and the case came before Mr Justice Foskett in the High Court of Justice in May.

According to Mr Justice Foskett’s judgement on 15 May 2015, Mr Pead (here going by the name of Mr Freeman) claimed that the restraining order was invalid:

Mr Freeman claims that the original restraining order was unlawful and void ab initio because, he alleges, neither his daughter nor grand-daughter appeared to give evidence at the original hearing and he was thus denied the right to cross-examine them. He has also said that neither provided any witness statement. On this basis he contends that the Magistrates’ Court had no jurisdiction to conclude that he was guilty of the offence of harassment, that since that is so he cannot be guilty of a breach of the order as alleged. He seeks his release from custody for those reasons.

Mr Pead/Freeman’s application was refused.

(As an aside, Mr Pead/Freeman was assisted in preparing his application by yet another McKenzie friend, Alexander Forbes, whom you might recall from our recent post on Belinda McKenzie’s Knight Foundation: Mr Forbes is the sole remaining director of that company since Belinda bailed in April 2016.)

The Tony Martin connection

On 15 August 2016, Mr Pead was arrested yet again, on charges of breaching his restraining order:

The “Tony Martin manuscript” in question is a book Mr Pead has apparently now written about the controversial millionaire farmer Tony Martin, who in 1999 shot dead a teenager who was burgling his home, and seriously injured his accomplice.

According to a 2003 BBC article:

The episode began in August 1999 when 16-year-old Fred Barras, and 33-year-old Brendon Fearon, broke into Martin’s remote, semi-derelict farmhouse in Emneth Hungate, Norfolk. Martin’s farm was extremely remote and had been burgled many times.

Martin, who was in the house at the time, opened fire with an illegally-held pump-action shotgun.

Barras was shot in the back and died at the scene, while Fearon was shot in the leg and recovered after treatment in hospital.

Three days later, Martin was taken into police custody and charged with murder and wounding with intent. …

When his trial began in April 2000 Martin argued that he had genuinely been acting in self-defence.

But it emerged the pair had been shot as they tried to flee through a window.

Mr Martin was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, but appealed this based on a psychiatric diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder, which was said to have diminished his responsibility. His murder conviction was downgraded to manslaughter, and he left prison in 2003, having served tw0-thirds of a five-year sentence.

In December 2015 Mr Martin, who had been banned from owning firearms, was arrested on suspicion of illegal firearm possession.

It seems that Mr Martin and Mr Pead met for the first time in early 2015, and have put their heads together to write a “tell-all” book, which Mr Pead claims will reveal never-before-known “facts” about the killing of Fred Barras.

Mr Pead is also now acting as Mr Martin’s McKenzie friend, most recently in an attempt to appeal his manslaughter conviction:

Mr Martin’s appeal seems to us quixotic at best. Whatever one might think about the pair who attempted to burgle his home in 1999, it’s undeniable that burglary is not punishable by death, and Mr Martin’s conviction seems to fit the facts as presented at his trial. And what is the point of appealing his conviction now, 16 years after the fact?

And given Mr Pead’s very peculiar view of his own legal history (he refers to himself as a “whistleblower”, not a convicted sex offender; he appears to believe that all restraining orders against him are illegal and invalid; he claims to believe that his arrests for breaches of those orders are actually just clever ploys by police to prevent him publishing his block-buster book), we wonder how well Mr Martin will be served by his ghostwriter/McKenzie friend?