Family "petrified" as notorious Portsmouth murderer and fugitive Victor Farrant could be released from jail
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00:00 (wind whooshing)
00:02 - Yeah, the last week's been very intense, obviously.
00:18 I mean, since we got the email that we ended up receiving,
00:22 I think it was two weeks ago.
00:24 From then on in, it's been pretty kind of full on
00:26 and we've only had a really finite amount of time
00:29 to make a difference.
00:30 So yeah, things have kind of snowballed a lot,
00:34 but we've got to keep the pressure up
00:36 in order to hopefully change people's minds on this.
00:41 - Yeah, definitely, it was a real shock.
00:46 I sort of saw it and it was in the morning, I think, here,
00:50 and I was like, "Oh my God,"
00:52 like almost literally kind of gasped, like screamed
00:56 when I saw the text,
00:57 'cause it went to David, our younger brother,
00:59 and then he forwarded it on to us.
01:01 Then, so it was just a reaction of shock, really.
01:04 Then after a day or so, the three of us connected
01:09 and thought, "What are our avenues?
01:12 "What can we do?"
01:13 - Yeah, I mean, obviously you've done loads
01:19 in the last two weeks.
01:20 I mean, do you feel that it's having a positive effect
01:25 on potentially stopping them getting out?
01:28 - I mean, truthfully, we don't really know
01:30 what the process is behind all of this.
01:32 We've been kind of given a vague timeline
01:35 of how this might happen.
01:37 We've got no experience of how the justice system works,
01:41 so we're just really trying to do our best
01:44 in terms of just making awareness.
01:49 I think the public outcry has been pretty unanimous
01:54 from everybody.
01:55 I don't think anybody said, "I think he should be released
01:58 "and this is a good idea."
02:00 The feedback we've got from all the media that we've done,
02:04 all the journalists, the public at large,
02:07 not only they think this personal story
02:11 is a bit of a miscarriage of justice now,
02:14 there's also the issue, well, the wider issue,
02:18 is this now gonna be commonplace
02:19 where dangerous criminals don't fulfill
02:24 their whole prison term,
02:28 which I think is worrying for everybody, really.
02:31 - And that sentiment's definitely been echoed.
02:35 I've seen those exact sorts of comments
02:38 echoed in the comments on news articles
02:41 or on social media posts of the news articles,
02:44 people saying exactly that,
02:45 and noting that we've not really had
02:49 any specific information about his health condition
02:52 or exactly how bad it is or how unwell he is.
02:57 And if he's got any kind of physical incapacity or not.
03:03 People have been commenting, well, even if he's ill,
03:09 why should he get out?
03:10 Why should he have the dignity to get out and die
03:14 in a caring environment?
03:16 He didn't afford that dignity to his victims.
03:20 And also that fear that he could go out
03:25 and, like Ian said, have a last hurrah.
03:29 And the more I read about him and remember
03:31 over these last few weeks and remember
03:34 and get more of an insight into his character
03:36 and his personality and the way that he does
03:39 and has before manipulated the system,
03:41 the more I think that could definitely be a good possibility.
03:46 - Yeah, I mean, you mentioned before
03:49 about how does it feel to revisit all of this?
03:51 This is something which we had blocked out
03:54 a lot of the details and over the last week or two
03:58 with revisiting it with interviews and speaking about it,
04:01 but also conversations that three of us had privately,
04:04 there's a lot of stuff that we've actually blocked out,
04:07 a lot of stuff that we were too young
04:08 to really kind of comprehend.
04:10 And a lot of stuff that we actually didn't know at the time
04:13 where people have come forward,
04:15 friends of our mum who still live in the area,
04:20 in South Sea and Portsmouth,
04:22 and said stuff that we didn't really know about
04:24 at the time that we may have been protected from,
04:26 which is really, really chilling.
04:28 So the more we hear about it,
04:30 there's nothing that has been made
04:32 to ally any of our kind of fears with his release.
04:37 The exclusion zone thing,
04:40 for that to be mentioned sort of straight away,
04:42 it feels that process has sort of been jumped over.
04:46 The conversation must be, is he gonna be released?
04:50 Not to kind of all of a sudden start agreeing
04:52 exclusion zones from the start.
04:54 And the worry is that to me doesn't appear to be someone
04:59 that is on their deathbed,
05:02 that seems to be someone that can move around freely,
05:05 that has got the freedom to move up and down the country
05:09 and certainly the physical capacity to be able to do so.
05:12 So from that perspective,
05:14 our fears feel that they're very valid
05:19 and it doesn't feel that we're just over-exaggerating it
05:22 just because of the grief that we feel
05:24 and the anger that we feel towards him.
05:26 So I think it's really, really worrying
05:31 given the lack of detail that we've been given
05:33 and how quickly this can happen.
05:36 - Yeah, and like you touched on before,
05:38 you still see him as a dangerous man,
05:40 even though obviously he's been in jail a long time now
05:43 and he could still be a threat to yourselves
05:47 and the public, you think?
05:48 - Yeah, I don't think being in jail
05:53 would have rehabilitated him in any way.
05:56 Obviously he was in jail before in the '80s and early '90s,
06:01 which only served to make him a more violent criminal
06:06 when he got out of prison.
06:10 Obviously, again, we've had no insight,
06:13 but all reports from previously spoke to him
06:18 not being someone that could be rehabilitated.
06:22 - I mean, also one thing that we'd heard
06:25 was that when he was inside in the '80s and '90s
06:28 for the string of crimes that he did,
06:31 he refused all psychiatric help at that point.
06:35 Again, we don't know if that's been the same
06:37 this time around, but when he left prison,
06:39 he left to murder and his parole officer
06:43 had said at the time that he was one of the most dangerous
06:47 people that she's ever encountered.
06:49 And that wasn't just purely from the fact that he was,
06:52 it was a thing just about danger.
06:59 It was about the fact that he was so persuasive
07:01 and he just didn't seem that he was capable of that
07:06 and he convinced people that he wasn't.
07:07 So I think that really does kind of play
07:11 into what we're seeing now
07:13 and what we're seeing now happening.
07:14 People are convinced, oh, he's dying,
07:16 give him another chance, come on,
07:18 what difference will it make?
07:19 Well, he knows how to work the system
07:21 and I think that should be really, really taken into account
07:24 when you're looking at kind of what the game plan is
07:27 for him being released.
07:28 I mean, if you're dying and your family's disowned you,
07:30 what difference is it dying inside or outside?
07:33 I mean, we haven't been told that the prison
07:36 doesn't have the care to take,
07:37 people die in prison all the time.
07:39 So I don't really subscribe to that argument
07:42 that the prison can't take care of him to his end of life,
07:45 which, as we mentioned before,
07:47 that Judge Butterfield has said that it is absolutely
07:50 something which he should die in prison.
07:54 That was made very, very clear in 1998.
07:56 - And remembering he wasn't only on trial
08:00 for the murder of our mom,
08:02 six weeks earlier, the attack he carried out on Anne,
08:06 on the other woman was horrific.
08:09 Like people remember the image of her injuries to this day
08:14 that were printed in the paper.
08:15 It was, I think, and I don't wanna speak for her,
08:18 but I think she had lifelong, she has lifelong injuries.
08:23 I think I read, you know, she was in a coma,
08:25 she had her part of her brain removed.
08:26 Like it was just a really massively violent attack
08:31 and the fact that he was tried for those two together,
08:34 you know, meant no one could think,
08:39 oh, this was a, I'm gonna hate this phrase,
08:41 but a crime of passion,
08:44 or it was a spur of the moment event.
08:48 You know, you could see a true like line of serial events.
08:54 - Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
08:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]