Overview
- Vincent Agar, 80, was sentenced to 19 years at Durham Crown Court on Thursday, with more than 12 years to be served before any release on licence.
- A jury earlier this year found him guilty on six of eight charges, including three counts of false imprisonment, grievous bodily harm with intent, assault causing actual bodily harm, making threats to kill and supplying a Class A drug.
- The offences, carried out in Middlesbrough around the turn of the century, involved torture of a woman with hot knives, a clothes iron, a heated crack-pipe gauze and a metal vacuum pole, leaving lasting scars and trauma.
- Another victim was held in his Parliament Road flat and threatened with a gun after seeing a girl tied to a radiator, and prosecutors said the flat had interior doors and a chair with straps that trapped victims.
- Agar was extradited from Koh Samui, Thailand, to face the case years later, and the judge said he would commend police and prosecutors for the work that brought him to court.