Three vicious robbers dubbed the Nappy Valley stranglers were jailed yesterday for a crime spree that targeted wealthy young mothers.
The trio singled out vulnerable lone women as they walked their children in pushchairs along the street in daylight.
Disguised with motorcycle helmets, hoods and balaclavas, they crept up on victims from behind and stripped expensive rings from their fingers after throttling them until they blacked out.
Williams: Jailed for 17 years
Lord: Given eight and a half years
Byom: Sentenced to 21 years
Some of the victims, including one who was seven months pregnant and walking a 17-month-old baby, feared they would be killed.
Detectives believe the men made more than £100,000 by selling the jewellery to a corrupt businessman in London’s Hatton Garden district.
The career criminals, responsible for hundreds of violent offences between them, spent the cash on overseas holidays and shopping sprees for designer clothes.
Judge Richard Southwell labelled the crimes ‘gratuitous’ and ‘motivated by pure greed’ as he jailed the men for a total of 46 years yesterday. Speaking at Kingston Crown Court, he said all three men ‘roamed as predators’ and posed a significant danger to the public.
Perrie Williams, 26, terrorised the affluent Battersea, Clapham and Fulham areas of South West London – known as Nappy Valley because of its high number of families with young children – with his school friends Christopher Byom, 29, and Anton Lord, 33.
After stalking their victims on motorcycle or by car, they strangled them with a potentially deadly grip on the carotid artery in their necks.
Some of the women were punched and kicked, including one who needed reconstructive surgery to her jaw.
The robbers, all on licence and bail for other crimes, lived on benefits and Williams even applied for a taxpayer-funded loan just a month before he travelled to Miami.
They were convicted of nine robberies but detectives suspect they were behind dozens more.
Byom, of Clapham, was jailed for 21 years; Williams, of Wandsworth, was jailed for 17 years and Lord, of Croydon, who pleaded guilty, was jailed for eight and a half years.
Byom, of Clapham, was jailed for 21 years; Williams, of Wandsworth, was jailed for 17 years and Lord, of Croydon, who pleaded guilty, was jailed for eight and a half years.
It can now be revealed Williams’s life of crime began when he kidnapped a 13-year-old boy in an attack that shocked the nation and was compared to the killing of James Bulger.
He and two accomplices abducted Michael Servante and strung him up by his feet before beating him to within an inch of his life in 2000 when he was just 15. But he has never been named publicly in connection with the crime because of an anonymity order imposed by an Old Bailey judge. It emerged yesterday that he began strangling and robbing minicab drivers within a month of his release from the seven-year jail term in December 2006.
Last night, Michael’s mother Leisha, 45, described Williams as ‘pure evil’ and said the special treatment he received in court opened the door to a life of crime.
She said: ‘The criminal justice system just protected him. He was always considered more important than us. The judge treated him with kid gloves.
‘My son and I have to live with what he did every day. How he was allowed back on the streets I do not know.’
Off the streets: The three men were jailed for a total of 46 years at Kingston Crown Court
The court was told the gang’s crimes began between October and November 2010 when three lone women were robbed of rings, watches and purses as they walked with their children.
The most shocking was an attack on a pregnant woman who was grabbed and choked in front of her baby in Clapham. Her £11,000 engagement was stolen and she came round to find her child screaming in an upturned pushchair. In another case a victim’s seven-year-old son was left with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Police believe their crimes date back further to April 2009 when a woman was throttled in front of her two-year-old son.
Once the men were finally in custody for the robberies police put their lifestyles under minute scrutiny and discovered they were responsible for an extraordinary crime spree.
They uncovered photographs of the men posing with bundles of £50 notes and found they were linked to robberies and burglaries spanning more than a decade.
Two of them admitted hundreds of crimes in a bid to wipe the slate clean.
Unemployed Byom confessed to 257 crimes, including robbing bookmakers, taxi drivers and train passengers over a decade, in some cases while armed with a gun.
Lord, who wore a £4,000 Rolex watch, admitted raids on Post Offices and betting shops.
Lord went to school in Wandsworth with one of the Mykoo brothers, who were jailed for life after being convicted of throttling wealthy women to within an inch of their lives.
In a shockingly similar series of robberies, Daniel and Matthew Mykoo stole jewellery worth £300,000 in just four months in South West London in 2008. Among their victims were TV presenter Dani Behr and designer Nicole Farhi.
Williams was also sentenced for his role in a knife-wielding gang who lured three minicab drivers and violently stole their takings in January 2007 when he was on licence from prison. After his release for the attack on Michael Servante, Williams amassed nine convictions for 16 offences linked to drugs and burglary.
DC Dan Williams, who caught the robbers, said: ‘These men were animals.’
I THOUGHT I WAS ABOUT TO BE KILLED
Victim: Laura Iverson struggled with two of the gang
Mother Laura Iverson feared she would die at the hands of the stranglers when she was targeted outside her home.
The 38-year-old told yesterday how she felt the 'blood leaving my head' as one of the men throttled her.
She believes she only survived after pulling off her diamond engagement ring while pinned to the pavement.
The wine industry worker, who has since left Britain to live in New York, described how she struggled with two of the gang as she saw her children's toys through her kitchen window.
Mrs Iverson, a mother of four-year-old twins, said she kicked her attackers as they failed to get the ring off because her fingers had swollen.
She said: 'The guy holding my throat was clearly the more experienced of the two and he was getting agitated.
'At that point he tightened his grip around my jugular vein and I could literally feel the blood leaving my head.
'I thought I was going to pass out or worse and he said: "Get her to take the ring off". I pulled it off and handed it to the other guy and they were off like a shot.
Mrs Iverson was attacked in Fulham, West London, on February 24 last year. She was left with two black eyes because her glasses were rammed into her face during the struggle.
Speaking about her attackers she said: 'What is outrageous is that for these men this is a profession.
'The idea that you can have a profession of targeting absolutely innocent people in such a terrifying way is abhorrent.'
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