Burglars strap hot iron to pensioner and threaten to pour scalding water over granddaughter, 3
- 69-year-old had iron tied to him for 30 minutes
- Terrified partner was handcuffed to him throughout
Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:39 PM on 17th November 2010
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A pensioner had a red-hot iron strapped to his back by robbers desperate to find out where he kept his valuables.
David Ward was tortured for 30 minutes by the raiders, who also boiled a kettle and threatened to pour scalding water on his three-year-old granddaughter in an attack so sickening that police say it has even outraged the criminal fraternity.
The iron burned through the 69-year-old's skin, fat and muscle - leaving him in need of extensive plastic surgery - as his tied-up partner was forced to watch.
Terrified Ann Woodland, 66, was handcuffed to her partner throughout the ordeal, during which the robbers stole £200,000 worth of jewellery.
Miss Woodland, a grandmother-of-four, said: 'Those people are just barbaric. They do not understand the value of life.
'I was next to David as he was burning. He was incredibly brave, he didn't even murmur because he didn't want to wake up my granddaughter.'
The couple from the pretty village of Sewardstonebury, near Chigwell in Essex, have now put up a £10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the violent robbers.
The couple were asleep at their large home, near Epping Forest on August 1 this year when Mr Ward woke to find two men wearing balaclavas and boiler suits in his bedroom.
The robbers had got into the house through a window at about 3.30am and then frogmarched Miss Woodland from a nearby bedroom where she was sleeping with her visiting granddaughter.
The couple were handcuffed together on the bed while the robbers fetched an iron and kettle to torture them into revealing the location of a safe - which they have not got.
Miss Woodland said: 'They put the iron on me first. They tied it around me with my dressing gown cord but they didn't put it on. Then they started boiling the kettle. It was terrifying.
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'Then they took the iron off and strapped it onto David's back and switched it on. They tied it on so it wouldn't move and it was on there for half an hour.
'I became hysterical when they said they were going to boil the kettle so they could pour it over my granddaughter. What kind of animals threaten to do that to a child?'
Mr Ward added: 'I could feel the iron searing into me but I didn't say anything, I didn't want to wake up Ann's granddaughter.
'I will never, ever forget how that felt. Now I just feel angry, how can they treat someone like that, how can they just ruin your life like that?'
During the nightmare ordeal, the robbers ransacked the house for valuables and collected together more than £200,000 of precious rings, Rolex and Patek Philippe watches and Mr Ward's collection of cufflinks which he was hoping to give to his grandson in the future.
Eventually the robbers left, leaving the couple handcuffed to a radiator in a darkened bedroom with only the three-year-old to help rescue them.
Miss Woodland said: 'We called her into the bedroom and tried to make it a joke and fun so she didn't get scared. I said we had been silly and got tied up and she managed to get the key for us from the dressing table. Thank God she didn't wake up while they were there.'
Police and ambulance crews were scrambled to the couple's home shortly before 5am and Mr Ward was rushed to Whipps Cross Hospital in east London for emergency treatment for his badly burned back.
The retired builder was transferred to a specialist burns unit at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford where surgeons took a skin graft from his thigh to treat the large iron-shaped burn on his back. He has been told he will be scarred for life and is having ongoing treatment.
Detective Constable Lee Pudney from Essex Police said: 'It is extremely rare to see violence like this used.
'Mr Ward's injury was a full thickness burn, it burned through the layers of his skin, through the fat and into the muscle.'
He said even members of the criminal fraternity had been left sickened by the level of violence used in the burglary and officers hoped that the £10,000 reward would flush out the thugs.
DC Pudney added: 'In my career I've never seen anyone do something like this before, with this scale of violence. Threatening to use an iron is one thing, using it is quite another.
'We are investigating other crimes across the country where irons have been used or threatened. It's very rare, there are only about ten cases. It may be linked to other crimes, it might not, we are still investigating.'
He added: 'Many people on the wrong side of the law feel there is a line and these offenders have crossed that line.'
Miss Woodland said they had been left traumatised by the raid at their home and have installed a hi-tech alarm and CCTV cameras.
She added: 'I am just a bag of nerves since this happened. I have to have the lights on at night, I'm on pills from the doctor to try and calm me down, I've had counselling. I can't have my granddaughter here anymore in case it happened again.
'They have ruined my life. I want to move house, I don't feel safe in my home anymore.
'I wasn't physically hurt but they tortured me mentally. I don't want them to get away with it.'
The haul of jewellery included a £20,000 white gold diamond solitaire ring, a £16,500 Patek Philippe watch and more than 20 pairs of expensive cufflinks.
Many of the rings stolen are a very small size - J - and police have circulated descriptions of the items to pawnbrokers and jewellers.
The couple have also put up a reward for information leading to the safe return of any of the items. They will pay 10 per cent of the value of each piece.
Anyone with information can call Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.
» » » » [Daily Mail.UK]
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The Guerrilla War of Racially Motivated Gratuitous Violence in White South Africa’s Backyards: From Robert Kaplan (1997) to the Lotter Sisters (2009):
Rob Kaplan was tortured for hours with an iron, for information about a non-existant safe; while the Lotter Sisters were tortured by broken bottles shoved up their vagina's, one had her breasts cut off while she was still alive, etc.
03 February 2010
Excerpt from: Ask Ernie Els
Why We Are White Refugees
According to Salon Magazine, in their article What Happened to Rob Kaplan (PDF), written in June 1997:
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The No. 1 Web site in South Africa is not about the beautiful countryside, the miraculous overthrow of apartheid or the glory of Nelson Mandela. It's about “a brutal act of violence” that has left its white victim “battling to breathe.”
“We just wanted our friends from all over the country to leave their own get well messages," said Irnest Kaplan, who found his elder brother Rob, 34, near death in his Johannesburg home on May 1. Rob, who ran a computer training center for blacks, had been shot twice in the chest, stabbed, beaten, pistol-whipped and tortured for hours with a household heating iron by three Zulu-speaking robbers seeking the keys to a nonexistent safe.
“Our intention now,” said Irnest, who works for The Internet Solution, one of South Africa's largest Web development and server companies, “is to have a meeting with Mr. Mandela, show him the responses and demand radical action ... We hope to leverage the Internet.”
The Kaplan incident was typical of the horrendous street crime that has enveloped South Africa. Carjackings, shootings, knifings and rapes have become so common that many newspapers have simply stopped reporting them unless the details are particularly grotesque -- a burning, for example, or a machete maiming. But Kaplan's Web site immediately attracted attention. In its first week it racked up 120,000 hits; in its second week, 1 million hits.
So far President Mandela's office has remained silent, no doubt aware of the racial dimension of the issue. The Kaplans are white and those complaining most vocally about violent crime are white. And the alleged perpetrators are mostly black. They almost always involve a high degree of gratuitous violence. Gang rape is a growing phenomenon.
Are these merely post-apartheid expressions of white racism? No, says former New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, who was asked to come up with a crime reduction proposal for South Africa's minister of police. “The situation seems to be getting worse ... The climate of fear has meant so many guns and people tend to shoot first. We did not meet a single person who did not know a victim of serious crime.” The former Lebanese ambassador, who fled the country after his house was broken into once too often, was quoted as saying that Beirut, even in its worst days, was safer than Johannesburg today.
The exodus of whites has grown since the advent of black majority rule, and crime is usually cited as the most compelling reason. As you read through Kaplan's site you get the feeling that for the average white South African, the guerrilla war of the apartheid era is not over -- it simply moved to their backyards, to their roads, stoplights, parking lots and to any place where they or their families are a target. Still, says Bratton, “They shouldn't lose optimism.” Crime can be lowered, he says, but it requires something he says the Mandela government has so far not shown: “leadership.”
According to the ANC Daily News Briefing, the ANC’s primary concern at the time, appears to have been Crime Victim’s Internet Site a “Hit”.
2009 Guerrilla War in White South African’s Backyards: Lotter Sisters‘Alice Lotter, 77, and her daughter Helen, 57, both frail, were tortured to death at their farm in Allenridge near Welkom in the Free State on April 1, 2009. According to forensic evidence, the Lotter mother and daughter had died excruciatingly painful deaths: first tortured by being stabbed with broken glass bottles into their vaginas. One of the women also had her breasts cut off while she was still alive – and both women’s blood, police forensic experts found, had then been used to paint anti-Afrikaner hate slogans on the walls of their homestead. -- Alphabetic Name List: Murders, attacks on SA Farms and smallholdings 2009: Death Toll: 3,074; and Volksblad
» » » » [Excerpt: Ask Ernie Els: “No Normal Sport, in an Abnormal Society”]
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