There was something not quite right about the two men struggling out of Hereford bus station on a blustery day in November 2015. The dark-haired one was wearing what appeared to be military fatigues; his much older companion seemed confused and barely able to walk. A concerned passerby went to help. The younger man, who seemed to have an American or Canadian accent, explained that he had found the older man face down on a country road and was taking him to Hereford county hospital. She walked with them, doing her best to support the faltering older man, who could not move more than a couple of paces unaided. As the three of them approached the turning to the hospital, she flagged down an ambulance. The paramedics suspected dementia and assessed the older man in the rear cabin; he seemed to be smiling and crying at the same time. He had no ID and could only give his first name, Roger.
His companion, sitting opposite, told the crew the same story: he had found the man on the side of a road some distance from Credenhill, a village on the outskirts of Hereford. But he claimed he couldn’t share his own contact details because he had been working at the nearby SAS base, and soon vanished into the early evening gloom.
Little was as it seemed that Saturday. It was just the beginning of an extraordinary international mystery that for six months flummoxed the British authorities and generated headlines around the world. The truth only partially emerged earlier this year, when Simon Hayes, a 53-year-old personal trainer, was given a two-and-a-half-year sentence for his role in a plot to abandon Roger Curry, an autistic American man with dementia, far from his home in Whittier, California. Hayes had driven Roger to Hereford the day after he had arrived, with the rest of the Curry family, on a flight from the US. The 78-year-old had been stripped of anything that could identity him, and dressed in brand new British supermarket clothes.
Yet Hayes’s motivations – and indeed much of the Curry family’s backstory – remain a mystery. The judge at his trial, Daniel Pearce-Higgins, struggled to find any precedents for the case. Sentencing at Worcester crown court in April this year, he remarked: “I cannot find any case remotely similar to the facts of this case, curiously because there appears to be no apparent benefit to the defendant.”
There is no evidence that money changed hands, or that Hayes benefited in any way. Why did he go to the lengths he did to help Roger’s son, Kevin Curry, dump his father more than 5,000 miles from his US home? Is he – as the court heard – a convincing liar who stage-managed the British end of a plot to get the NHS to look after an unwanted relative? Or is he – as the court also heard – a tragic figure who took refuge in a fantasy world to protect himself from a turbulent life punctuated by loss?
Continues here....
"I'm not dead yet...
"I'm not dead yet...
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: "I'm not dead yet...
Definitely a fucked up story.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.
Re: "I'm not dead yet...
Yea, like you really care. He is just an old racist getting what he deserves, right? Or maybe it is a new form of illegal immigration.Crackpot wrote:Definitely a fucked up story.
I expected to be placed in an air force combat position such as security police, forward air control, pararescue or E.O.D. I would have liked dog handler. I had heard about the dog Nemo and was highly impressed. “SFB” is sad I didn’t end up in E.O.D.
Re: "I'm not dead yet...
Definitely a fucked up poster.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.
Re: "I'm not dead yet...
Crackpot wrote:Definitely a fucked up poster.
Sure of that mother fucking son of a bitch.
You have the blood of millions of people on your corrupt soul you communist bastard.
I expected to be placed in an air force combat position such as security police, forward air control, pararescue or E.O.D. I would have liked dog handler. I had heard about the dog Nemo and was highly impressed. “SFB” is sad I didn’t end up in E.O.D.
- MajGenl.Meade
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Re: "I'm not dead yet...
I hope I don't regret this . . .liberty wrote:He is just an old racist getting what he deserves, right? Or maybe it is a new form of illegal immigration.
First: liberty, why (apart from your own prejudice) do you bring "racist" into this story? The closest it comes is this: "US motor sports journalist David Malsher recalls that Hayes was a familiar face at Champ Car and IndyCar races for about six years". Do you think that people who drive race cars are ipso facto "racists"?
Second: if you read the story you would see that in a way, it is a form of illegal immigration. In this case, the "immigrant" was totally without understanding of what was being done. His family, it seems clear, conspired to get the poor man legally into the UK but then illegally left him there. So well done; your failed attempt at drollery was closer to the truth than you knew.
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
Re: "I'm not dead yet...
Nah he’s just in a snit because I have long called hm out on his racism and has decided that any thing/one that he doesn’t like is racist and or communist.
Perhaps he is starting to show signs of dementia at home and this story touched a nerve.
It’s sad that he feels lashing out at strangers on the internet is accomplishing anything. I have compassion for the man but not the behavior.
Perhaps he is starting to show signs of dementia at home and this story touched a nerve.
It’s sad that he feels lashing out at strangers on the internet is accomplishing anything. I have compassion for the man but not the behavior.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.
Re: "I'm not dead yet...
easy lib.....
I may be wr0ng, but Damagedjar d0esn t strike me as a c0mmie.
and it is a fucked up st0ry, I think that he said that sympathetically t0wards the 0ld fella s plight.
I may be wr0ng, but Damagedjar d0esn t strike me as a c0mmie.
and it is a fucked up st0ry, I think that he said that sympathetically t0wards the 0ld fella s plight.