Daily Express 5 September 2007
A private detective hid inside a body bag
to catch the man who waged a three-year campaign of vandalism
against a firm of funeral directors.
The bag was put in the back of a hearse,
one of a number which had been repeatedly attacked over the
years, and for days the detective lay in wait.
His perseverance paid off when he caught
Richard Bullen stabbing the wheels of the vehicle.
Surveillance experts launched the £4,000
operation while investigating the hate campaign against the
Co-operative Funeral Directors in Portsmouth.
The cost of the vandalism came to more than
£100,000 and up to five vehicles a day owned by the firm and
its staff were being damaged. However, there were no clues to
the identity of the perpetrator.
The funeral directors contacted the
Portsmouth Business Crime Reduction Partnership which hired a
team of private detectives.
They spent five days posing as members of
the public and using cameras to stake out the firm.
But cars continued to be damaged under
their noses so security firm Storewatch decided one of their
team had to hide inside a body bag.
There the detective could watch a computer
displaying live images from cameras inside and outside the
vehicle.
Mark Ferns, Storewatch director said:
"Our guy would do three or four hours in the bag and then
would have to take what the Americans call a comfort break.
It was all so covert that we did not even
tell the funeral firm what we were doing."
On the fifth day he saw Bullen stab the
wheels of the vehicle with a carpentry tool and felt the
hearse move. Bullen, 40, was followed and placed under
citizens' arrest until police arrived.
His motive is unknown, but police believe
he was angered by staff occasionally parking in a public car
park near his then home.
Bullen, of Portsmouth, appeared before the
town's magistrates and was fined £50 after admitting one
charge of criminal damage for the act caught on camera.
At a separate hearing he was handed an
anti-social behaviour order after magistrates heard he was
believed to be the man behind all the vandalism.
He was banned from going near the funeral
directors, from going near the homes of staff and from
carrying a bradawl - the tool he used - anywhere in Hampshire.
The burden of proof required to secure an
Asbo is less than that needed for a criminal conviction,
meaning magistrates had only to believe on the balance of
probability that Bullen committed the offences and was likely
to cause trouble if the Asbo wasn't in place.
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