Inside terror fortress of ‘sadistic bully’ who trapped and tortured intercourse staff

Horrifying pictures show Vince Agar’s ‘fortress’ flat in Middlesbrough which was kitted out with a ‘torture chamber’, trapdoor and telescope used to monitor vulnerable women

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Shocking images expose the disturbing lengths to which a “sadistic bully” would go in his twisted attempt to dominate vulnerable women. During proceedings at Teesside Crown Court, jurors were shown photographs of Middlesbrough torturer Vince Agar’s Parliament Road “fortress”, captured by officers around the time of his crimes.

The images revealed additional doors he had fitted, weapons left on surfaces and apparatus he used to watch those trapped under his drug-dealing regime. They can now be published following Agar being finally held accountable for the litany of brutality he imposed on two women.

On Thursday, he received a 19-year prison sentence with Judge Richard Bennett branding him a “sadistic bully”, who “revelled in holding power over some of the most vulnerable women in our society.”

Agar was raised in Middlesbrough and grafted on oil rigs and at ICI. He resided with his parents before relocating to live with his wife Mary on Fleetham Street.

Throughout the trial, he could not remember when he wed Mary, but did acknowledge having an affair with a woman – another casualty of his violence.

In the appalling assault for which he was imprisoned in 2001, he battered her with an iron bar, glass bottle, hammer and a wrench, sliced off half her hair and scorched her with cigarettes and scissors.

This victim observed as Agar received his sentence on Thursday for offences which bore “chilling” similarities to her own suffering.

Agar told the court that when Mary found out he was taking crack cocaine, at around 51 years old, he left their home and relocated to Parliament Road.

Agar operated his narcotics enterprise from the first-floor flat, distributing cocaine to those trapped by dependency, including numerous vulnerable women and girls, reports Teesside Live.

Situated in the heart of Newport’s red light area, the district was then plagued by widespread drug abuse, brutal criminality and assaults on sex workers. Marilyn Surtees, who operated a drop-in facility for vulnerable women and girls during that period, previously informed Teesside Live: “I remember there were a lot of rapes and girls being beaten up, lots of violence.

“There was a lot of naming and shaming of the kerb crawlers but I don’t think there were many arrests for violence. The girls either didn’t report it or they weren’t taken seriously.”

Agar’s first-floor flat was positioned on the junction of Parliament Road and Longford Street. During the period of his criminal activity, he set up a pair of binoculars, a telescope and a tripod beside the window which offered a direct view onto Union Street.

This equipment was utilised, the prosecution argued, to monitor and maintain dominance over those whose substance dependency he manipulated. Both of Agar’s victims were drug addicts.

One was a sex worker who purchased her drugs from Agar. The other peddled narcotics on Agar’s behalf. She had informed the court Agar provided her with complimentary drugs and she went out “grafting” for him when Agar rendezvoused with his mistress.

When she pilfered from him, Agar enacted his twisted retribution.

While rendered helpless through narcotics, the woman was restrained with rope before Agar assaulted her for hours, initially with a metal vacuum cleaner pole until it snapped.

He pressed heated blades against her arms, threatened to shatter her fingers with a spanner and made telephone calls to an unidentified person in her presence, instructing them to collect her corpse.

In the second appalling assault, he locked her in her for three days. He once more employed knives alongside sticks, buckles and belts. He warmed up his crack pipe and purposefully scorched her on the upper arm and marked her on the back, potentially using an iron.

Both assaults resulted in lasting scarring. At sentencing, Judge Richard Bennett informed Agar the assaults were “on any view, sadistic and amounted to the torture of her.”

During the trial, the jury was told she had witnessed a “torture chamber” in the flat, which featured an “old fashioned wooden chair” with brown leather restraints for ankles and wrists.

The second of Agar’s terrified victims stated Agar threatened to shoot her after she observed a “scared” girl, whom she suspected to be a sex worker, bound to a radiator. The court was informed, through her witness statement, of her enduring guilt and distress for not reporting the incident to the authorities.

The judge addressed Agar: “Such was your reputation at the time, she was too terrified to tell anyone apart from her boyfriend, and she discouraged her boyfriend from intervening, for fear of what you may do.”

The jury was also presented with images of additional doors Agar had fitted in his flat, including one behind the main entrance and a “trapdoor” at the top of the stairs. Prosecutor Ms Brown proposed that these extra doors were part of an “elaborate security arrangement” to administer his own form of justice.

She stated: “You didn’t want people coming in because of your drug-dealing and because you were being violent to women in there and keeping them against their will?” In his sentencing remarks, Judge Bennett told Agar: “Your flat was like a fortress.

“You had installed a number of doors to the interior to prevent access. They also prevented escape.

“These were typical security measures of a drug dealer designed to prevent the police getting into your flat before you could dispose of drugs. That anti-police security also created a barrier which prevented [victim] from escaping.”

The court heard suggestions that Agar peddled his drugs almost solely to sex workers at the time. He was questioned in court by Ms Brown: “You didn’t care about these girls at all did you? Did it ever bother you what they were doing to afford the drugs they were using?

“Did you ever worry about your customers’ safety. Did you like the fact these girls were indebted to you? Did you like that they were reliant on you? Did you like the power over them?”

Agar was photographed by the Evening Gazette as he relocated into a new housing development in Middlesbrough town centre. Mary and Vince were the first shared owners to move into the £9m St Paul’s development in Newport under Erimus Housing’s shared ownership scheme.

Several years later, he relocated to Thailand, “met a lady, she had a baby, I brought the baby up, so I stayed in Thailand,” he said. As police compiled evidence, Agar attempted to evade justice, declining to return voluntarily.

An extradition process was initiated and he was returned to Middlesbrough to answer for his historic crimes. Throughout the criminal proceedings, Agar continued to inflict trauma on his victims – his denials meant they had to revisit their experiences in a trial which spanned more than three weeks.

The jury saw through his deceit and he was found guilty in March of six out of the eight charges brought against him. As Judge Bennett told him when sentencing Agar to 19 years: “You got away with committing these serious offences for 25 years and this has now caught up on you.”