Two drug addicts who tortured a man to rob him of his cash inheritance have each been jailed for five and a half years. Former glamour model Leanne Houston and Stephen Kerr, 40, subjected their “broken” and “vulnerable” target to horrendous violence, stabbing him repeatedly with a knife and battering him with a hammer to his severe injury.
They repeatedly demanded that he tell them the PIN number to his bank cards and forced them to transfer money which he inherited after suffering a family bereavement from his savings account into his current account so they could withdraw the cash. The heartless duo eventually got their hands on thousands of pounds.
They repeatedly forced him to accompany them to ATMs to withdraw money which they used to buy drugs and alcohol. A jury heard that the abuse only stopped after the man managed to pluck up enough courage to leave a property where he had been held. He went to a branch of his bank in Glasgow’s west end where shocked staff noticed he was covered in cuts and bruises.
Police were told about the man’s ordeal and managed to build a case to bring the pair to justice. They were convicted after trial last December of assaulting and robbing the man at locations in north Glasgow between May 6 and May 12 2023. Lawyers for both Houston and Kerr claimed their clients still maintained their innocence but had both contacted the victim to apologise.
They admitted that both accused had numerous previous convictions and a history of drug and alcohol abuse spanning a number of years. Passing sentence, Judge Alistair Watson told the pair they had been found guilty of “somewhat cruel assaults” involving a knife and a hammer which had left their victim severely injured.
He said: “This culminated in them taking advantage of his finances, forcing him against his will to transfer significant amounts of his savings on your behalf. You selected a person who was a particularly vulnerable individual with significant challenges in his life. He was a somewhat isolated individual and as you knew, a person who happened to have inherited money from a relative.
“It’s clear from the evidence that you selected him and assaulted him with the purpose of financing your lifestyle, in particular the consumption of drugs and alcohol.” He said the injuries the man had sustained could properly be described as severe, but the psychological effect on him had been “significant and prolonged”.
He said he found it difficult to reconcile the pair’s claim of “genuine” expressions of remorse and contrition with the fact that they continued to deny what they had done. Houston, a 34-year-old mother of three with a “chaotic” lifestyle and a medium risk of reoffending, had her five and a half year sentence backdated to 12 December when she was first remanded in custody.
Kerr, 40, who has been on remand and is assessed as being at his risk of reoffending, had his sentence backdated to 5 July 2023. However, he was told his sentence would be extended to include a supervised release order under which he will be monitored for two and a half years following his release to protect the public and improve the chances of him reintegrating into society.
Houston bowed her head in the dock and wept as sentence was passed.
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