Judge sentences gambling caregiver to over three years jail for stealing £75,000 from late Thunderbirds director. [Image: Shutterstock.com]

Victim an ill, elderly man

Judge Adam Feest KC has sentenced caregiver Allan Beacham to three years and ten months in prison for stealing £75,000 ($95,159) from elderly Parkinson’s disease-stricken Thunderbirds director Alan Pattillo, who died aged 90, at a prior hearing

Beacham, 66, appeared before Winchester Crown Court on Friday after the caregiver pleaded guilty to fleecing Patillo. He did so to feed his gambling addiction. According to the Wiltshire Police, the felon from Wootton in Kent blew £25,000 ($31,721) of the stolen money on lottery tickets.

addiction to the National Lottery”

Beacham started caring for Portillo, also registered blind, hard of hearing and wheelchair-bound, in 2016. But when the Scotsman moved to Salisbury, England, in 2017, Beacham became his personal full-time caregiver on a £40,000 ($50,753) salary and a condition that the ex-director would buy him a house.

Pattillo accepted Beacham’s demands. Soon afterwards, however, Pattillo’s health declined further which left Beacham in control of the elderly man’s day-to-day finances.

Abuse of position

The convicted caregiver quickly used his position as both Pattillo’s carer and the man in charge of his daily finances to steal £75,000 from the acclaimed film writer from October 2017 to May 2019.

Winchester Crown Court heard that Beacham abused his position of trust by requesting sums of money from the paralegal appointed by Pattillo’s solicitors, Batt Broadbent, to manage his finances and portfolio.

According to a Monday report in The Mirror, Batt Broadbent’s paralegal Alison Bamber approved Beacham’s requests for cash, which the crooked carer would then withdraw via his patient’s bank cards. It was only when solicitor Rachel Catherine Wilson replaced Bamber in April 2019 and noticed the amount of cash withdrawals that Beacham’s shocking abuse of his client came to light.

“My concerns were sufficiently grave enough to inform the police straight away,” Wilson told the court last year at a trial abandoned when Beacham got COVID-19. Wilson’s actions led to Pattillo’s lawyer freezing the Scotsman’s bank cards and terminating Beacham’s employment in May 2019.

While the respected Emmy award-winning writer succumbed to Parkinson’s in 2020 during the police probe, the case continued to be investigated by Wiltshire police “in the public interest.”

Regional Organised Crime Unit Detective Constable Nick Bishop expressed his satisfaction Friday that the court convicted Beacham of his crimes “despite his continued efforts to frustrate and delay justice for the victim’s family.”

Justice eventually served

The Mirror cited Pattillo’s niece Joanne Simmons as stating: “The trauma of all of this certainly took a toll on his condition and was a factor to his demise.”

DC Bishop added in a news release by Wiltshire Police that Pattillo trusted and totally depended on Beacham to take care of him in his final years, but that the latter stole from the late writer:

for his own satisfaction and addiction.”

Judge Feest said while handing out the jail sentence, which Beacham must serve in full, that he was “satisfied that this is a case of high culpability.” The judge also admonished the caregiver, telling Beacham he was “all too aware” of Pattillo’s vulnerability and on that basis “deliberately targeted him.”