This list includes seven people jailed over the past seven days for crimes linked to Merseyside.
While the Jubilee celebrations meant courts in our region were only open for a shorter period over the past week, people have continued to move through the justice system and have been sentenced for their crimes. This week, they included a woman who scammed her own dad and a burglar who took "a lifetime's worth" of jewellery from an elderly woman.
A dad who claimed he was "100% paedo" was also jailed for collecting a trove of images of children being sexually abused and a cocaine-fuelled thug was sent down for chucking a Molotov Cocktail at a doorman.
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Here are the people jailed in our region over the past week.
Clare Roughley
A scammer who stole hundreds of thousands from her family left her dad saddled with a mortgage he didn’t ask for just as he started his retirement.
Clare Roughley subjected her parents, grandparents and a woman she cared for to a vile campaign of theft over a number of years. The former bank employee was jailed back in October after admitting to using her insider knowledge to steal £325,000 from those who were supposed to trust her.
She set up online access to the accounts of her dad, Raymond Roughley, her mum, Delyn Roughley, and her nan, Theresa Leyland. Over a number of years, she drained their life savings to fund her escalating gambling addictions, as well as stealing thousands from a woman she was caring for.
Earlier this week, the 40 year old was back before a judge at Liverpool Crown Court to be sentenced for mortgage fraud carried out during the same period. Peter Hussey, prosecuting, told the court that during 2015 and 2016, the same period she was stealing from her parents, Roughley applied for and then took out a mortgage in her father’s name to buy the home where her and her partner were living.
Roughley, who is already serving a lengthy prison term for the offences she was sentenced for last year, admitted mortgage fraud. She was sentenced to another 38 months in prison. However, that will be served concurrently with her other jail terms and means it will not affect her projected release from jail on licence in autumn 2024.
John Kirk
A drunken cocaine-fuelled thug’s homemade petrol bomb exploded mid-air as he tried to take “revenge” against a nightspot that wouldn’t let him in. Convicted heroin supplier John Kirk, 34, launched the attack at Chambers bar on High Street in Runcorn in the early hours of Sunday, March 6, after being barred entry to Chambers and Alchemy on the same street earlier that night.
Door staff at Alchemy bar had turned Kirk away at 10.30pm on Saturday, March 5, after seeing him argue with staff at another pub earlier on. Kirk, who later told his probation officer he had been drinking alcohol and had snorted a line of cocaine, responded by making “rude comments” and shouting abuse at door staff and bar workers.
Just over an hour and a half later he tried to enter Chambers but was rejected by the same staff. He became aggressive but appeared to agree when police intervened to get him to go home. However, he then filled an empty Pepsi bottle with fuel from a nearby Petrol station and launched the lit missile towards the doorman. Luckily, it exploded before reaching him.
Kirk, of The Hove, Murdishaw, Runcorn, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted arson with intent to endanger life. He was jailed for four years and 10 months.
Karl McDonough
A burglar conned his way into an elderly couple’s home and stole thousands of pounds of jewellery by telling them he was a police officer investigating a previous break in.
Karl McDonough targeted Jean and Francis Hampson at their home in Everton early last year, stealing a “lifetime’s worth of jewellery” from Mrs Hampson. McDonough cruelly suggested he was there to take photos to help catch the previous burglar yet he then rifled through a cupboard and found her jewellery box.
When the couple began to suspect him him he pushed past them and ran off into the street with many of her valuables. The court heard the Hampsons' Everton address had been targeted by burglars before and McDonough used information about that crime to gain their trust before managing to steal Mrs Hampson's jewellery box.
In a statement, she said she had also lost every piece of jewellery given to her by her husband, who has sadly since died. McDonough, formerly of the YMCA on Great Crosshall Street, was jailed for three years and nine months. A restraining order will also prevent him from contacting Mrs Hampson.
James McGowan
A drug dealer doused a woman in petrol from a Lucozade bottle before she went up in flames.
James McGowan threatened to set Kelly Quinn alight when she asked for drugs while already in debt. The 24-year-old thug then hit her over the head with an iron bar.
Prosecutors said conflicting accounts of what happened next meant they couldn't be sure if McGowan set her ablaze. But after weeks in a coma, she remembered waking up covered in bandages like an Egyptian "mummy".
Ms Quinn visited her drug dealer's flat on Southport's Derby Road on Boxing Day to try to get drugs but McGowan and his girlfriend Holly McCarthy later came round and argued with her over a debt. McCarthy hit Ms Quinn and McGowan, who had previously threatened to "set her alight", doused her in petrol.
Ms Quinn then left but the petrol, which is believed to have been ignited during the lighting of a cigarette, burned her seriously and put her in a coma.
He told McGowan: "Your intention must have been to terrify your victim in order to bring her into line." Jailing him for two years and 10 months, the judge said: "I accept you did not set her on fire but you must have realised by pouring petrol on someone who smokes serious harm was foreseeable - there was a risk of serious harm occurring and it did occur."
McGowan's girlfriend, Holly McCarthy, also admitted common assault and was handed an 18-month community order, with a 15-day Rehabilitation Activity Requirement and 28-day home curfew in February.
Claire Newman
A mum stabbed two security guards as they tried to stop her stealing children’s clothes from a Next shop in Liverpool.
Claire Newman slashed David Bailey with a Stanley knife in the chain’s New Mersey Shopping Park store, leaving him needing 20 stitches in his arm. Mr Bailey’s colleague Ian Grogan was also injured by Newman after she injured his hand with the blade.
The 34-year-old wept as a judge jailed her for the attacks on March 9 and a pair of thefts in which she stole designer handbags from the Selfridges in Manchester and assault a security guard there as well.
Jonathan Duffy, prosecuting, said Mr Bailey and Mr Grogan spotted Newman stealing baby clothes in the Speke shop and managed to stop her from getting away. The pair were not planning to call the police and wanted to take a picture of Newman so that she could be banned from the shop. However, after initially following them Newman became aggressive and agitated.
Mr Duffy said: “She shouted that she would stab David Bailey and it transpired that she had a Stanley knife on her person and she stabbed Mr Bailey, causing him a nasty injury on his forearm.” Newman also caused a scratch on Mr Bailey’s jaw and bit his other arm. In the scuffle, she also caught Mr Grogan with the knife,.
Newman later admitted wounding Mr Bailey with intent and wounding Mr Grogan without intent. She also pleaded guilty to theft and possession of a bladed article.
Newman, of HMP Styal, was jailed for six years and five months.
Helena Robertson
A woman who was banned from lying in the road in 2019 is back behind bars after threatening to smash up a woman’s house.
Helena Robertson, 45, of no fixed abode but from Runcorn, appeared at North Cheshire Magistrates’ Court in Warrington on Saturday, following an offence on Thursday. She pleaded guilty to “shouting and swearing” at her victim in breach of a Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO), threatening to smash up the woman’s house, and failing to comply with her supervision.
Court papers said she was sentenced to 38 weeks in prison and ordered to pay a £156 surcharge, with the conviction regarded as “serious” because the “offence occurred in someone’s home having been invited in”, was committed during post-sentence supervision and due to her criminal record.
The incident took place in Runcorn. Robertson was made subject to a five-year CBO intended to curb her antisocial antics in May 2019 following a litany of nuisance behaviour.
Graham Handlon
A depraved dad begged undercover police to send him twisted pics and said: "I'm 100% paedo."
Graham Handlon thought he was talking to a fellow pervert online. But the 49-year-old was really chatting to a covert officer - just months after the deviant was previously spared jail for having a stash of sick images. The dad-of-two revealed he had bought an unregistered pay as you go phone "for all my paedo". And he boasted: "There's no limits with me. I'm just a dirty c***, I’m just into everything. Everything and anything what goes. You know what I mean?"
Liverpool Crown Court heard Handlon, of Park Crescent, Southport, was handed a two-year community order in January 2020, after he was caught with child rape images. He was given a five-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO). On November 30 that year he messaged the officer on web forum ChatIW stating "Hi m 47 peD north west no limits" and using the profile name "Bipedlknforbiped". Jamie Baxter, prosecuting, said: "Perhaps bi-sexual paedophile looking for another bi-sexual paedophile, if that's what bi-ped stands for."
Handlon sent him indecent photos and videos before claiming he "did" a girl when she was two. He sent more photos, boasting he had "100s", and asked the officer if he had any photos of his 11-year-old daughter - who the officer pretended to have sexually abused. The officer said he was "cautious" who he shared images with, but Handlon replied: "I understand that bud, I’m 100% paedo bud." To prove his claims he sent more images and added: "I have vids too."
He sent three child rape videos to the officer, plus a video of himself performing a sex act. Police tracked his phone and found CCTV footage of him buying a top up voucher at the Spar in Roe Lane, Southport on November 7, 2020.
Officers raided his home on January 25, 2021. He handed over a phone and laptop, but didn't produce his Alba mobile, which was discovered hidden inside a plastic bag in his letterbox.
He admitted three counts of downloading, three counts of distributing and one count of possessing indecent images of children, plus possessing extreme porngraphy and breaching his SHPO. A judge jailed him for three years and 10 months. He made a new 15-year SHPO and told Handlon to sign on the Sex Offenders Register for life.
