The man at the heart of the story was born Robert Freegard on 1 March 1971 in Dronfield, Derbyshire.
The programme is centred around Jake and Sophie Clifton, whose mother Sandra met Hendy-Freegard in 2014 on a dating site and has since disappeared with him.
Netflix’s latest three-part true crime documentary The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman tells the extraordinary story of Robert Hendy-Freegard, a 51-year-old British man who posed as an MI5 secret agent in order to control and manipulate his victims.
Brandon would subsequently say that he had never met “such an accomplished liar” in 25 years as a detective.