‘Professional kidnapper’ who tortures fellow criminals to extract ransoms and steal drugs says he ‘loves’ his job as he brags about waterboarding victims and using bolt cutters to rip off their toes
- Inside Britain’s Kidnap Gangs looks at alarming rise in kidnapping across the UK
- Home Office figures reveal there were 5775 kidnappings in England in 2020
- Kidnapper from Birmingham says he squeezed victims genitals until he talked
- Victim tells how he was randomly mugged, abducted off street and beaten up
A professional kidnapper reveals how he ‘loves’ torturing his victims and will ‘take it to the next level’ in a shocking new documentary which investigates the alarming rise in the crime across the UK.
The man, referred to as Zulu, who describes kidnapping as his job, freely admits he is hired to snatch and torture other criminals in order to extract ransoms or to discover the whereabouts of drug stashes.
He tells how he’ll use bolt cutters to remove a person’s toes and a wrench as a ‘finger snapper’, and once squeezed a man’s genitals until they bled so that he would tell him ‘everything he needed to know’.
While he insists his victims are usually dealers and he doesn’t snatch people who haven’t done anything wrong, he claims younger gang members are now targetting civilians if they look wealthy.
Investigative journalist Livvy Haydock (pictured centre) presents BBC Three’s Inside Britain’s Kidnap Gangs, which highlights the alarming rise in kidnapping across the UK
According to statistics obtained from the Home Office, there were 5,775 kidnappings in England alone in 2020. Figures from the National Crime Agency estimate one in five kidnap victims are now completely innocent.
Speaking to investigative journalist Livvy Haydock in BBC Three’s Inside Britain’s Kidnap Gangs, Zulu goes into harrowing detail about the torture methods he uses on hostages.
‘There’s loads of ways you can torture people without killing them,’ he explains. ‘Get their balls and staple them to their leg, I tie them up sometimes, hang them by their hands and proper punch the life out of them.’
Pulling out a blow torch, he then shows Livvy a wrench, explaining: ‘I love this one, it’s the finger snapper. Put it straight on and bang. More times when you’ve done the pinky and that one, before you get to the third finder they’ll tell you anything.’
‘I take toes off with these,’ he says as he pulls out a pair of bolt cutters. ‘Especially for toes, nothing more, nothing less, toes.’
A professional kidnapper reveals how he ‘loves’ torturing his victims and will ‘take it to the next level’. He goes into harrowing detail about the torture methods he uses on hostages (pictured showing Livvy a pair of ‘toe-cutters’)
Asked why he chooses such brutal tactics, he replies bluntly: ‘It just has to be, it’s just the way of life.
‘We don’t target innocent people who haven’t done anything wrong… We don’t just go out there and terrorise people for nothing.’
Having taken Livvy to one of the locations used for a torture session, Zulu describes how a hostage is stripped off, ‘violated’ and tied up.
Sometimes he’ll sit them on a chair and put a wet towel over their head and ‘pour water on them make them think they’re drowning’.
Zulu says he draws the line at harming women – though he would snatch them if required – and children, but otherwise he’ll ‘torture them all’.
‘I love torturing them, you know like I’ll take it to the next level,’ he enthuses, chillingly, adding he’ll take it ‘as far as it has to go’.
Pulling out a blow torch, he then shows Livvy a wrench, explaining: ‘I love this one, it’s the finger snapper’
‘I’ve had to pull the party popper through a cigar cutter, make him think I was going to cut, you know like take it away for life. I pulled his c*** through a cigar cutter and squeezed until it started bleeding and then he told me everything I needed to know.’
Until recently, kidnapping was almost exclusively a gang-on-gang crime, mainly involving turf wars between drug dealers or other organised criminals.
But Zulu claims his torture methods are now used by a younger generation of kidnappers who will readily target innocent civilians.
Livvy meets with two young south London gang members who insist there’s a ‘lot of money in kidnap’.
One, known as Rayzr, says: ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re a criminal or you’re a normal civilian, if you’ve got what we need then you’re going to be a target.
‘Some kidnaps are random, some you do in the spur of the moment but some of them can be planned out proper.
Livvy meets with two young south London gang members who insist there’s a ‘lot of money in kidnap’
‘Social media plays a big part in it, they’re putting up their cars, their designer clothes, could be a Rolex, if it’s worth it for me and my guys then we’re probably going to come and take it off you innit [sic].’
During a second meeting Rayzr directs Livvy’s team to a wealthy suburb, explaining: ‘Some people we’ll target their every move, get somebody to watch the house, whenever we feel like we can make the move, we make the move. Could be weeks, could be months.’
Livvy also meets with kidnap survivors and hears their harrowing accounts of what they endured at the hands of their abductors.
The frightening rise of kidnapping in the UK
Kidnappings have increased every year for the past five years.
According to statistics obtained from the Home Office, there were 5,775 kidnappings in England alone in 2020. In London alone there were 995 kidnappings last year.
In the last year, West Midlands Police reported 376 kidnappings. In Kent, there are five times more kidnappings now than a decade ago.
The National Crime Agency now estimates one in five kidnap victims is completely innocent.
Kidnappers face up to 12 years in prison – more if their crime involved weapons.
One man, referred to as James to protect his identity, experienced the horror of being targetted at random and snatched off the street by a gang looking for money.
‘I parked the car and I noticed somebody crouching behind the car in front. By then it was too late, there were two more of them and I was thrown onto the road,’ he recalls.
‘I thought well, this is a typical mugging, handed over my watch and wallet, and then they said, “Ok get up and get into the car”.
‘I tried to run, I was tackled to the ground, my head hit the road and my teeth broke, my eye socket went out and that’s when I saw the knife. Three big men, there’s no chance.
‘They put a hood over my head and off we set. And then we were into the lock up, they literally ripped the suit off my back, they found a flex in the car and they tied me up with the flex.’
Two men left with James’ bank cards and stole £600, the maximum they could withdraw. The one that stayed behind then pulled out a knife.
‘I thought, if this is it I haven’t had a bad run, and if this is it make it quick,’ he recalls. ‘It was a distinct possibility [that I was going to die].’
When the gang was done, they dumped James by the road side and escaped in his car. Police think he was chosen purely because it looked like he might have some money.
Meanwhile a vulnerable woman from Kent who was coerced into criminality tells how a gang hunted her down and kidnapped her when she tried to escape.
After she was bundled into a car, she recalls how weapons were put in the back and a man put a gun in her mouth and cocked it.
‘They dragged me into a secluded area, they hit me with a baseball bat, they made me open my legs and they hit my private parts with it,’ she recounts.
‘They shoved a gun in my mouth, cocked it in my mouth. I just looked at him and prayed to the Lord that he was just going to pull the trigger and get it over with, I just wanted it done with, I didn’t want it dragged out any longer than it needed to be dragged out…
‘I just looked at him and I wanted to say “shoot me” because that’s all I wanted to happen then, I just wanted him to get rid of me.’
The gang eventually dumped her, bloodied and unable to move, and she was found by a passerby and rushed to hospital. Her family has since moved home, fearing for their safety.
Livvy meets David Jones, the Head of the National Crime Agency’s Anti-Kidnap Unit, who reveals that kidnapping in the UK is a big problem.
‘It is the most serious criminal offence outside of murder that anyone can imagine, the psychological impact is absolutely colossal, not only for the time that they’re in captivity, but it’s the aftermath as well,’ he says.
He says the police are working undercover to do everything in their power to stamp- out this crime.
Inside Britain’s Kidnap Gangs is available to watch on BBC iPlayer from August 17.
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