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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Stuart Jeffries

Parole review – how do you decide when it is safe to let a murderer back on the streets?

A changed man? … convicted murderer Colin Stacey.
A changed man? … convicted murderer Colin Stacey. Photograph: BBC/Raw TV/Matt Frost

“The media called me Casanova Coombs, Don Juan,” recalls 58-year-old convicted fraudster David Coombs from his cell in HMP Wormwood Scrubs.

That seems a stretch. Neither Casanova nor Don Juan groomed victims on Smooch.com before fleecing them of their savings. Neither spent 40 years as a conman, nor were they sentenced to four years’ jail in 2017 by a judge who described Coombs as a “predator” who ruthlessly took advantage of the people (though mostly women) he, inconceivably, charmed.

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