Carer who stole £75k from Thunderbirds director jailed

Mr Pattillo was a director for the well-known Thunderbirds series

The carer of a blind former film-writer and director has been jailed after stealing £75,000 from him to fund his gambling addiction.

Allan Beacham, 66, of Wootton in Kent, stole the money from the Emmy award winning Alan Pattillo, who directed the first episode of Thunderbirds.

Mr Pattillo, who died in 2020, was registered blind, in a wheelchair and had Parkinson's when Beacham was taking his money over a 19-month period from October 2017 to May 2019.

Beacham was sentenced at Winchester Crown Court on Friday to three years and 10 months in prison after pleading guilty to theft in January.

Beacham was working for a care company in May 2016, when he was sent to care for Mr Pattillo in Scotland.

The following year Mr Pattillo moved to Salisbury, Wiltshire, and continued to employ Beacham who managed his finances and care needs. He would also liaise with a paralegal when funds needed to be transferred.

But when Mr Pattillo moved into a local care home in 2019, concerns were raised about large amounts of cash being removed from his bank account, and a report was made to Wiltshire Police.

Beacham stole Mr Pattillo's money to fund a gambling addiction

During an investigation, officers discovered Beacham would request money from an attorney for goods or services which should have been for Mr Pattillo's benefit.

But as soon as the money arrived in his account Beacham would withdraw the cash for his own benefit and his addiction, the police said.

Mr Pattillo died, aged 90, during the investigation but Wiltshire Police said it was in the "public interest" to continue their investigation.

'Abused trust'

Det Con Nick Bishop, now of Regional Organised Crime Unit, said: "It was obvious that Mr Beacham thought he could continue to procrastinate and make a mockery of the justice system for as long as possible in the vein hope that the crown would concede and let him off.

"Unfortunately for him he was the only person that thought this, after all his antics justice caught with him and he has been handed an appropriate sentence.

"His crime was against a very elderly and vulnerable man, who he had employed as a trained live-in carer and who he totally depended and trusted to look after on him in his later years.

"Instead, Mr Beacham utterly abused this trust and position by stealing a vast amount of money from his employer for his own satisfaction and addiction."