Two evil sisters terrorise town’s elderly for TWENTY years including a quadriplegic man and dementia-suffering pensioner
They have been stacking up crimes against the elderly and vulnerable since the 1990s
DRUG addict sisters who have been branded "despicable" and a "menace" have been targeting vulnerable and elderly people for twenty years.
Sarah and Sally Harcourt have quite the CV of crimes after terrorising Norwich for two decades, to feed their drug habits.
Between them they have stolen money from pensioners and kidnapped a disabled man.
Youngest sister Sarah, 37, is behind bars serving a four-year sentence, after she and a sidekick wheeled a quadriplegic man to a park in his wheelchair and robbed him of £6 or £7.
Sally, 39, was last week sentenced to 20 months in prison, suspended for two years.
She escaped going to jail after admitting she tricked her way into the home of a 76-year-old woman by asking for a glass of water. She then stole £65 from her purse.
Another target, a 76-year-old with dementia living at a sheltered housing complex, was a victim of Sally's cruel thefts as she took £40 from a wallet.
She is banned from going into any sheltered housing complex in Norfolk for the next five years and must complete a drug treatment order.
Sally, of Northfields, near Eaton Park in Norwich, has a record stretching back to the 1990s.
In 2014 she served an eight-month sentence for stealing from an 81-year-old dementia sufferer and in 2012 withdrew money from an elderly woman's bank account.
Roy Blower, a former county and city councillor, said: "I personally can't think of anything more despicable than attacking or stealing from disabled and senior citizens.
"I think most people, even in these modern times where we let a lot of things go, have real issues with people who target the most vulnerable in our society."
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A 79-year-old woman from Norwich knew of Sally, but did not want to be named, and called the sisters' actions "cowardly" and said they are a "menace to others".
Her younger sister has followed the same crime ridden path. Sarah has racked up 42 convictions for 97 offences between 1992 and 2013.
Like Sally, many of Sarah's crimes have been committed against the background of "out of control drug addiction".
SICK SISTERS' CATALOGUE OF CRIME
- August 1996: Sally and Sarah, then 19 and 17, admitted affray after a newspaper seller was hit on the head with a stone after being abused and punched by the sisters in Brigg Street, Norwich.
- September 1998: Sally, 21, got a six-month conditional discharge for letting someone drive without insurance.
- Sally was given 100 hours community service and Sarah was put on probation for a year.
- December 2000: Sarah, 21, was jailed for a year at Norwich Crown Court after admitting her part in a cashpoint robbery in Plumstead Road, Norwich.
- April 2004: Sally, 27, got a 12-month community rehabilitation order after admitting stealing £5 from a vulnerable man she had picked up in the city's red light district after luring him back to her flat.
- March 2012: Sally, 34, was jailed for 16 weeks after admitting handling stolen goods. It followed an incident in July 2011 where she and another man stopped to help an 80-year-old woman in a mobility scooter. They took a bag from the woman.
For the sentence she is currently serving, in 2013 Sarah and her boyfriend Adam Webster wheeled paraplegic Stephen Dooley to Chapelfield Gardens, Norwich, and robbed him of £6-£7 he kept in a bag.
Stephen, then 38, was waiting to be picked up when the pair targeted him and mugged him.
Unable to speak and profoundly disabled after he contracted meningitis at nine-days-old, Stephen was praised by Judge Antony Bate for his "strength of personality".
When he sentenced Webster to six years and Sarah to four years and 12 weeks, Judge Bate said: "This was a despicable joint crime drive by self-centred greed and as usual an utter disregard for your victim's feelings.
"While this experience has been undoubtedly been distressing for him, I hope that, with time and the loving support of his close family, he will gain a measure of closure and begin to engage again with the outside world, which I believe is enriched by his company."
Today top criminologist Nic Groombridge, based at St Mary's University Twickenham London, said: "Research into women who commit crime lags behind that of men.
"One of the earliest criminologists, Lombroso, believed both women and criminals were less advanced in evolutionary terms and found the idea of women criminals as particularly challenging to his theories.
"Much feminist criminology examines the offending of men against women.
"In the 70s some theorists thought the rise of feminism might lead to a rise in women's crime.
"This seems not to have happened and some suggest where rising levels of women's incarceration can be seen this more a backlash against feminism.
"So with the Harcourt sisters we might look to all the same reasons why men might offend.
"They appear vulnerable and prey on the still more vulnerable when opportunity presents.
"This and drugs might explain much of their offending but the fascination lies with them being sisters.
"Some might point to genetic factors but as sisters their upbringing is likely to be the same too."
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