This programme contains strong language
and scenes that some viewers may find disturbing.
Aston Abbotts is the quintessential English village.
There's tea, scones, gossip and the occasional scandal.
Can you remember the last time there was a crime in Aston Abbotts?
Well, there was one last week.
Somebody stole a strimmer from somebody's garden.
But in 2011,
the calm of village life was shattered
when this worried mother grew suspicious
of her daughter's new boyfriend.
I remember sitting opposite the table, just thinking,
"You're not telling me the truth."
The daughter was blissfully unaware.
I was very, very fond of him.
I would have liked more of him in my life.
But her mum had discovered that she was dating a violent psychopath.
It was a case of "If I can't have her, then nobody else can."
When the daughter tried to leave him, he refused to let her go.
I just had this feeling that maybe he's going to come and get me.
'Fire service, thatched cottage on fire, Aston Abbotts.'
I knew that he would not stand being crossed in any way.
He became a man possessed, on the loose and equipped to kill.
He was moving towards some sort of endgame scenario.
He's a very dangerous man. A very dangerous man.
This is the real life horror story of a stalker who hunted down
an entire family.
This should never, ever have been allowed to happen to us.
The Buckinghamshire village of Aston Abbotts
has been home to the Hewitt family for 27 years.
Mum Pam brought up all her children here -
three boys and her only daughter, Alison.
I had been single for a while, quite wanted a relationship in my life.
I had had a couple of fairly serious relationships,
but I'd never really been in the state
where I really wanted to settle down with somebody.
At 35, Alison had just begun a new career
as a junior doctor in Brighton.
But the long shifts meant meeting someone new was tricky.
I think Alison was getting to a position where she was thinking,
"I haven't got that much time if I'm going to have children."
I'd considered things like online dating,
but I didn't think that was quite for me.
Her brother suggested Alison join a dating agency in London.
Aimed at professionals, it was exclusive and upmarket.
Al Amin Dhalla had moved to London from Canada.
He'd landed a well-paid job as an accountant in the city.
Single, he had also joined the dating agency, looking for love.
When I first met Mr Dhalla,
he was very well presented, beautiful suit.
He just seemed a nice guy.
Modest, had a respectable job, looking to settle down.
And the first couple of dates he had, we were getting feedback,
they were all saying the same - "Nice guy,
"but too forward, pushy, too pushy."
He was turning up for the first date with chocolates and flowers,
which we had words with him about. "Don't do this."
I don't think we went into great depths about each other's history
on the first date.
I just knew he'd come over from Canada
and he told me a bit about where he'd worked.
I found him very easy to talk to.
He liked history and was keen to see castles and things like that.
I became very fond of him, and I think we had a lot of fun together.
I wanted to see more of him
and I would have liked more of him in my life.
So he just seemed like a genuine guy, really.
Alison had been seeing Dhalla for six months when he asked if
he could meet her family.
It was a big occasion for everyone.
'It was our wedding day, it's my second marriage.'
I was widowed 15 years previously and subsequently met David.
Alison was bridesmaid, she debated whether to bring him or not,
and in the end, she did.
She's had several boyfriends, certainly,
and I've met some of them,
but this was the first one that seemed, let's say, really serious.
Where are you sitting?
Oh, we're sitting up front by Peggy.
Oh, right.
Here's the bridegroom.
He circulated, he chatted to people.
There was nothing particularly strange.
We were genuinely pleased to meet him.
Dhalla told the same story to everyone he met that day.
He was 35, had lived in the UK several years
and had been orphaned at the age of three.
He was lying on every count.
'Alison's grandma had been allocated the task of looking after him.
'And she said, "He's very evasive.
'"I've been trying to find out more about him.
'"How much do you know about his background?"'
"He's got a big secret," she said,
"and I think you need to find out more about him."
We'll see you soon.
(BOTH) Bye.
Two weeks after the wedding,
I was a little bit curious about the fact
he'd gone round telling everyone he was an orphan,
so I think I said to him,
"It must have been very sad losing your parents at such a young age."
And it was at that point that he just gave me
a whole lot of descriptive material about the car crash that he
and his parents had been in when they were killed.
There was no emotion, he didn't look down,
he didn't put his hand up or anything.
It was like a rehearsed script.
Dhalla, meanwhile, began to force the pace of their relationship.
He started spending more and more time round at mine,
which was fine,
and then I think he started moving a little bit more stuff
and a little bit more things of his into mine,
so I think I just turned round at one point
and I just asked him, I said, "Have you moved in, or what's happening?"
Erm, and I think he said then that he'd let his place go,
and suddenly I realised his stuff was all at mine.
Erm...so that wasn't discussed.
I did think it was a bit odd,
but then at the same time it was quite flattering.
A couple of weeks later, I had a conversation with my son, David,
and Mr Dhalla came up
and I said, "I don't want to make a big thing of it,
"but I'm really not convinced about him being an orphan."
At that point, my son said,
"Mum, we need to know more about this guy."
Alison's brother did an internet search on Dhalla
to see what he could dig up.
I think his words were, "Oh, Mum, you'll have to look at this".
In the first instance, I found this title quite worrying.
"Memoirs, legacy", and I thought, "For a young guy, why memoirs?"
A strange title,
a title you might even associate with some terrorist or a bomber.
He's put lots of photos of other girlfriends up.
He's trying to say, "Look what a great guy I am.
"Here I am with this girl and this girl and this girl."
"Family Achievements", we have a heading of. That's my daughter.
I'm afraid I wasn't very happy with seeing her as an achievement.
He claimed to have been a successful nude model in his youth.
They kept this from me at the time,
partly because they didn't want to scare me.
So I think they were understandably worried at the time,
but weren't quite sure what to do.
I thought, "This is written by someone who's mentally disturbed."
It just was strange, it was bizarre,
and it left me thinking, "What's he hiding?"
Dr Alison Hewitt had been seeing
Canadian Al Amin Dhalla for seven months.
They'd met through a dating agency.
He'd moved into her flat in Brighton.
As far as he was concerned, things were getting serious.
The couple arranged a holiday to the Greek island of Skiathos,
and Dhalla had just one thing on this mind.
We were on holiday, yeah, we were sat on a beach
and he'd buried a ring in the sand.
And I sort of opened it
and, you know, he proposed.
But my heart kind of sunk a little bit.
I said, "Oh, this wasn't what I wanted. I'm not ready yet."
And I said, "It's not to say that I won't be ready,
"it's just not quite the right time for me."
Privately, Alison's mum had been suspicious of Dhalla
from the moment she met him.
She was convinced he was hiding something.
Now he was talking marriage.
At this stage I was absolutely quite horrified, to be honest.
We had all these doubts and I was thinking, "Oh, dear,
"this is too soon, this is all too soon."
Pam was desperate to find out who Dhalla really was.
Without letting Alison know, she took a drastic step.
I decided to hire a private investigator.
I had no idea how to find one,
didn't know anybody who had used one,
so I actually got the local Yellow Pages
and the second one I got hold of.
He went by the name of Elliott,
I actually thought he'd probably got another name.
I then asked if I could go into their office and meet them,
and I was quite shocked because he said, "No.
"No, I'm sorry, we don't work like that."
Elliott worked undercover. It meant Pam would never meet him in person.
I felt very guilty that I was going behind my daughter's back
and hiring a private detective.
I had to know, and I hoped that this guy would prove me wrong
and then I could stop worrying.
The first thing I did was to check out the website.
It struck me as decidedly odd from the first page, really.
It was as if he was trying
to portray himself as an Action Man go-getter jetsetter.
The page regarding previous girlfriends -
the photographs seemed staged.
They looked to be random girls,
looked like he brought in to take a photograph with.
Others were staged photographs in restaurants
with girls he was having meals with.
He was definitely a wrong 'un.
One of the pictures of the so-called girlfriends
that stood out on Dhalla's website was 30-year-old Donata.
She had met Dhalla four years earlier
when she visited Canada on a student exchange programme.
I was very surprised when I found out that he had his own website
and that on the section "ex-girlfriends",
it was my photo,
even though there was no relationship at all.
When I met him during those first days, first weeks,
he was a really nice guy.
He was, like, very friendly, very smart, nice to talk to, very helpful,
and then actually it started.
I felt him all around me, you know.
For example, I'm going home, he is following me with a car,
or I come backs from somewhere, he was waiting outside.
And then one day, somebody knocked on my door
and I opened the door
and it was Al standing outside.
Then he took the proposal ring and he said,
"Donata, I want to marry you,"
and I said, "You have to leave, otherwise I'm calling security."
I really was thinking,
"Why is he doing this?"
Because...
a normal person wouldn't do that.
But Pam was still very much in the dark about Dhalla.
All she had was suspicion.
And that wasn't enough to take to her daughter Alison.
So far, the private detective Pam had hired had drawn a blank.
He suspected Dhalla had used aliases.
He told Pam he needed Dhalla's passport if he was to find out more.
We had already invited the two of them to come to Spain with us
for a long weekend.
And it occurred to us
that he would have his passport with him at the time.
On his first day, Alison and he went swimming
and we decided that we would see if we could find his passport.
And when we came back,
Al came over to me and he said,
"Somebody's moved my passport.
"It's not back in the place where it should have been"
The passport showed us he definitely was not an orphan.
He hadn't been in the country for many years, as he claimed,
he'd only been in there for a few months,
and he wasn't 35, he was 40.
The next morning we were woken up by a terrific noise in the villa.
He was acting like a child having a paddy.
He was banging the chairs up and down.
But here he was, now extremely angry with us.
He kind of launched straight at them.
He said, "You fucking bitch."
You know, "You've looked through my stuff."
I stood right out of the way.
I was very frightened as to what he might do to me.
In the end he said, "I'm not staying here,"
and he went and packed his bag
and Alison called a taxi, and she stayed.
His anger was to do with the fact that we'd found out about the lies
and he realised that we would probably find out more.
Alison's mum admitted that she'd hired the private detective.
Back in Brighton, Alison now saw the man she was living with
in a very different light.
I was, like, "Whoisthis guy?"
You know, "Why has he lied to me?"
I wanted a lot of answers.
Just... Was there anything else he'd lied about?
Dhalla had his explanation ready.
He told Alison his parents had gone through a bitter divorce
when he was just three.
He'd been estranged from his father ever since.
The orphan story was his way of hiding this uncomfortable truth.
But the damage was done. Alison no longer trusted him.
I didn't see the relationship going anywhere.
It was going to have to end, basically.
The only problem was that I found ending it very difficult.
I would say, "It's over, really,"
and I would be quite stubborn that way
and he would be quite stubborn the other way -
"No, I want to make it work.
"I still want to get married to you eventually."
Alison's situation became more serious when the private detective
made a disturbing discovery about Dhalla's past in Canada.
I'd spoken to Mrs Hewitt.
She'd obtained some details from his passport,
which enabled us to make further enquiries
via our colleagues in Canada.
It was then ascertained that he had in fact done prison time
for aggravated assault.
Also, he was banned entry from the US,
and there was a ten-year ban on him from carrying weapons.
That was sufficiently serious then to pass as information
back to Mrs Hewitt
as to what kind of character we were dealing with.
Dhalla repeatedly refused to move out of Alison's flat.
My patience snapped and I felt it was only one small step
before he was actually going to start hurting her
and therefore I had to take a hand.
David drove to Brighton to confront him.
I gave him an ultimatum.
I said, "Either you leave now of your own accord
"or I make a phone call and a policeman will help you to leave."
And that was enough.
And I hoped that that was the last I would see of him.
How wrong could I be?
Three days later,
something strange happened in the village of Aston Abbotts.
Pam's neighbours began to receive anonymous letters.
"Dear neighbours and residents,
"please be aware that your neighbour, Pamela Hewitt,
"is known to harbour criminals.
"Her son Paul Hewitt is known to use,
"grow, supply and sell illegal drugs.
"His mother's uncle is a paedophile and homosexual."
The following week there were letters to David's work
and letters went to Alison's work as well.
It was accusing me
of stealing drugs and selling drugs from the hospital, basically.
"In December 2010, Paul did kill ducks in the hunting off-season
"on non-hunting property and without a licence."
Claiming I was an international spy...
The intention of the letter was to discredit the Hewitt family totally.
Beating me up...
Yes. Yes, I had been... I had been beating my new wife.
But we all knew Pam, so, therefore, we knew it wasn't true.
The malicious lies were the first act in a campaign of revenge.
Al Amin Dhalla wasn't going to disappear quietly.
MOBILE VIBRATES AND RINGS
I started getting texts and phone calls from him
and e-mails,
and there were lots of them.
We're talking lots.
And then, one day,
I just left the house in the morning for work...
..and he was there.
And I was a bit like, "What are you doing here?"
And I was very much, like, "No, it's over."
He said, "You can walk with me from my house to work,
"and then that's it."
That day, Dhalla told Alison he'd moved back to London,
had a new job and had sold the engagement ring.
She thought that maybe he was moving on.
She couldn't have been more wrong.
In fact, he'd hired his own private detective
to spy on her around the clock.
I was asked to carry out surveillance on Alison Hewitt,
to see where she went, who she went with. He thought she might be seeing
somebody else. All was normal at the time.
He was just like a normal client.
I didn't notice there was any difference with him whatsoever.
He just wanted to know where she was, had she been anywhere,
had she seen anybody, had anybody visited?
I thought something was amiss
when he asked us to go and knock on Alison's door
and ask her if she'd had sex in the last two months,
on the ruse of it being a survey for a lady's magazine.
I thought that was a strange request, which I refused.
One thing that he asked us to do was
to do some checks on Alison's stepfather,
because Dhalla thought that he'd been involved with prostitutes
and that was another thing I refused to do,
just cos he blamed the parents, from what he told me,
for Alison and himself splitting up,
and he was quite peeved with the parents, to say the least.
With Dhalla far away in London, Alison believed she was safe.
But, actually, he'd rented a flat
just 200 yards from where she was living in Brighton.
And he had a flat above these shops here,
where we're just pulling into now.
As far as I'm aware, Alison wasn't aware
that he had a flat here at that time.
Yes, I did think that was a little bit strange, yeah,
that they'd split up but he still wanted to be so close.
Dhalla couldn't leave Alison alone.
One Saturday, she spotted him lurking outside her flat.
This time, he forced his way into her car.
It was the final straw.
Alison called the police.
Two days later, Dhalla was arrested for harassment
and ordered not to make contact with Alison or any of her family.
But none of this was going to stop him.
Al Amin Dhalla was obsessed.
Starting to think that his state of mind...that he was unstable.
The fact that he'd been harassing Alison
and clearly wasn't going to leave her alone
is what really concerned us
and really, really escalated the risk.
It certainly seemed to me
he was moving towards some sort of end-game scenario
and the likelihood being that he was expecting to go to prison
for a long time, or even die.
When Al Amin Dhalla began dating Doctor Alison Hewitt,
he seemed like a genuine guy.
This guy is a man of few words,
so I'm assuming he's going to be a guy of large actions.
I think so. >
Ready to jump. I will see you guys in a minute.
Thank you.
Until her mother discovered the truth.
He'd been in prison for violence,
and created a fictitious new identity, built on lies.
I think at first, I was probably just a concerned, worried mum,
who was a bit worried that she might be overreacting,
but as the days and weeks passed by,
there was certain behaviours which increasingly rang alarm bells.
Dhalla's behaviour, along with the photos on his website,
made Pam extremely anxious.
As a probation officer, she'd spent time with criminals in prison.
She'd also worked in a psychiatric hospital,
dealing with people who suffered from personality disorders.
She saw similar traits in Dhalla.
In the mental health profession we refer to it as narcissism,
and that's somebody who comes across as quite arrogant
and full of themselves, quite opinionated.
Lies, can lie indiscriminately.
A narcissist cannot cope with rejection, that is a key factor.
It was very, very worrying.
I knew that he would not stand being crossed in anyway.
Dhalla had already been arrested once for harassing Alison.
He'd been released on the condition he didn't contact her or her family.
But that didn't deter him.
By now he was a man fixated, intent on getting Alison back,
and getting even with her mum.
Well, it was about half past three.
I remember it quite distinctly cos it was Mothering Sunday,
and a call came through that there was a man in a field
that had been seen firing some kind of weapons.
As we entered the field we saw the chap, Mr Dhalla,
he wasn't right, he had a small arsenal of weapons in his vehicle.
I had a chat with him about, you know, what he was up to
and why he was there, and the answers were very,
he was very evasive.
I was still asking the questions,
I had my hand on my handgun cos I just didn't feel right.
You know, he didn't say anything, he just basically stared,
he made you feel very, very uncomfortable, sort of,
seemed to be staring through you and made you feel very uneasy.
Dhalla was doing target practice with a crossbow
and you can see the actual crossbow here.
This is a very high-powered weapon, these are the bolts that it's
designed to fire and these could do serious injury to somebody.
You can see also here, there's a hammer, a blowtorch,
there are gloves, high-powered air rifle and a number of targets.
They looked at his van, they could see that it had been modified,
which would allow somebody to be locked in the back of the van,
but also there was a grill on the back of it,
which would allow somebody to fire a weapon out of the back.
They found in there his satnav,
they looked at some of the locations that he had in there,
and those locations, overwhelmingly,
related to Alison Hewitt and her parents.
Everything pointed to Dhalla plotting a revenge attack,
but none of the weapons were illegal.
All the police could arrest him for was trespass
and driving on an out of date Canadian licence.
Although the offences that were being committed
weren't that great at that time,
when I added everything up, I was really quite concerned about it.
We had here somebody that had gone to really some great lengths
to modify a van, acquire some weapons, and it looked to me
like he had an obsession with Alison and members of her family.
The police had major concerns about what Dhalla might now do.
But as he'd only committed minor offences,
he was granted bail by the court.
I thought, "This is serious, maybe he's going to come and get me."
My phone was tapped, my house was on red alert,
and they asked that I call them if there was anything suspicious.
I decided just to look around my flat and think, "What do I do
"when he turns up in the middle of the night?"
So I worked out my escape route and I decided the safest place for me
to be would be to sleep under the table on the floor,
literally with a phone in my hand, so that I could phone the police.
He didn't come the first night.
The second night, it was about two o'clock in the morning,
the police came and they were banging on the window.
He said "Someone's set fire to your mum's house."
'This is the Fire Service, how can I help you?'
'Fire Service, thatched cottage on fire, Aston Abbott.
'We're trying to wake the occupants up,
'we've not been successful so far.
'OK, we're on our way.'
The fire was going along here, all up the front door
and all the way along here.
So I was banging on the door because I was worried that Pam and Dave
were actually in the house and I could see two cars parked there.
It had to be arson, cos this area of grass
that runs along the front of the house here, there was a six inch
band that ran all the way along, green grass, completely on fire.
As we reached the back door
and there was a telephone directory or some form of phone book
that was burning away with flames up here, and the door was alight.
The fire was nearly at the thatch.
I was really concerned that if the thatch had caught,
there was nothing I could do about it from that point onwards.
And immediately, the number one suspect for me was Dhalla.
It was a clear sign that it wasn't just Alison under threat.
Dhalla was after her parents, too.
We don't know whether he targeted the doors as a way of blocking our exit,
that is something we will never know.
Although their cars were parked in the drive that night,
Pam and David were actually 200 miles away, in the middle
of the Bristol Channel, staying on the remote island of Lundy.
I was pretty confident that Dhalla was trying to find Alison
and, or her parents.
We thought that Dhalla may well meet the ferry
as it arrived back from Lundy.
The clue that he might be planning to pay them a visit
had come from Dhalla himself.
When he had been arrested with weapons three days earlier,
police discovered his satnav was programmed with locations
near to where the Lundy ferry departs.
At five o'clock in the morning we were woken
and told to pack immediately.
And that we would be heli-lifted off Lundy
because they were so concerned for our safety.
There were two policemen there, totally covered in black,
wearing black balaclavas and with long, black guns.
It was all very surreal.
It's only afterwards the real horror of it all affected me.
With their suspect on the loose, the police were taking no chances.
The Hewitt family were taken to a safe house,
a hotel on the south coast.
Armed police remained on Lundy, but Dhalla failed to show.
He'd wrong-footed them, turning his attention back to Alison.
What we didn't know was that actually Dhalla would have
an interest in the Princess Royal Hospital in Hayward's Heath,
because Alison had very recently moved to work there.
What happened was that he appeared there two to three hours after
the fire was started and you can see on the CCTV a man wearing
a woolly hat and woolly gloves wandering around the car park,
and was spotted by a security guard who was having a cigarette
at about three in the morning.
She had two colleagues with her, they repeatedly challenged him
and he said he was walking around simply because he couldn't sleep.
He is behaving very suspiciously and they've picked up on that
and they've challenged him,
but the security guard does describe how uncomfortable he made her feel.
I think he was there because he knew Alison had moved to that hospital
and was working there.
We think he was probably monitoring her emails, to try and work out
when she was going to be on the premises
in order that he could get to her.
The security staff didn't know Dhalla was wanted.
He was free to plot his next move.
I was absolutely paranoid about everything and anything.
They were worried that Al might be in the area, like looking for me,
so I was in a bad way, really.
I was starting to think that his state of mind
was that he was unstable.
He transferred that day, all of his money out of the country,
out to somebody in a different name.
It certainly seemed to me very much like he was moving towards some sort
of endgame scenario and the likelihood being that he was
expecting to go to prison for a long time or even die.
The police had taken enormous precautions,
they had removed our mobile phones from us.
They clearly had put us in a hotel where they made absolutely sure that
Alison and Mr Dhalla had never been, so he was not familiar with the area.
And there was a police car sitting outside the hotel, so...
And we were booked in different names.
We were told that we were going to be there until they had arrested him.
This hotel that we were staying in, which my brother and both my mum
and step-dad were staying in as well, was effectively a safe house.
I came into the room, and straight away it was like, shut the door,
lock the door, shut all the curtains in the room.
I'd sort of peep out a little bit,
just to check that I couldn't see anybody watching.
I was so paranoid I wasn't going to sleep much that evening
and I spent a lot of it just lying on the floor,
looking at the light under the door and just looking for shadows,
cos I thought if there's a shadow and moves and somebody's outside
the door I want to know, so I can basically call the police.
The whole thing was completely surreal.
This doesn't happen to people like us, no.
By now, Alison had told the police
she had changed jobs to a new hospital.
They immediately circulated Dhalla's photo amongst staff.
Officers went in there with his picture and the staff,
some nurses said, "Well, actually, that man that you're showing me
"there in that picture, he was in here an hour ago,
"dressed as a doctor."
I had to take a breath.
You know, even though I knew at this stage he was a very dangerous man,
he was really determined to get at Alison,
and potentially her mum and step-father,
I was still quite shocked that he had somehow acquired a doctor's coat
and stethoscope, he had a folder under his arm,
and masqueraded as a doctor to try and find out
when she was going to be on duty.
It really just added a further sense of urgency to the whole thing.
At one stage I thought, "We're not far behind him now,
"we know an hour ago where he was", but on the other hand,
the lengths that he was going to to try and get at her,
were really at a level that I hadn't dealt with before.
Convinced Dhalla was hacking into Alison's emails,
the police set a trap.
They told Alison to email her mum,
explaining she'd finished with the police and would be back
at the hospital on duty at 8am the following morning.
We knew that it was likely that he'd see that email
and it would reinforce the fact that she's going to be there
next morning, and that would be our opportunity to catch him.
Dhalla rose to the bait.
In fact, he showed up an hour early.
The police called us early in the morning and said he's been
seen on the hospital grounds, and it was so nerve-wracking, so tense.
Armed officers were taken to some toilets that he was inside,
told him to put his hands on his head and open the door.
He didn't comply with what they'd asked him to do at all,
they were able to grab him and it was then a struggle before
they managed to get some handcuffs on him and restrain him.
After his arrest, a car belonging to Dhalla was found near the hospital.
It contained another high-powered crossbow and other disturbing items.
He'd also had a satnav in which had a reference
to a rather secluded spot close to the hospital, in woods.
We can only speculate what he intended to do.
But clearly he intended to try and get Alison out of the hospital,
and possibly to take her to this site.
We think that possibly it was a case of if I can't have her,
then nobody else can.
Even though Dhalla was now locked up,
this wasn't the end for the Hewitts.
There was one final twist to come.
Whilst he was locked up, we felt relatively safe.
I thought it was all over. I've always thought it was over.
So it was a huge shock, really, to hear that he had, when in prison,
made a plot to kill one of us.
Al Amin Dhalla had been captured,
following a three-day manhunt by the police.
After a month-long trial, where he protested his innocence,
he was found guilty of nine charges, including arson and harassment.
There was relief for all of the Hewitts.
I want to thank the police who have kept my family and myself alive.
Stalking destroys lives and we need to take it seriously.
'It's the stuff of screen scripts I think, basically.'
< It's been a horror movie.
A horror movie. Very difficult.
Dhalla's sentencing was to be delayed several months.
The judge wanted psychiatric reports on his mental state.
He remained locked up in prison.
The Hewitts assumed they were safe,
until detectives made a discovery no-one could have predicted.
So this is Lewes Prison and this is where Dhalla was remanded to, after
he was convicted for the offences against Alison and her parents,
and during his time here, we got some information
that was sufficient for us to arrest him for conspiracy to murder.
I know that he had transferred some money over from Canada,
and that the information had been found out via a phone call
in the prison when they'd listened back to it.
And that he had put a contract out on,
and it was described as 'one of the ladies in the case'.
Dhalla was arrested, along with two other men and a woman,
on suspicion of conspiracy to murder,
but the police had insufficient evidence to press charges.
Regardless of the strength of the evidence around that,
the very fact that there was that inquiry
was a pretty devastating thing for the family, I think,
because they thought it was all over.
The reality for Alison and her parents
is that their long-term safety can no longer be guaranteed.
They've met with officers from Witness Protection
and discussed changing their names, moving home
and even cutting themselves off from friends and family.
Nobody can predict whether he is ever going to come to terms with
this revenge whilst he's in prison,
or whether it's just going to fester away,
and he's going to be building his plans whilst he's got time alone.
One man has changed all their lives, perhaps forever.
We know there will always be a threat to us.
We cannot ever lead life the way it has been.
(NEWSREADER) A man described as a narcissistic psychopath
is due to be sentenced at Lewes Crown Court today.
Al Amin Dhalla waged a sinister campaign against Dr Alison Hewitt.
More than a year after his arrest,
Al Amin Dhalla is finally being sentenced,
but it won't represent closure for any of the Hewitt family.
(ALISON) I would like a long sentence,
but whether it's one year or ten years,
the worry will be, for me, when that's finished.
Alison isn't going to the sentencing.
She wants to avoid antagonising Dhalla any further,
but her mum and stepfather will face him in court.
'I have a whole mixed range of feelings about this guy.
'This isn't what I wanted for my daughter.
'I guess like all parents, you want your children to be happy,'
and this has made her very unhappy, made us all very unhappy.
In fact, I think if you ask me to keep talking
I'll probably burst into tears cos...
This should never, ever have been allowed to happen to us.
And we have it for the rest of our lives,
so...
yeah, it's had a profound impact on us.
Certainly, you know, thinking about moving from this country,
and we might have to disappear if it's a short sentence.
Sorry, I don't like talking about this, because it means
separating ourselves from our family and friends.
Everybody said to me, "Did you not see warning signs?
"Was he not weird from the beginning?"
and the answer's no, I didn't see anything.
I think there's something in his personality that,
with a rejection, has led to this extreme...outcome.
(NEWSREADER) Al Amin Dhalla was sentenced today for offences including
harassment to arson, and possession of an offensive weapon.
Dhalla is sentenced to an indefinite prison term.
He will serve a minimum of six years.
(REPORTER) Is there a sense of relief that it's all over now,
but from what you're saying is,
it's going to be preying on your mind for years, even while he's in prison?
We believe this man holds a grudge and, er,
he will continue to hold that throughout his life.
(DETECTIVE) I want to acknowledge the bravery and courage of Alison and her...
Having already served time on remand,
Dhalla could be free from prison in just over four years.
(INTERVIEWER) In terms of the future, you still can't rule out
the possibility of having to relocate or change your identity?
I think I'll probably do that anyway now.
I feel, I feel that I need to do that,
but I feel that I'm not in any...
I don't need to do it today or this year,
so it takes some of the pressure off.
(PAMELA) You're looking over your shoulder.
I will check when I go out to the dustbin that there's
nobody around in the garden.
We don't open the windows so that nobody can get in.
We sleep very lightly, very lightly indeed.
We were targeted, hatred and anger...
..and for people who commit those sorts of crimes,
they don't always move on.
This is a man we believe will hold a grudge for the rest of his life,
so he may get out in a few years' time.
We have a worry for the rest of our lives.