Eight years and six months for House Jacking Gang in Alicante

Two members of the violent gang this week began jail sentences of eight years and six months each after admitting armed robbery and kidnap in a plea bargain deal.A third was sentenced to a year and a half in prison by a court in Alicante after being convicted as an accomplice.Two men involved in the April 22 2004 kidnap are still on the run.Mr and Mrs Yarwood were playing cards as they relaxed after dinner at their home in Moraira on Spain's southeastern coast when the gang burst in.The couple were threatened with pistols and a knife and told they would be killed unless they paid 600,000 euros - the equivalent of £400,000 at the time of crime. The pair, from Frodsham, Cheshire, were terrorised overnight and the following morning, Mr Yarwood, 72, a retired electrician was driven to the local bank and told to withdraw all the money in his account.But he wrote a note on the back of a cheque begging for help and the bank manager alerted police who called in a specially-trained kidnap response unit.Speaking of their ordeal at the hands of their Romanian and Spanish kidnappers, Mrs Yarwood who ran a guest house in Cheshire for 27 years, said afterwards: "They terrorised us all night, constantly pointing the guns at us and cocking them."When my husband tried to escape out of the back door they punched him in the face and kicked him repeatedly."I was convinced we were going to die.Her husband added: "I was praying the bank would try and help and I wrote a note on the back of a cheque saying, 'Please give me the money because someone has kidnapped my wife."The gang leader kept saying that if he didn't see the money by the following day I would never see Pat again."