One of Britain's wealthiest men is facing a life sentence for ordering the killing of a business associate.
He is the scourge of ramblers, a ruthless property baron who regards his tenants as "filth" and his women as chattels. Once described by a judge as a self-styled "emissary of Beelzebub", Nicholas van Hoogstraten, (57) inflicted terror on his tenants in the pursuit of an enormous fortune.
When rent was overdue or he wanted someone evicted, the "heavies" went in. In one case, he removed the roof from above a tenant's head, while in another, a sick tenant returned from hospital to find the staircase to her flat had been ripped out.
Ten years ago, when a fire broke out at one of his properties in the Sussex seaside town of Hove, he described the five people who died in the blaze as "lowlife, drug dealers, drug takers and queers - scum". In the 1960s, he was jailed for four years for his role in a hand-grenade attack on a former business associate.
Van Hoogstraten is proud of his chauvinistic attitude towards women. He boasted in an interview that his latest girlfriend, an 18-year-old from Botswana, "was given to me by her father" when she was 16. But earlier this year she walked out on him and complained to police of domestic violence. More recently, he fought a protracted battle with ramblers - "the great unwashed," in his words - over a public footpath across his East Sussex estate where he is building an enormous £40 million country home, Hamilton Palace. Van Hoogstraten blocked the footpath with a shed, barbed wire and old fridges, sparking 4,000 letters of protest.
Van Hoogstraten, born in Shoreham, east Sussex, in 1945, is proud of his reputation, once boasting in a World in Action independent television documentary: "I'm probably ruthless and I'm probably violent." The extent of his ruthlessness was discovered by Mohammed Sabir Raja (62), a property developer, originally from Pakistan, whose decision to stand up to Van Hoogstraten cost him his life.
The pair, both property magnates, met at an auction in 1988. Van Hoogstraten's style is to buy property with sitting tenants then, as he puts it, "winkle them out" and sell on with vacant possession. Mr Raja bought and rented out flats. He had more than 100 court findings against him for letting out property unfit for human habitation.
The Pakistani businessman borrowed money from Van Hoogstraten to invest in rental property, and was persuaded to sign blank property transfer forms.
Van Hoogstraten then started collecting rents instead of Mr Raja. He filled in the blank transfer forms and filed them with the Land Registry, transferring the titles. Mr Raja responded by launching a legal action. By the spring of 1999, he was alleging fraud. Van Hoogstraten told police that the value of the business dealings was "peanuts" to him. But he undermined this apparent nonchalance when he admitted to the jury that despite his wealth he remained driven by avarice: "Whatever money you have, it's never enough." Officers who raided one of his homes discovered quite how parsimonious he was when they found teabags drying out on a draining board, ready to be recycled.
Mr Raja's son Amjad recalled meeting Van Hoogstraten and discussing with him the fact that his father was a thorn in Van Hoogstraten's side. With relish, the tycoon replied: "I pull out thorns and I snap them." On July 2nd, 1999, Mr Raja was with his grandsons, teenagers at the time, at the family's £300,000 semi in Sutton, in Surrey's stockbroker belt. At 10.15 a.m. the grandsons heard a shot and rushed downstairs to find the front door open, and their grandfather clutching his chest and saying in Punjabi: "Hoogstraten's men have hit me".
The man with the gun, police believe, was Robert Knapp (55), originally from Abbeyfeale, Co Limerick. His accomplice was David Croke (59). Both were career armed robbers and heroin addicts who had recently been released from Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire, where they were on the same wing. The first shot had missed. But Mr Raja had been stabbed five times in the chest with a kitchen knife and was fatally injured. Pursued by the gunman, the businessman stumbled into a TV room at the back of the house where he was shot in the head.
Among those expected to give evidence against Van Hoogstraten was his girlfriend, Ms Tanika Sali (18). In police interviews, she claimed that when she was introduced to Knapp by Van Hoogstraten, he whispered in her ear: "This is Bob: he's one of my hit-men." After he was arrested, she asked him if he was responsible. He allegedly told her: "There are some things you best don't know for your own protection." However, she refused to testify in court.
According to Van Hoogstraten's rags-to-riches story, he founded his empire as a teenager, buying cheap property with the proceeds of selling his stamp collection. He also began acquiring a criminal record early in life: in March 1956, aged 11, he was convicted of theft. The self-made man now faces self-destruction. His fortune appears to be crumbling. In 2001, he was rated 159th on the Sunday Times rich list with a valuation of £200m. This year, that figure was cut to £60m and his rating plummeted to 595th.
Hamilton Palace is unlikely to be completed. Within it, the mausoleum he intended to last 5,000 years after his death remains unfinished. It may be a more fitting monument than he intended.