Two burglars who poured boiling water over elderly couple are jailed for life

Two ‘barbaric’ men who poured boiling water over the heads of an elderly couple during a burglary have been jailed for life.

Daniel Wallace, 33, and Kacey Adams, 34 (pictured above), broke into the home of John and Janis Buswell in Halstead, Kent, last April and tortured them for two hours.

They beat the couple, who are in their 60s, doused them with boiling water and threatened them with a knife and a hot iron.

The pair were told at Chelmsford Crown Court on Monday that they will serve a minimum of seven-and-a-half-years each in prison.

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Mr Buswell, 66, was watching television while his wife, 64, knitted clothes for their expected great-grandchild when the men smashed into their bungalow on April 26 last year.

Wallace and Adams tied them up while demanding the codes to their safes at their property on London Road.

The burglars poured boiled water from a kettle over the heads of their victims and threatened to cut off their fingers and ears and gouge their eyes out.

After almost two hours, the two men left the home with stolen cash and jewellery. Police were alerted after Mr Buswell managed to untie himself.

In a victim impact statement, Mrs Buswell said: ‘What these criminals did to me was barbaric.

‘This will affect me every day for the rest of my life. The injuries I have suffered have left me permanently disfigured.

‘I now have no confidence in myself and feel worthless and can’t even do the simplest of things.’

Her husband said: ‘They have destroyed my life and wife’s too.

‘I’m physically and mentally scarred, not just from the attack but from seeing her being tortured and then in a coma fighting for her life.’

Mrs Buswell suffered about 30 per cent burns to her body and required treatment in an intensive care unit for several months.

The pair were caught after police found traces of Wallace’s DNA from the fragments of a cup used to provide water to the victims, before it was smashed against a wall.

Wallace, of no fixed address, and Adams, formerly of Covert Road, Hainault, Ilford, were arrested on May 31 at Heathrow Airport, where they had returned from a shopping trip in Dubai.

Another defendant, Drew Morris, 27, of Downhall Road, Rayleigh, Essex, was jailed for four years and three months after admitting burglary.

He was the getaway driver but said he did not enter the house and didn’t know what was going to happen.

Wallace and Adams were each given a third life sentence, with a minimum of 12-and-a-half years in prison, for conspiracy to murder in another case related to a drive-by shooting in Stanford-Le-Hope, Essex, in May 2016, which their victim survived but lost sight in one eye.

Detective Inspector James Derham, of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said: ‘Adams and Wallace smashed their way into the home of two elderly people, before subjecting them to the most horrific ordeal.

‘Between them they poured two kettles of boiling water over the woman’s head and body and a further kettle over her husband.

‘They have inflicted unimaginable pain and distress on two people who had worked hard throughout their lives and were looking forward to their retirement.

‘The gratuitous, barbaric and utterly senseless actions of these two criminals have caused extensive physical and psychological scars to their victims.’