SUMMARY: Real Crime is a British documentary television series produced by ITV Studios for the ITV network. Each episode examines a notorious crime and includes interviews with relatives of the victims. It was broadcast from 2001 to 2011, and ended after ten series. From 2008 until 2011, each episode was presented by Mark Austin and from 2010 was listed as Real Crime with Mark Austin.
The Tesco bomb campaign was an attempted extortion against British supermarket chain Tesco which started in Bournemouth, England, in August 2000 and led to one of the largest and most secretive operations ever undertaken by Dorset Police. During the campaign, a blackmailer identified by the pseudonym "Sally" sent letters to Tesco stores threatening to harm customers if his demandsâfor Clubcards, modified so that the holder could withdraw cash from ATMsâwere not met.
Several months after the threat first came to light, "Sally" sent out several letter bombs, one of which was received and exploded in the face of the householder, causing her shock and minor injuries, while the Royal Mail intercepted several other packages, which had been held up because insufficient stamps had been put on them. In October 2000, "Sally" threatened to use pipe bombs against Tesco customers and the threat was taken seriously enough that Tesco began the production of the modified Clubcards, but were unable to produce the required number before the deadline set by the blackmailer. In November, "Sally" claimed to have placed a pipe bomb in a garden in the Ferndown area of Dorset. No bomb was found.
Police eventually mounted a surveillance operation on the postbox to which several of the extortion letters had been traced and identified "Sally" as Robert Edward Dyer. Dyer was arrested in February 2001, over six months since the beginning of the extortion attempt, and charged with several offences, including nine counts of blackmail and one of common assault, of which he was found guilty in May 2001. He was sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment on 12 June 2001, later reduced to 12 years on appeal. A number of similar extortion attempts against supermarket chains and other businesses and subsequent attacks on Tesco have since been compared to Dyer's campaign by the media.
BOURNEMOUTH CONNECTION: The Tesco Bomber finally got captured due to surveylance of the postbox outside the Post Office. His mistake was to use this postbox to post letters to his victims. Although the programme was a one off, naturally, it still happened in Bournemouth, and therefore I feel justified in including this important part of history in this geocaching series. The fascination programme "Real Crime: The Tesco Bomber" can be viewed in its entirity on the popular video streaming website.
THE CACHE:Â The info to find the cache can be found on the postbox. Despite being one big postbox - usually the case outside post offices, due to being two doors, means this is a double postbox, and as such, each has their own unique box number, that are displayed on the timeplates.
BH8 ABC & BH8 DEFG
The cache can be found at: N50 44.CBF W001 50.D8(A/E).
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