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Make-up artist names £53m heist mask men

A MAKE-up artist giving evidence at the trial following the country's biggest ever cash robbery has identified eight men who visited her flat in connection with disguises she had been asked to produce.

Michelle Hogg, 32, said that Securitas robbery defendants Lea Rusha, Jetmir Bucpapa, Roger Coutts and Stuart Royle had visited her Plumstead home in the days before the robbery.

Another three men from South East London, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and a fourth man whom she knew only by his first name were also said to have visited the flat.

Miss Hogg, who now lives in Woolwich, told the court that she had been asked to make face-casts and "bald-caps" for four men, but when she asked what the make-up was for she was told "just a job".

Miss Hogg told the court that she was expecting four people to come to her flat on Monday, February 6, but instead seven turned up, including Coutts, Royle, Rusha and Bucpapa.

Miss Hogg told the court she had not met the four men before but knew their names now.

She described how there was not enough space for all the people to sit down in the room, which only had a two-seater sofa and a chair. She explained how she and one of the men had worked together to make positive and negative face casts for four men, including Rusha and Royle.

Miss Hogg also claimed that she was tasked with making "bald caps" for Lea Rusha and for the man whom she knew only by his first name.

When asked what the relationship between the men was, she said: "They all knew each other. They seemed like buddies, like friends."

Miss Hogg told the court that some of the men, plus an eighth man, had also visited the flat on Tuesday, December 7, and on Wednesday, December 8.

She told how she was asked if she could make false chins and noses and do moustaches and beards.

Miss Hogg had originally stood accused alongside the men in the dock, but the jury was instructed to clear her of all three charges against her earlier this month.

Seven men are on trial. They are John Fowler, 58, Stuart Royle, 48, Emir Hysenaj, 27, Jetmir Bucpapa, 26, Lea Rusha, 24, Roger Coutts, 30, and Keith Borer, 53.

Car dealer Fowler, of Elderden Farm, Chart Hill Road, Staplehurst; car salesman Royle, of Allen Street, Maidstone; unemployed Bucpapa, of Hadlow Road, Tonbridge; roofer Rusha, of Lambersart Close, Southborough, near Tunbridge Wells; Hysenaj, of New Road, Crowborough, East Sussex; and Coutts, a garage owner, of The Green, Welling, all deny conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy to possess a firearm at the time of committing an offence.

Borer, of Little Venice Country Park, Hampstead Lane, Yalding, near Maidstone, denies handling stolen goods.

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