IT was the big hit film of last year about a conniving, money-grabbing con artist who stole an entire family’s estate.
And now a shocking story has come to light in a sleepy English village which has echoes of comedy thriller Saltburn.
Leigh Voysey was sentenced to six and a half years in jail for forging the £4million will of her former head teacher.
In 2021, Voysey stated that she had become the primary recipient of Maureen Renny’s will after her passing at the age of 82 in Much Hadham, Herts the previous year.
Voysey, a mother of one and a Homebase shelf stacker, came close to inheriting the luxurious country property Hill House from its legitimate beneficiaries. However, in October, she admitted to committing fraud and forgery.
This narrative shares similarities with the situation in Saltburn, where Oliver, portrayed by Barry Keoghan, deceitfully acquires the estate belonging to his friend Felix’s family, played by Jacob Elordi.
When Voysey, 46, was a child, wealthy Maureen was her tutor at the fee-paying school which the former headmistress founded.
She claims she reconnected with Maureen many years later when she took a job at a care agency and worked as her carer once in 2016.
Then, in one of the most brazen attempts at probate frauds British courts have seen in years, Voysey bought a £15 will kit and forged the necessary documents.
The heartless con artist enlisted her pal, Stansted Airport security guard Amber Collingwood, and drug addict Ben Mayes, to sign as witnesses to the will. The pair later pleaded guilty to forgery.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Maureen’s step-grandson Tom Renny, 32, said: “Maureen was a very generous lady and incredibly charitable to everyone she met. But by the end she was extremely vulnerable and for someone to have tried to exploit her in this way has been horrific.
“I always believed that it was a lie, but they were unrelenting and brazen.
“As a family, we asked them so many times to retract the claim and said we wouldn’t press for compensation if they did.
“No one wanted memories of Maureen and the house to end up being tainted by their horrible behaviour.
“But they callously refused right up until the end.
“I will never get the four years back that Voysey took away from us. Not only did she attempt to profit from Maureen’s death, she has soured what was a final gift from her and my grandfather.”
Tom and his sister, Emily, had been left money by Maureen as she had married their grandpa Murray in the 1970s.
Maureen’s real will, from February 2016, left more than £200,000 to the animal lover’s 16 favourite charities, including the RSPCA, The Donkey Sanctuary and Dogs Trust.
‘Lawsuit out of the blue’
The other real beneficiaries were cousins Gillian Ayre, Angela Eastwood and Susan Vickers.
But Voysey claimed vulnerable Maureen had made a new will while she was bed-bound after a stroke, and was said to have been “talking gibberish” by her regular carers.
The will signed by witnesses Collingwood and Mayes was dated September 2019 — two months after Maureen had her devastating stroke.
Her carer, Tanya Hedges, told Voysey’s trial: “She couldn’t do much for herself at all.
“She wasn’t with it. She talked less, but more gibberish. Nothing she said made sense.
“There was confusion. She thought she was on a boat sometimes.”
According to the family, Voysey produced the bogus will in May 2021 — a year and four months after Maureen had passed away.
The brazen crook had first known Maureen as her headmistress at the exclusive Barn School situated in the property she attempted to claim.
Kindly Maureen had nurtured Voysey, who attended the school from age eight, and, in the 1990s, made her head girl.
It was that connection that scheming Voysey attempted to exploit — alleging that the elderly woman didn’t want the £2million estate to be handed over to developers.
She told cops: “She wanted me to have this. Whether she wanted me to have this because she wanted me to live there, I don’t know.
“She wanted it to remain as a school or a house. I was very close to her. She made me head girl. I didn’t force her to do it.”
Voysey said she was going to win a mansion and an estate. She was going to do it with a fake will. I asked her why, and she said because she deserved it
Fiona House
She also claimed: “Mrs Renny remembered exactly who I was, even though it was 25 years since I’d left her school.
“Mrs Renny told me that she’d been asking about me during the years since I had left her school. After reconnecting in February 2016, I visited Mrs Renny when I could, approximately three to four times a year.”
But Detective Constable Sian Beames, from Hertfordshire Constabulary’s Serious Fraud and Cyber Unit who lead the case, said: “Voysey had befriended the deceased on only one occasion before she died.”
Voysey stated that no one knew of her alleged visit when Maureen supposedly signed the fake will.
Tom said: “We have never heard of her. A member of the family phoned Maureen every day to check in.
“And there was a visitors’ book for people to sign. No one was able to walk in unannounced and unknown. The lawsuit came out of the blue.”
The family reported the claim to fraud police who launched a probe.
Voysey’s attack on the rightful inheritors left the grieving relatives in a three-year hell as they fought for their £4.2million.
In court, Tom told how he had barely slept for three years as he and his family fought to keep what they had been bequeathed.
By the time Voysey’s legal challenge was launched, the estate had already paid out to the beneficiaries and Tom had bought a house with his wife, Alex, for £275,000.
His dream home was put in jeopardy when Voysey launched a civil case against him and his family.
Tom added: “I think she came up with the idea when she saw the house for sale because that coincided with the time that she came forward.
‘Leigh tells lots of lies’
“She obviously saw the house and thought, I’m going to win myself a house.
“She made a comment to us saying, along the lines of, ‘It doesn’t matter, even if I do lose, I won’t have to pay anything back, because I don’t have anything.’
“Yet there was nothing we could do to stop her making the claim.
“By then I had bought the house, so if she won — which we were scared could happen even though her claim was rubbish — I would have to sell it. It would have drained my life savings. We did everything by the book, we followed the whole probate process, and yet this was allowed to happen to us.”
It took until October 15 — seven days into the trial — for Voysey to confess her lies, and the family were able to rest easy knowing their inheritance wasn’t going to be snatched away.
Thankfully, Voysey was outed by a work pal Fiona House, who she had attempted to get in on the scam.
Fiona said: “She said she was going to win a mansion and an estate. She was going to do a fake will. I asked her why, and she said because she deserved it.
“She asked me if I would be a witness to the fake will. She said I’d be able to leave my job because I would earn more money working with her at the estate when she wins it. She’d be a multi-millionaire.
“At this time, all that was going through my head was that Leigh tells lots of lies. I assumed it was one of those lies.
“Obviously, I declined what she had asked me to do.”
- Tom Renny’s book about the trial, Inheritance Hell: A £4.2 Million Fraud, is available on Amazon, price £9.99.
