Paul Sandow admitted harassment at Newcastle Crown Court last week and received a suspended sentence (Picture: North News and Pictures)
Three friends have described how the traumatic ordeal of sharing the same cheating partner brought them together.
Kirsty Harding, 36, Chloe Allan, 24, and Kylie Hubbard, 35, all fell head over heels when they met former soldier Paul Sandow, 35 – that is until they realised their partner was seeing all three of them at the same time.
Sandow’s double (or rather triple) life eventually came to a sinister climax when Kirsty dumped him at her home, with Sandow threatening to kill her with a knife.
He admitted harassment at Newcastle Crown Court last week, accompanied by his new partner, and was sentenced to 27 weeks, suspended for 12 months, in addition to 150 hours paid work and a restraining order against him seeing Kirsty again.
Kirsty herself began dating Sandow after meeting him on an app in April 2017.
She claims she was happy in the relationship until she received a call from Chloe, who told her she’d also been dating Sandow after meeting him at a bar in July 2019.
What they didn’t know at the time was that Sandow had by that point also started seeing Kylie, having met her at a pub in August of that year.
Kirsty Harding (left), Chloe Allan (centre) and Kylie Hubbard (right) were all victims of ‘love rat’ Paul Sandow, who was seeing all three women at the same time (Picture: North News)
Kirsty and Chloe remained in contact, using the codeword ‘Prosecco’ to indicate to one another when it was safe to speak freely and without Sandow overhearing them.
When Kirsty eventually dumped Sandow, he threatened to kill her in her home, waving a knife and saying ‘you might as well go into the kitchen, it’s easier to clean up the blood,’ before Chloe arrived to help calm the situation down.
Kirsty said: ‘Paul always said he was going to the gym in the middle of the night and that he was working as a security guard but I had no idea he was secretly seeing another woman.
‘Chloe contacted me after my number flashed up in his car. My name was saved on his phone as something completely different but she thought it was weird that he declined the calls so she noted the number down.
‘She called me and we discovered that he was dating us both. We decided to come up with the code word Prosecco so we knew it was safe to speak.
‘We didn’t want him to know that we were speaking to each other and he wouldn’t understand a Prosecco emoji.’
Newcastle Crown Court heard Kirsty and Chloe came up with a codeword ‘Prosecco’ to let one another know when it was safe to speak without Paul Sandow (pictured) overhearing (Picture: North News)
Chloe said she first knew something was amiss when Sandow expressed interest in meeting her family but refused to introduce her to his or any of his friends.
She said: ‘Kirsty was saved as ‘Kevin’ in his phone and after he turned down a number of calls from her I took a picture of the number and decided to contact her.
‘I actually asked my nail lady to ring her and confirm an appointment to see if it was another woman, which is was.
‘After that, we spoke on the phone and met up. She claimed he had been aggressive towards her and we agreed to break up with him but at different times so he wouldn’t catch on to what we were doing.’
Kirsty claims Sandow continued to torment her with threatening messages after she confronted him and that she was even forced to change the locks at her home in Sunderland.
Their story took a final twist when a third woman, Kylie, contacted Chloe to say she had seen Paul had sent her a message in January 2020 saying he missed her.
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Kylie said: ‘I met Paul while he was working at a bar in August 2019. He was relentless and pursued me for weeks until I finally went out with him.
‘I had a feeling that he was with someone else as he had a lot of texts from people I didn’t recognise. I went through his phone and found a message to Chloe.
‘She explained what had happened with Kirsty and herself. When I finally left Paul in March, as lockdown rolled around and I could get away from him, I contacted them and asked to help with the prosecution.’
She added: ‘We all wanted justice for Kirsty. We can rely on each other to talk about what happened and to help us move on.’
Sandow is understood to have since moved to Scotland, where he has found a new partner and is working as a scallop diver.
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He threatened to kill one of them and his secrets unravelled.