Keri Pegg

The trial of Keri Pegg has ended with a guilty verdict. The trial of Keri Pegg has ended with a guilty verdict, convicting her of all charges. Kerri Pegg, the former governor of HMP Kirkham, was charged with two counts of misconduct in a public office and one count of possessing criminal property. She is guilty of failing to disclose county court judgments against her for debts, and of entering into a relationship with drug trafficking prisoner Anthony Saunderson, who is alleged to have given her a Mercedes (the criminal property in question). 

Pegg has denied being in a relationship with Saunderson, or that he ever went to her home, even though his DNA was found on a toothbrush and flip-flops at her flat. It is unclear why Pegg would have a pair of size 10 Hugo Boss flip-flops, as she is a size 4. 

She signed off Saunderson’s temporary release without proper authority in May 2019. In July 2019 Saunderson was contracted by prisons to run a project called Breaking Alcohol and Drug Dependency (BADD).

Pegg was involved in co-ordinating drug strategy in a number of prisons, and said she was “passionate” about the BADD project. She testified that thought of Saunderson not as an ex-inmate but a “colleague”.

In early 2020 Saunderson began using a phone encrypted with EncroChat. Both he and Pegg used burner phones to keep in touch, and there were 80 calls and texts from his phone to hers in the space of a month. Saunderson went by “Jesse Pinkman” on EncroChat, after the Breaking Bad drug dealer. 

The defence said in their closing statement that Pegg was “green and stupid” but had led an “unblemished life”, never having been in trouble with police before, and is now working for a homeless charity.