Benedict’s knife terror at £3m home
Crazed chef kicked in gates
BENEDICT Cumberbatch and his young family were left in fear after a knife-carrying chef shouted that he was going to burn down their home.
Jack Bissell, 35, kicked the iron gate outside the star’s £3.5million house in north London and yelled: “I know you’ve moved here,” a court was told.
Sherlock star Cumberbatch, 46, his wife Sophie Hunter, 45, and their three young children reportedly feared they would be targeted by the attacker as he yelled abuse.
Bissell, a former chef de partie at the five-star Beaumont Hotel in Mayfair, also hurled a garden plant at the wall, spat at the home’s intercom and prised it loose using a fish knife.
Prosecutors told the court that before Bissell carried out the attack, he visited a nearby store and shouted to the shopkeeper that he was going to break into Cumberbatch’s house and burn it to the ground.
Bissell rushed from the scene and was arrested by the police who found his DNA on the intercom.
Appearing at Wood Green Crown Court earlier this month he gave no explanation as to why he targeted the actor and was sentenced on May 10. He was fined £250 after admitting criminal damage and given a threeyear restraining order that bans him from approaching the Cumberbatch family or going to the area in which they live.
The full details of the case were only made public after a national newspaper challenged blanket reporting restrictions.
A source said: “The family thought this guy was going to get in and hurt them.
“Luckily it never went that far. “The fact that it was a targeted intrusion makes it a lot more scary.”
Benedict, star of Doctor Strange and Hawking – the BBC film chronicling physicist Prof Stephen Hawking’s student years – bought the five-bedroom luxury home in 2015.
Bissell, from Kentish Town, north London, worked at the Beaumont Hotel for two spells in 2017-2018 and 2019-2020.
He was photographed back in 2015 being arrested in his underpants during a central London protest against military intervention in Syria.
The chef has a previous conviction for theft, a public order offence and a drug offence.
‘The family thought the guy was going to get in and hurt them’