£60,000-a-year surveyor who led secret life as leader of prolific graffiti gang which defaced hundreds of trains and buildings is jailed

Kristian Holmes, 32, caused £250,000 of damage to trains and buildings



The father-of-two sprayed 'VAMP' tag across rail network and even abroad

One of his accomplices was 4ft tall and required a stepladder to get on trains

Defacer: Kristian Holmes, pictured at an earlier hearing, carried out a seven-year vandalism campaign on trains

To his colleagues Kristian Holmes was a respectable father of two, dedicated to his £60,000-a-year job as a surveyor.

But the bespectacled office worker was living a double life as one of Britain’s most prolific graffiti vandals.

Yesterday he waved goodbye to his family as he was jailed for three-and-a-half years for a trail of destruction that even included a steam train run by volunteers.

Holmes, 32, caused damage estimated at more than £250,000 and forced scores of trains out of service by defacing carriages.



One of his most high-profile victims was the Bluebell Railway, the steam-powered heritage line in Sussex.

Over the next seven years his ‘VAMP’ tag was found across the rail network on engines, walls and bridges, and was even discovered in Ibiza.

Jailing him at Blackfriars Crown Court in London, Judge Deva Pillay said: ‘These defacing attacks upon the property of others was at times so prolific that it could justly be described, on occasions, as occurring on an industrial scale.

‘The costs incurred by the railway companies and owners of property, and ultimately the community at large to clear up this unsightly mess, was and is very substantial indeed.’

Holmes, of Sidcup, South-East London, was a leading member of the so-called ‘PS crew’ which defaced property with tags, in-jokes and crude caricatures.

He kept an A-Z London street map marked with the locations he had vandalised, along with notes on how to avoid being caught scrawled in the margins.

The vandal was joined by others, including 4ft 3in Matthew Mandell, 30, who needed a step ladder to reach the trains.

They often posed as maintenance workers wearing Network Rail high-visibility jackets and trousers to avoid suspicion.



But when he realised police were on to him, Holmes posted a series of YouTube videos showing a mixed race man spraying his distinctive tag.



Costly: The cost of the damage caused by the daubings of Holmes and his gang is estimated to be around £250,000 The crude 'Vamp' tag was found across the rail network on engines, rail-side walls, bridges, and was even spotted in Ibiza

He was finally arrested in front of shocked colleagues at his workplace, RI Building Services, in Bromley, South-East London, in April 2010.



Searches uncovered a vast amount of evidence of his secret life, including spray can nozzles and paint-splattered gloves.

Prosecutor James Murray-Smith said the total damage was estimated at £250,000, one of the highest value criminal damage cases to come to court.

He told the jury: ‘Mr Holmes is a prolific graffiti vandal. We are not talking here about witty imaginative images such as those I expect you are familiar with by Banksy … I would suggest what you are dealing with is simple damage.

‘It is damage which to the vast majority of the public is tedious and depressing.’

The apparently respectable father’s trail of destruction began at the world-famous Bluebell Railway in 2003.

Ploy: Holmes posted a series of YouTube videos appeared to show a mixed race man spraying the word VAMP in a bid to derail the investigation

Wanton: A vintage train carriage that was restored by volunteer railway enthusiasts was one of Holmes' targets

CCTV at the train yard in Uckfield, Sussex, showed Holmes and four others vaulting the fence at night to cause £3,000 of damage.



DNA on a discarded cigarette, left at the scene among empty paint cans, linked Holmes to the offence.

Volunteer Anthony Funnell said: ‘What can’t be qualified is the effect this had on the volunteers who have given up their time to restore the carriages.’



The vandal’s crimes then spread across the commuter network as he struck property owned by National Express East Anglia, London Overground and South Eastern.

In 2009 he was seen writing on a wall in Brick Lane, East London. But police released him with a warning after he claimed he was only reading the graffiti.