Ex-boss of Dreamboys is found dead in his cell

Ex-boss of Dreamboys is found dead in his cell after being jailed for trying to kill his model girlfriend with an axe when he saw her kissing TOWIE star Kirk Norcross

  • David Richards was found guilty of the attempted murder of Alex Alam last year
  • His body was found by warders at Lowdham Grange prison in Nottinghamshire

The former boss of Dreamboys has been found dead in his cell after being jailed for trying to kill his model girlfriend with an axe.

David Richards, 42, was found guilty of the attempted murder of Alex Alam last year, after seeing TOWIE star Kirk Norcross giving her a ‘goodnight kiss’.

Ms Alam made a desperate FaceTime call to the reality star begging him to come and rescue her children as she feared for her life during the attack, which left her needing more than 100 stitches for life-changing injuries.

Richards’ body was found by warders at Lowdham Grange prison in Nottinghamshire yesterday.

An independent investigation has since been launched at the Category B men’s jail, which was put on lockdown after the discovery.

David Richards, 42, the former boss of Dreamboys, has been found dead in his cell

Richards managed the Dreamboys stripper troupe for nearly 20 years

Ms Alam was left with ‘life-changing’ injuries that required her to spend days in hospital and needed 100 stitches

Richards attacked his ex violently after seeing her share a goodnight kiss with Kirk Norcross (pictured)

A source told the paper: ‘It’s a huge shock. Richards’s case was high profile and so he had kept his head down since arriving at the nick.

‘A probe into what happened on Monday was launched immediately.’

Richards, who established the male strip show brand before selling the business for £1m in 2019, had been in a nine-year relationship with Ms Alam and built a luxurious house complete with stables for them to share, placing the property in both of their names.

But the ex-boxer was abusive towards Ms Alam throughout the relationship, and she had repeatedly reported him to police for alleged coercive control before throwing him out of the house.

She then succeeded in getting a non-molestation order against him after making a claim of assault against him.

After being questioned by police, Richards waited outside the house for five hours, before seeing 34-year-old Kirk leave the property, giving Ms Alam a ‘kiss goodnight’ as he went.

Shortly afterwards he attacked Ms Alam, hitting her over the head repeatedly with an axe while shouting the name of the TOWIE star.

He then attempted to strangle the former model and continued hitting at her with the axe. 

She said: ‘Every time I was screaming or begging he was getting more angry. I realised I was going to get hacked to pieces. I knew he was going to do me, and then he was going to do the kids.’

Richards tied up Ms Alam using cable ties and is said to have dragged her around by her hair.

She managed to make up a story about why she had been with Mr Norcross and said she had evidence on her phone, the court heard.

While Richards left her tied up to hunt for the phone, Ms Alam grabbed a kitchen knife and managed to lock him out, before hiding in a bedroom in the house where she called police and then Mr Norcross.

Alex Alam, a former model, was attacked by Richards late at night in April with an axe

Richards chose to have his head tattooed after comb-overs and caps didn’t work

He told the court that when Ms Alam phoned him: ‘She was covered in blood. I had never seen anything like it. 

‘It was like I was seeing a horror movie. She said, ‘Kirk come back, I am dying. He has killed me’.’

Ms Alam then begged Mr Norcross to come and save her children. 

She was in hospital for several days after the attack and needed more than 100 stitches. 

Chelmsford Crown Court heard from the prosecution that Richards fled the scene and drove at speeds of more than 90mph before being stopped and arrested by police.

Prosecutor William Carter told the court Richards was ‘a man who intended to kill.’

Richards denied attempted murder and said he had never had an axe. But a jury took just four hours to convict him after the week-long trial.

He had already admitted breaching the non-molestation order.

Richards previously spoke of how, when working as a stripper himself, his confidence was left in tatters when he began to go bald.

To make amends, he plumped for an extreme solution – having, what looks like, new hair tattooed onto his head.

‘It involves a little bit of pain, a few snuffly moments and watery eyes but the end result is that I look like I’ve got hair,’ he explained in 2014.

‘I had four or five treatments but most people have two. I’m very picky and that’s the beauty of this treatment – you can dictate exactly how you want it.’ 

His new hair line was created using SMP which involves tiny tattoos all over the scalp

Richards said he found losing his hair deeply upsetting and had tried to cover it up by wearing caps

Richards, who managed the Dreamboys stripper troupe for nearly 20 years, had been left miserable and lacking confidence after noticing his hair beginning to thin.

‘I had gone completely bald on top,’ he remembers. ‘I did try to comb it over and cover it up. But it got to the point where there was nothing else I could do and I just had to shave it off.

‘For me there is nothing more soul destroying for a man than losing your hair – it’s worse than going grey.

‘I first noticed it quite some years ago when someone at work said to me: ‘You’re losing your hair’ and I said: ‘No I’m not’ and he said ‘Yes you are!”

‘It was a very slow process,’ he adds. ‘You start to get thinner and thinner up top and you notice clumps of hair on your pillow in the morning.

‘I started to wear more and more baseball caps. I was sat in the hairdressers one day and I was looking in the mirror and I just thought, ‘it’s time to shave it off’.’

Miserable about losing his hair, Mr Richards resorted to baseball caps and comb-overs until bumping into a co-worker whose hair appeared to have mysteriously regrown.

‘One of the guys at work had it done,’ he explains. ‘I said to him, ‘You’ve done something done to your hair’ and he denied it and denied it but then he eventually told me he’d been to have his head tattooed.

I was like, ‘Wow I really like it’ and went for a consultation at His Hair Clinic and then I thought let’s rock and roll!’

Like his colleague, Mr Richards had opted for new treatment: a procedure called Scalp Micro-Pigmentation or SMP which costs between £500 and £3000 and involves having tiny blobs of pigment dotted across the scalp to replicate the look of natural hair follicles.

While not as natural as traditional hair transplants, according to fans, SMP is unnoticeable from a distance and can barely be seen close up.

‘The results are well worth the pain,’ adds a delighted Mr Richards. ‘You can add numbing cream and take paracetamol, but at the end of the day it’s 12 hours of treatment for the rest of your life.

He adds: ‘One thing I would say is that it does make you sneeze a lot and your nose run [during the treatment] – it’s like having hayfever.’

A spokesperson for HMP Lowdham Grange said: ‘We can confirm that a prisoner died at HMP Lowdham Grange on 13 March 2023. 

‘The next of kin have been informed and our thoughts are with the family. 

‘As with all deaths in custody, there will be an investigation by the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman and therefore we are unable to comment further at this stage.’

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