A 49-year-old man was sentenced to eight years in prison in October after carrying out multiple armed robberies in southern England while wearing a Halloween mask, police announced in a press release on November 13.Essex Police said Daniele Aldegheri had committed five robberies in stores across Essex and Suffolk from the start of the year up to his arrest on September 3. He had attempted to evade capture but officers found him hiding under bed sheets, police said.“It was the potential for escalation which we found so worrying in this case,” said Detective Sergeant Dan Smith of Braintree CID, according to the press release. “He’s gone from using some form of blunt instrument to make these threats, then a knife in the later robberies. He says himself during one robbery that he’s desperate. If someone is desperate enough to continue to escalate their offending, there is the potential for things to become violent in their need to get more money,” Smith said.Security video released by police first shows Aldegheri wearing a horror mask and wielding a metallic pipe as he forced staff to empty a cash register. Police said that robbery took place on February 14 at a Co-op store in Silver End.The video then shows Aldegheri holding a knife and emptying a cash register in a different store, the location of which has not determined.Playing in the background throughout most of video is an audio recording of a call to police about a robbery at a Morrisons Daily in Witham on August 15.Further footage shows Aldegheri’s arrest after police finding him under a duvet. Credit: Essex Police via Storyful