Chuck Yeager did much better. He flew a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight, or, for that matter, any sort of flight.
In the UK, significant events were conservatively confined to terra firma. The Gatwick rail crash on 27 October 1947 raised a few eyebrows when the Flying Scotsman express from Edinburgh Waverley to London King’s Cross derailed, killing 27 people; two bumbling electric commuter trains collided in fog, killing 32 people near South Croydon railway station; the Thames inconveniently flooded; and the country was gripped with excitement when Gravesend, Liverpool Edge Hill and Normanton held by-elections.
However, of more interest to us was that Kenneth Noye was born in Bexleyheath, Kent, on Saturday, 24 May 1947. On the Taurus-Gemini cusp, his astrological strengths are to be expressive, incisive and socially involved; his weaknesses are identified as being self-centred; caustic and closed. He is all of those things… and much much more.
As a youngster, he was a perky and mischievous lad. By the time he had reached 12, he was a strikingly good-looking boy, 5ft in height with a well-defined face, strong eyebrows and deep, dark, narrow brown eyes. Some of the boys in his class were jealous of his good looks; subsequently, he was sometimes bullied in the playground between classes. However, he rapidly learned to defend himself and the bigger, older boys rapidly learned to leave Kenny Noye alone.
Within a few years, Kenny had embarked on juvenile crime. Breaking and entering and interesting himself in dodgy deals, he became fascinated by the tough, edgy characters in their sheepskin coats who seemed to have endless bundles of £5 notes in their pockets. According to Wensley Clarkson, author of Killer on the Road, ‘These twisted values intruded upon young Noye’s life with increasing frequency and made him fairly confused about morals… He was also developing a terrible temper. If he didn’t get what he wanted, he often became violent.’
Those close to him noted that he had a hair-trigger reaction which would be provoked by the smallest incident. Instead of taking a deep breath and walking away from potentially difficult situations, Kenny would steam straight in. He was fearless.
By the age of 14, Kenny Noye was operating a successful stolen bicycle racket, charging younger children protection money at school, doing an early-morning paper round and selling programmes at the greyhound track where his mother worked.
Aged 15, he found himself Saturday employment in the men’s department of Harrods in Knightsbridge, and started dressing more smartly. As a result, Kenny Noye became fascinated by all the rich and famous people; he watched their wallets closely and they style of clothes they bought, and he would return home to dream about his future.
It is doubtful that Kenneth Noye was aware of this at the time, but within his small frame and sharp mind were all the ingredients – the building blocks, if you like – to form a first-rate criminal. Good-looking, amiable when it suited him, yet hard as nails – he had the ambition to devise cunning schemes to amass all the folding money he could lay his hands on, and dress himself as ‘class’. Working at Harrods, mixing with those who had ‘real ’class, was an education to him, in much the same way as a lowly butler often pretentiously assumes the airs and graces of his lordly employer.
And, to give Kenneth credit, by the age of 18 he was earning enough money to make his first material dream come true. Graduating from being a ‘Mod’, and tearing around on a scooter, he bought himself a bright yellow Ford Cortina Mark 1. He had sprung up to 5ft 8in tall, he was fairly muscular and looked older than his age. He started visiting some of the legendary clubs and bars in and around the Old Kent Road, where, keeping in the background, his education was furthered observing some of the most infamous criminals of the mid-1960s. He was intrigued. He wanted some of the action – the big cars and mohair suits. He wanted respect.
Perhaps even the Great Train Robbery in 1963 played a part in his ambition; south-east London at the time was a hot-bed of cutting-edge criminal activity, where the status of such criminals put them on a par with film stars. But his first serious brush with the law was when he was arrested for handling stolen vehicles, and he ended up with a one-year sentence in a Borstal near Shaftesbury, Wiltshire.
If it had been the intention of the sentencing magistrate to make an example of young Kenny Noye by handing him a stiff prison term, it backfired. Noye took the inconvenience in his stride. He made contacts, took down names, addresses and phone numbers of his fellow cons. He listened to what they had to say, kept his own counsel, and was determined to learn from their mistakes. He vowed that when he was released he would run his own ‘business’. No one would grass him up in the future and, with this in mind, he believed that he would never be outwitted by the Old Bill again.
Upon his release from Borstal, Kenny met a young, blonde girl. Petite and neatly dressed, Brenda Tremain had good looks and a forthright personality. The couple were soon mixing with the wheelers and dealers at their local pub, The Harrow. Perched midway along the relentlessly grey, grimy and desolate Northern Road at Slade Green, The Harrow was a large, downbeat, smoky old pub, which, at the time, was run by a close family friend. It was, and still is, the sort of place that favours locals and is unlikely to draw outsiders, bar the lost or perversely curious.
One particular acquaintance was Micky Lawson, who owned a used car showroom opposite the Tremains’ family home. From The Harrow, the two men gravitated to pubs in south-east London – the Frog and Nightgown, The Connoisseur, the Prince of Wales and The Beehive in ‘Del Boy’ Trotter’s Peckham, and it was inevitable that Noye would start mixing with some of the hardest gangsters in London. In the 1960s, this was the Richardsons’ manor.
The Richardson gang was a tight-knit group of pug-ugly villains and blackguards less well-remembered than their rivals, the notorious Krays. Nevertheless, in their heyday, the Richardsons were held as being one of London’s most infamous and sadistic gangs. Also known as ‘The Torture Gang’, their socially responsible ‘speciality’ was pinning victims to the floor with 6in nails and amputating their toes with bolt cutters.
The gang’s leader was Charlie Richardson. He and his younger brother, Eddie, turned to a life of villainy when their father abandoned the family home leaving them penniless. Charlie’s ‘legit’ side of the business included investing in scrap metal, while Eddie operated a fiefdom of fruit machines. These businesses were merely fronts for underworld activities which included extortion, murder, fraud, theft and handling stolen property.
Eddie was a persuasive entrepreneur who seemed to have no problem in convincing pub landlords to buy one of his machines. He would make an initial sales pitch and, if the offer was politely declined, the landlord risked heavies smashing up his premises before his very eyes. With a number of bent coppers on the Richardson’s payroll, complaining to the Old Bill was not an option.
However, the lawless Richardsons preferred the method of investing in ‘long firms’. A company would be set up by an acquaintance of the brothers. Trading would start, building up a good credit rating, and then the company would place a large order on credit and sell the goods. Quite naturally, the Richardsons would pocket the money and the company would disappear into thin air, often leaving the unwitting supplier totally ignorant that he had just made a large donation to the Richardson gang, who, in turn, contributed a percentage of the proceeds to the police fund to keep the cops off their backs. Nice work if you can get it.
Perhaps the greatest influence on Kenny’s life around this time was Billy Haywood, a brutal mobster who had secured a place in gangland folklore by fighting a pitched battle with the Richardsons over who should control local protection rackets. Known as ‘The Battle of Mr Smith’s Club’, one of Haywood’s men, called Dickie Hart, was shot dead during the mélèe; Haywood won, however, effectively taking down the Richardsons’ empire at a stroke.
It was Haywood who impressed upon Noye that the more astute criminals were the middle-men – the handlers of stolen property and money – rather than
those who actually got their hands dirty. This confirmed what Noye had more or less figured out for himself while in Borstal, so he lapped up Haywood’s counselling like a cat gorging itself on cream.
And there was something else that Noye had figured out on his own, something that was also endorsed by Billy Haywood. Always a ‘watcher of people’, Kenny had noticed that the small-time crooks spent most of their illicit gains gambling on the dogs, the horses, in pubs and clubs, pissing their money up against a wall, and buying what we might call today ‘bling-bling’ trinkets – heavy gold bracelets, neck chains, rings and the like. The brighter lads invested, and many invested significantly in property, mini-cab firms, launderettes, sometimes even the stock market.
The 1960s was a crucial time in Noye’s life. Even before he had been sent to Borstal, he’d been mapping out a criminal career. His chance meeting with Brenda Tremain in her local pub, The Harrow, and a chance meeting with Micky Lawson, who introduced him to the south-east London pubs, all contributed to Noye’s education. His mentor – the utterly fearless, yet criminally astute Billy Haywood – and the constant shoulder-rubbing with scores of London’s real tough guys, all cemented together his ambitions for the future. But he had a fatal flaw, and it was to prove his Achilles heel – his short fuse.
Noye had been drinking in a Peckham pub, and his drink was knocked over. Rightly, Kenny asked for it to be replaced. The request was denied. The two men exchanged words and the comparatively diminutive Noye walked out to the sound of hisses and boos. Thinking that Noye was a coward, the customers returned sniggering to their drinks… it was a bad move.
Rather than slink away from the pub with his tail in between his legs, Noye had gone to his car to pick up an ‘equaliser’ – a double-barrelled, 12-gauge shotgun. Moments later, he burst through the front door and aimed it at the men who had insulted him. The bar went as quiet as the grave; no one dared move. Slowly, Noye brought the weapon round, stopping momentarily at each one in turn. Then he pointed it at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The shot blasted a hole in the plaster, showering the men with debris. Then he calmly walked out without a further word being said. The message sent a signal around the manor – cross Kenny Noye and you could end up dead.
From then on, Kenny Noye started earning serious money from fencing stolen property – car parts, shipments of whisky, cigarettes and cigars. Among the criminal fraternity, his word and his money were good. He was someone to be trusted, and he never missed a trick, but he needed a front for his growing enterprise, somewhere away from prying eyes and off the beaten track.
He found such a location in a quiet Kent village called West Kingsdown, and there he started his own haulage company, which he ran from a battered caravan behind a local garage. And the parish had another bonus, too – there was only one copper whose principal duties extended to riding around on his bike or napping in a panda car. The local force were totally oblivious to the success of Mr Noye’s growing haulage company, which soon expanded to more than a dozen lorries.
Kenny and Brenda married in August 1970. They had bought a dilapidated bungalow on 20 acres of prime land in West Kingsdown’s Hever Avenue. They set the bungalow on fire, claimed on the insurance and set about constructing a huge, mock-Tudor mansion. This was followed by the building of Hollywood Cottage – ten bedrooms, an indoor swimming pool, jacuzzi, huge snooker room, all protected by the most comprehensive of security systems. Noye was now a millionaire.
For the next decade, Kenny Noye went from strength to strength, give or take one or two brushes with the law. During this time, though, he had set his sights on gold bullion, and a lot of it was stolen – 10 tonnes of it to be precise – in what has become known as ‘The Brinks Mat Robbery’.
The scheme had been masterminded by one Brian Robinson, and the heist occurred at around 6.40am, on Saturday, 26 November 1983, when six armed robbers broke into the Brinks Mat’s Unit 7 warehouse on a trading estate near Heathrow Airport. The men thought – as they had been told by insider guard Anthony Black, brother-in-law of Robinson – that the haul would be £3 million in cash. How wrong they were, for when they got inside they found themselves looking in amazement at ten tonnes of gold bullion worth the best part of £26 million.
Of course, it proved to be a terrible ordeal for the Brink’s-Mat staff, who feared for their lives. Petrol was poured over one man’s genitals, and he was threatened with being set ablaze or being shot if he didn’t comply by neutralising the alarms and opening the vault – which he did.
The vault turned out to be a treasure trove. For several moments, the robbers were unable to speak. They were looking at 60 boxes, which contained a total of 2,670 kilos of gold worth £26,369,778. Over in a corner was a stack of several hundred thousand pounds in used banknotes. In a safe was a pouch containing $250,000 in travellers’ cheques. In anther safe was yet another pouch filled with polished and rough diamonds valued at £113,000.
The gang had expected rich pickings, but not a haul beyond their wildest dreams. As Wensley Clarkson observes in his book, ‘Their audacious plot, ruthless in its conception and brilliant in its execution, had just landed them the biggest haul in British criminal history.’
The 1963 Great Train Robbery, which netted the villains £2.6 million, paled into insignificance, even considering inflation, when compared with this Brink’s-Mat raid. No doubt, the Great Train Robbery was a coup. It involved cunning and intricate timing – the stopping of a mail train in the dead of night precisely at a particular railway bridge in Buckinghamshire, the unloading of mail bags containing the haul, and conveying it away in a small fleet of vehicles to a place called Letherslade Farm, where it was divided up, with each crook going their separate ways. But the Brink’s-Mat gang, with balls of steel, hoovered up their entire proceeds and carried it all away in a single truck. For that, they deserve the Nobel Prize for Planning and Execution.
Scotland Yard soon discovered the family connection between Messrs Black and Robinson and, under interrogation, Black soon grassed up his accomplices. Tried at the Old Bailey, Robinson and principal accomplice Michael McAvory earned themselves 25 years’ imprisonment. Black got six years, and served three.
Enter Kenny Noye. Prior to his conviction, McAvory had entrusted part of his share to an associate called Brian Perry. Perry recruited Kenneth Noye (who had links to a legitimate gold dealer in Bristol) to dispose of the gold. Noye melted down the bullion and recast it for sale. However, the sudden movements of large amounts of money through a Bristol bank came to the notice of the Treasury, who informed the police. Noye was placed under police surveillance and, in January 1985, ‘it all came on top’, as they say in Kenny’s world.
With all of the Brink’s-Mat robbers behind bars, police focused on Noye and they shadowed him everywhere he went. It was obvious that he was the key to the distribution of the gold and, if they were going to achieve anything, they would have to move closer to him rather than simply tail him from place to place.
Early in January 1985, eight C11 officers from the Specialist Surveillance Unit took up covert positions near Hollywood Cottage but, apart from Noye’s comings and goings, nothing much happened until 26 January.
It was a bitterly cold evening when, at 6.15pm, DC John Fordham, 43, and DC Neil Murphy, dressed in rubber wetsuits, camouflage clothing and balaclavas, climbed over a wall into Noye’s property and made their way to a copse and shrubbery in front of the large barn. Fordham was also equipped with a pair of light-intensifying, night-sight binoculars, a webbing scarf, gloves, a camouflaged forage cap and a green webbing harness to keep the larger of his two radios in position while crawling through the undergrowth.
The officers were now just 60 yards from the house when one of Noye’s three Rottweilers appeared out of the darkness and started snapping at the ‘intruders’. Noye heard the commotion, grabbed a leather jacket from behind a chair and headed for the front door. Outside, he walked to his Ford Granada and picked up a knife and a torch.
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nbsp; The Rottweiler was still barking, and Noye heard someone call out halfway down the drive, ‘Dogs!’ Neil Murphy made a beeline for the boundary fence of the property and climbed up to take stock of the situation. He tried to attract the attention of the dogs but, in doing so, attracted the attention of Noye, who flashed the torch beam in his direction.
‘Keep those dogs quiet,’ shouted Murphy.
Noye froze. A second later, a hooded figure appeared a few feet away. A scuffle ensued and Noye, fearful that he was about to be murdered by the stranger, stabbed DC Fordham eight times. The officer died shortly afterwards.
At the resulting trial, the jury found Noye not guilty on the grounds of self-defence. And there is some logic to this as former Kray henchman Freddie Foreman has said, ‘Put yourself in Kenny’s position. If you went into your back garden tonight and someone leaps out of the ground in a mask and that, what would you think? You would suspect they was there to rob you and your family.’
In 1986, though, he was found guilty of conspiracy to handle the Brink’s-Mat gold, fined £700,000 and sentenced to 14 years in prison, although he had to serve only 8 years before being released in 1994. For several years, Noye slipped in and out of the country from Spain, where he had built several large villas; then, on Sunday, 19 May 1996, Noye stabbed to death 21-year-old electrical engineer Stephen Cameron during a so-called ‘road-rage’ incident at the M25/M20 intersection near Swanley, Kent.
Noye immediately fled the country. The police tracked him to south-east Spain and, on 28 August 1998, he was arrested at the El Campero restaurant in Barbate on the Atlantic coast and deported back to Britain. Tried and convicted in 2000, he received a life sentence. Eight years later, he won permsission to bring a legal challenge over the refusal of the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer his conviction back to the Court of Appeal.
Gangland UK Page 5