Gangland UK

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  The life of Kenneth Noye has been one of malevolence and corruption. It is an example of how someone eagerly embracing crime as a profession can accumulate enormous wealth and frightening power. It is also a stark reminder of how vulnerable society can be when faced with such a single-minded predator.

  Compared to the Gunn brothers, Kenny Noye operated at Premiership level, rather than at Conference. Hard as nails and highly astute, Kenny Noye was in a class of his own. A Freemason with a taste for the finer things in life – beautiful young women, expensive homes and international travel – his only real downfall, which has ensured that he could spend the rest of his life in prison, was his quick and violent temper. Had he not brutally stabbed to death Stephen Cameron in front of his beautiful blonde fiancée, 19-year-old Danielle Cable, in 1996, he would have still been enjoying his accumulated millions today.

  Despite being acquitted of the murder of DC John Fordham, and the possible excuse of self-defence that convinced the jury at the time, Noye cannot be excused for the killing of young Stephen Cameron and leaving him to bleed to death by the side of the road. This was an entirely vicious, rage-filled crime, and it is right to point out that dark side to Kenneth Noye, rather than perpetuate the myth of the ‘gentleman master criminal’, a dapper, cheeky chappie, who loves his mum and looks out for those less fortunate than himself.

  Pending the outcome of his possible appeal for the 1996 murder of Cameron, Kenneth Noye is currently expected to serve at least 20 years of his life sentence, but he will still continue to amass a fortune from his financial investments and, if he is ever released, he will return to society a multi-millionaire. He was 53 when he was locked up and he cannot be considered for release until 2020, when he’ll be in his mid-seventies.

  Robin Hood? Kenny Noye was far from it. However, what we cannot take away from him is the undeniable fact that he operated for a time at the very pinnacle of the UK underworld.

  And what of the legacy of Mr Kenneth Noye? Many of his former associates have met ‘unfortunate’ ends… although there is no suggestion here that Kenny played any part in their deaths or maimings. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

  • John Marshall

  Just after Noye’s disappearance following the murder of Stephen Cameron in May 1966, 34-year-old car dealer John Marshall was found shot dead in his black Range Rover at Round Hill in Sydenham, south London. It was Marshall who had supplied Noye with stolen vehicle licence plates, including the registration plates used on the Land Rover Discovery linked to the road-rage killing of Stephen Cameron.

  Marshall vanished after leaving his £250,000 home at Little Burstead, Essex, at about 10.00am on 15 May to meet ‘business contacts’. His car is believed to have crossed the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge into Kent at about midday. He didn’t return home and failed to keep other appointments that day. He was reported missing that night by his wife, Toni, who would normally contact him regularly throughout the day.

  Seven days after he vanished, on 22 May, his body was found in straw in the unlocked trunk of his Range Rover by a police officer at Round Hill. He had been shot twice in the head and chest execution-style. The only thing clear about the weapon was that it wasn’t a shotgun. The Range Rover’s keys, a grey Head sports bag, two mobile phones and a Patek Phillippe 18ct gold watch with a blue face were missing. However, £5,000 cash that he had taken with him the morning he disappeared was still in the vehicle.

  Marshall had also been an accomplice of Pat Tate (see below).

  • Danny ‘Scarface’ Roff

  Roff was shot dead outside his home in Bromley, Kent, in March 1977. A cold-blooded criminal, he and accomplice Jeremiah Parker held up a sub-post office at gunpoint in Evelyn Street, Deptford, in June 1987. The money the two men got from the raid, and many others like it, helped them start new lives on the Costa del Sol in the 1990s. They may have escaped British justice in their sunshine hideaway but they could not escape the violent retribution of other mobsters.

  On a warm evening in 2006, Parker, 43, was enjoying a drink with friends at The Point bar in Nuevo Andalucia, Marbella, with a mainly British crowd. He was standing on the terrace when a hitman walked up and fired five bullets into him.

  By this time, Roff had already met his maker. After one failed attempt on his life, which left him in a wheelchair, his past caught up with him outside his luxury home in Bromley, Kent. The 36-year-old was shot dead by two hooded executioners. The bullets hit his head and chest as he was moving from his Mercedes to his wheelchair.

  Roff was widely believed to have been the man who shot dead Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson at his Marbella villa in 1990; it was also believed that his own murder was a revenge killing.

  Roff was also the prime suspect for the January 1993 contract killing of 55-year-old property tycoon Robert Urquhart – a good friend of Noye – outside his Marylebone home when he was shot dead by a gunman who escaped on a motorcycle.

  • Keith Hedley

  Hedley was murdered by alleged bandits on his yacht in Corfu in November 1996.

  • Pate Tate, Craig Rolfe and Tony Tucker

  All were shot to death by shotgun blasts into their Range Rover along a farm lane in Rettendon, Essex, during the night of 6 December 1995. Engineer Michael Steele and mechanic Jack Whomes were convicted solely on the word of police supergrass Darren Nicholls. The case highlights police corruption and is presently under review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

  While in jail at Swaleside, Noye had befriended Tate, a tattooed, muscle-bound, 18-stone drug-dealer from Essex, who acted as his protector. At Tate’s suggestion, Noye invested £30,000 on an Ecstasy shipment, making a quick £70,000 profit. Police claim that Ecstasy from this part of the batch could be forensically linked to the death of teenager Leah Betts. The claim was another attempt to implicate Noye.

  Leah was a schoolgirl from Latchingdon in Essex. She is notable for the extensive media coverage and moral panic that followed her death several days after her 18th birthday, during which she took an Ecstasy tablet, then collapsed four hours later into a coma, from which she did not recover. Subsequently, it was discovered that water intoxication was the cause of her death.

  • Sidney Wink

  Wink was a gunsmith and dealer who put a pistol to his own head and squeezed the trigger in August 1994.

  • Nick Whiting

  Whiting came unstuck when he was stabbed nine times and shot twice with a 9mm pistol in 1990. A car dealer, he went missing from his showroom in West Kingsdown in 1990. His body was later recovered from Rainham Marshes in Essex.

  • Stephen Dalligan

  Dalligan was shot six times in the Old Kent Road in 1990.

  • Daniel Morgan

  Morgan was at the centre of one of Britain’s most enduring murder mysteries. In March 1987, private detective Daniel Morgan was found in the car park of the Golden Lion public house in Sydenham, south London, with an axe embedded in his skull. Morgan’s business partner, with whom he had fallen out, was friendly with a number of police officers who have since been implicated in the killing. Allegations of police involvement were made at the inquest but, in spite of hundreds of statements, hours of covert surveillance and four investigations that identified several key suspects, no one has ever been charged.

  The inquest, which took place in April 1986, and ended with a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’, heard allegations of involvement by Metropolitan Police officers, and allegations of attempts to cover up that involvement. It also heard that Jonathan Rees, Daniel Morgan’s business partner in their private detective company, Southern Investigations Ltd, had talked about having Daniel killed and arranging for police officers at Catford CID to be involved in the murder and its subsequent cover-up.

  Morgan had enjoyed a number of careers, and he also ‘enjoyed’ a falling out with his business partners in the PI business. Things came to a head when Southern Investigations was asked to provide security for a c
ar auction company in Charlton, south London. Though Morgan didn’t want the work, his partner, Jonathan Rees, took the job on, using some of his police contacts to moonlight while off duty.

  On 18 March 1986, Rees was in charge of the night’s takings for the auction – some £18,000. He took the money to a local bank, but discovered that the night safe had been glued shut. Some say this was a most convenient state of affairs, one that demanded that Rees take the money home, where, as coincidence would have it, he was sprayed in the face with a ‘noxious liquid’.

  As might be expected, no one was ever arrested for the robbery. Indeed, many – including the car auction company, which demanded the return of its money – today believe that the gluing-up of the night safe, and the attack on Rees, was a sham.

  For his part, although he alleges he was a victim, Rees agreed to repay the money on the proviso that it came from the Southern Investigations company account. Morgan smelled a rat. He refused the offer, arguing, diplomatically, that the loss had been down to Rees alone.

  Rees was now in a fix. Desperate to take control of the company and its finances, he tried on several occasions to have Morgan arrested for drink-driving, knowing that if he lost his licence he would have to give up working at the agency, but to no avail.

  At the inquest, Kevin Lennon, the company’s bookkeeper, stated that Rees told him, ‘I’ve got the perfect solution for Daniel’s murder. My mates at Catford [CID] are going to arrange it… when he is gone, Sid Fillery will replace him.’ Fillery was, at that time, a serving DS, and a ‘friend’ of Kenny Noye.

  In the hours following Morgan’s death, a murder inquiry was launched, headed by DS Douglas Campbell. One of the lead detectives assigned to the case was none other than DS Fillery.

  In 2004, Roger Williams, MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, told the House of Commons that a full judicial inquiry was ‘the only way of obtaining a fresh and independent scrutiny of the murder and the circumstances in which successive investigations into it have come to nothing’.

  Roger Williams told the House of Commons, ‘Not only was Sid Fillery among the officers, but he played a key role in the initial murder inquiry during the first four so-called ‘golden’ days before he was required to withdraw from the murder squad for reasons of personal involvement with the primary suspect, Jonathan Rees. During those four days, Fillery was given the opportunity to manage the first interview under caution with Rees, and to take possession of key incriminating files from the premises of Southern Investigations Ltd, including Daniel’s diary, which has never since been found.’

  Rees, Fillery and two other police officers were subsequently arrested in connection with the murder, but no charges were ever brought. Fillery went on to take up joint ownership of Southern Investigations Ltd.

  • George Francis

  Francis was the ninth man linked to the Brinks Mat gold bullion heist to be murdered. He had survived a previous attempt on his life when he was shot at in a pub he owned in Kent in 1985. 18 years later, he was executed by a hooded gunman at 5.00am on 14 May 2003.

  A career criminal, the 63-year-old, who had homes in Beckenham and Kent, was shot four times in the face, back, arm and finger as he opened his business in Lynton Road, Bermondsey. He was at the gates of his haulage company Signed, Sealed & Delivered, and was gunned down as he leant into his car to get a newspaper. His body was found slumped in the front seat with his legs hanging out of the front passenger door.

  Francis was killed after he tried to collect a £70,000 debt from a business contact. After the shooting, it was found that a CCTV camera at the yard had been repositioned so that it did not capture any footage of Francis’s death.

  54-year-old Terence Conaghan from Glasgow, and John O’Fynn, 53, from Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, were found guilty of murder. Harold Richardson, aged 59, of Towncourt Lane, Petts Wood, was found not guilty.

  Francis, who had served a jail term in 1997, knew Richardson through a number of business deals. Richardson, in turn, knew O’Flynn in the same way, while O’Flynn had known Conaghan for a number of years.

  A cigarette butt was found in a drain at the scene of the shooting. DNA linked it to O’Flynn. A pair of glasses were found on the ground, which were later found to have a one-in-a-billion DNA link to Terence Conaghan. A 9mm Luger bullet, of the same type used to kill Francis, was also found near the building. CCTV images also captured Conaghan trying to shift the CCTV camera with a broom while he stood on a table, but he had to climb on to the roof instead when he realised he could not stretch far enough to reach the camera. A footprint left on the table showed a similar pattern to a pair of Reebok trainers found at Conaghan’s home after his arrest.

  A fortnight before his death, Francis called Richardson on 71 separate occasions; however, Richardson returned only five of the calls. The frustrated man’s attempts came to a head on 11 May 2003 – three days before his death. Mobile phone records also showed that Richardson was in contact with the two hitmen in the lead-up to the killing.

  £3 million of the original £26 million from the Brinks Mat robbery is still unnaccounted for.

  4

  The Kray Brothers

  ‘Who loves you, eh? That’s right, Mummy loves you, you little monsters. Mummy loves you more than anything - more than all the cakes, more than all the jewellery, more than all the chocolate in the world.’

  VIOLET KRAY TO RONNIE AND REGGIE AGED 3

  I met Ronnie Kray at Broadmoor Hospital in 1984, where he bought me a Diet Coke. Immaculately dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, black shoes, tie, and sporting a gold ring with ‘RK’ set with diamonds, he chatted to me for an hour at a table in the airy visitors’ room with its view of sweeping grounds leading down to the high perimeter wall.

  It was autumn. While waiting for Ronnie to grant me an audience, I watched inmates with wheelbarrows, brooms and rakes sweeping up leaves into neat piles before a mischievous wind sent them scattering again, leaving me to ponder just for a moment on Broadmoor’s grim history.

  Broadmoor was the country’s first purpose-built asylum for the criminally insane. Completed in 1863, it houses about 500 men and 120 women. Lying on the edge of the small town of Crowthorne, in an area of heathland known as Bracknell Forest, it is one of four maximum-security hospitals in the UK.

  The ‘facility’, as our US friends call such places, was built under an Act of Parliament to reform the poor conditions in institutions such as Bethlehem Hospital, the original ‘Bedlam’. Its imposing classical Victorian architecture was the work of Major General Joshua Jebb, a military engineer who is said to have based the building on two other hospitals – Wakefield and Turkey’s Scutari Hospital, near Istanbul.

  Joshua Jebb was no slacker. He participated in the Battle of Plattsburg in Canada during the War of 1812, and surveyed a route between the Ottawa River and Kingston where Lake Ontario flows into Saint Lawrence River.

  Around 1876, Jebb was appointed Surveyor-General of Prisons, busying himself with the construction of prisons at Portland, Dartmoor, Pentonville, Chatham, Mountjoy in Dublin, and Portsmouth. He was awarded a KGB for his civil services on 25 March 1859.

  Yet, even in retirement, he found time to consider the construction of embankments on the River Thames, and of communications between the embankment at Blackfriars Bridge and the Mansion House, and between Westminster Bridge and Millbank.

  One of the most remarkable characters of his time, Jebb married twice and, aged 70, died on 26 June 1863, having enjoyed a passing acquaintance with a gentleman we met earlier, Marriott Ogle Tarbotton, who followed him to the grave in 1887.

  On meeting Ronnie Kray, it was extremely difficult for me even to begin to envisage that he was mentally disturbed, even less criminally insane. He didn’t provide any obvious outward signs to suggest as much, or talk about the rats and mice that were infesting his cell – as did Paul Beecham, another Broadmoor patient I had previously interviewed. Sentenced to life for slaughtering his parents, and subsequently released
as ‘cured’, Paul went on to murder his wife and then fatally shoot himself. So much for successful reintegration back into the community

  Unlike some of his contemporaries at Broadmoor, Ronnie was never regarded in the same demonic way as Peter Sutcliffe, for example, or Kenneth Erskine, ‘The Stockwell Strangler’, who, circa 1986, murdered 11 elderly people in their south London homes.

  Ron was never even in the same league as the cannibalistic murderer Robert Maudsley, either. Dubbed ‘the English Hannibal Lecter’, in 1974, Maudsley killed a man who picked him up for sex after having been shown pictures of children he had sexually assaulted and abused. Maudsley was arrested and sent to Broadmoor.

  In 1977, Maudsley and another inmate took a fellow patient, a paedophile, hostage and locked themselves in a cell with their captive, whom they tortured and killed. When guards eventually smashed their way into the cell, the hostage’s skull was found cracked open, a spoon wedged in his brain, and pieces missing. Maudsley claimed he had eaten some of the man’s brain, earning him such names as ‘Spoons’, ‘Cannibal’, ‘Brain-Eater’ and ‘Jaws’ (because of his crooked teeth).

  Other patients at Broadmoor who displayed particularly extreme behaviour, way beyond that of Ronnie Kray, was David Copeland, who, in 1999, targeted ethnic minorities with explosive devices in Brixton and the East End, and planted another bomb which targeted the gay community in the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho; Ian Ball attempted to kidnap Princess Anne in 1974; and Graham Frederick Young earned his status as the thallium poisoner.