Detective Superintendent Gordon Lang, who ran the investigation into Anne White’s death, said outside court: ‘Gary Vinter is clearly a dangerous man with a history of extreme violence. He inflicted horrific injuries on Anne White and I hope that her family and friends can now take some comfort from today’s events.’
Edwige Robertson, mother of Carl Edon’s girlfriend Michelle, said: ‘At the end of the day he shouldn’t have been let out in the first place. I blame the system. He is supposed to have got life when he killed Carl. For murderers, when they say life, it should mean life.’
‘AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS MAN’
‘He was so cool after the murder – he even invited me to his flat and sat me down on the settee where Derek had been killed.’
Victim’s girlfriend
Name: Phillip Heggarty
Crime: Murder
Date of Conviction: 23 July 2004
Age at Conviction: 49
Small-time drug dealer Derek Bennett could not resist boasting to pals that he was, for once, flush. The 41-year-old was at an all-night party in Rumney, Cardiff, with his best friend Phillip Heggarty. That night, the inseparable pair – both ‘mad keen’ Cardiff City fans – drunkenly hugged as Derek told anyone who’d listen that he’d landed a lucrative cannabis and cocaine deal that had made him thousands. He had more than £3,000 in cash in his money belt and £11,000 of drugs in his car.
Three days later, on Monday, 14 April 2003, Derek’s grey Renault Laguna was set on fire in the car park of the Earl Haig British Legion Club in the city’s Whitchurch area. Firefighters considered it the work of joyriders until they spotted a charred arm protruding from a rolled-up carpet on the backseat. The body was burnt beyond recognition, but was identified from dental records as Derek Bennett.
A post-mortem examination found no soot in Derek’s lungs, meaning he was almost certainly dead before the fire was started. He had been battered round the head at least six times with a hammer-like object. Such was the ferocity of the attack that his skull was broken into 23 pieces. Home Office pathologist Andrew Davidson said it was ‘highly likely’ the deceased would have been unconscious after the beating, though he probably lived for at least 90 minutes afterwards. There were no defence wounds to his arms and hands, indicating he did not resist the beating.
Detectives learned that the dead man left the all-night party the previous Friday with a man who was already well known to them: Philip Heggarty. The 48-year-old call centre manager had a long record of violent crime and police were soon knocking at his door. When they searched his flat in Clare Road, Grangetown, Cardiff, they found Derek’s blood on the walls and he was arrested for the murder of his life-long best mate.
At the opening of Heggarty’s trial at Swansea Crown Court on 16 June of the following year, prosecuting counsel Gregory Bull, QC, told the jury that the defendant’s sole motive for killing his friend was greed. He murdered him for the large quantity of cash and drugs that he made no secret of having in his possession, said Mr Bull. Then, with a callous indifference to the man who called him ‘Bruv’, he rolled his body up in carpet, bundled him into his car and set fire to it ‘in a deliberate and calculated attempt to destroy evidence he may have left on the body.’
Mr Bull told the court that on Friday, 11 April 2003, Heggarty and the deceased had been out with friends on ‘an all-nighter’. Derek left his car at the Cardiff International Arena, where he had a parking arrangement with staff, and then he and Heggarty met up with his brother Paul and nephew Matthew in a city centre pub. The prosecution said Derek made it clear he was flush with money by peeling off notes from his wad of cash every time he bought a round of drinks. Later, at the party in Rumney, he boasted of having a large stash of drugs in his car.
Afterwards, Heggarty drove some of their group of friends home and took Derek to collect his car. Mr Bull said: ‘It was decided Mr Bennett should collect his car and follow Heggarty’s car to Clare Road and there, the two men would get their heads down. Mr Bennett did retrieve his Laguna and made his way back to Clare Road, where later that day he was murdered.’
The prosecutor added: ‘Following Mr Bennett’s death, Heggarty – who was known to be normally strapped for cash – was found to be flush with it. A large quantity of drugs taken from Derek Bennett were found at the home of Heggarty’s girlfriend, Ann Kerslake.’
The accused made no effort to hide his newfound wealth and paid off a number of debts in the days immediately after his friend’s death. Mr Bull said Heggarty paid £750, plus £50 interest to a colleague who had lent him money. He also paid off £500 of a £1,000 loan from Robert Nash, the owner of the telesales business that he had managed. Mr Nash told the court he was surprised when Heggarty phoned him on 12 April to tell him that he was going to repay half the loan.
Mr Nash said he learned of Derek’s death when he phoned Heggarty with a query about work. The witness told the court: ‘I began the call by asking him how he was and he said he was not very well. He said, “Derek has been found dead in the back of his car.”’ Mr Nash described the accused as ‘shocked and shaken’ with a ‘completely different demeanour’ from Saturday, when he handed over the money. He said: ‘I asked him if the police had been to see him and he said, “My God, yes!” He told me that apparently he had been the last person to see Mr Bennett.’
Cross-examined by defence barrister Francis Aubrey, Mr Nash agreed that at the time of the murder his company had been making record profits from selling a weekly newspaper in the North of England. He said it was ‘like shooting fish in a barrel’ and that his staff were expecting large commission bonuses and had good reason to feel flush.
Prosecutor Mr Bull said the fire was extinguished in time for police to collect damning evidence that would prove Heggarty’s guilt. He told the court that Derek’s body had been wrapped in a carpet that was covered in hairs matching those of Heggarty’s dogs. A pink-and-white towel wrapped round the deceased’s head and a pillowcase covering his feet both matched others found at the Clare Road address. But when Heggarty was arrested, he told police that he did not own the carpet used to wrap up the body and that he’d never seen the pillowcase and towel.
Heggarty told police that after the party he took Derek to his car before they went their separate ways. He said Derek had told him he was going to get some breakfast and ‘had a few things to do’; that he had watched his friend drive off, and then went to his girlfriend’s house to pick up his dogs. But Mr Bull said witnesses, including a gas worker and two neighbours, said Derek was at the flat on that Saturday morning. The defendant agreed that he must have ‘forgotten’ his friend was with him that morning, after all.
Mr Bull said Heggarty would ‘say anything to get away with murder.’ He turned to the dock and told him: ‘Not only have you told many lies to the police, you have told many lies to the jury.’ He asked Heggarty how he could give a detailed description of the all-night party, but could not recall seeing the father-of-two at his flat the following morning.
In the dock, Heggarty agreed that his friend was ‘probably attacked’ at his flat and suggested it must have happened when he was out between 10am and 3pm. Mr Bull said that if this ‘ludicrous’ possibility was true and his attackers had killed him for his drugs and money, they had missed out on the ‘jackpot’ – around £10,000 of cannabis and cocaine stashed away in a kitchen drawer.
The barrister also wondered how the ‘murderers’ knew Derek was staying at Clare Road and that he would be alone when they went round. He added that it would have taken at least two people to carry a 12-and-a-half stone man out of the flat and into his car. Asked who his accomplice was, Heggarty replied: ‘I did not have one because I did not do the murder.’
Mr Bull said that in the hours after the murder, Heggarty set about faking himself an alibi. He went to a Tesco store and made a point of being caught several times on the CCTV; he also met a friend in a pub. ‘He was making attempts to be sure he was seen out and about,’ said Mr Bull.
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The jury also heard that Derek Bennett’s blood was found inside Heggarty’s flat and on clothes he was wearing on the night of the killing. The accused’s fingerprints were discovered in blood on a wall in the cellar of the flat, said Mr Bull. He told the court: ‘In order to leave a fingerprint in blood you must put your finger in it while the blood is still wet.’ The prosecutor said splashes of blood on Heggarty’s settee were consistent with the attack occurring while the victim lay on it. Derek may have been ‘asleep or dozing with his back to his attacker’ at the time, Mr Bull explained. He also told how police found blood sprayed on the walls close to where he was attacked. Derek’s blood was also found on walls leading to the basement of Heggarty’s flat, underneath a handrail along the basement stairway and on a phone bill in the defendant’s name.
Asked why the flat had been thoroughly cleaned in the hours after the killing, Heggarty said he was cleaning up vomit from one of his dogs. He said he noticed no signs that Derek had been attacked at his home, adding: ‘The police sat in front of the blood splashes on the wall when they were interviewing me. They didn’t see anything either.’
Mr Bull also referred to Derek’s blood found on Heggarty’s shoes and jeans: ‘Can I suggest it could have only got there while you were moving the body or while you were attacking him?’ Heggarty answered,‘No, that’s not right.’
His defence counsel asked Heggarty: ‘Did you kill your friend, Derek Bennett?’ He answered: ‘No, I definitely did not. He was like the brother I never had.’ He went on to describe Derek as a man who lived a dangerous life as a drug dealer, and said that he juggled money he owed to various dealers to ‘keep the wolves from the door’. Heggarty told the court: ‘He was robbing Peter to pay Paul. He would have a number of suppliers and would get his drugs on credit – he would get some drugs from dealer one and pay for drugs from dealers two and three from the profits.’ He said that about a month before his death, Derek had, in his own words, ‘dropped the balls’. Heggarty went on: ‘He’d lost the use of his car – which he used to do all his business in – and could not pay the people he owed.’ Defender Mr Aubrey asked: ‘How much was he owing?’ Heggarty answered: ‘I knew it was a thousand pounds-plus.’ The accused said he agreed to lend his friend £1,000 so that he could give his dealers ‘a gesture of goodwill in part payment.’ Mr Aubrey asked: ‘What did you think might happen to him?’ Heggarty replied: ‘He was in fear of his life.’
Mr Audrey then called Derek’s girlfriend, Colleen Jacobs, to the witness box. Ms Jacobs, who had lived with the victim for five years, agreed that he had been worried about his debts to drug dealers ‘higher up the chain’. She said the ‘lay-on’ system was common practice in the drugs underworld, where suppliers would hand over large amounts of drugs to local dealers without charge, but the money would have to be paid as soon as the drugs had been sold. Mr Aubrey asked: ‘He was not a man who was easily frightened, but he was frightened this time?’ She replied,‘Yes.’ The barrister continued: ‘One of the men he referred to as a “heavy” lived in nearby Whitchurch, is that right?’ She answered, ‘Yes.’
The jury deliberated its verdict for 36 hours before finding Heggarty guilty of his best friend’s murder. They then sat shocked as the killer’s 79 previous convictions were read out before the court. Heggarty’s long criminal career began when he was 10 and he stole from neighbours. He spent most of his childhood in approved schools and borstals for theft and assault.
By his 20s he was beating up old ladies for their handbags, then in 1988, aged 33, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for torturing a 60-year-old man in his own home. He slashed the terrified victim’s face until he told him where he kept his savings. After 10 years, he was released.
During his trial, Heggarty argued that he could not have dumped his friend’s body in the Whitchurch area because he was completely unfamiliar with the place, but his criminal record showed that he had committed at least eight burglaries there.
Sentencing Heggarty, 49, judge Mr Justice Roderick Evans said: ‘You are a resourceful and manipulative liar. This was a brutal and very violent killing and you are an extremely dangerous man. There is no doubt he enjoyed your company that night, drinking, taking drugs and going to an all-night party.
‘Within hours of that coming to an end, you bludgeoned him to death, hitting him about the head with a blunt object, shattering his skull into 23 pieces. He took one-and-a-half hours to die. I have no doubt your motive was robbery.’
The judge added: ‘Thirty years is not enough. The sentence is whole life: you will spend the rest of your life in prison.’
Outside court, the victim’s girlfriend, who was bringing up their children Josh, three, and six-month-old Kian, who was conceived shortly before Derek died, said: ‘Phil could be charming and likeable, but I suspected he did it from the outset. He was so cool after the murder – he even invited me to his flat and sat me down on the settee where Derek had been killed.’
Derek’s brother Paul, 45, welcomed the sentence, saying: ‘Justice has been served and it has given me faith again in the justice system. There is no jubilation for me in this. At the end of the day that man should never be on the streets. He should have been locked up a long time ago.’ He added: ‘Derek was a lovable rogue, well-liked in the community and always put a smile on people’s faces with his wit and personality. It hasn’t been easy listening to the evidence or reports that Derek was the best friend of his murderer.’
‘THE ENFORCER’
‘I find it almost impossible to understand the workings of a mind as twisted and evil as yours.’
Trial judge Mr Justice Rougier
Name: Victor Castigador
Crime: Double murder
Date of Conviction: 28 February 1990
Age at Conviction: 35
At around midnight on 2 April 1989, staff at an amusement arcade on Wardour Street in London’s Soho were cashing up when one of their former employees burst through the door. Victor Castigador – a former hit man for President Marcos of the Philippines – had recently been overlooked for promotion at the arcade and he held a very bitter grudge.
Standing at only 5ft tall but as broad as a heavyweight boxer, Castigador stormed the arcade with four young accomplices: Calvin Nelson, 19, Paul Clinton, 17, and their respective girlfriends, Karen Dunn, 17, and Allison Woodside, 20. After flooring a security guard, he rounded up the four staff and marched them down to the basement with his gang in tow.
Downstairs, Nelson held a gun to the neck of relief manager Yurev Gomez and forced him to unlock a steel strong-room, where the money was kept. Once the terrified employee had done so, Castigador stormed in, hitting him to the floor with an elbow to his back. He then emptied the day’s takings, totalling £8,685, into a rucksack.
Yurev and cashier Debbie Alvarez were then herded into the vault, along with Sri Lankan security guards Ambikaipahan Apapayan and Kandiahkanapathy Vinayagamoorthy. All four were made to kneel down while their captor tied their hands behind their backs.
Castigador, 34, then fetched a bottle of white spirit from a nearby store cupboard and squirted it over them. As they knelt, cowering, the vengeful maniac emptied a wastepaper basket around the cage.
Yurev told the Old Bailey murder trial in March the following year: ‘Victor threw bits of paper from the dustbins into the cage. I saw him emptying a fire extinguisher. He went off and reappeared with what looked like a jiffy bottle. He came into the cage and started squirting the liquid over our heads. He made sure everyone was soaked. He slammed the cage door shut and secured it with a coat hanger.’
Castigador – whose name translates to ‘the enforcer’ in Spanish – laughed and yelled abuse in his native tongue as he and Nelson threw lit matches into the cage like darts.
One of the guards managed to get to his feet and stamp the matches out, but Castigador was already packing newspaper along the bottom of the cage door, taunting his former colleagues by teasingly stroking a match across the light
ing strip of its box. The petrified manager yelled at him: ‘How can you do this? These are people just like you.’ One of the guards begged: ‘Don’t light it – I would rather you shoot me.’ Ignoring his pleas, Castigador used every remaining match to light the paper, threw the empty box at his victims and led his accessories up the stairs, locking the basement door behind them.
At 7.55 the following morning, two members of staff arrived for the early shift and smelled burning. As they opened the basement door, they were consumed by smoke and immediately dialled 999. When fire fighters arrived shortly afterwards they found four bodies lying on the floor of the cage. The two security guards were dead from asphyxia and inhalation of fire fumes.
Two of the victims were alive, but the fire damage to their bodies was so extensive that only afterwards, when they arrived at the Burns Unit at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, West London, was one of them identified as a woman. Yurev suffered 30 per cent full thickness body surface burns, including the whole of his left arm from shoulder to fingers, patches on the face, right arm, back and chest. He had severe internal burns from breathing in the scorching hot smoke.
Debbie, the cashier, sustained 28 per cent burns. Her face was essentially burnt off and she had severe injuries to both arms and hands, her back, buttocks and thighs. She also suffered severe internal burns to her upper airways and lungs.
In court, Yurev, 25, told how he and his colleague had survived the fire. He said he had managed to untie his hands and drag himself and 27-year-old Debbie across the scorching steel floor to the air supply coming from beneath the strong-room door. Once there, they took turns in breathing from a keyhole, where the airflow was stronger. He told the jury: ‘There was a ball of fire. It was like an oven. My skin was on fire and I could feel myself disintegrating, but there was nowhere to go. I undid my hands and rolled myself on the floor and the wall and put myself out. I managed to get my mouth near the keyhole. I kept going down for 10 minutes and coming up again.’
Life Means Life Page 19