Gypsy Jane - I've Been Shot Four Times and Served Three Prison Terms?This is the Incredible Story of

by Lee, Jane

  The transfer was at 7 pm and I waited in my van outside Valentines Park in Gants Hill, near Ilford, where I could see both the off-licence and the house the money was being taken to. I was sitting in a white Ford Transit, which belonged to the man who had supplied me with the information. I loaded my Colt .38, just in case. At length, I saw the runner come from the off-licence with the satchel over his shoulder, just as I was told he would. I drove almost level with him, pulled out the replica Browning, waited for him to walk past my open window and pointed the gun in his face. ‘Give me the satchel, mate,’ I said nicely. But something was wrong. I could see it in his face from the off.

  To my disbelief he said, ‘No.’

  ‘Give me the fucking money,’ I said again through gritted teeth. ‘What are you fucking playing at?’ He didn’t answer but just started to run. I was not amused with what was happening. I began to see it was a set-up. Now I knew why the other two didn’t come. My target was now legging it down the road. This was not on at all and I cursed myself under my breath for not twigging when the other two pulled out at the last minute. To make matters worse, the runner had got some balls. I mean, most people would have handed over the cash but he had done his job. I threw the imitation gun on the passenger seat and grabbed the Colt .38 but by this time my man was among a group of people. There were two families on the opposite side of the road coming out of the houses and getting into their cars, and quite a few pedestrians up ahead where the runner was headed. This was a crowded street. I spun the van around and, my gun in my hand, I shouted at everyone, ‘Get down, get down!’ They thought I was going to shoot them but I just wanted the runner and to warn them. It was all going pear-shaped big time because no one had noticed him. They all looked at me before hitting the ground – all apart from the runner who was still trying to get away. He was hiding behind those people who were too far to have dropped down yet and I just couldn’t believe what was happening. This wasn’t the plan. I was waving a gun at a crowded street and I knew I was in big trouble but it was about to get a lot, lot worse.

  Satchel-boy knew I wanted to do him and he ran behind a woman. There was a look of pure terror in her eyes and she started screaming. That set a few others off and then I could hear police sirens. Soon, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a police car. I’d got a whole street on the ground at gunpoint and I had to get out of this situation. I threw the gun in the back of the van, put my foot down and drove off as fast as I could. I was driving the van at up to 70 mph as though it was a mini. But at every turn I could see police cars. Then I heard a helicopter above me and it seemed as though the whole of Scotland Yard was after me. But I didn’t give up.

  Soon I could see the helicopter clearly. It was hovering in front of me, flying backwards but the pilot was looking straight at me. This close it looked like something from outer space. All I could really see was a big glass dome with men in it, helmets over their faces, big goggles over their eyes. A spotlight was shining down on me. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ I screamed. I had a high-powered torch in the van, which I grabbed and pointed directly at the helicopter. The beam was so powerful it dazzled the pilot and suddenly the helicopter banked and turned away from me to avoid crashing onto the busy street below. He did the right thing because I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  I was screeching down turnings at random and before long I flew down a dead-end road. There was a brick wall in front of me and, behind me, a sea of police cars. But there had been a turning to my left, just behind me, so I stuck the van into reverse, smashed into a police car, forcing it out of the way, and spun the van round in the direction of the turning. ‘I’ve got to get out of this,’ I said to myself. ‘I’ve told my boy I’ll be home at nine.’

  I was just about to put my foot down and head into the turn leading to a clear road when an armed officer, aiming an M16 rifle straight at me, shouted through the driver’s window, ‘Armed police. Show me your hands!’ He had appeared from nowhere. He was standing by the side of the van. I hadn’t seen him jump out of the car I had rammed into. The barrel of his gun was inches from my head. Time stood still. I stared straight back at him through the window. It’s now or never, I thought, my eyes darting from him to the turning in the road. I was as calm as you like. Then, for some reason, words that I had lived by came into my head and told me what to do – Mine is not to question why, I am but to do or die. That had always been my mantra when I was in danger. My gypsy blood would never allow me to go down without a fight.

  I laughed in the copper’s face. ‘Yeah, really?’ The red dot of his laser sight was flicking around my face. He wasn’t expecting those words. I supposed I was meant to shit myself and crumble. It didn’t happen. For a long moment the copper was motionless. I knew now that, if I didn’t get away, I’d get it in the head. I laughed again and then smashed my foot down on the accelerator and the van lurched, then roared forward. But the turn was too tight and I lost control and crashed the van into a house on the corner. In the mayhem I didn’t hear anything but the copper I had taunted had his M16 set on semi-automatic and fired off four shots. I could see my hands covered in blood and the windscreen was a red mist. My blood. I’d been shot. Then the van door was pulled open and I could hear the cops screaming at me. They were going mental. I mean mental. ‘Armed police. Armed police. Show us your hands. Show us your hands!’

  I was dragged out of the van and handcuffed. Now I was laughing at them. They tried to spread me star-shaped on the ground but my hands were cuffed above my head. I looked up at them all and laughed again. ‘You load of fucking pigs,’ I said. But before I could finish, six guns came down into my face.

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth or we’ll blow your fucking head off,’ one of them said. There were loads of them, all in full body armour. I was in no doubt that, if I made one false move, I would have been taken out. Another one of the cops stood on my hands and, for the first time, I realised I had been shot in the right hand. I stopped laughing as the adrenalin started to wear off. I didn’t know it yet but in all I’d been shot four times. I knew I was facing serious time and I thought about my boy at home. If I realised how badly I’d been hurt, I would have wondered if I was dying. The first bullet had entered my right forearm and ripped its way down to lodge in my hand. The second had gone into the back of my right shoulder and exited through the front of the same shoulder. The third had entered my back, behind my heart, and the last had ricocheted off the dashboard and got me in the groin. Just my luck. But I still didn’t feel a thing. I knew I’d been shot in the hand because I could see a big hole in it but I hadn’t got a clue about the other wounds.

  The armed police were screaming at everyone coming out of their houses to stay away. I was lying in a pool of my own blood in Royal Close, Ilford, wondering what the hell had happened. I found out later that the police officer opened fire because he thought I was going to run him over. That was what I was told but all the shots came from behind me as I tried to get away. I had been shot in the back, driving away, so how could I have been trying to run him over?

  But maybe I was dying. All of a sudden my dad was there cradling and rocking me and telling me I was going to be OK. I could hear him shouting, ‘Get these cuffs off her. She’s been hit everywhere. There’s blood coming out of her everywhere. We’re going to lose her. Stay with me, babe. You’re going to be OK. I’ve got you.’

  ‘I’m OK, Dad,’ I replied. And that was the last thing I remembered. I passed out. But the man holding me wasn’t my dad. He was an ordinary police officer. Not one of the armed ones. This copper picked me up, got the cuffs off me and held me as if I was a baby until the ambulance got there. I’d like to thank him for that, whoever he is.

  I woke up in the King George hospital, Ilford, with two police officers in my room. All I could think was that my dad was going to go mad and Matt was going to kill me because he had warned me not to get involved with the villains who had given me the information. He had told me they were wrong ’uns and, as usual, I
hadn’t believed him. I thought he was just saying that so I didn’t do any more jobs but he was right again. I had now been shot four times and was looking at a life sentence.

  I lay in the hospital bed recovering from the blood transfusion I’d had to replace all the blood I lost. I’d had two operations to remove three bullets that had lodged in my body. The bullet that blew a hole in my hand and the two that went into my back and groin had to be removed in the operating theatre. In all, I needed more than 350 stitches to keep me together. It wasn’t only bullets they took out of me. It was the bits of van metal propelled by the bullets into my body. I had other splinters from the van in me as well. I mean, I had half the bleedin’ van in me. I’d been flung into the windscreen and had to have chunks of glass removed from my arms. Some of the debris was buried so deep that they had to pick shrapnel out of my arms and back for about ten months. I didn’t even know about much of it until it worked its way to the surface. Then they would dig it out.

  I was on the critical but stable list but, when I woke up, it was as though nothing had happened. I couldn’t feel any pain anywhere. It was unbelievable. Then in walked my dad and John and I grabbed hold of my boy. He was only 12 and I could see he’d been crying but, when he saw me and realised I was OK, his face lit up. Believe it or not, we all started laughing.

  The doctors told me I should have died but I told them it takes more than four bullets to keep me down. I don’t feel any different from any other day. My boy was OK and, as long as he was OK, I felt like nothing could hurt me. According to Dad, the police said I’d been shooting at them and that’s why they opened fire. I told Dad I didn’t shoot at anyone and that, if it had been me firing four shots, I would have got four coppers in their heads.

  ‘Shush, Jane. Don’t talk like that,’ my dad said under his breath. ‘The place is crawling with the old bill and you’re in enough trouble as it is.’ Of course, he was right so I toned it down. And it was just bravado anyway. I felt so guilty because of my boy. He deserved better.

  The cops questioned me while I was in bed and I told them I hadn’t done anything wrong. ‘A man tried to rape me, then he tried to hurt a load of people in the street,’ I said. ‘I tried to help them and I’m the one who gets shot, just for saving myself.’ Even the cops had to hide the smirks on their faces. They should have given me an Oscar for that one! But you’ve got to try something. After all, I had put a whole street of people on the ground at gunpoint and the runner was saying I had tried to rob him. I was looking at life for armed robbery and it was easily possible I would be charged with attempted murder of police officers because they were saying I shot at them. Now I knew I had done wrong. But I wasn’t guilty of attempted murder.

  I told Dad and John not to worry because I didn’t believe God would save me from four bullets to give me a life sentence for something I didn’t do. I told them that everything would be OK and put them all at ease. I think they left the hospital happier than they were when they arrived. But God only knows what they must have been thinking. Their hearts must have been breaking, seeing me like that.

  I was told I was going to be transferred to a burns unit at Basildon University hospital for plastic surgery on my hand, which was in a bad way. I arrived the next day and, while I was in my room, I could hear a commotion outside and then Matt burst in. He looked really worried. But he was angry too. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, looking at my hand and all the tubes and drips I was linked to. So I started with the whole story. Before I could say anything to stop him he reacted by going mad and he began throwing police officers down the corridor.

  ‘You shot my missus!’ he screamed and the police were terrified. He was a very powerful man and had brought a firm with him. Believe me, they made their presence known. I think the cops must have thought Matt was going to try to spring me from the hospital or something because they had called in the army to guard me. There were police and soldiers on the roof, in the corridors, right outside my room. There must have been 20 in the corridor alone. Police dogs patrolled outside and they had put security checks in place a mile around the hospital. If you came to the hospital, you were treated like a terrorist, partly because I was a dangerous criminal and partly because they reckoned Matt was planning an escape for me.

  But a couple of days later I got a message saying Matt had been shot. I couldn’t believe it. I had a feeling he had gone after the geezers who grassed me up. At least he was only hit in the shoulder and he was OK. I didn’t get to see him for a while but he sent me the biggest bunch of flowers I’ve ever seen and I knew he was OK.

  After being in hospital for ten days I was told I could leave. I think they were relieved to get rid of me. I mean, this was a hospital and it looked like a prisoner-of-war camp with soldiers patrolling the place. I was taken to East Ham police station and they put me in a cell with no toilet paper and a blocked bog. I wasn’t amused. I mean, I’d just got out of hospital and had three bullets taken out of me and one of them was in the groin. This place was unhygienic. But I was a soldier, I told myself, and crashed out on the bunk.

  The next day they took me to be interviewed and believe me when I say I had two of their best interviewing me. I mean, these were the best of the best. They offered me a fag and asked me what I was doing waving a gun about and threatening people. So I said, ‘It was like this, officers. I went to test the guns I’d restored in the park. I know I shouldn’t have. But I was curious to see if they fired OK. Being close to bonfire night, I thought no one would take any notice and just think the sounds were fireworks.’

  ‘But you had an imitation gun as well. What was that for?’

  I said, ‘Oh, that one’s for my boy for Christmas. I was going to have a little go with that as well.’

  ‘But where did you get the bullets from?’

  ‘I made them,’ I said. I told them I was a restorer of antique guns. I thought I was doing OK.

  ‘Why did you hold up a man at gunpoint and force a whole street on the ground in fear of their lives then?’

  ‘I never held a man up at gunpoint. I asked this man for directions to Gants Hill and he said, “Let me get in and I’ll show you the way.” I said, “No way, mate, you can’t get in,” and started to drive off when he went for his satchel and said, “I’ve got something to show you.” I thought he was going for a knife or gun so I picked up my gun and said, “I’ve got something to show you,” and he runs into a group of people and I think, Oh, no, he’s a nutter and he’s going to hurt somebody. I tried to help them. I was shouting at them to be careful when I realised I’ve still got the gun in my hand and they are more scared of me than they are of him.’

  Well, there was a bit of a silence. Then one of them took a deep breath. ‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘You not only saved yourself but you saved the whole street as well?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Well, we put it to you that you went to rob this man and you tried to involve two innocent people but they decided not go with you when they saw your weapons,’ he said. ‘They told you they don’t mind doing a burglary but that they think you’re mad and out of their league.’ Well, well, well, I thought. Now I knew I was definitely set up and grassed. I should have known when the two men said they weren’t coming with me but now I knew for sure. But I didn’t say a word of that to the cops.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘You’ve been listening to Jack, haven’t you?’

  ‘Jack who?’ the chatty one asked.

  ‘Jackanory,’ I said. I couldn’t believe what had happened. Professional villains, in my opinion, should have more self-respect than to behave in the way that those two had. It was obvious the police knew exactly what had gone off but they still had to prove it. They tried a different approach.

  ‘Our armed response team have told us you tried to kill two of them.’

  This wasn’t funny anymore.

  ‘I can’t believe that one. Are yous being serious?’ I asked. ‘You shot me four times, remem
ber? I didn’t shoot anyone.’

  ‘You were only shot because you tried to shoot two officers.’

  ‘Look. I never fired a shot. I know I rammed them but, believe me, they were in my blind spot behind the van and I didn’t see them there.’

  They said the officer who shot me was standing in front of the van and I tried to run him and another officer down and that’s why he shot me.

  ‘What a load of crap. He was to the side of me and there was no second officer. I only wanted to get away from him, not kill him,’ I told them.

  Their story was changing. At first, the officers had said I’d been shooting and that was why they shot me. Now they were saying I tried to run two officers down. I knew that, in time, forensics would prove I hadn’t fired a shot and I guessed they already knew that and that was why they were trying this new angle.

  ‘Well, we’ve got a vicar and his son who witnessed it and they swear on the bible that one officer was in front of you,’ the copper said. ‘And the vicar and his son said you were screaming with laughter and drove right at the officer and he had no other choice but to fire or he would be dead. These are men of God. They wouldn’t lie now, would they?’

  Only God could know what the police told the vicar I’d done but I would have sworn by the bible myself that I was telling the truth. I didn’t try to hurt anybody apart from the runner that didn’t play the way he was supposed to. It wasn’t looking good though. I’d got the vicar and his son against me, police officers, the runner, a street full of people and the witnesses who saw me driving like a maniac. But I told the two coppers what I thought. ‘God didn’t save me from four bullets so yous can fit me up and life me off,’ I said. ‘God’s on my side. I haven’t done nothing wrong. I know I shouldn’t have took my guns out to test but I’ve got four bullets in me for that. God won’t let yous stitch me up. He’s on my side.’

  ‘So where did you get the van?’ one of them asked.