by Lee, Jane
‘I hired it.’ I told them it came from a mate but that I couldn’t really remember the exact details. I didn’t want to involve anyone else.
The senior one of the two said, ‘Oh, well, you may not remember them but the firm you hired the van from remembers you very well. In fact, let me read you this statement: “I remember the women very well. She was dressed head to toe in full combat gear. She was so eager to hire the van that I charged her twice the usual rate and, when I asked if she wanted me to show her how to drive the van, she said no and sped off like lightning.”’
I told the coppers I didn’t know what they were talking about. They charged me with possession of firearms and ammunition, attempted armed robbery, the attempted murder of two police officers and dangerous driving. I was looking at life.
By now they were not being as nice as they were when I’d gone into the interview room. In fact, they were being nasty. They packed me off to my cell. Sitting on my own once more, I couldn’t believe how people could go so dodgy on me. One word from me and I could have had all those who had betrayed me and grassed me up behind bars, just like I was. But I was not scum like them. Whether I got out of this or not, I said to myself, I could hold my head high because I wasn’t a grass.
PART TWO
PRISON
9
BANGED UP – HER MAJESTY’S PRISON HOLLOWAY
In the eyes of the law, I was the most dangerous woman in Britain.
The papers were full of it.
COPS SHOOT GUN GIRL, screamed the Sun. BLONDE FIRED TWO GUNS AT US – SO WE SHOT HER DOWN, said the Daily Mirror. Even The Times got in on the act: POLICE MARKSMAN SHOOTS ARMED WOMAN AFTER ROBBERY BID. And the News of the World couldn’t resist the story under the headline: COPS SHOOT GUN WOMAN AFTER CHASE. The People did a huge double-page spread about the police armed response unit that captured me. NO TIME TO RUN, NO PLACE TO HIDE, JACK DROPS HIS MP5 TO HIS HIP AND LETS RIP AT THE DRUG-MAD BLONDE TRYING TO MOW HIM DOWN.
Blimey, I thought to myself. Some of the reporting was accurate but some of it wasn’t. But, whichever way you read it, I was Britain’s most dangerous female criminal and the tabloids lapped it up. I was famous for all the wrong reasons but now I need to set the record straight on a couple of things the press had to say about me. The People described me as a ‘drug dealer with a dangerous addiction’. ‘She needed the money to finance her dealing,’ it went on and said I was ‘high on drugs’ when I went on the job. That piece, which came out a couple of years after the shooting, described me as a ‘drug-mad blonde’.
The article was publicising a book called The Trojan Files, which told the story of London’s armed response units and the procedure under which I was arrested – Operation Trojan. It was written by Sergeant Roger Gray, who has since left Scotland Yard. They made me sound like a heroin and crack addict, the cheeky sods. I’ve never taken heroin or crack in my life. I hate that shit. The book showed a reconstruction of the police marksman capturing me and, although the write-up was blown well out of proportion, the reconstruction photo was brilliant. They had used a really pretty blonde girl who looked a lot like me and I was well chuffed with that. It was the text that was wrong. I didn’t have a ‘deadly addiction’. I had done a little bit of Billy to keep me alert but no way was I high. I was too professional to go on a job in that state. And anyway, as I’ve said, my limit was a bit of puff to relax and I only really used speed when I was on the beer run to keep me going. But the reports did help me understand how much mayhem I caused that night.
The police units that came after me were from Operation Trojan’s specialist armed response units and by the time the first armed unit got to Ilford I was already being followed by eight local patrol cars as well as the Trojan mob. When I was arrested, there were over 50 officers at the scene. It was the first time that any armed police response unit had been involved in shooting a woman.
The Times quoted the 15-year-old schoolboy son of the vicar. This was the boy the cops had told me about. He said he saw an officer fire through my windscreen when it looked as if he might be mown down as I attempted to turn the van out of the cul-de-sac to get away. The boy said, ‘The van was revving up and the wheels were turning, then suddenly a police officer standing there just shot. I think he thought the van was going to run him over. I heard four shots in quick succession and I ran back in because I did not want to get caught in gunfire.’ I didn’t understand why that boy had said what he’d said because I never tried to run anyone over – rather, I only wanted to escape. He was later proved to be wrong by forensics and all I can say is thank God for forensics because my word wouldn’t have counted for anything against those of a vicar’s son and the police.
They took me from East Ham police station to court and I was remanded in custody and carted off under armed guard to London’s Holloway prison for women. I was designated a category-A prisoner, meaning I was one of the most dangerous inmates in the land and likely to attempt escape. Cat A meant I was bang in trouble from the start. I was segregated and had no communication with any other prisoners but, as I hadn’t ever been in prison before, I thought this was what everyone got. I didn’t know that I was the only Cat A prisoner in Holloway when I arrived. I still thought of myself primarily as a mum trying to do her best for her boy but, the way I was treated when I arrived, you would think I was more dangerous than Bonnie and Clyde put together. I still had about 350 stitches in me and, generally, I looked like I’d just got back from a war with the amount of holes and wounds I’d got.
Just 12 days after I was shot I was in Holloway on C1 wing. This was the nutters’ wing where all the Broadmoor cases were but I didn’t know that at the time. To me, they were just ordinary prisoners. The officers took me to my cell and I didn’t see one prisoner on the way because the prison was on lockdown. I didn’t even know that this was because of me. I didn’t know what Cat A meant at that precise moment. I just thought this was all normal as it was my first time inside. I was accompanied by 20 red-and-black screws. The heavy mob – specialist officers whose role was to act as security over and above ordinary screws. They got their name from the red badges they wear on black uniforms and they were only called in when there was trouble, such as a riot or a fight. Ordinary screws, hundreds of them, lined the corridors as the heavy mob walked me to my cell. I’d been strip searched on entering the prison and the cell we reached at the end of it all looked fucking grim.
It had a lump of concrete, like a long shelf or slab, built out from the wall, with a pillow and grey blankets that looked like they had come from World War II. That was my bed. There was a cardboard table and chair and a bible. Next to the ‘bed’ was a toilet and sink with a towel in the corner. This cell was eight feet long by six feet wide. There wasn’t enough room to swing a cat. Once I was in I was strip searched again. They took all my bandages off and I complained straight away. ‘You aren’t allowed to do that,’ I said. ‘The hospital have been checking my wounds several times a day because I’ve had plastic surgery and have been warned about getting it infected.’ I’d had skin grafted onto my hand from the top of my legs.
‘You’re not in hospital now,’ one of the screws said. ‘You are not going to try to strangle any of us with your bandages,’ and, sure enough, off they came. The screws left me there like that, with just my thoughts for company.
My wounds looked bad so I wrapped my arm in the rough old prison towel. Then in came the doctor with some pills but, before he was allowed in my cell, I had to be strip searched again. Then he was let in under full guard. I was on about eight different tablets from the hospital but he said I was not allowed some because they weren’t in prison regulations. So he gave me some medicine of his own that was an orange colour and a tub of white cream for my skin. He said I had to take the medication in front of him, which I did, and then he left and I was strip searched again. I swear to God that there were about ten or fifteen of the heavy mob that had not left my side. Now I was finding out what Cat A meant and, b
ecause I was Cat A, the Governor had to come to check on me every day. I realised I was a top-security prisoner when the Governor didn’t even enter my cell but only opened the hatch from the outside. I had to stand up and walk over to the door. The first time he came, he asked if I had any problems.
‘No, I feel good,’ I said. Well, he just shut the hatch and walked off and I giggled to myself. This became one of my stock answers every time any officers or the Governor came to my cell. I would always make out I was fine. Sometimes I would start dancing in my cell and singing, ‘I feel good, I knew that I would.’ They used to say I was nutty. I did this because I’d never let them know I was down. It was my way of staying strong.
But I was missing my boy like you wouldn’t imagine. John had turned 12 now. All his life he’d had me there and now he was alone in that big dangerous world. He was with my mum and dad but they didn’t really know him. Not to put too fine a point on it, when I’d lived with them when I was 12, things hadn’t been too clever. But I had to block that thought out of my mind and I prayed to God, ‘Please let John get through this, God. Please. You can do anything to me. I’ll take it on the chin. I won’t be offended with whatever you decide to let happen to me. I know I deserve it but please watch over my son.’
My dad and my sister Shell would be looking after John. Shell lived opposite my parents with her husband and three boys. Kevin, Shell’s middle son, and John were only six weeks apart in age and were more like brothers than cousins. John would survive, I told myself. Yet it was going to be hard because I knew Matt had been shot so he couldn’t be around for my boy.
Most people get off on other people’s misery and, when things in your life are looking a bit bleak, they thrive on it. But I wasn’t going to give anybody the pleasure or the opportunity to thrive off me and mine. And if they thought four bullets and what looked like a life sentence were going to wipe the smile off my face, well, they didn’t know me. I didn’t think so, somehow. Would you think so? So while anybody was near, I didn’t show a flicker of emotion. It wasn’t going to happen. When I was lying in bed alone, that was the time to grieve. But to the outside world, I was always happy and nothing they could do would change that.
I was only allowed a bible in my cell on C wing and I tried to read it. But I couldn’t concentrate because the girl in the cell next to me was shouting all the time. ‘Gi’s a fag, gi’s a fag.’ All day long. When the heavy mob checked on me, I asked them to give her a fag.
‘It’s hard enough being locked up in a cell 24/7, let alone without a fag,’ I said. They explained that she kept burning herself. But she wouldn’t stop screaming, ‘Gi’s a fag! Gi’s a fag!’
So I shouted that I’d tried to get her a fag but the screws wouldn’t allow it. ‘I don’t fucking want a fag off you anyway,’ she called.
‘You fucking ungrateful cow.’
‘I’ll do you if I get the chance.’
But when, at last, we got to talking properly, I found I liked her. There was a glass slit in the door, which was about an inch wide and six inches long, and through it I could see the girl. She was in the cell opposite mine and I swear to God she looked as normal as anybody else. We talked all the time until one day I could hear a noise coming from her cell and I looked over to see that she was covered in blood from head to toe. She had broken her phone card in half and was slicing herself to pieces with it. There was blood everywhere.
‘No!’ I screamed. ‘Stop!’
I felt for this woman. She had lost her kids through coming to prison and she wasn’t handling it too well. Who could blame her? Anyway, the screws and heavy mob burst into her cell, all in riot gear with helmets and shields as big as they were. They put her in a straitjacket and took everything out of her cell and threw her back in it with just the straitjacket on until the doctor arrived. He took the jacket off, cleaned up her wounds and then the screws put her back in the jacket. My heart went out to her. She was crying for help and needed to be in hospital, not a stinking cell.
As for me, I had been inside a week and still hadn’t even been allowed a bath or a visit. I really was beginning to understand what being Cat A meant. It was the attempted-murder charge that had done it. Believe me, trying to kill a copper is the worst crime to be accused of in Britain – even actually killing one is not that much worse. On paper, it looked like I had wanted to do it but not succeeded. In their eyes, there was little difference. I mean, the police who were there should have known it was a load of old rubbish. I was doing wrong and I was up to villainy, yes, but I did not have murder on my mind and I did not try to do murders. I did not pull the trigger. I knew I was in trouble because, if I was found not guilty, the police would have lost their justification for shooting at me.
In the meantime, in the eyes of the law, I was the most dangerous woman in Britain, which meant visitors had to be vetted at the nearest police station before they were allowed anywhere near me in prison. My dad, John and my mum all came to see me as the weeks went by. My dad was my first visitor. He wanted to come sooner than a week but they wouldn’t let him. When he came, they put the prison on lockdown and I was strip searched yet again before being taken to the visitor’s wing by the heavy mob. Throughout the visit they stood there, two of them on either side of him and two on either side of me. Watching and listening to every private word. There was also a glass screen between me and Dad.
‘You all right, my girl?’ were my dad’s first words, concern written all over his face.
‘I’m having the time of my life in here, Dad,’ I told him, pressing against the glass where his hand was, more worried for him than I was for myself. ‘There is a swimming pool, disco every night and it’s just pure fun. It’s a holiday camp, Dad.’
A big smile covered his face, the colour came back into cheeks and I could see a weight lifted from his shoulders. He was always going to worry about me but at least he knew now I was mentally strong. Of course, I didn’t tell him what it was really like but Dad knew that already from his own years behind bars. I was coping. That was all he needed to know and that was what I told him. And it was true. I reminded him of his own words to me as a kid. ‘Remember what you told me as a little girl, Dad?’ I asked. ‘Tough times don’t last but tough people do.’ When he left, he had the twinkle back in his eyes and the smile back on his face, even though I swear there was a little tear in his eye, which he tried to hide from me.
His final words were, ‘I’m proud of you, Jane, how you’re handling it. We are all here for you, girl.’
I was putting Dad through hell but he put his own feelings aside and was only thinking of me and how he could help. There were tears in my eyes too that day. I was proud of him. He was the quiet but silent type and, when I needed him, he was there. ‘I love you so much, Dad,’ I said as he got up to go. I wanted to hug him so much but there was no way through that glass screen.
On the way back to my cell I was strip searched yet again and by now it was beginning to piss me off, big time. ‘Do you think I’m a fucking magician and my dad’s conjured up a gun out of thin air?’ I said. The screws could sense my mood was turning nasty because they were ruining the nice feelings I had from seeing Dad.
‘It’s the rules,’ one said.
‘Look. I’ve just seen my dad and I’m not letting you ruin it with another strip search,’ I said. ‘You know I haven’t got nothing on me so, if you want it, bring it on if you’re brave enough but I am not being strip searched again.’ I knew they would have battered me but I would have done a couple of them first, as you will find out later on, but not this time. They let me back in my cell without another search.
Soon it wasn’t just my dad visiting me. Matt and John came. My defence lawyer, Gary Jacobs, started to visit too. He warned that the charges against me were very serious and that I could be looking at life or years behind bars in double figures. But I told him I was innocent of all the charges and that he had to find a way to prove that. Gradually, as we went through the details over seve
ral visits, I could see he was starting to believe me on the attempted murder charges but proving it was another matter. He knew it wouldn’t be easy because the police needed a reason to have opened fire on me. He told me to be patient.
One night I smelt burning. Soon enough the word was passed down the wing that someone had set themselves alight. The prison seemed to physically shake and rock with the response, as if there had been an earthquake. I had never heard anything like it. I mean, there were more than 500 women in Holloway and they were all going nutty, jumping up and down. But it wasn’t because there was a woman on fire. They knew the fire brigade had turned up and they were all screaming at the firemen out in the yard, ‘Get ’em off, gorgeous,’ and, ‘Get over here and get your kit off, mate.’ All that sort of stuff and they were jumping up and down like wild women.
The firemen lapped it up. They didn’t exactly break any world records putting the fire out. It was more like they were on the catwalk – posing, waving and blowing kisses, flexing their muscles at us lot behind bars. I mean, there was a poor woman on fire and this lot thought they were film stars. You can imagine what would have happened if the women had got their hands on them. They would have been raped. Some of these women hadn’t been with a man for years. I mean, firemen are a turn-on even when you aren’t in prison so, for us who were banged up, you girls out there know how good they would have looked. And the burnt woman? We were told later that she was OK but she had to go to hospital and we never did know exactly how bad it was.
I had first been allowed a bath after being inside just over a week. Taking the bandages off had actually done me a favour because the wounds were healing better that way. But my so-called bath was just three inches of water. I stood there looking at it in disbelief.