Apart from a break for lunch in Eastcote, they had spent the day driving around the Harrow and Wembley areas looking, mainly in station car parks, for a car to steal. No suitable car or opportunity had presented itself, and on leaving East Acton the three decided to abandon their search, take a break, and discuss their next move. Witney was also reluctant to go home as his wife thought he was at work. They headed for nearby Wormwood Scrubs common, intending to lie in the sun on the grass not far from the prison walls.
At 3.10 pm, Foxtrot Eleven received a radio message from DI Coote in Marylebone magistrate’s court: the five men who had escaped from the prison had just been committed for trial, and Coote asked the Q car to pick him up with his exhibits. DS Head told Coote they would be at the court in twenty minutes. They were then in Acton.
Exactly where they were and how they chanced to spot and follow the blue Vanguard is unknown. But something about its appearance or movements must have attracted the policemen’s attention. DS Head probably decided to check the other car before they headed east to Marylebone Road.
All six men, three in one car, three in the other, were totally unprepared for what happened in the next five minutes.
The Vanguard entered Braybrook Street, whose southern end ran along the thirty-foot-high perimeter wall of the prison. The rest of the street was bordered on the north by the wide stretch of the common. The residents of the council houses lining the opposite side of the road were used to drivers parking in the quiet street for a nap or a snack. That sunny afternoon, women idled about their household duties and children on holiday played on the pavement and out on the common.
The police car overtook the Vanguard and DS Head flagged it down. Both cars came to a halt, the police car some yards in front of the other, which was much closer to the kerb. Head and Wombwell got out of the Q car and approached the Vanguard, both coming to the driver’s window. Fox remained in the Q car, the engine running.
DS Head asked Witney if he was the owner of the car. Witney replied: ‘Yes.’ Then he was asked for his road fund licence. He replied that he didn’t have one. Head enquired why. Witney said he couldn’t get the car taxed until it had been given an MOT certificate. Head asked to see his driving licence. Having examined it, he asked for the car’s insurance certificate. After studying it he remarked: ‘It’s three hours out of date.’
DC Wombwell produced a notebook to write down the car’s and the driver’s particulars. So far Roberts and Duddy had said nothing. Head moved away to inspect the rear of the car. ‘Can’t you give me a break?’ cried Witney. ‘I’ve just been nicked for this a fortnight ago.’
As DC Wombwell inclined his head to talk to Witney through the open window Roberts shot him in the left eye. Wombwell staggered back and fell.
Roberts told Duddy to grab a gun and leapt out of the car, closely followed by Duddy, as Head ran for his life towards Foxtrot Eleven. ‘Get the driver!’ Duddy was told. Roberts fired at Head and missed. ‘No, no, no!’ cried Head, trying to hide behind the bonnet of Foxtrot Eleven. Roberts shot him in the back, and Head fell dying in front of the car.
Shocked senseless, Fox was slow to respond. But in any case, with Head in front of the police car he could not advance, and if he reversed he would approach the gunmen. Duddy fired at him three times, once through the rear near-side window, shattering the glass. This and another shot missed Fox. The third shot, which Duddy fired through the open passenger window, entered Fox’s left temple and exited the other side.
As it did so his foot stamped on the accelerator. The car lurched forward over DS Head, who was still alive. He was caught underneath the car. Smoke poured from the engine as the rear wheels, lodged against Head’s body, repeatedly banged against him, unable to advance. Fox lay dead at the wheel.
Witney had stepped out of the car to see what was happening. Roberts and Duddy ran back towards him and piled into the Vanguard.
‘Drive!’ cried Roberts. ‘You must be fucking potty!’ yelled Witney. ‘Drive, you cunt!’ Roberts retorted. ‘Unless you want some of the same!’
Unable to stomach passing the fallen policemen, Witney reversed, and the blue Vanguard careered backwards with its loose exhaust, tied with string, sparking on the road. The brakes screeched as the car stopped, was swung left and sped down Erconwald Street and away from what would come to be known by the press as the Massacre of Braybrook Street.
A young couple, Bryan and Patricia Deacon, driving up Braybrook Street on their way to see his parents, were alarmed by the Vanguard reversing towards them. Bryan Deacon, a thirty-year-old security officer, who had been on duty the previous night, swore at the men in the blue car, and thinking that they might be mixed up in some prison-break shouted at his wife, who was seven months pregnant: ‘Get the number!’ He drove on, cursing, intending to telephone the police about the incident.
‘Then I came across the first body,’ he said later. ‘I now know it was David Wombwell. He was lying with his feet towards the common. There was blood everywhere. Pat said: “He’s dead!” There was a green police car in the middle of the road, with smoke pouring from it. A lorry driver ran down the street, shouting: “Get the police! Get the police!” ‘It was the lorry driver who reached across PC Fox and switched off the ignition. The engine died and there was silence in the street.
At round about that time, a blackbird flew in the kitchen window of Mrs Roberts’s flat in Euston. She was unable to get rid of it for some time and felt it was some kind of omen.
Bryan Deacon drove on past the police car and found a telephone in a nearby butcher’s shop. He dialled 999. Although his wife was sobbing and hysterical, he returned to Braybrook Street on foot and gave the Vanguard’s number, which he had written down on the butcher’s wrapping-paper, to the driver of one of the many police vehicles that were soon on the scene. The number was PGT 726.
There were other witnesses – women and children. But there were discrepancies in their statements, and their descriptions of the three men involved in the shooting proved to be very inaccurate.
It took some time to trace the owner of PGT 726, as the records of car owners were in those days kept in county council offices and at 5 pm they had closed for the day.
DCS Richard Chitty was put in charge of the murder enquiry, and by 9 pm DI Steventon and a sergeant were knocking at the door of Witney’s basement flat in Paddington. ‘We are making enquiries concerning the owner of a blue Vanguard shooting-brake, PGT 726, which we understand is yours.’ ‘Oh, no! Not that!’ said Witney, and explained: ‘We’ve just seen on the telly about the coppers being shot.’ He told Steventon that he had sold the car that day to a stranger for £15. ‘You told me you’d been to work,’ said Mrs Witney. ‘You didn’t tell me you’d sold the car. What’s going on?’ ‘I haven’t been to work for five weeks,’ Witney replied. ‘I had to get some money for you.’ He was trembling and sweating: he mopped his face with a towel. Steventon, after further questions, asked Witney to come to the police station. Mrs Witney, much upset by now, said: ‘Please, darling, tell them the truth.’
Witney was questioned at Shepherd’s Bush police station. He made a statement, elaborating what he had told DI Steventon, and was detained. A search of his flat revealed no weapons or anything incriminating.
Meanwhile, the car’s number and descriptions of the wanted men had been issued to the press and broadcast on radio and television. Masses of information, most of it useless, began to pour in, and at a press conference on Saturday evening the police appealed for other witnesses and information. Witney’s detention was not mentioned.
The previous evening, Harry Roberts had returned to Wymering Mansions in Maida Vale at seven o’clock. ‘I knew at once something was wrong,’ said Mrs Perry. ‘He looked as if he had been running. He was all breathless and very flushed. I told him I had some nice rock salmon and chips for his tea. He looked disgusted. “I can’t eat anything,” he said, complaining of a headache.’ Soon after this Mrs Howard left the shared flat and
Lilian Perry mentioned the shootings to Robbie – she had heard about them on the radio. ‘Did you hear about the three policemen?’ she said. ‘Shut up!’ said Roberts, and added: ‘It was us.’
He told her what had happened. Repeatedly he said: ‘If only that fool hadn’t asked to look inside the car. I knew if the coppers turned the car over they’d find the guns and put us all away. I thought it was better to shoot it out than go down for fifteen years.’ If the police had found the guns, he said, they would have done time for nothing. He neither ate nor drank and sat staring at the television set all evening, seeming to Mrs Perry to be very far away. She didn’t know what to say or do.
On Saturday morning, they went shopping. On their return, John Duddy was in the flat: he had the guns. Roberts hid them under a bed. In the afternoon, Roberts, Duddy and Mrs Perry went for a walk in Paddington Recreation Ground, taking a pram and two of Mrs Howard’s children with them, Barry, aged four, and Samantha, two, whom Roberts carried in his arms to hide his face. They returned to the flat in time to watch the wrestling on ITV.
Roberts wanted Duddy to go with him and get rid of the Vanguard, which Witney had left in a lock-up garage in Tinworth Street, Vauxhall, near the River Thames. But Duddy refused to go anywhere near the car. Eventually, at about 8 pm, Mrs Perry agreed to accompany Roberts to Vauxhall, leaving Duddy behind in the flat to babysit, as the Howards had gone out. Duddy poured himself a drink.
The lock-up garage was under the arches of the main railway line to Waterloo. Mrs Perry and Roberts peered through the slats of the garage door at the car within. The door was locked and they did not have the garage key or car key. Roberts said he wished Duddy would help him do something to get rid of the car, burn it or something. But he did nothing himself. Returning to the flat with Mrs Perry, he kept on at Duddy to do something, to help him. But the other man repeatedly said: ‘No.’
Later that night, a man telephoned the police to say that he had seen a blue Vanguard being driven into the Tinworth Street garage on Friday. Within minutes the police visited the scene, and some time after midnight they discovered that the lock-up was rented by Witney. Three .38 cartridges were found in the car from the .38 Colt that Duddy had fired. The next day – Sunday – the Commissioner, Sir Joseph Simpson, and the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, called at Shepherd’s Bush police station, outside which a crowd was shouting: ‘Bring back the rope!’
That evening, John Witney was charged by DCS Chitty with the murders of all three policemen ‘with others’ and taken back to his cell. Soon afterwards he decided to make another statement. ‘I’m not scared for myself,’ he said. ‘I know I’m going away for a long time, but I’m frightened for my family. As God is my judge I had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting of the three policemen.’ He told the police his version of what had happened in Braybrook Street, naming Roberts and Duddy as the gunmen. Unable to remember their exact addresses, he was taken in a police taxi late at night to point out where Roberts and Duddy lived. Both buildings were discreetly surrounded by armed policemen.
They were raided at 5 am on Monday, 15 August, to the shock and alarm of the occupants. Duddy’s two teenage daughters were on their own. They had not seen their father since Saturday, and their mother had walked out weeks ago. The Howards and their children were alone in their flat. Mrs Perry and Roberts were absent. Mrs Roberts’s flat in Euston was also visited by the police and searched, and was kept under observation from then on. Harry Roberts’s one-time wife was put under police protection. But of Roberts himself, there was no sign.
On the Sunday morning, Roberts and Duddy had gone to Hampstead Heath to bury the guns. On their return, Duddy opted to go to Scotland and Roberts decided to go to ground. He told Mrs Perry to pack a suitcase for him, and that afternoon they went to the Russell Hotel. He booked them in as Mr and Mrs Crosby. After a meal in a local restaurant – he couldn’t eat, as food still made him feel sick – they went up to their twin-bedded room. They lay on top of the single beds, talking. Roberts smoked a cigarette.
It was a very warm night, for London was having a heatwave. He said: ‘What a mess I’ve made of things. What a bloody mess. If only that fool hadn’t wanted to inspect the car … I’ve got to get away, pet. If I can keep hidden, lie low for a while, the whole thing may blow over.’
It seems he intended to go to Scotland, for on Monday morning he and Mrs Perry walked from the hotel to Euston Station. There, however, Roberts changed both is mind and the direction of his flight. He put his case in a left-luggage office, and then tore up the ticket he had bought.
They then went to a second-hand army surplus store near King’s Cross Station, where he bought some camping equipment, including some clothes, a haversack, a primus stove and a sleeping bag. He also bought some tins of food from a grocer. From King’s Cross, they journeyed by bus to Camden Town, where they got on a Green Line bus for Epping. Roberts hardly spoke. They left the bus beyond the Wake Arms and walked back to the crossroads opposite the pub.
He looked at Mrs Perry and said: ‘This is as far as you go, love … I’m on my own now. I’ll have to make my own way from here.’ She asked him where he was going. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I haven’t really made up my mind.’ He began to cry. So did she. ‘You better go,’ he said, ‘before I get any worse.’ Taking £6 out of a pocket he gave her 6s 6d, and told her how to get back to Maida Vale from there. ‘That should be enough for your fare,’ he said. ‘I reckon I’m going to need the rest more than you.’ Although she wanted to stay with him, he told her to go and saw her on to a coach. On her return to Wymering Mansions, she was interviewed by the police. She told them what she knew about Roberts and his whereabouts.
On Tuesday, 16 August – another hot, sunny day – a photograph of Harry Roberts was issued with a description of the khaki combat jacket, khaki trousers, shirt, socks and boots he might be wearing. The public were warned he might be armed.
That same morning, acting on a tip-off, the police arrested John Duddy in Glasgow, catching him in bed in a Calton tenement. He did not resist arrest. That night he was brought back to London on a scheduled flight from Glasgow airport.
Handcuffed, he sat between two Yard detectives – DCI John ‘Ginger’ Hensley and DI Slipper. The latter took a statement from him on the plane, which Duddy later denied having made. It said: ‘I must tell you what happened … It was Roberts who started the shooting. He shot two who got out of the car and shouted to me to shoot. I just grabbed a gun and ran to the police car and shot the driver through the window. I must have been mad.’ At Shepherd’s Bush police station, Duddy made another statement. It ended: ‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I wanted quick money the easy way. I’m a fool.’
At dawn on Thursday, over 500 policemen, many of them armed, began searching the 6,000 acres of Epping Forest, backed up by police dogs and tear-gas guns, with a helicopter overhead observing and directing. On Saturday the search was called off – Harry Roberts had gone to ground elsewhere.
The man-hunt intensified, spreading all over Britain and into the continent, where Interpol were alerted. Roberts was seen everywhere. Sightings were as many as the theories about where and how he was living – was he disguised? – and every piece of information had to be followed up. There were further raids, chases and searches. A £1,000 reward was offered and advertised on 16,000 posters. It was the biggest police operation since the Great Train Robbery in August 1963.
In London, the police had two rest days, on 31 August and on 6 September. On the first day, the three murdered policemen were buried after a funeral service in the church opposite Shepherd’s Bush police station. Over 600 policemen lined the route of the funeral procession. At Scotland Yard, in the wind and rain, a lone piper played a lament in the courtyard. On 6 September, a memorial service was held in Westminster Abbey, attended by 2,000 policemen from all over Britain, as well as by the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, by Mr Heath, by the Home Secretary and other leading politicians. In Whitehall, signature
s were collected for a petition demanding the restoration of the death penalty.
More sightings than ever before were reported – over 6,000 in all. Roberts was seen in Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man, on planes, trains and boats. A hundred and sixty reported sightings came from Liverpool, 106 from Bournemouth. And over 50,000 people sent money and gifts to the Bush for the dead men’s families.
September ended. Press and public interest waned and was then diverted by another sensation – the escape, on 22 October, of the spy George Blake from Wormwood Scrubs Prison, where, six years previously, Roberts had met him. Blake had been sentenced in 1961 to forty-two years in prison, the longest sentence ever passed by a British court.
The weeks passed. October ended. The trial of Witney and Duddy was set for Monday, 14 November. By then, the real Harry Roberts had been seen by several people, who thought they recognised him but did nothing about it.
It must have been in October that three teenage boys, hunting rabbits in Thorley Wood near Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire, 3 miles up the A11 from Epping Forest, found a camouflaged tent, hidden in undergrowth and surrounded by a low stockade of twigs and branches. A man was inside and a radio was on. Without disturbing him they went away. One of the boys told his mother about the man in the woods. He said: ‘I wonder if it’s Harry Roberts.’ ‘That’s not possible,’ replied his mother with a laugh.
Since the beginning of October a dishevelled man in a combat jacket had regularly visited a grocery shop 2 miles away from Thorlwy Wood. He went there once a week and bought bread, eggs and tins of food, for which he paid in silver and other coins. ‘My gosh, that chap looks like Harry Roberts!’ said the manageress to her assistant, who laughed. They continued to see him. Said the manageress later: ‘I meant to telephone the police. But I was afraid of feeling a little foolish. Now I feel an even bigger fool.’
Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England Page 52