I was later told that the woman who had attacked me was Jesse Gail’s sister. It was Billy Jasper, not I, who had claimed that Gail and the other man had been involved in the murders of Tucker, Tate and Rolfe – I had merely repeated what Jasper had told police in my book Essex Boys.
Around the same time as the film was released, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) announced that it was going to look into the Rettendon murder case. Mick Steele’s partner, Jackie Street, told a local newspaper that this had come about because Geoffrey Couzens, a former protected witness who had been kept in custody at HMP Woodhill at the same time as Nicholls, had now come forward and made a statement claiming Nicholls had told him that the evidence he was to give in court was a pack of lies. ‘We are feeling very confident and believe this will prove what we have said all along – that Mick and Jack are innocent,’ Jackie said.
She accepted that nothing was going to happen overnight and that the CCRC would not start full-time work on the case for three or four months. But it had been acknowledged there was significant new evidence to put before the appeal courts.
‘Mick has never wavered – and has always refused to take part in programmes in prison which would make his situation easier and reduce his status as high risk,’ Jackie added. ‘He will not do that because it would mean admitting his guilt. He is innocent and will prove it. We feel that the tide is finally turning and we are 100 per cent confident that the truth will now come out.’
The search for the truth was not limited to those who had been imprisoned. Darren Nicholls’s former police handler, DC Bird, had been suspended from duty following his arrest. DC Bird was charged with conspiracy to supply cannabis although the charges were later withdrawn. After four years on full pay, which was a salary of £26,000 a year, and an annual housing allowance of £4,000, Essex Police announced that a disciplinary hearing would take place at their headquarters in Chelmsford.
Steele’s and Whomes’s legal teams applied to Essex Police to permit a solicitor from their office to attend the hearing because they felt important information regarding Nicholls and his evidence may be divulged. This application was refused and they were told that the hearing would take place behind closed doors.
When John Whomes heard the news, he was incensed. He called it a cover-up and decided that he would protest in a way that would make not only the police but also the whole country listen. At approximately 9 a.m. on 22 May 2000, John and another man chained themselves to a gantry above the M25 at Thurrock in Essex and displayed banners declaring his brother’s innocence and complaining that a disciplinary hearing involving two Essex Police officers had begun in private. The police closed the motorway because they were concerned drivers would be distracted by the protest that was being held above all three lanes. Diversions were set up around the M25, resulting in rush-hour chaos.
As the police tried to talk John and the other man down, John spoke to the media on his mobile phone. ‘I’m doing it because two police officers at Chelmsford Police headquarters face disciplinary hearings which involve a supergrass who gave evidence in my brother’s case. I want a legal representative at that hearing so we know exactly what this supergrass has been up to. I want the Home Secretary Jack Straw to know I’m up here and I want him to refer my brother’s case back to the Court of Appeal. Jack is innocent of those murders, 100 per cent innocent.’
At 1.20 p.m., a trained police negotiator climbed the gantry and asked John to come down because he had made his point.
‘I’m not coming down until Jack Straw knows I’m up here and why I’m up here,’ John replied.
‘The whole fucking country knows you’re up here and why,’ the policeman said. ‘You’re on every TV station and every radio programme.’
Confident he had made his point, John agreed to come down, but he told police they would have to free him and the other man first because they had chained themselves to the gantry and thrown away the key. When John and the other man reached the ground they were arrested and taken to Grays police station, where they were questioned about causing danger to traffic. They were bailed pending ‘further enquiries’, but no charges were ever brought against them.
A year after John’s protest, Essex Police announced, much to the disappointment of Steele and Whomes, ‘DC Bird has tendered his resignation from the force. Having regard to his duties under the Police Act to maintain an efficient and effective police force and in exercise of his discretion, the chief constable has accepted the resignation. The disciplinary proceedings against DC Bird will therefore automatically conclude. A settlement between the parties has been reached.’
‘You will see that an officer has resigned. A clause of confidentiality was signed,’ said Anthony Peel, chairman of Essex Police Authority. ‘I cannot make any further comment.’
Nobody therefore knows the details of DC Bird’s settlement with Essex Police when he resigned and nobody will ever be able to find out just how much or how little he knows about the validity of Darren Nicholls’s evidence.
Those re-investigating the case on behalf of the CCRC didn’t take long to discover that Darren Nicholls’s evidence was far from convincing. Nicholls had given police elaborate details of phone calls and meetings between himself, the alleged killers and the victims. A key piece of evidence in the trial centred on two mobile phone calls made by Whomes to Nicholls just before 7 p.m. on 6 December 1995 – just minutes after he had allegedly shot dead the three victims.
The first call cut off after a few seconds and the next, Nicholls claimed, was Whomes telling him to ‘come and get me’ from Workhouse Lane, where the shootings had taken place. The two calls were picked up on two different transmitters, meaning Whomes must have been using his mobile phone in an area where they overlapped. Workhouse Lane was in the centre of that area.
But Whomes denied that he was down the lane. He said that he was at the Wheatsheaf pub in Rettendon to pick up Nicholls’s broken down VW Passat. During John Whomes’s visits to prison, his brother Jack had repeatedly told him to test the mobile phone. Similarly, Whomes’s solicitor repeatedly requested to have access to the phone, but every request was denied by Essex Police. It took two years for the defence team to get hold of Whomes’s mobile phone for tests to prove his story. Telephone specialist David Bristowe, who had supplied mobile phone evidence that helped convict former Essex man Stuart Campbell for the murder of his niece, Danielle Jones, and who had also been a prosecution witness at the Soham murder trial of Ian Huntley, was appointed to carry out the tests.
It is important to understand that in certain places, a mobile call can connect to any one of three or four different servers. Whomes’s call connected to what is known as the Hockley transmitter. David Bristowe made 20 test calls from the Wheatsheaf car park (where Whomes said he was) and 40 calls from Workhouse Lane (which was Nicholls’s story). His results show that of the 20 calls he made from the Wheatsheaf, more than a third were picked up by the Hockley transmitter. Of the 40 calls from the murder scene on Workhouse Lane, not one connected with the Hockley transmitter. The calls were made with Whomes’s own phone at the same time of year as the murders and the same time of day. It seems as though when Jack Whomes said he was in the Wheatsheaf car park and not at the murder scene, he was telling the truth.
According to Nicholls, Tate, Tucker and Rolfe died at approximately 7 p.m. However the CCRC discovered that several factors pointed to a much later time of death. The following morning when it was discovered, the Range Rover was untouched by snow or ice, despite standing out on a freezing night. Two local witnesses thought they heard shots between 10 p.m. and midnight, while a third who walked his dog along the murder lane at 7.30 p.m. was adamant that the Range Rover was not there.
On the night of the murders between 8.30 p.m. and 8.45 p.m., a man was driving his white van towards the Rettendon roundabout. Pulling up alongside him was a dark-blue Range Rover, carrying four men. The van driver immediately recognised the hulking figure in the back se
at was Pat Tate – one of the most well-known men in that part of Essex.
According to Nicholls, he had already been dead for more than 90 minutes. The van driver also saw a second passenger. The man cut a striking figure: tall and thin, wearing what looked like a black trench coat, with shoulder-length blond hair. The Range Rover accelerated up Rettendon Hill, but a moment later the white van was forced to swerve violently to avoid being hit after the Ranger Rover U-turned and headed towards the murder scene.
There was a secondary point of interest in the van driver’s story. Nicholls had told police that as he drove Whomes and Steele away from the murder scene, his shock caused him to almost crash into a white van. In fact, it was the blue Range Rover that had had the near-miss, again with a white van, in the same location Nicholls described. Pure coincidence? Or had Nicholls witnessed the first near-crash and used it to embroider his own story?
As the CCRC delved deeper and deeper into Nicholls’s story, the evidence against Whomes and Steele began to get weaker. As the case against Whomes and Steele started to crumble, the CCRC announced it had asked Hertfordshire Police to launch a special re-investigation into the way the original case had been handled by Essex Police. Detective Superintendent Steve Read, one of the force’s most senior investigating officers, was to lead the inquiry. The move followed past reviews of the case by both Norfolk Police and the Metropolitan Police, who were asked by Essex Police to double-check that procedure had been followed.
‘It is something we do not do very often, but we will if there are significant issues to be investigated,’ a CCRC spokesman said. ‘We have got certain expertise, but we do sometimes appoint an officer or force to carry out an inquiry for us. In this case, that has been done.’
Everybody involved in the campaign to free Steele and Whomes was delighted with the news, but the jubilation was short-lived, as shocking news from HMP Whitemoor came through: somebody in prison had attempted to murder Jack Whomes.
Jack had been taking a shower when another inmate had accused him of breaking wind. ‘Dirty bastard,’ the man had snarled.
Jack denied he had done any such thing but added, ‘Surely everyone is entitled to break wind, mate, especially after eating the slop they serve us in here.’ The man stormed off without replying and returned moments later, brandishing a large kitchen knife.
Jack, who had his back to the man, continued showering, unaware of the impending danger. When he became aware of the man, it was too late. He suffered three stab wounds to the abdomen in quick succession. Fearing for his life, Jack grabbed the man and pulled him to the floor while trying to disarm him. As the two struggled, prison officers alerted by the commotion ran into the room and overpowered the knife man. Jack knew he had been lucky to escape with his life. Pam Whomes later told the media that she was worried her son would be ‘carried out of prison in a box’ rather than walk free.
‘My son’s done remarkably well, but when he was stabbed, it terrified him, he really couldn’t get over it,’ she said. ‘It’s affected him mentally, too. He has spent the last eight years worrying and fighting to prove his innocence and now this happens. We want the CCRC to hurry up with their investigation so my boy can come home. We are all worried sick about him.’
In order to maintain public interest in the case, Martin Moore would collect any newspaper cuttings, photographs or documents relevant to the Rettendon case and upload them to the website he had created for others to view. While surfing the Internet for new material one day, Martin came across a document detailing the full Court of Appeal judgment concerning Nicholls and the injunction he had imposed on the BBC in order to prevent the screening of the Inside Story programme.
At first glance, it appeared to be a pretty boring document full of legal jargon, but as Martin began to read it, he realised that it held the key to unravelling the web of lies Nicholls had told since his arrest. Throughout Nicholls’s cross-examination during the trial, he had been repeatedly asked what had motivated him to commit a crime and then inform on his fellow criminals.
‘Money was important in your life, was it not?’ Mr Lederman, QC for Jack Whomes, asked Nicholls.
‘It’s important in everyone’s life,’ Nicholls replied.
‘More important in some people’s lives than other people’s, I suggest.’
‘I suppose for people who have got money, yes, it’s less important.’
‘You were obsessed with money, were you not?’
‘No. I liked earning money.’
Mr Lederman then went on to describe some of the ways in which Nicholls had ‘liked’ earning his money: the plot to rob drug couriers taking £150,000 abroad and the £400 reward he had been given when he set up two innocent men for the drugs he had dumped in the gravel pit lake; the plan to manufacture amphetamines and dish them out like sweets to the people of Braintree.
Despite the fact that Nicholls was being exposed as a man who would do practically anything for money, he was adamant that he had not benefited financially from giving evidence against Whomes and Steele. Mr Lederman reminded Nicholls that he had once told DC Bird that he would not supply him with information unless he was paid ‘up front’.
‘Money first, before you inform. That is your philosophy, is it not?’ Mr Lederman asked.
Nicholls stared straight back at Mr Lederman and with a smirk on his face replied, ‘Yes.’
Mr Lederman then asked Nicholls, ‘In connection with money, if the price is right, you’ll do it?’
Once again, Nicholls smirked. ‘Yes,’ he replied.
As Nicholls gave his evidence, John Whomes later told me that he couldn’t help but feel he wasn’t quite telling the whole truth about money he had received for assisting the police. ‘He squirmed and couldn’t look the barrister in the eye,’ John had said. ‘I just had a feeling there was more he was holding back.’
At Steele and Whomes’s trial, Nicholls had without doubt rather dubious credentials as a witness of truth, so Justice Hidden had warned the jury to treat Nicholls’s evidence with caution before they retired to consider their verdict. ‘So much of the case hinges on the evidence of one person, it is important that you look at that person and see his evidence from every angle,’ he said. ‘It is important that you look at the character of the person giving that evidence. Darren Nicholls is a convicted criminal and has served a term of imprisonment. He is a person who was himself engaged in the serious criminality involved in importing drugs of abuse into this country. You will bear in mind that in giving evidence to the prosecution he may well have an interest of his own to serve in seeking to obtain some lesser sentence than would otherwise be the case.
‘He was involved in the criminal activities about which you have heard. Further, when he was told by Superintendent Barrington the importance of telling the truth in everything he said from then on, he nonetheless in his third interview did not tell the complete truth and attempted to reduce or minimise the extent of his activity in the overall drug importation matters of criminality.
‘You may consider, and I would advise you to do so, that because of these matters you should look at the evidence of Darren Nicholls with great caution before acting on it.’
What the defence, judge and jury did not know was that Darren Nicholls was profiting financially from giving evidence on behalf of the police, and had been for some time. The BBC injunction document revealed that within weeks of being arrested Nicholls had telephoned a journalist named Tony Thompson at Time Out magazine. Nicholls asked Thompson if he would write a book about his life and the Rettendon murders because he was going to be the principal prosecution witness at the trial. Thompson knew at once that such a high-profile case would not only make a lucrative book, but also there were possibilities for any such book to be made into an even more lucrative film.
Nicholls had been granted bail after Whomes and Steele had been charged with murder, but a condition of that bail was that he remain in police custody for his own protection. However, his polic
e handlers would take him out on an almost daily basis to shops, fast-food restaurants, theme parks, pubs and anywhere else that took Nicholls’s fancy. Because he was technically a free man, the police gave him access to telephones and he was rarely locked in his cell, which was fitted out with all the creature comforts of home. (This allowed Nicholls to have the freedom he needed to contact Thompson without the police becoming aware of what he was up to.)
Fewer than eight weeks after being arrested for murder and importing drugs, Nicholls was able to instruct Thompson to contact his agent, Caroline Dawnay, about the book they had agreed to write together.
On Thursday, 1 August 1996, Nicholls was being held at Colchester police station, but somehow he was able to attend a meeting with Thompson and Dawnay almost 40 miles away at Two Brydges Place, an exclusive members’ club in the West End of London. The custody record at Colchester police station for that day was left blank, which was a breach of police rules and regulations. Every officer who had any responsibility for Nicholls throughout his time in police custody denies they took him to London that day.
At the end of the meeting, Dawnay was happy that Nicholls had sufficient material for a book and that they had a reasonable chance of finding a publisher. On 8 August 1996, she drew up a terms of business letter for Nicholls that authorised her company, Peters Fraser & Dunlop – PFD – to act as his agent. On 17 August, Nicholls signed a collaboration agreement between himself and Tony Thompson. This contract set out who owned the copyright to the book and how the proceeds would be divided. Nicholls was to receive 50 per cent of the first £10,000 received and then 75 per cent of any subsequent payments.
Two days later, the publishing company Little, Brown sent a contract to Nicholls’s agent offering to publish his story. Nicholls signed the contract shortly afterwards. Between them, Nicholls and Thompson received £20,000 as an advance payment for their book.
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