The courtroom was packed. John took the stand first, while I nervously paced up and down in the corridor outside, occasionally peeping through the glass panel in the door. The opportunity came. John was asked by the prosecuting attorney, ‘And what do you mean “Mr Water’s manner”?’ John’s face transformed into a mask of intensity as he raised an accusing finger and waved it at the attorney growling, ‘Now, don’t you speak to me like that. How dare you? You will do as I say!’
The jury reacted with shock. They thought John was being literal to the prosecutor. John’s angry mask faded to a benign smile as he mused, ‘That’s what he could be like.’ Everyone visibly relaxed. When asked by the defence attorney about Ces’s philosophy with regard to boxing, John referred to Ces’s guidance when giving some tips regarding our son. The guidance included some advice for John too as a potential boxing father. John told how Ces assured him that you can influence one’s child if you use emotional triggers like ‘loyalty’ and ‘do it for the family’. The court stirred at that.
When it was my turn to enter the large crowded courtroom, I tried to stay calm but my heart was leaping. My voice had gone husky, my face was burning. ‘Breathe deeply,’ I kept assuring myself, ‘this will soon be over.’ Dean sat in the dock, exposed for all to see, his deep brown eyes filled with hope. I felt uncomfortable being up there, momentarily the centre of attention, but Dean’s freedom was in the balance. Would my mind go blank? Fears from childhood prickled me. I answered as honestly as I could, my trembling voice betrayed my nerves. I began to relax a little and for a few moments tasted power and influence. The jury hung on every word, smiling with sympathy. I was surprised the prosecution didn’t challenge my statements. It all seemed very one-sided.
In the final day of evidence, the crown prosecutor, Paul Lynch, told the jury not to let their compassion for Dean get in the way of the evidence. Although he acknowledged that Ces orchestrated the campaign of terror against Allen Hall, it was clear Dean committed the crime in a premeditated and methodical way. For example, he wore a black hood, beanie and gloves, cleaned the bullets before inserting them in the shotgun, and afterwards vacuumed the dirt out of his car.
A day later the verdict was announced. Not guilty. He was also found not guilty to maliciously destroying Allen Hall’s house at Jilliby by fire. Dean wept at the news and turned to the judge and jury to say, ‘Thank you.’ The jury had felt that although Dean was clearly guilty of the act of murder, it was a consequence of brainwashing and the extreme control his father had over him. Tracey and Guy were there with other supporters to congratulate their brother; it was a very happy moment.
We were elated with the unexpected outcome but it stirred up controversy at the time. Some issues are only about timing. Only the previous week, two other people walked free from court: a policeman of Middle Eastern extraction, Said Morgan, shot a man to death who was on bail on charges of molesting his nieces, and a woman stabbed her boyfriend, allegedly drunk and violent, who had punched her pregnant belly the night before. Discussion revealed that each jury had not been given much flexibility for deliberations. Putting it in lay terms, they were instructed, in all three cases, to acquit or find the accused guilty. I’m sure the jurors found it very difficult having such limited choices, where neither a Guilty nor Not guilty verdict seemed appropriate in view of the exceptional circumstances influencing each case.
At the time of going to press with the book, Damon Cooper is still serving 18 years, minimum 12, for his role in the murder. And his shot missed the target. Justice can be so elusive.
36 Loose Ends
My heaven would be to know the truth, to see truth face to face, not in fragmentary glimpses as now … and to contemplate the supreme and ultimate beauty of which all the most beautiful things I have known, in nature and in art, are but shadows and hints. That, I think, is the only kind of heaven in which I should desire to find myself after what we call death.
Sir Walter Murdoch
When I began this book my sympathy and admiration for Ces Waters was at its zenith. He’d pulled himself out of the whirlpool of crime, violence and poverty and taken his family into a world of achievement and rugged individualism. I hoped for a successful, positive and inspiring ending, and it looked for a time like I might get it. Troy, it was widely held as self-evident, had been cheated of a world title in San Diego, but it was only a matter of time. Guy achieved his WBC world title. Dean had aspired to fight Mike Tyson after achieving his national title. Allen Hall’s murder meant goodbye to all that. Hopes for a ‘happy’ ending vanished forever and an appalling realisation had taken its place. The truth today is muddier than ever, but we have new information and it is important—and fair—we get all sides of the story.
This chapter reports what I heard from five people connected by family ties to Ces. The family structure needs attention: in the mid-1940s Sylvia married Johnny, Dids’ brother. Dids was married to Dianne, Sylvia’s stepsister. When Sylvia and Johnny split up, their two children Laverne and Johnny Junior went to live with Dids and Dianne, becoming as brother and sister to their son, Lee. The five are Ces’s daughter Tracey, his sister Sylvia, Sylvia’s daughter Laverne, Ces’s brother-in-law and partner-in-crime Dids, and Did’s son Lee. All knew Ces in the UK and Australia. For example, Laverne lived with Ces’s mother for a couple of years when she was about 10 and remembers Ces visiting when he was married to Gloria.
I was unable to interview some of Ces’s key critics. Christine had left the area, had a silent phone number, and was unresponsive to interview requests made via the police. She clearly didn’t want to revisit the past. Troy and Guy did not want to be interviewed, probably out of loyalty to Dean whose biography was being written when this book went to press. We did, however, have a social meeting at Bumble with the four children and their spouses after Ces died. Naturally, talk turned to Ces and their lives with him; specifics emerged.
Some of what follows was recorded in court. These have the special virtue common to evidence that is sworn and, where possible, investigated by police and legal experts—lying can be punished by law, can be found out.
Ces and Sylvia as young children
Sylvia says she was crippled from the age of two; she could only crawl on her backside. She was sent to an institution in Birmingham. Ces also had rickets and wore callipers when he was young.
Ces’s personality
Sylvia told Laverne: ‘I know he was a bastard and I knew what he could get up to but he was my brother and you don’t slag off at members of your family.’
And to me: `Ces was honest when it suited him. He had lots of secrets locked inside him. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.’
Dids and Lee were not so kind: `Ces never did a nice thing in his life, never a good turn. Back in Manchester he used to arrange abortions for prostitutes. He was a ponce; a little tout. Ces thought he was a gangster but he was nothing back then.’
Sylvia disagrees: `Ces was a well respected lad in Manchester.’
Ces’s boasting
Lee: ‘The stories you used to hear from Ces… He was a romancer.’
Sylvia: `Ces was a bit of a Walter Mitty. He would get carried away with his stories.’
Ces as teenager
Laverne relates a story from Sylvia: `Ces was oversexed as a teenager. Once he climbed into the bed she shared with Barbie who was only eight or nine, with the intention of being playfully amorous with Barbie. Ces’s father, Darkie, caught him. Darkie called him a dirty perverted so-and-so and beat him within an inch of his life.’
Dids told Lee: ‘When Ces was about 14 he lived next door to a prostitute. The prostitute would bring American servicemen back to her house and while they were preoccupied, Ces would creep into the house and steal their belongings. Three years later, Ces was earning half a crown from the police each time he dobbed in a criminal. He used to regularly meet detectives Wagstaff and Perkins at noon in Ardwick Green where the main police station was. He became known all over Manchester for th
is. All he thought about was himself.’
Sylvia disagrees: `Ces didn’t like the police and kept to himself.’
Sylvia as a teenager
Sylvia admits that she did have that fight with Dianne but Ces had pushed her into it. She said otherwise she and Dianne were very close and loyal to each other, often baking and cooking together.
Ces’s parents
Ces’s dad was a very short and aggressive man. Everyone agreed that Ces was treated cruelly by his dad.
Lee and Laverne remember Nancy well as a warm-hearted woman who always looked after people, including Ces, of whom she was particularly fond.
Ces seemed to care about his mother but as an adult he rarely ever went to visit her and never sent her money. Once she went to London to get a course of gold injections for her arthritis Ces had promised her, but when she got there she realised it had all been talk.
Bill and Tony
Dids remembers Ces’s stepbrothers as big rough standover men, Manchester’s equivalent to the Kray brothers. They were good fighters. Ces always wanted to live up to their reputation. Ces was never the leader of their gang; he was too young and his brothers too dominant.
There was a hole drilled in the ceiling of the house in Manchester where his brothers were living and Ces used to enjoy spying on their sexual activities.
Dids
Dids denies wanting to hit Dianne over the head with an iron bar. He also denies going with Ces on chicken-stealing escapades. However, he admits that Ces was his wheelman in crimes.
Army
Dids was convinced that Ces never boxed in the army ‘as he was only there one week’. When they found out his age they turfed him out.
But Sylvia recalls him being in the army a longer time, possibly a couple of months. Sylvia confirms that Ces joined aged only 16 by forging his age. Ces got to drive army lorries. He had reunited with Joe Armstrong, also in the army, when Ces’s dad grassed on him and Ces was discharged.
Tommy Tatler
Dids said that Ces had a reputation for putting men behind bars if he fancied their wives.
As once told to him by Sylvia, Dids relates: ‘Ces fancied the wife of a fellow crook called Tommy (or ‘Tony’ in Ces’s recollection). “Nice looking wife,” Ces said. Tommy had a gold watch to sell and asked him where he could get rid of it. Ces told him to hang on to the watch until Ces could get a buyer. Instead, he brought in his two detectives who arrested Tommy and put him behind bars. Then Ces moved in on his wife Mary (or Maria as Ces recollects) and began living with her. She had a baby which he used to throw up and down, frightening Mary so much she threatened to get the police. Ces accompanied Mary when she went to jail to visit Tommy and provoked Tommy so much that he went wild and grabbed Ces, nearly throttling him.’
Jewellery heist
After the jewellery heist, Tony told Dids that Ces had dobbed him in to police. Tony ended up spending seven or eight years in prison. Sylvia recalls that Tony always felt that Ces had grassed him.
Dartmoor
Contrary to police suspicions, both Dids and Sylvia confirm that Ces spent years in Dartmoor.
Dids said Doreen told him that when Ces returned from Dartmoor, he couldn’t stay in Manchester because of his reputation for dobbing people in. Other criminals were wise to Ces’s activities and it was getting too dangerous for him to stay on.
Peggy
Apparently Sylvia told Laverne: ‘Peggy was sitting in a picture show one night. Ces propositioned her to go on the game and she slapped him. He retaliated by striking her on the head with a beer bottle, causing a bloodied gash. He forced her to sit quietly for the duration of the picture with blood running from her wound. Afterwards, she was not allowed to see a doctor. Her father eventually took her away from Ces.’ Peggy remained a friend of the family for a long time and Laverne remembers her visits.
Doreen
Doreen was from a respectable family. She was a very tall woman, nearly six foot in height. Lee described her as ‘the loveliest person in the world’. Many years after she split up with Ces, in about 1963, Lee, aged about 14, and his brother paid her a visit to ask her a favour. Doreen was living with a short Scotsman called Davie at the time. Doreen talked to them about her experiences with Ces, calling him `an evil bastard’. She described how he had got her on the game, and would wait at home for her to come back from the club with earnings. One time when she brought insufficient money home, Ces punched her in the face, tied her down and burnt her breasts with a cigarette butt. Maybe it was on this occasion or another one, that Ces broke her nose. Another time she was drunk and did not obey Ces. He kicked her down some stairs. The Scotsman heard about Doreen’s injuries and was furious, wanting to cut Ces’s throat. However nothing eventuated. Lee felt that because Ces was so short and Doreen so tall, Ces felt he had to be very aggressive to dominate her. Lee felt that Ces was into hurting people, that he derived some sick pleasure from it.
Doreen ended up marrying Davie. After Ces had left for Australia, Doreen committed suicide with whisky and aspirin. Strangely enough, Davie’s first wife is rumoured to have died in exactly the same way.
Al Capone’s car
Laverne remembers that when Ces visited his mum, he would come along dressed as a gangster and driving a black car with runners on each side. Ces would tell the children in the street it was Al Capone’s car but Laverne, who was about 10 at the time, knew that it was just an ordinary car and the real one was in a museum. Laverne does not think he ever owned Al Capone’s car. However, she knows that Ces was keen on Al Capone and had a cardboard placard of him.
Sylvia is pretty sure Ces owned this car because he once showed her a photo of it. She also remembers the placard. She says that she didn’t see Ces very often when he was in London.
Child murder?
About 1954 Ces took a new born child and threw it in a fire, because the woman who gave birth to it didn’t want it. Lee wasn’t sure whether it was still-born.
Great Train Robbery
Laverne does not think Ces was personally involved, but Ces did boast to the family of once meeting one of the train robbers, Ronny Knight, and having a long conversation with him.
Sylvia wasn’t sure if Ces was involved, but cited Buster Edwards and other gangsters involved as associates of Ces.
Reggie Kray
Sylvia believes that Ces knew Reggie Kray.
Ces’s driving school
Dids told Lee Ces’s driving school in London wasn’t a conventional driving school but a front for transporting clients and prostitutes.
Ces, and Lee as a child
Lee said that when he was five or six (about 1955-6), Ces came to visit his mum.. At that time his dad was serving an eight-year jail sentence. Lee was washing his hair at the sink under the cold water tap. The kettle was on the stove heating up so that his mother Dianne could pour lukewarm water over his hair to rinse it. When soap got in his eyes, Lee started crying for his mother, rubbing his sore eyes. Ces roughly grabbed him and forced his head into the sink. Then he took the kettle and poured near-boiling water over the back of Lee’s head. It scalded his scalp. Lee screamed his head off. Ces was apologetic, saying it was an accident. Dianne had a row with him and kicked him.
Gloria
Laverne: `Ces made Gloria prostitute herself in London. He even drilled holes in the ceiling of the house so that he could watch her with other men.’ Tracey said that Gloria disliked being on the game and would stay with friends instead of working, then borrow money from them to take home to Ces so he wouldn’t get suspicious. Ces sometimes beat her badly. She’d report this abuse to her local doctor. Laverne remembers: ‘I was at nanny Nancy’s place and Gloria came to visit. At the time she was about eight months pregnant with Troy. She was an attractive woman wearing nice smart clothes, but she had two black eyes and a broken nose. Gloria told Nancy she fell down the stairs. In private Nancy got cross with Ces and he replied: “She shouldn’t have answered back.” Nancy made a comment to the
effect that Ces was up to his old ways again.’
Gloria left Ces partly because of his affair with Christine, but mainly because he was a cruel husband. Gloria went into hiding. She’d left him several times before and each time he’d dragged her back, so this time she didn’t want to be found. She wanted her children back but when she made contact with Ces he threatened her life. She took his threat seriously as he knew the Kray brothers at that time. She was terrified. She approached the police to get custody of the children and was told that both her and the children would be in danger if she took them. Gloria went into hiding again, waiting for Ces to cool down. In the meantime Ces twice moved to other premises leaving no forwarding addresses. Gloria did not know where they went. Ces then moved to Australia, telling the kids their mother had died. When Ces arrived at Terrey Hills, he wrote to Sylvia giving her his address. Gloria was able to get this address off Sylvia. It had been 10 years since Gloria left. Ces’s hostility and evasiveness had cost Gloria the pleasure of seeing her four children grow up.
When Ces came out to Australia, he put Christine’s name as the mother of the children on the passports. He did this to avoid Gloria finding out about the passports, the issuing of which required the mother’s permission.
On a positive note, Sylvia says that Ces did go to Australia to start a new life and bring up his children in a healthier environment. Ces borrowed off members of his family to do so.
Christine’s parents
Christine’s mum was very upset about Christine going to Australia with Ces. She wrote:
I was as a mother very pleased to get your letter if only to hear how you are getting on.
Hellbent: Ces Waters & Me Page 40