What cannot be denied is that Bronson’s reputation for violence and non-cooperation during his many years as a prisoner is without parallel in the British prison system.
A bright, gentle child, according to his aunt, Michael Peterson – as he then was – had nevertheless begun to get into trouble with the law by the age of thirteen, and at nineteen only narrowly escaped his first prison sentence for a smash and grab raid. He was given a suspended sentence on the grounds that the judge felt that he deserved one more chance. That was in 1971, but the chance did not last long.
In 1974, the young Peterson was imprisoned for seven years for his part in an armed robbery at a post office in a suburb of Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, during which he stole £26.18. He was imprisoned at Walton Gaol, and his long history of violence in prison began. Peterson soon ended up on the punishment block after attacking two prisoners, and was then transferred to Hull Prison in 1975. Refusing to work, he smashed up a workshop after an altercation with a prison officer and was sent to the punishment block.
Within a matter of weeks he attacked another prisoner with a glass jug, and was charged with unlawful wounding; a further nine months were added to his original sentence. By now his reputation as a highly dangerous inmate preceded him, and he spent the years between 1975 and 1977 switching from prison to prison, though almost always being kept in isolation from his fellow prisoners. It was not until he came into contact with the London gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray that he seemed to calm down slightly, describing them as ‘the best two guys I’ve ever met’, although Reggie Kray in turn called meeting Peterson ‘the most frightening visit I ever had’.
The calm did not last long. Peterson was moved to Wandsworth after threatening to kill a prison officer, only to spend four months in isolation after being caught trying to dig his way out of his cell. The governor wanted him transferred again, but only Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight was willing to accept him. There he attacked a prisoner with a jam jar and was again charged with grievous bodily harm. Peterson attempted suicide and attacked another prison officer and was eventually sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1959.
As a result, in December 1978, Peterson found himself in Broadmoor, where he all but killed a child sex attacker and was reunited with Ronnie Kray. Then, in 1982, he launched his first rooftop protest after escaping to the top of the hospital and tearing off roof tiles. Not long afterwards he did it again, causing £250,000 worth of damage in a three-day protest before he was talked down by his family. Another rooftop protest followed, and Peterson then started an eighteen-day hunger strike.
Even given his own mental problems, Bronson found the experience of life in Broadmoor very disturbing. ‘I witnessed them running into walls, using their heads as rams,’ he wrote later. ‘I’ve seen them fall unconscious doing this. They stabbed themselves with pens, needles, and scissors. One even blinded himself in one eye and another tore out his own testicle. There was one just kept trying to eat himself, biting his arms, legs and feet.’
Bronson was eventually moved to Ashworth Special Secure Hospital, home to Moors Murderer Ian Brady, in June 1984, where he lapsed into another brief period of calm. So calm, indeed, that he was granted release on licence – but not before another rooftop protest and being moved again from prison to prison.
‘I’d been certified mad because of my violence,’ Bronson has said, questioning his time in Broadmoor and Ashworth. ‘I was still violent – but they are now certifying me sane. Where’s the sanity in that? Isn’t the system just as crazy?’
After his release in 1987 Peterson embarked on his short-lived career as an illegal bare-knuckle boxer in the East End of London on the advice of Reggie Kray. It was then that he changed his name from Michael Peterson to Charles Bronson – even though he had never actually seen the American actor whose name he chose.
On 7 January 1988, his sixty-ninth day of freedom, Bronson was arrested in the wake of a jewellery shop robbery and was remanded in custody again, only to plead guilty in June 1988 and receive another seven-year sentence. His prison career, with all its violence, resumed again as though nothing had happened. In 1989, for example, he ran riot in the nude, clutching a spear he fashioned out of a broken bottle and a broom handle, and was transferred again. In 1991 he was stabbed in the back by two fellow prisoners, but refused to discuss any element of the attack with the police and, after a long period of recovery, was again released on licence from prison in November 1992.
This time his period of freedom was even shorter – fifty-three days. Bronson was arrested and charged with conspiracy to rob and once again remanded in jail, but in February 1993 the case was dropped and he was released. Just sixteen days after that, however, he was arrested and remanded, once again on robbery charges. It was while he was on remand that he took a civilian librarian hostage and demanded an inflatable doll, a helicopter and a cup of tea from police negotiators. He released the hostage after being disgusted when the man he was holding broke wind in front of him.
On Easter Monday 1994, Bronson took a deputy prison governor hostage, but was eventually overpowered. Then, in 1996, he took a prison doctor hostage, but was again overpowered. A matter of months later an Iraqi hijacker bumped into him in the canteen and did not apologise. After brooding in his cell, he took two Iraqi hijackers, along with another inmate, hostage in a cell. Bronson then forced the Iraqis to tickle his feet and call him ‘General’, before demanding a plane to take him to Libya, two Uzi sub-machine guns, 5,000 rounds of ammunition and an axe. Eventually he agreed to release the three men, but another seven years were added to his sentence, later reduced to five on appeal.
Nothing changed. There were more hostage incidents – notably one involving a prison art teacher named Phil Danielson in January 1999. Bronson targeted Danielson because he had mildly criticised one of Bronson’s own drawings. Bronson tied him up with computer cable and put him on a pool table in the recreation hall while he danced around with a makeshift spear made out of a pool cue with a home-made knife taped to the tip, while telling Danielson he was going to kill him. Ironically, it was Danielson who had first interested him in art. The siege lasted forty-four hours before he finally released his hostage, who was left traumatised by the experience. In its wake, Bronson received a discretionary life sentence with a three-year minimum tariff for the incident.
Once again he appeared to calm down, although for a time he was placed in the glass cage cell that Robert Maudsley had occupied for more than a decade. Eventually both men were transferred to a newly conformed Close Supervision Centre in the Special Security Unit in Wakefield.
The period of calm meant that Bronson became due for a parole hearing in September 2008, but this was postponed after his lawyer objected to a one-hour interview, requesting instead a full day to deal with the case. Bronson had been claiming he was a reformed character since 2000, rather overlooking the fact that in that eight-year period he had attacked two prison officers, been sprayed with CS gas for refusing to exercise, and spat at a prison governor. The hearing finally took place on 11 March 2009. Parole was refused shortly afterwards, on the grounds that Bronson had certainly not proved that he was a reformed character.
Little has changed since then. In 2013, he was moved to Woodhill Prison near Milton Keynes and on 28 February 2014 he hit the governor over the head several times and was moved again. Then, on 17 May 2014, he attacked prison officers at Full Sutton in Durham after Arsenal – his least favourite football team – had won the FA Cup final. At the end of 2014, still unrepentant, Bronson admitted causing the prison governor
at Woodhill actual bodily harm and was sentenced to two more years of imprisonment within his discretionary life sentence.
Bronson’s many years in prison have had a dramatic effect on him. ‘My eyes are bad due to the years of unnatural light I have had,’ he has said. ‘My vision is terrible; I have to wear shaded glasses even to read. Years of solitary have left me unable to face the light for more than a few minutes. It gives me terrible headaches if I do … Years of loneliness in small cells have left me paranoid about people invading my space. I now can’t stand people getting too close, crowding me. I hate people breathing on me and I hate smelly bodies coming near me. Mouths to me are simply for eating – never for kissing … A man needs a routine to cope with such an extreme situation. For me it is my push-ups and sit-ups. I also pace the room and count each step.’
Bronson is also clearly searching for some sense of his own true identity. Nowhere could that be clearer than in his personal life and his appetite for changing his name to assume a new and different identity.
Bronson met his first wife, Irene, in 1971, and eight months later, when she was four months pregnant, they married at Chester Register Office, only to divorce five years later. The couple had a son, Michael. Nevertheless, in 2001, Bronson married again, this time in Woodhill Prison. His new wife was Fatema Saira Rehman, a Bangladeshi-born divorcee who had seen his picture in a newspaper and begun writing to him before visiting him ten times in prison. For a short time, Bronson converted to his wife’s faith of Islam, and insisted that he be known as Charles Ali Ahmed.
After four years, however, the couple divorced, and she subsequently described him repeatedly in the harshest terms. In one newspaper interview, for example, she said, ‘He fooled me – he is nothing but an abusive, racist thug.’ Bronson immediately went back to using his bare-knuckle boxing name.
In August 2014, however, Bronson changed his name again, this time by deed poll, insisting that in future he must be known as Charles Arthur Salvador – in a tribute to the artist Salvador Dali. In a statement on his website, Salvador said, ‘The old me dried up … Bronson came alive in 1987. He died in 2014.’ He also announced that he was renouncing violence. ‘It’s non-violent all the way. It’s a peaceful journey from here on … Coz my heart is at peace and my mind is set on art.’
There are some in the prison system who doubt that Bronson’s transformation will last any longer than his conversion to Islam. Yet he seems destined to see out the rest of his life in prison. He may claim to hate it, but there is also something in his incarceration that feeds his rage, and the conviction that he is the victim, not those whom he has attacked or taken hostage. There is also an element of self-pity in him that turns into a form of narcissism, fuelling his constant desire for notoriety and attention.
Now offering T-shirts for sale on his website, and claiming he wants to be released, the reality is that Bronson has taken eleven hostages, fought with twenty prison officers – leaving one ‘covered in blood and squealing like a pig’, to use his own words – and staged nine rooftop protests, including one lasting forty-seven hours that caused £500,000 of damage. In total, it has been estimated that Bronson has cost the state more than £5million in prison costs, court appearances and criminal damage during his time inside.
As one member of the Prison Officers’ Association has put it, ‘The only reason he hasn’t been even more violent in recent years is because he’s been kept completely isolated. Every time he’s been put back among other prisoners, he’s committed another act of violence.’
Like Robert Maudsley and Sidney Cooke, Bronson has never been sentenced to a whole life term of imprisonment, but has already served more time in prison than they have, and he is still only sixty-three. But he presents the same question to British society and, of course, the Parole Board. Will it ever be safe to release him? Indeed, could he survive in the world beyond the prison walls? He has never known how to use a computer – his website is run by his supporters – and has never even possessed a mobile phone.
Should the new Charles Salvador be left forever to rot behind bars, as a form of retribution for his repeated acts of violence, or should he be released on licence to see if he can survive in a world that he really does not know, in an attempt to redeem his repeated violent crimes?
No one can be certain, but he perfectly illustrates society’s ambivalence to its most infamous criminals. Nor should we be surprised that he is reported to have been asked to take part in the reality television programme I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here if and when he is released on licence.
12
Not ‘Seeking Release’
Victor Miller, Mark Bridger and Rosemary West
Not every whole life prisoner wants freedom. The European Court of Human Rights may believe that they should, but there are at least three killers who have accepted that they will end their days behind bars, and are apparently content to do so.
One of them, fifty-nine-year-old Victor Miller, a gay black man from Wolverhampton, has even specifically requested that he never set foot beyond the prison gate, even though he has already served twenty-seven years for the murder of fourteen-year-old paperboy Stuart Gough in January 1988.
Declining the chance of release could well see him spend half a century in jail for a single murder conviction, though the police suspect he may have committed as many as twenty-eight other assaults on boys and young men. That is on top of the fact that he has already served part of a seven-year term for abducting a thirteen-year-old in 1980. Miller had only just completed this earlier sentence, some of it spent on early release, when he killed Stuart Gough.
A computer operator, Victor Miller was thirty-two and living with a convicted paedophile named Trevor Peacher, some fourteen years older than he was, in the first weeks of 1988. The couple were not getting on and there were persistent rows. Miller, who had a history of attraction to teenage boys, vented his rage by targeting newspaper boys as the object of his particular sexual compulsion. He regarded them as especially vulnerable.
In the first week of January 1988, eighteen-year-old Richard Holden, who was not actually a paperboy, was attacked by a man while riding his bike down a country lane near his home in Wellington, not far from Hereford in Shropshire. A knife was held to his throat and Holden was partially stripped before he managed to fight off his attacker by kicking him in the groin.
Just a few days later, on 17 January 1988, Malcolm Higgins and his wife, who ran the village newsagents in Hagley, Worcestershire – where Miller had once lived – alerted the police to a second attack on a young man. One of their paperboys, Anthony Dingley, told them he had been stopped by an ‘Afro-Caribbean’ man driving what he later described as a silver Datsun Sunny car.
The following day, Saturday 18 January, another of their paperboys, Stuart Gough, a fourteen-year-old asthmatic, turned up at the Higgins’ shop to do his paper round. He was due to do two that day. Stuart loaded his bag and said he would come back to the shop for the second load, but he never returned. Within twenty-four hours a police manhunt had been launched.
It did not take police long to link all three incidents, and after a further interview with Richard Holden, they discovered the car involved was actually a silver Colt Sapporo, not a Datsun. They also discovered that local man Victor Miller owned exactly that sort of car, and that he had a criminal record for attacking boys and young men. The police found tyre marks at the scene where Holden had been attacked which matched the tread on Miller’s car tyres, and this immediately made Miller the prime suspect in the Gough missing
person’s inquiry.
For the previous two years Miller and Trevor Peacher had been sharing a flat in Pennfields, Wolverhampton, and when the police first interviewed the pair about the disappearance of Gough, Peacher gave Miller an alibi for the time when the paperboy disappeared. Without a body there was little the police could do to arrest either Miller or Peacher, or both, no matter what their suspicions.
Over the next few days the police launched a massive manhunt for Gough, using more than 170 officers, underwater divers and a helicopter, but they found nothing. They then decided to go back and re-interview Miller and Peacher, and on 29 January, the police decided to arrest both men on suspicion of abduction and murder, even though they had still not located the boy’s body. They did not have to wait long. Two days later, after a prolonged series of interviews with both men, they decided that Peacher was not involved and agreed to release him on bail. It was the turning point. Almost immediately, Miller confessed to the killing of Stuart Gough and told the police he would lead them to where his body was hidden. Peacher was later sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for providing Miller with a false alibi.
The following morning, 1 February 1988, Miller took officers to Bromsberrow, near Ledbury, Herefordshire, and led them to a drainage culvert not far from the M50 motorway. Here, they discovered Gough’s partially-clothed dead body under a pile of leaves. He had been sexually assaulted and then battered repeatedly with a rock so that his face was all but unrecognisable. He was only finally identified from his dental records.
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