Nicholas Van Hoogstraten

by Mike Walsh

  After a short chase a police car managed to ram them. Knapp’s accomplice ran off, firing repeatedly at the pursuing police before being wounded. At that point he turned his gun on himself and committed suicide. Knapp, more wisely, realised the game was up and surrendered. He was given twelve years. Ellis noted that Knapp had been released from Long Lartin prison on 21 April – only ten weeks before the murder of Mohammed Raja.

  Ellis did some more digging. He came across a Home Office record listing all those who had applied to visit Knapp in prison. Permission had to be granted because Knapp had been a high-security Category A prisoner. Among his visitors was Nicholas van Hoogstraten.

  At a meeting of the murder team on 27 July, Knapp and Van Hoogstraten were discussed in detail. Neither was looked upon as a suspect for the actual hit. Van Hoogstraten was too old. Knapp, too, was getting on a bit and, like many an old con before him, had a serious liking for Class A drugs, especially heroin. There were also the eye-witness reports of the hit men being much younger.

  It was felt that if Knapp was involved it would have been to organise the hit, hiring the assailants and so on. Horne asked his team for more information on Knapp, his connection with Van Hoogstraten and with any other likely villains who could have been involved.

  The team reviewed the case so far. It could have been an attempt to frighten or threaten Mohammed Raja. Or the intention might have been to injure him, either as revenge or a warning. It was thought unlikely that it was a robbery gone wrong. If it had been, why did the gunman feel it necessary to run after the dying man and finish him off with a shot to the head? If this was so, could it have been a contract killing? The main puzzle facing the police was why was the hit so badly done? It did not appear to be a properly planned murder at all.

  Two men had gone to Raja’s house armed with a single-barrelled shotgun and a knife. If they had merely intended to threaten or scare him, surely they could have found more subtle methods. If their intention was simply to rough him up, why the knife, why the gun? So much seemed so odd.

  And that took them to Van Hoogstraten. If he had hired them, why these amateurs? This puzzled Chris Horne.

  ‘Van Hoogstraten was rich. He could have afforded to hire the best,’ he says. ‘I thought if he had wanted Raja killed, he would have been more organised, done it in a better way. For £1000 you can hire a professional hit man.’

  The murder did not fit the usual pattern of contract killings. They typically involve a hit man approaching his victim in an accessible place such as the street. They would shoot with an automatic pistol at point-blank range before making a swift getaway, perhaps on the back of a motorcycle driven by an accomplice.

  In the case of Mohammed Raja, the attackers turned up in elaborate disguises involving false moustaches, glasses and wigs. They were primitively armed with a single-barrelled shotgun and a knife. They grappled with their victim by the front door in view of people on the street, before having to run through the house to deliver the coup de grâce. As one of the investigation team, Detective Inspector Andy Sladen, observed: ‘It’s not a fantastically professional contract killing – certainly not the sort of thing that Frederick Forsyth would write about.’

  He had a point. In the film of Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal, the dashing assasin played by Edward Fox drives an Alfa-Romeo sports car. Mohammed Raja’s attackers made their getaway in an old Ford Transit van. It had been bought by a man giving a false name and address, who paid £200 cash. The van had been customised, making it stand out from all the thousands of other white vans on Britain’s roads. Two green stripes had been painted along its sides and on a large sign above the driver’s cab was written ‘THUNDERBIRDS TWO’. It was more Del Boy than Carlos the Jackal.

  Horne needed to find a motive. The place to look for it was in the dead man’s office, among his business papers.

  DC Ellis began the task. Every scrap of paper had to be gone through. ‘The papers were put into three large piles. Between them, they measured six feet high,’ he remembers. Some of the papers made no sense by themselves. Ellis would seek clarification with Amjad Raja, who would help to put them into context. Among a lifetime’s correspondence, contracts and legal documents, three documents stood out. They were copies of letters exchanged between Mohammed Raja and Van Hoogstraten three months before Raja’s death.

  The first one, dated 9 March 1999, was from Raja to Van Hoogstraten. In the Asian style, it was rather flowery and flattering, and spoke of Raja’s respect for Van Hoogstraten’s integrity and sincerity. It went on to describe him as ‘unusually unique’ and added, ‘By the way, you looked nice on BBC on Monday night.’

  But the letter’s real intent was not flattery. Raja asked Van Hoogstraten to provide ‘further explanations and clarifications’ to help clear up what he referred to as ‘this mess between us’. Ellis realised the letter’s importance. It provided written confirmation of a dispute between the two men.

  Van Hoogstraten replied on 17 March, saying that he agreed entirely that they should try to settle their differences – and do so ‘without legal proceedings which only enriches the lawyers’. He had always been willing to meet to arrange a settlement and he would telephone to fix up a meeting. He signed off, ‘Kind regards, Nicholas.’ An amicable letter, thought Ellis.

  He found a reply from Raja, dated 23 March, saying: ‘I wish I was brought up in such a wise atmosphere as yours which makes you a winner.’ Raja went on to say that ‘as you expressed your honourable intention’ they should think what he would get for several properties. The letter listed eight addresses in Brighton and London and added, ‘and other properties in your possession’. To Ellis, the implication was clear: Van Hoogstraten may have had possession of the properties but Raja believed they belonged to him.

  Raja’s letter continued: ‘Please Nick! You know I am honest and truthful and sincere and genuine. Thus I expect you to respond accordingly, probably we can sort out our differences in daring way and keep these money grabbers and greedy solicitors out of the way.’ He ended with a reference to the legal action he was pursuing against Van Hoogstraten: ‘Please Nick! Send me replies to my further and better particulars so that I don’t have to make further applications and avoid embarrassment.’

  Ellis thought that, despite the polite tone, the letter was that of a man making a last effort to settle a dispute and threatening stronger legal measures. It could not have had the desired effect, for a few weeks later Raja successfully applied to the High Court to bring an action against Van Hoogstraten for fraud.

  For the next few weeks the murder team sifted through evidence, interviewed friends, relations and business contacts and whittled away at their initial long list of suspects. They began to look at Knapp’s associates and soon discovered he knew another seasoned robber with a taste for violence and guns. His name was David Croke. He and Knapp had done time together for similar offences.

  Croke’s criminal career had an all-too-common trajectory. He began with shoplifting, quickly moving up to armed robbery and then sliding into long stretches at Her Majesty’s pleasure. His career effectively ended in 1986 when he and two accomplices hijacked a security van containing £283,000 in cash. There had been a tip-off and they were under police surveillance. The rest was the usual downward spiral of arrest, charge, trial and sentence.

  That was only the beginning of the bad times for Croke. A long-time accomplice turned Queen’s Evidence. Croke was found guilty of several other serious crimes. Among them were taking £250,000 from another security van, stealing £90,000 from a security depot after strapping a mock bomb to a guard and robbing £480,000 cash from a bank after holding a security guard and his wife and daughter hostage.

  Croke got twenty-three years, reduced to twenty on appeal. His many victims got a lifetime of trauma after being held captive, bound and gagged, threatened with guns and – ultimate horror – having what they thought were real bombs strapped to their bodies.

  David Croke had been r
eleased from prison on 6 May, two months before the Raja murder. Here was a man who would do anything for money, thought the detectives.

  The results of the DNA blood tests came through in early September. Almost all the samples from the house matched those taken from Mohammed Raja. But a tiny amount – taken from the blood on the edge of the door – did not.

  This was important news. The unidentified blood could be from one of the attackers. Police had to eliminate all other possibilities. The DNA from the anonymous sample had to be compared with DNA from the Raja family and everyone else who had a legitimate reason to have entered the house.

  The DNA samples were collected by taking swabs of saliva from inside the mouth of each person, and were sent for analysis to the Home Office forensic laboratory. Swabs were taken from the immediate family, their relations and in-laws, their friends, the postman, taxi drivers and even the milkman. More than a hundred people voluntarily had their DNA tested.

  The painstaking sifting of all the connections to the murdered man – their possible motives and their whereabouts on the day – continued throughout the summer. The team kept an open mind, looking into every possibility, while keeping their main theory and suspect uppermost.

  Contract killings are notoriously difficult to investigate. Even if police quickly identify someone as a strong suspect with a clear motive for ordering the hit, it is difficult to pin the crime on them. The simple fact is that there is usually little or no evidence linking the person who pays for the hit with those who carry it out. Nothing is ever in writing and there are no witnesses to the contract.

  By the autumn, the investigation was going slowly. There was no evidence linking Van Hoogstraten with the murder and no motive for Knapp or Croke. Usually, murder cases are solved quite quickly. If a result is not obtained after about six months has passed, the inquiry may be scaled down or put on the back burner so that manpower can be diverted to the wave of new cases rolling in.

  Chris Horne and his team felt the pressure. The Metropolitan Police were still receiving criticism over the botched investigation into the Stephen Lawrence murder. If they failed to find sufficient evidence even to charge anyone for the murder of an Asian businessman on their patch, the bad smell could become overpowering.

  By now it was business as usual for their number-one suspect. In a case similar to that in Palmeira Avenue, Van Hoogstraten was involved in a struggle over ownership of a building divided into flats. Once more the leaseholders were moving to buy the freehold. In order to prevent them reaching a majority to force the sale of the freehold, Van Hoogstraten created a new leasehold flat for one of his companies – out of a broom cupboard.

  He also had some pressures on his cash flow. In 1999 he was spending large sums from his own resources on improving his hotels, building his palace and developing his African estates.

  At Shooters Hill, detectives still had insufficient evidence to arrest or interrogate Van Hoogstraten. There was nothing connecting him with the murder that they could put to him. In fact, Horne was still far from sure that he had anything to do with it.

  If all the uncertainty was not enough, Horne had something else weighing on his mind. He had been asked to take up another job. His newly appointed boss, a superintendent, wanted Horne to review other murder inquiries. The idea was that weekly check-ups would help ensure that officers on all inquiries were always making progress.

  Horne was unhappy about the idea. He was an investigating officer at heart and did not want what he saw as merely an administrative job. He told his boss he wished to continue with the Raja case and see it through. The superintendent pressed Horne to take up the new position. Horne refused. A sort of stand-off developed, with neither one giving way.

  Meanwhile it was obvious the Raja murder team needed more leads. Horne decided they should seek publicity on BBC’s Crimewatch programme. Every week the programme appeals to the public for information to help solve crimes. These appeals are often very successful and the programme has contributed to many a villain being convicted.

  On 10 October 1999 the show carried a report on the murder. It was carefully prepared so as not to tell the whole story. Key facts were changed or kept back.

  ‘I made a deliberate decision, as in all murder investigations, to withhold information,’ says Horne. ‘This is something we do as a routine.’

  The reason for this is to help police discount false confessions. People often come forward and claim to have committed murder. They may be deluded, attention-seekers or time-wasters who love a twisted thrill. Whatever their reason, some facts are always kept from the press to catch them out.

  If a person walks into a police station and says they have committed a particular murder, the first thing they are asked is how they did it. If their description of the murder tallies with the deliberately erroneous one given out by the press, police know they are not the real murderer.

  There is, of course, another good reason for keeping some details back. In a rare case, the real murderer might be interviewed and let slip a detail unknown to the general public. This is the kind of thing that often happens in television detective series but in reality almost never does.

  The Crimewatch report included a reconstruction of the murder with actors playing the parts of Mohammed Raja, his grandsons and the two hit men. The Raja family bravely allowed it to be filmed at the house. The reconstruction was to play a major part in the investigation, so it is worth describing how it went.

  At the beginning Mohammed Raja is seen in his office on the first floor. Then two men dressed as gardeners and aged in their twenties or thirties get out of a white Transit van and walk up to the front door. Raja opens the door and the men burst in.

  The film then cuts to Raja’s two grandsons asleep in their beds. A bang is heard and they wake up and come downstairs. They see their grandfather in the hall. We see no blood, but he shouts: ‘I’ve been hit.’

  Next one of the intruders is seen reloading a single-barrelled shotgun. Mohammed Raja and one of his grandsons run into a room and shut the door. The gunman bursts in and points the gun at Raja. The two assailants flee.

  At no time does the film show Mohammed Raja being stabbed, nor do we see the first shot missing. We only hear a shot being fired.

  Next we see the gunman reloading the shotgun, and then pointing it at the doomed man. We do not see or hear him shoot, but it looks as if Raja is about to be killed.

  There was a good response to the programme. People phoned in, reporting that they had seen the van in various locations in the days before the murder. Horne set his team to follow up all the new leads.

  Then he went on holiday. He had been working solidly all year, going from one case directly to the next without a break. He felt this was as good a time as any to get a rest. But he was not to get the relaxation he had hoped for. Within a day or two one of his team telephoned him to say that a new Chief Inspector had moved into his office.

  Horne was devastated. He knew the person who had been moved in to replace him. Dick Heselden was a much younger man who had been promoted into the CID after coming first in his sergeants’ exam. He had been fast-streamed for promotion to high rank and had been parachuted into Horne’s job at Shooters Hill.

  The older man was crushed. His friends and colleagues on the case were shocked. A change in leadership can unsettle any team – but this one had happened without warning and behind the current leader’s back. The trouble was that the tenacity that makes a good detective can, in different circumstances, manifest itself as stubbornness. For Horne’s superiors, it had, sadly, seemed the only way.

  If all of this was not unsettling enough, the Raja investigation team received another bolt from the blue. They had been working every hour they could, running up large amounts of overtime. Now overtime was cut. It was a double blow.

  The Raja family heard the news of the changes with dismay. They had got to know and trust Horne. So why was he being moved? The investigation into the murder of Steph
en Lawrence had suffered from several destabilising changes at the top. Because of that, one of the recommendations made in the McPherson Report was that there should be continuity of leadership in all murder cases.

  There was a sense of unease, especially among the members of the Raja family. Perhaps the Raja inquiry was about to go the way of the Stephen Lawrence affair.

  16

  THE CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST

  The murder team was anxious to see how the new Chief Inspector would shape up. Dick Heselden was a stocky young Londoner, still in his thirties, and very ambitious. His manner was restless, that of a man keen to move on. His speech was rapid and fluid. There was a feeling of energy.

  He would need it. He had vigour and intelligence on his side, but not the experience of his predecessor. Chris Horne had largely built the team Heselden was taking over. Not only had the new boss to handle all the new murder cases coming in, he had to read himself into those already up and running. But his first crucial task was to show leadership and win over the team.

  Heselden’s arrival coincided with the investigation’s six-month review. This is standard practice for every murder inquiry. It was carried out by Chief Inspector Brian Bowden-Brown. His main recommendation was simple: that Nicholas van Hoogstraten should be investigated urgently.

  To mount a case against the tycoon it would require perseverance – and the co-operation of the Raja family. And here was a problem. The Rajas had written to the local paper in Sutton and to their MP, Paul Burstow, asking for Chris Horne to be kept on the case.