The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin

by Dick Kirby

  Tony shook his head. ‘A right load of that CB1 crap on the main set,’ he replied, and then he added, ‘Funny thing, Dick. I think C11 must be nearby. I heard them on the small set a little while ago – all of a sudden, I heard someone say, ‘‘Oh, fuck!’’ Dunno what it was all about.’

  ‘Nothing else since then?’ I asked and Tony shook his head. ‘Right, let’s head back to CO,2 see if anything’s happening.’

  Tony dropped me off on Scotland Yard’s concourse and I got into the lift and ascended to the fourth floor, Victoria Block, pushed open the swing doors, turned left and walked down to the end of the long corridor (Flying Squad offices on the left and C11 – or Criminal Intelligence – on the right) towards the main squad office. There was no one about; it seemed that they’d heeded the wise police dictum: that it was POETS3 day.

  There was just one person in the squad office: Jim Moon, once an ace squad driver, now in retirement supplementing his pension by manning the telephones and the radio.

  ‘Anything happening, Jim?’ I asked but Jim shook his head. ‘Nothing for you, Sargie.’

  I picked up the Police Almanac which housed the telephone numbers for all the police stations in all the United Kingdom’s different constabularies, found the one covering the area where Eric was living and asked the local detective inspector to nab him for us. ‘That’s great!’ responded the Inspector. ‘We want the little bugger as well, but we didn’t know where he was!’ Of course, the Inspector hadn’t made the acquaintance of ‘Harry the Scrappie’.

  I booked off duty and went home to Upminster, Essex, rescued a steak pie from the oven, which, had I arrived home three hours previously when it had been freshly cooked, would have been quite tasty, made incisions into it to release the scorching heat and poured myself a glass of red. As I finished the meal, I poured myself another glass and then I realised it was time for the news. I switched the television on. There on the screen was a yellow Mini, registration number GYF 117W, its doors wide open, spotlights illuminating it and the commentator was saying, ‘A man has been critically injured in a police ambush in a West London street in what may be a case of mistaken identity. Witnesses said marksmen surrounded a car in a traffic jam in Pembroke Road in Earls Court and opened fire.’

  Just then my wife Ann came into the room. ‘Is this what made you late?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, first I’ve heard about it … shh … I want to hear …’

  ‘The driver was shot several times in the head and body,’ continued the commentator. ‘Scotland Yard said the ambush was part of an operation to recapture escaped prisoner David Martin.’ Now the camera focused on one of the first witnesses on the scene, secretary Jane Lamprill, who said the man seemed very badly injured. ‘He was about thirty,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t even see the colour of his hair because of the blood.’

  ‘Christ!’ I exclaimed. ‘The wrong bloody man!’

  ‘No, they said it wasn’t clear if it was this Martin man or not,’ said Ann, but just then the phone rang. It was the Inspector from the constabulary to say that Eric had been arrested. ‘He’s singing like a bird to our job,’ he chuckled, ‘although he did look a bit worried when I said the squad wanted to have a word with him!’

  ‘He fucking needs to be!’ I scoffed. ‘Just lock him up tonight and we’ll be along to see him tomorrow morning.’ I rang off and telephoned the rest of the team for an early start the following day. As I went up to bed, the name ‘David Martin’ was going round and round in my head. Who was he? All right, it was a fairly common name but where the hell had I heard it before?

  The next day, Saturday, Tony and I, together with the rest of my team were heading north out of London. We reached our destination, a small market town in the middle of nowhere, where I met, and spoke fairly briskly to Eric who promptly confessed everything confessable in a written statement. The constabulary officers wanted to charge him with their offence, take him before the local Magistrates’ Court and remand him in custody and this suited me to the ground. Later, we could have him produced on a Home Office order to join the rest of the gang on a remand hearing at our Magistrates’ Court and then we could commit the whole lot of them to the Old Bailey for trial.

  We set off back to London and I was glad that the ‘Eric’ business had been transacted so quickly. Today was my mother’s 78th birthday and since my father had died four months earlier, it was especially important for me and the family to be with her at this time.

  As we reached the borders of the Metropolitan Police District, I called up the Flying Squad office on the RT set: ‘Central 899 from Central 954; Jim, book us back in the MPD, please – see you soon.’

  The reply was immediate: ‘Central 954 from Central 899; get over to ‘Delta Delta’ as quick as you can – there’s a flap on!’

  I acknowledged the call as we came out of the Hanger Lane gyratory system and on to the A40. ‘Delta Delta’ – otherwise Paddington Green police station and ‘D’ Division’s Divisional Headquarters – was just a short distance away; and as we tore towards the A40(M), two-tones wailing, I was thinking, ‘Why Paddington? Why us?’

  All was soon revealed. The nick was crowded with police officers, a lot of them Flying Squad. It was from ‘D’ Division that the operation had originated to hunt down David Martin, who, charged with shooting a police constable, had escaped from custody. Somehow – nobody seemed quite sure how – matters had gone tragically wrong and had resulted in armed police shooting and seriously wounding an innocent young man, a 26-year-old film editor named Steven Waldorf. One of the officers who had fired shots which had injured Waldorf was attached to ‘D’ Division.

  Morale at Paddington Green police station was, quite understandably, at rock bottom and the operation, which had been headed by ‘D’ Division’s Detective Superintendent George Ness, was now, on orders from on high, being handed over to Commander Frank Cater who the previous week had taken over the running of the Flying Squad.

  My team and I were part of 12 Squad, which along with 10 Squad was now appointed to the investigation. The officer in charge of operational matters was Detective Chief Superintendent Don Brown, who I later discovered was a seasoned and highly respected squad officer. Arriving on the same day as Frank Cater, Brown had returned to the Flying Squad for his third and final tour.

  I didn’t know Don Brown but I knew Frank Cater; he’d been my boss when I’d served on the Serious Crime Squad and as the meeting broke up he murmured to me, ‘We need to wind this up as soon as possible, Dick.’ I nodded and replied absently, ‘Right, Guv,’ but my mind was on other matters – from the photographs and the background I’d seen and heard of the target, I’d just realised where I knew Martin’s name from. The Flying Squad hunt for David Martin was beginning right now, but my private war with Martin had started ten years previously.

  * * *

  1. Citizens’ Band radio, a mercifully short-lived fad whereby amateur radio enthusiasts searched the airways to speak consummate gibberish to complete strangers.

  2. Commissioner’s Office, New Scotland Yard.

  3. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

  Note: The correct spelling of Steven Waldorf’s name is with a ‘v’ despite many online resources and newspapers spelling it with ‘ph’.

  First Sightings

  Before I progress any further with the story of both the shooting of an innocent man and the hunt for a man who was anything but innocent, I have to introduce you to the police world of many years ago and of which I was a member.

  In the early 1970s, I was appointed a detective constable of the Metropolitan Police and was posted to Forest Gate police station in the East End of London, reputedly the busiest sectional station in the Metropolitan Police. I couldn’t have been happier. I’d had a successful career as an aid to CID, plus I’d scored high marks at the ten-week Initial (Junior) Course at the Detective Training School. In addition, I’d achieved the highest number of arrests on ‘K’ Division and now, having succe
ssfully passed two stiff selection boards, as a fully fledged member of the Criminal Investigation Department I needed to make my bones as a detective. The whole area (it was colloquially referred to as ‘The Manor’) – Forest Gate, Upton Park and Manor Park – was a hotbed of villains and villainy and I simply couldn’t wait to get stuck into them.

  As an aid to CID, our brief had been to get out and patrol the streets, keep observations, follow, stop and arrest suspects and cultivate informants. Now as a member of the CID proper, I investigated reported crimes and attended the Magistrates’ Court practically every day; it was a kind of mini Stock Exchange, filled with the flotsam and jetsam of society, where deals were struck, promises made, informants procured, prisoners remanded and evidence presented. The rest of the time I was attending Crown Courts, meeting informants, typing reports, searching suspect premises and arresting burglars, robbers and fraudsmen. There were simply not enough hours in the day; and at this time the CID were not paid overtime. So much was going on that if I was unable to immediately arrest a local suspect, I’d leave word with their friends and relations for the culprit to surrender at the nick at a specified time, and they usually did.

  Right from the start I tore through the underworld like a dervish. I arrested four tearaways wanted for grievous bodily harm, caught one of the last, great cat burglars and his receiver and broke up a highly unpleasant gang of half a dozen blackmailers. A husband-and-wife team were wanted for fraud all over the country; I received a tip that they were about to leave their hotel in the Romford Road and raced down there just in time to stop them in their car, which was loaded with swag. An Arab sheikh in full tribal regalia who was carrying out a fraudulent transaction in a bank was surprised to be seized, addressed as ‘cock’ and unceremoniously bundled into my car, and when I was attacked by two young thugs whom I’d arrested for possessing offensive weapons, I was restless while on sick leave to return to duty so that I could get out to nick some more. This, as you will imagine, played havoc with my home life. It’s a small miracle that Ann and I are still happily married after fifty years.

  I reached for the ringing telephone in the CID office on that particular Monday morning; it was the manager of a jeweller’s shop in Green Street, to tell me that a man was at the premises attempting to purchase goods by means of a stolen credit card. I slammed the phone down and, shouting at another detective constable to follow me, I raced down the stairs to the station yard where my car, a powerful Ford Corsair 2000 GT, was parked. We roared out of the yard, turned right into Finden Road and almost immediately left into Green Street. ‘You’ll break our necks, the way you’re driving,’ sighed my companion, who was not entirely fired with enthusiasm for this investigation, as we tore south along the thoroughfare, paying only lip service to the restrictions imposed by the Road Traffic Act. ‘He won’t be there,’ he insisted. ‘As soon as the manager went to phone, he’ll have been long gone.’

  Privately I too thought that this might be the case but while a possibility of catching a fraudsman red-handed existed, I wanted to give it my best shot. Pulling up outside the jewellers, I ran towards the shop entrance and as I did so, a young man started to leave. There was absolutely nothing about him to attract suspicion; he was extremely smartly dressed in a pinstripe ‘company director’ style suit, slim, about five feet nine, dark blond hair, a slight tan, aged in his mid-twenties and looked entirely unconcerned as he courteously stepped to one side to let me enter the jewellers. He then began unhurriedly scrutinising the wares in the shop window in the same way that any discerning customer who had yet to make up his mind might do.

  I rushed up to the manager. ‘Right, where is he?’ I demanded and given what was to happen, I now realise that a courteous, more structured approach might have been called for.

  The manager raised his eyebrows. ‘To whom are you referring?’

  ‘The bloke with the stolen credit card,’ I testily replied.

  ‘And you are?’ he enquired.

  ‘Police from Forest Gate,’ I replied, and I was getting quite irritated because by now, it was obvious that the suspect had departed before our arrival and this was the manager’s way of putting me in my place for not getting there sooner.

  Nodding thoughtfully, the manager asked, ‘Have you any – er – identification?’

  I snatched out my warrant card which the manager ostentatiously examined before nodding his approval. ‘Right – now was it you I spoke to on the phone at Forest Gate police station about five minutes ago?’ I asked. He conceded that this was so.

  ‘And did you tell me there was someone in the shop trying to buy goods with a stolen credit card?’ Again, with pursed lips, he nodded in agreement.

  ‘So how long ago was it that he left?’ I asked.

  The manager languidly waved in the general direction of the door. ‘He went out,’ he replied, ‘just as you came in!’

  ‘You wanker!’ I roared, turned and rushed out of the shop, looked left, then right, just in time to see a pair of well-tailored trouser legs disappear round the corner into Plashet Grove.

  As I dashed up to the junction, I heard the roar of a powerful car engine starting up. Turning the corner, there facing me was a Jaguar XJ-12 with the fraudsman behind the wheel. As I ran towards the car, I noticed that the car’s front passenger window was open, so I plunged in, hoping to grab the ignition key. With that, the driver slammed the car’s automatic transmission into ‘drive’ and drove off fast, with me half-in and half-out of the vehicle.

  I said afterwards that I’d be able to recognise him again because of the imprint that my knuckles made on the side of his face, but don’t you believe it. As pugilists reading this are aware, to effectively deliver a straight right, you need the transference of power, driving off the ball of the right foot and turning the hip and shoulder in the direction of your opponent. You try it when you’re lying horizontally, clinging on to a speeding car with one hand! Yes, I gave him a dig but what with the lack of force of the punch, plus the rush of adrenaline he must have been experiencing, it had little or no effect.

  As he reached the junction with Green Street, he braked sharply and I was thrown from the car. I rolled over in the roadway a couple of times and as I got to my feet, I heard the furious sounding of car horns and saw the Jaguar swerving crazily across the junction with Green Street and then swing left into Plashet Road. I dashed across the junction but by the time I got to Plashet Road, the car had vanished. It was only later that I discovered that the Jaguar – which had been reported stolen from the Paddington area – had been abandoned in Lucas Avenue, the fourth turning on the left. It was thought that the driver – who had discarded his jacket, to prevent recognition – might have escaped by turning left out of Lucas Avenue into Harold Road and thence the short distance into Upton Park Underground station.

  I was furious – furious with the manager of the shop, furious with the fraudsman who could have caused me serious injury and furious with myself for failing to arrest him, by not being quicker off the mark. Matters were not improved when I limped back to the police station where, with a commendable lack of tact and concern for my well-being, the first-class sergeant scoffed, ‘Huh! Couldn’t catch a bleedin’ cold!’ Doc Lazarus MBE, the Divisional Surgeon (who would later say that he thought that I was his best customer), tut-tutted as he examined my lumps and bumps from being thrown off the car, diagnosed strained chest muscles from hanging on to it, prescribed paracetamol and told me to ‘get on with it’.

  So I did. Simmering quietly, I put the details in the crime book, circulated details of the fraudsman and the details of the card he’d been using and cracked on with a fresh inquiry.

  Months later, I received notification that the fraudsman had been arrested somewhere else in London and had been charged with a whole series of offences; when he appeared at court, he had been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment.

  I looked at his name. Martin. David Ralph Martin. Aged 26 and born in Paddington. Never heard of
him. And he wasn’t a local lad. So how did he know about Lucas Avenue and the close proximity to a secondary getaway route via Upton Park station? Had he taken the trouble to plot an alternative escape, prior to going into the jewellers, just in case he got tumbled? And what was more, I couldn’t get out of my mind the slick way in which he’d strolled out of the shop; that took a lot of nerve.

  Then I shrugged my shoulders and forgot about him.

  I might have thought that I was cock-o’-the-walk in the CID office at Forest Gate but I still had a lot to learn about criminal behaviour and psychology in general, and crooks like Martin in particular. Slick? Christ, I didn’t know the meaning of the word.

  Fraudsman

  From undistinguished beginnings, David Martin’s life can only be described as extraordinary. He was born in Paddington on 25 February 1947 and was brought up in a council flat in Finsbury Park, the only child to Ralph and Joan Martin. For all of his life and whatever he did, right or wrong, his father defended, made excuses for and idolised him. Father and son had a common predisposition: both of them hated the police.

  In common with the majority of law-breakers, Martin’s criminal career commenced during his formative years. He first appeared at North London Juvenile Court on 19 April 1963 where, for unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle and associated offences, he was fined a total of £4 and was disqualified from driving for twelve months. Less than three months later he was back at the same court, for stealing petrol from a car. On this occasion, he was fined £5 and his father was bound over in the sum of £15 for twelve months to ensure his son’s good behaviour. And it appeared to work. Two years went by and the twelve months, both for Martin’s disqualification from driving and his father’s recognisance, passed without incident.