by Dick Kirby
On 12 January, Detective Sergeant Colin Hockaday, who was running the Crime Squad at Paddington Green, was told by Detective Superintendent Ness – who knew that Hockaday had just joined ‘D’ Division from the Flying Squad and who was an authorised shot – that he was seconding him to join his team in the hunt for Martin. The following day, Thursday 13 January, Hockaday and the other officers, including some from C11s Unit No. 2 Team, attended the briefing at Paddington Green’s incident room.
Most of the officers present did not know Martin, including the C11 surveillance team. During the detailed briefing, Superintendent Ness explained that Martin was a transvestite who could pass for a woman and distributed colour photographs of Martin, plus other photographs in the possession of police – in excess of twenty of them, plus nineteen photographs of Stephens. He was described as being aged 35, five feet ten, of slim build with a prominent nose, with long blond hair, blue eyes and crooked teeth who walked with very short, mincing steps, like a woman. Enquiries had revealed Purdy’s identity who was believed to have associated with and provided transport for Stephens, plus his photograph and address, together with Enter’s address which were passed on to the team. Superintendent Ness emphasised the danger element when dealing with Martin, that he had already shot and wounded a security guard during the course of a robbery and a police officer during the course of a burglary, and stressed that on the last occasion he had been arrested he had had two firearms in his possession and that of the twenty-four guns which had been stolen from the Covent Garden gunsmiths, five were still not accounted for. Therefore, extreme caution had to be exercised at all times. The sighting at The Chelsea Kitchen was mentioned as were other recent sightings where it was stated that Martin had outwitted the police by driving off the wrong way down one-way streets, having no regard whatsoever for the safety of members of the public. It all indicated that he was still in the London area.
The plan was to keep observation on Stephens. She was described as being five foot five, aged 25, slim build with very short hair, the colour of which could change daily, and if this resulted in her meeting Martin, to follow, then ‘house’ him. It was not the intention to arrest Martin on the street; in the event that Martin was followed to a premises, the authority of the Deputy Assistant Commissioner ‘A’ Department (Operations) had been sought to deploy D11, the police firearms team, to contain the situation with the intention of peacefully carrying out Martin’s arrest. They would not be called in earlier because this would be stretching their resources, plus the fact that (at that time) they were used on static plots, not mobile ones.
However, there was always the possibility that Martin could become aware of the police presence, in which case he might have to be arrested in the open; therefore two of the ‘D’ Division officers, DC Peter Finch and DS Colin Hockaday, would be armed with Smith & Wesson Model 10 six-shot revolvers. They would also man the OP. In the event that Stephens made off in a vehicle from her address, they would alert C11 by radio and then follow on behind the surveillance team. However, should Martin be spotted, it would be C11 who would be closest to him and therefore they sought authority for two of their officers to be armed as well. This was granted and Detective Constables John Jardine, a 37-year-old Scot and 34-year-old John ‘Fred’ Deane were also armed, in their case with the handguns issued to Central officers: Smith & Wesson Model 36 five-shot revolvers.
Arming the police had always been a contentious matter. The British police were the envy of the civilised world for going about their duties largely unarmed. However, during the early 1880s two Metropolitan police officers were shot dead and another seriously wounded by burglars, which in 1883 prompted the Evening Standard to lead a press campaign to arm the police:
It is not only foolish but absolutely cruel to send policemen to combat men possessed of revolvers, without any arm, other than a short club. If the law will not protect the police by heavy penalties from armed resistance, they should at least have weapons to enable them to defend their lives.
The superintendents of divisions loftily stated that their men did not wish to be armed; however, the rank and file disagreed and in a poll, 4,430 out of 6,325 officers opted to be armed with revolvers while patrolling night beats in the outer divisions.
The first officer to fire his weapon was Police Constable 161 ‘P’ Henry Owen. On 18 February 1887, he fired all six shots from his Webley ‘Metropolitan Police Revolver’ into the air to awaken the inhabitants of a burning house in Keston Village after all other means had failed: ‘I blew my whistle, lustily called out “Fire!” and hammered at the shutters.’ Owen’s inspector supported his actions; his superintendent did not. A report was forwarded to one of the two assistant commissioners, Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Pearson, who, three days after the shooting rather dismissively minuted the papers to the commissioner with the words, ‘I do not attach much blame to the PC.’ Nor most likely did Thomas Cyrus Haslitt, the 87-year-old occupant of the burning house, plus the three other members of his family, who were awoken by the sound of the gunshots, especially after PC Owen assisted in rescuing the contents of the building and extinguishing the blaze, which gutted the premises.
The practice of night duty patrols carrying firearms started to die out in 1893 and following the inadequate weaponry and poor marksmanship displayed by police during the Siege of Sidney Street in 1911, 1,000 .32 Webley & Scott automatic pistols were issued. However, within a short space of time, these became dangerous with many being capable of being fired when the safety catch was on. During the 1930s, a total of nineteen new pistols with 608 rounds of ammunition were issued to each Metropolitan Police division.
During the invasion scare period of the Second World War, the total sum of the armoury allocated to the Flying Squad was a single .32 pistol, kept in a purple case. Its existence was religiously signed for over a period of years before it was discovered that it was unable to fire in any event.
Initially during the post-war years, when the need arose firearms were issued to officers who had some previous experience of them from the armed forces or from gun clubs. Usage of these .38 Webley & Scott revolvers required the officer to fire six shots, with three of them hitting the target. There was, however, no instruction on how the weapon should be loaded. When two police officers were shot dead (and another severely wounded) at West Ham in 1961, firearms were issued to police regardless, to anybody who wanted one, but their knowledge and use of firearms was practically non-existent. One officer loaded his revolver, put it on full cock and simply did not know what to do with it. His colleagues hit the floor while one of their number pluckily shoved a pencil between the gun’s hammer and chamber and relieved him of his weapon. Another caused mild panic in the canteen as he brandished his revolver asking anybody who wasn’t rushing to get out of the door, ‘Where’s the safety catch?’
Following the savage murders at Shepherds Bush of the crew of the Q car ‘Foxtrot One-one’ by Harry Roberts et al. in 1966, there were still few officers who had a clue about weapon handling. One CID officer with a complete disregard for the procreation of a family stuffed a loaded pistol, with the safety catch in the ‘off’ position, down the front of the waistband of his trousers. But following the Shepherds Bush murders, a firearms unit was formed, known as D11 Branch. Although this was a dedicated unit, training courses were introduced for them to train up divisional and central officers, both uniform and CID. Initially, a four-day course was considered sufficient and divisional officers could, if the need arose, be issued with the Smith & Wesson Model 10 six-shot revolver with a four-inch barrel and for Central CID officers, the more concealable Smith & Wesson Model 36 five-shot revolver with a two-inch barrel. With the abolition of the death penalty, gun crime was on the increase and with it the need for more armed officers.
In 1979, a survey was carried out of all the divisions and branches of the Metropolitan Police to assess how many authorised shots should be trained. It was left to the respective commanders of the twenty-th
ree divisions to determine how many and they arrived at a total figure of 4,601 authorised officers. This was agreed, but by the end of 1979 only 3,820 officers had been trained and when in April the following year a new survey was held to see if the initial figure of 1979 was still a precise one, the commanders now stated that a far more realistic figure was 6,039 authorised shots.
There were simply not enough sites for the officers to be trained and by 1982 complaints that insufficient numbers of officers were being trained were flooding in to D11 Branch. In a review of June that year, D11 complained in turn that they believed that the level of training was insufficient. Ranges were, of course, still required but so was the need for the trainees to practise in realistic surroundings to assess what their actions in dangerous and life-threatening situations should be and D11 suggested a field-craft village be built at the existing training ground at Lippitts Hill. This was ignored and therefore the instructors looked around for temporary accommodation in disused industrial sites which could be utilised. St Olave’s Hospital, Bermondsey appeared to fit the bill; by 1979, only forty patients remained and they were transferred to New Cross Hospital and it had partially closed; in fact, it never did re-open and was fully closed in 1985. But the very idea of the disused hospital being used by the police was sufficient for the concept to be denounced by the divisional officer of the public service union, NUPE, who declaimed in the Socialist Worker Party’s News Line, ‘I am appalled to hear there is even the suggestion of the use of the building for a frightening form of police training.’
This then was the level of police firearms training in 1983.
* * *
1. They were given the honorary application of ‘detective’ to precede their rank; however, they were not CID officers per se.
2. One young female officer, blonde and massively endowed, attended a C11 selection board only to be told, ‘Sorry, dear; there’s three things against you – and one of them’s your hair!’
The Follow
The briefing by Detective Superintendent Ness took more than an hour and as Colin Hockaday said, ‘It was very full and detailed.’ Detective Sergeant Paul Seabrook was in charge of the C11 team; ‘In my view,’ he said, ‘it was a good briefing.’ At its conclusion, the briefing was thrown open for discussion and as DC Cyril Jenner said, ‘There was ample opportunity for questions and answers, so that everyone present knew their jobs.’ For the purposes of the operation, it was decided to refer to Stephens as ‘Susie’, since the girl with whom she shared the flat was also named Sue; if necessary, the second girl, Susan Sykes, would be referred to either as ‘Sue’ or ‘Tall Sue’.
Hockaday met Peter Finch for the first time at the meeting; his immediate impression of Finch was that he was ‘a nice, mild-mannered bloke’. These two officers duly manned the OP to keep observation on Susan Stephens’s flat at West End Lane, together with two other officers. Nothing of any importance happened during the observation on that first day; Stephens simply came out of her flat with another girl and went to the Railway public house opposite. She returned at about midnight and in the early hours of the following morning, the observation was terminated.
The following day, Friday 14 January, the operation recommenced at 11.45 a.m. At West Hampstead police station, DS Seabrook briefed four new team members from C11 who had been unable to be present at the initial briefing. He had kept detailed notes from Superintendent Ness’s briefing from the previous day and told the team the identities of the armed officers (the same as the previous day) as a safety measure.
This was the disposition of the surveillance team: DS Seabrook with Woman Detective Constable Sharon Collier in a Vauxhall Chevette saloon and DCs Deane and Jardine in an orange Marina van were in the vicinity of Stephens’s address; DC Roy Chivers, together with DCs Peter Buddle and Robert Bruce, were in a London taxi; and DCs Ronald White and Cyril Jenner were on solo motorcycles parked at West Hampstead police station. DS Hockaday and DC Finch were again in the OP.
Communications between the various units were on channel seven on the main RT set; these were monitored through Scotland Yard and were recorded. Any discourse between the ‘D’ Division officers and C11 had to be by means of this medium because only the C11 personnel and their vehicles were fitted with car-to-car radios, operating on channel one, and these were not recorded. However, channel seven was also used by a number of other Central units, Flying Squad and Regional Crime Squad to mention but two, and at that time there was also considerable interference from CB radio enthusiasts. And if that were not enough, in spite of channel one’s very limited range, by sheer bad luck another completely separate Central operation on the same channel was being conducted simultaneously nearby.
The officers, including those in the OP, got what appeared to be a strong lead; they had received intelligence that Stephens was going to move to a new address. Since she was in possession of Martin’s clothes and belongings, it was reasonable to assume that they would be moving into the new address together. Lester Purdy had been recently escorting Stephens, therefore it was possible that he would provide the transport and details of his green Ford Capri was provided; either that or Stephens would take a London taxi.
At 1.10 p.m., Stephens returned to her flat; in fact, Mr E. Hilton, the owner of 175 West End Lane, had wanted to speak to her but she appeared tense and nervous and replied, ‘I can’t speak to you now – I’m going to Bath.’ At about 4.00 p.m., the officers in the OP saw Purdy’s apple-green Ford Capri arrive, which parked opposite to Stephens’s flat and two men got out and entered the building.
It was at this stage that problems were experienced in the OP. The portable RT set could receive but not properly transmit (this was a common failing) and a new one had to be acquired and brought in to the OP as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. Therefore C11 foot units, using their own covert radios, had to be deployed to provide up-to-the-minute reports and then when the new RT set arrived, information from both the main set and the covert radios were transmitted simultaneously; until this was sorted out, it added to the confusion.
Thirty-five minutes later, Stephens, wearing a fur coat, and three men – the third man had remained in the Capri – went into a fruit shop. Ten minutes after that, Stephens put a bag or a suitcase into the back of the Capri, and she and the three men got into the car and drove off. By now, the sun had set and the officers in the OP alerted C11 who immediately started following the vehicle and Hockaday and Finch left the OP, got into Finch’s authorised private car – call sign ‘Delta 13’ and fitted with a main RT set only – and followed the C11 operatives. Right at the end of the tail was Superintendent Ness and DS Tom Martin (the fifth officer to be armed) in a Hillman, call sign ‘Delta 56’. Although, like ‘Delta 13’, this vehicle was not fitted with a small set, Ness’s presence was necessary because if Martin were to be picked up and the vehicles were to leave the Metropolitan Police District it would be necessary to contact the constabulary area they had entered in order for that force to provide armed back-up.
The Capri drove down West End Lane, into Abbey Road and into Grove End Road. As the Capri turned right into St John’s Wood Road, so the surveillance vehicles followed and travelled down to the junction with Maida Vale where they were held at the lights. They turned right into Maida Vale, then almost immediately left into Clifton Road and into Clifton Gardens. The Capri turned left into Warwick Avenue and reached the roundabout where it turned right on to the Harrow Road underneath the A40(M) flyover. The surveillance vehicles, often changing places, always unobtrusive, followed the target vehicle on to Lord Hill’s Bridge where it turned left and took the first right into Westbourne Park Villas, which ran into Westbourne Park Road.
As Hockaday reached the area of Notting Hill, he heard one of the C11 officers say on the radio, ‘They’re in a different vehicle.’ They were. At 4.57 p.m., the Capri had stopped in Kensington Park Road, close to the junction with Westbourne Park Road. WDC Collier got out on foot, strolled towards the
Capri and walked up the outside staircase of a block of flats in order to keep observation on the vehicle; DC Deane, meanwhile, was keeping observation from a bus stop, behind the Capri. Stephens and Purdy had gone into the Portobello Mini Hire Ltd at 317 Westbourne Park Road, W11 and as Seabrook would later say, ‘There was a lot of coming and going.’ Stephens later went into a branch of Bodyshop and at 5.30 p.m., the Capri left; it was driven by Peter Enter, who had been the third man in the car. The other man, a friend of Purdy’s named Lewis Muslin, left on foot – he would play no part in the subsequent events.
Some six or seven minutes later, a yellow Mini, registration number GYF 117W, was driven from around the corner by a man not known to the surveillance team. Wearing a bomber jacket, he was slim with long fair hair; he got out, Purdy got into the driver’s seat, Stephens got into the back of the car and lay down and the unknown man, into the front passenger seat, and the car drove off.
Seabrook alerted the rest of the team and in the darkness, the Mini was followed by the surveillance vehicles, the motorcycles, taxi, van and cars. Upon being asked by Seabrook – driving the Vauxhall Chevette saloon, call sign ‘Central 411’ – who the passenger in the Mini was, WDC Collier in the front passenger seat replied, ‘I don’t know where he came from, but he’s very slim and has similar hair to Martin.’ Seabrook asked the opinion of other members of the team and DC Chivers, driving a black London taxi, call sign ‘Central 422’, replied, ‘He doesn’t look to be five feet ten to me.’