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

by Dick Kirby

  The Mini drove along Ladbroke Grove and into Holland Park Avenue and threaded its way through London’s home-going traffic, followed unobtrusively by the surveillance team. As it reached the Shepherd’s Bush roundabout, WDC Collier asked DC Deane for a repeat of a message he had transmitted previously about the passenger’s nose and hair. ‘The nose is a good likeness and so is the hair,’ replied Deane, ‘especially in the photograph of him dressed as a woman.’ Seabrook asked if Deane could confirm whether or not this was a positive identification; Deane, in the orange Marina van, call sign ‘Central 415’, driven by Jardine, replied, ‘Not.’

  The Mini turned left into Holland Road, towards Earls Court which was where the Boat Show was being held and the traffic was exceptionally heavy. It turned east into Pembroke Road, a one-way street with three lanes of traffic and as it approached the junction with Earls Court Road, behind a lorry, traffic came to a standstill.

  Seabrook informed Ness on the radio, ‘He may, I stress, may be the wanted man’ and Ness replied, ‘Received, mind how you go.’ Hockaday told Seabrook, ‘Received, we’ll stay behind you for now,’ and Ness told the crew of ‘Delta 13’, ‘Stay back, stay back, leave it to the Central units, over,’ but shortly afterwards Ness called Seabrook, saying, ‘The only way to resolve it is for one of the crew of ‘Delta 13’ who know him, to look, over.’ This had to be Finch; he was the only officer present who could make a positive identification, since the other officers had to rely purely on photographs.

  This transmission was received and then Ness said, ‘411, we’ll wait for a suitable opportunity and maybe in heavy traffic is the best time, over.’ There was discussion over the radio as to the location of the Mini and Seabrook said, ‘Now’s as good a time as any, one of you, I suggest – as soon as they see the white Volkswagen van towing a generator, it’s the target vehicle immediately in front of it, over.’ The CB interference was worse than ever, and Hockaday replied, ‘Received, has he got through the lights?’ Seabrook replied that the pedestrians were moving faster than the cars.

  The vehicle containing Finch and Hockaday was probably 100 to 150 yards behind the Mini and the other watchers heard the transmission from Hockaday, ‘Peter’s going on foot, Peter’s going on foot, to look at the car’, and these messages were often repeated, in case the first words were lost in transmission. ‘Tell him to be very careful, we don’t want to alarm our man, over,’ radioed Ness.

  At that moment, as Seabrook had said, the Mini was in front of a Volkswagen van towing a trailer with machinery on board, which Seabrook was using as ‘cover’; the three vehicles were on the nearside of the road. Seabrook passed the position of the vehicles but then cancelled the transmission because the traffic began to move. Seconds later, the traffic stopped once more with the vehicles in the same formation. The van, containing Jardine and Deane, was behind Seabrook’s Chevette.

  To confuse matters in an already tense situation, these were the transmissions being broadcast on channel seven at that time:

  Yeah, thousand unit from seven, ten seven one, over.

  … ended up being R5 and started off being R2, MP over …

  (Unintelligible)

  Yeah, very intermittent now, acknowledged, MP out.

  Ten seven one from ten eight five, receiving, over.

  Ten eight five from ten seven one, we’re in Brixton Road – er – can you give us? (interference).

  Seven one, ten seven one, there’s Gough Brothers off-licence (interference).

  Yeah, ten eight five from ten seven one, you broke up completely, can you repeat please, over.

  (Interference)

  … seven, MP over.

  … sierra five seven five seven from six, are you receiving, six, over.

  (Interference)

  Seven from six – er – are you returning to five zero, six, over.

  Yeah, six from five seven, yes, yes, yes, over.

  Can you give me your ETA, please, thanks a lot.

  … from five seven, do you receive that, over.

  … seven from … over.

  One five minutes, fifteen minutes, over.

  Received, six, out.

  The person has made off with no money and he was hit back, so he may be injured, over.

  It was therefore amazing that any coherent messages got through to anybody, whether connected with the hunt for Martin or not.

  However, a chain of events had already been set in motion which would result in tragedy. As the seventeeth-century poet James Shirley said, ‘There is no armour against fate,’ because at precisely 5.57 p.m. and ten seconds, Finch was now on foot in Pembroke Road, approaching the Mini, gun in hand.

  The Shooting

  Due to the traffic conditions, the Mini was now stationary outside 2A Pembroke Road. DC Cyril Jenner pulled up on his motorcycle, call sign ‘Central 414’, by the front nearside door of the C11 Chevette saloon and as Seabrook was about to re-advise the units of the Mini’s position, WDC Collier exclaimed, ‘He’s got his gun out!’

  Seabrook looked and saw that she was referring to Finch, holding his revolver down by his side as he walked towards the Mini and this too was seen by Deane who commented on it to Jardine. Finch looked inside the Mini; he stared at the young man with the fair hair in the front passenger seat and believed that he was Martin. At the same time, Purdy, the driver, looked at Finch and said something to his passenger who turned his head, also looked at Finch and then turned, as though to pick up something from the rear seat. In that split second, Finch was certain beyond doubt that the passenger was Martin and that he was reaching for a gun. He knew only too well how dangerous Martin was and believing that he was in mortal danger, he shouted, ‘Armed police!’ and opened fire. His first two shots hit the Mini’s nearside rear tyre and then he fired two pairs of aimed shots at the passenger, hitting and seriously wounding him.

  This was witnessed by DC Jenner; and because there was a gap between the first paired shots being fired and then the subsequent two paired shots, he believed that Finch and the passenger were exchanging fire. WDC Collier initially believed that Finch had been shot. DC Bruce in the taxi had seen Finch walk past him out of sight towards the Mini and had heard the shots; because of the delay between them, he too believed that the first shots had been fired from the Mini and that police had returned fire. DC Buddle, also in the taxi, heard the sound of shots and saw glass flying out of the Mini towards Finch, which gave him the impression that shots were being fired from the Mini’s interior.

  Purdy fled from the car and, upon hearing this from other units, DC Bruce gave chase on foot into Earls Court Road but was unable to find him; Stephens, trapped in the back of a two-door car, was screaming hysterically, and now things were happening very quickly indeed. DC Deane rushed towards the Mini and believing not only that the passenger must be Martin, but that Martin was engaged in a gun battle with a colleague, from a distance of about twelve inches from the Mini, he fired five shots. Four of them penetrated the Mini’s rear window, one of the bullets passing through the back of the rear seat and travelling towards the front offside of the car. Another passed through the back of the front passenger seat and possibly a third entered the back of the seat and remained there. A fourth struck the passenger in his left armpit and the fifth later fell from his anorak.

  All of his shots expended, Deane emptied the cartridge cases from his revolver. ‘As I was doing this, there was a further shot,’ said Deane later. ‘I’m not sure where this came from, but it seemed part of what I believed to be an exchange of shots between the front seat passenger and DC Finch.’

  Deane reloaded his revolver from behind the Volkswagen van. ‘I had trouble reloading my revolver because I was fumbling,’ he said. ‘As I was reloading, I heard more shots.’

  DC Jardine also ran towards the Mini but by now the front seat passenger, severely wounded, had crawled across the front seats and was halfway out of the driver’s door. Jardine saw him fumbling with his clothing – this was also witne
ssed by DC Buddle – and in that split-second, Jardine not only deduced that the man was Martin but also knowing how Martin had previously had a back-up weapon, believed that he was reaching for a gun and he too opened fire three times, hitting him twice. One bullet lodged in his armpit, the other was found on the casualty trolley on admission to hospital.

  DC Finch had moved round to the offside of the car and remembering how Martin had previously fiercely struggled, even after being shot when he had been in possession of a back-up weapon, now believed that he was still under threat and pistol-whipped the passenger, several times, fracturing his skull and also the bones in the back of one hand as he instinctively raised it to protect his head.

  DC Jenner handcuffed the man and dragged him by his arms from the car, as was Stephens, who was screaming and protesting. A police officer shouted, ‘Where are the guns?’ Stephens was handcuffed by DC Bruce and searched by WDC Collier, to whom she said, ‘What have you done? That wasn’t your man!’ Fourteen shots had been fired; six had hit the young man and had grievously wounded him.

  Hockaday heard the shots, followed by Seabrook on the radio: ‘Shots being fired – shots being fired!’ He quickly made his way to the Mini where he saw Jardine on the pavement holding Stephens and passed his handcuffs to him; someone shouted, ‘One of them’s away!’ That was Purdy.

  It was at that moment that Detective Superintendent Ness arrived; looking down at the young man, half in and half out of the Mini, he said, ‘Who is this guy, Colin?’

  ‘I dunno, Guv’nor,’ replied Hockaday and not only did he not know the identity of the injured man, neither did anybody else. It became suddenly and sickeningly clear that the wounded man was not David Martin; it was a 26-year-old freelance film director named Steven Richard Waldorf.

  What happened next is best described by John Deane in his statement to the investigation:

  At this point, I still believed that we had detained Martin who had been exchanging shots with DC Finch. As soon as I knew that Waldorf had been restrained with handcuffs, I felt that it was safe to re-holster my gun, which I did. I felt relief that the matter had been concluded without injury to ourselves or any other member of the public. Still believing that we had detained Martin, I turned to DC Finch who said, ‘You know it’s not him?’ I could not believe this as I had been convinced that DC Finch had been exchanging shots with the person believed to be Martin. My initial reaction to his comment was that he was suffering from shock as a result of the incident. I asked him what he meant and he said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s not him.’ I still was not prepared to accept what he was saying so I said to him, ‘Are you a hundred per-cent sure, Peter?’ He replied, ‘Yes, I’m sorry, it’s definitely not him.’

  It was this realisation that the wrong man had been shot which had undoubtedly prompted the exclamation, ‘Oh, fuck!’ which was overheard on the Flying Squad’s car-to-car radio by Tony Freeman, as he waited for me, several miles away.

  Colin Black, one of the team who had been responsible for Martin’s arrest ten years earlier, was interviewing a victim of crime in the front office of Kensington police station when a member of the public came in, saying that someone had been shot. ‘I went straight to the scene and found out that it was apparently David Martin who had been shot,’ recalled Black. ‘Everyone was very elated, well, for a short time, until it soon became apparent that it wasn’t him.’

  Brian Baister QPM, MA was the chief superintendent at Kensington police station; hearing from Detective Superintendent Mike McAdam that there had been a shooting nearby, he dashed out of the police station into Earl’s Court Road and ran the 300 yards down to the scene of the incident. ‘My intention was to tape off the area, away from the press,’ he told me. ‘The paparazzi were just round the corner from the shooting, having staked out an apartment where Prince Andrew was a frequent visitor to the home of Koo Stark. When I got there, there was Waldorf hanging half way out of the car; but my fears were groundless; the paparazzi were far more interested in what Prince Andrew was up to and they never showed up!’ This was but a moment’s light relief in a desperate situation because in Pembroke Road the scene was one of pandemonium.

  Detective Constable Andy Muth arrived and turned off the Mini’s still-running engine. The first independent senior CID officer to arrive at the scene was Detective Chief Inspector Bob Chapman from Kensington police station. He ensured that the scene was taped off, all unauthorised persons were kept out of the area, floodlighting from Traffic Division had been sent for and now he was awaiting the arrival of the support units. Chapman saw that Waldorf was laying face down in the roadway, bleeding from the back of his head and as he was turned over, a bullet fell from his body. ‘His face resembled, in my view quite markedly, the man Martin whom I knew was wanted and whose issued photograph I had seen,’ said Chapman. This belief was shared by Detective Sergeant Roger Driscoll who had also hurried there from Kensington police station. ‘I saw the PCs turn him over and then saw his face,’ he said. ‘In my opinion, it was the man called David Martin whose picture I had seen on various appeal posters.’ Driscoll was then deputed to become the exhibits officer in the case.

  The handcuffs were removed from Waldorf but Police Constable 342 ‘B’ Timothy Davis held on to his left arm, in case he attempted any violent movements because he heard someone at the scene say, ‘That’s the bloke from Marlborough Street.’ PC Davis said, ‘From that, I assumed that the victim was the man Martin, wanted for attempted murder and escaping from custody.’

  A woman who told police she was a nurse arrived – this was Jane Lamprill – with some dressings. Police Constable 166 ‘B’ Adrian Dwyer heard Waldorf moaning several times, ‘God help me, God help me.’

  Baroness Helen de Westenholz had witnessed some of the incident from her home, which overlooked the scene. ‘Whilst I was watching, I heard one or two more gunshot cracks but I couldn’t actually see where they came from,’ she said. ‘Then I saw that the driver [sic] of the Mini had sort of fallen out of his car, he was hanging out from the waist up on to the road with his head on the floor.’

  George Edward Carter had been the driver of the Volkswagen van towing the jetting unit and as he pulled up behind the Mini, his dipped headlights illuminated the car and he could see there were three occupants: the back seat passenger was a girl, sitting on the nearside. Carter saw Finch approach the car but his recollection was that one shot was fired whereupon ‘the Mini began to go down on the nearside’ and that he then moved to the back of the Mini, fired two shots through the back window, then returned to the car’s nearside and fired one shot through the passenger’s window. He then saw a man trying to get through the driver’s window and when Carter got out of his van and moved back, he heard another report, followed by four more. He described seeing a man, holding a gun by the nearside of the Mini who shouted, ‘There’s a girl in the back, shall I get her out?’ and the girl got out of the car via the passenger door and complained of an injury to her back.

  And then Carter stated that more men appeared, one of whom had a card in his breast pocket – this appeared to be a police warrant card – and the man who had carried out the initial shooting said to him, ‘I put one in the tyre and noticed movement in the car so I put two through the back window.’ The man with the card – and it is possible this was Detective Sergeant Tom Martin – replied either, ‘You did good,’ or ‘You did well.’

  David Eric Still was Carter’s brother-in-law and he was a passenger in the Volkswagen van. Initially, he noticed that there was a girl in the back of the Mini and his attention was drawn to her because on several occasions, she had looked out of the Mini’s rear window and had then laid down ‘out of sight’. Of the two men occupying the front seats in the Mini, Still initially thought that the front seat passenger was a girl, ‘because the person had long hair to the shoulders’. Still concurred with Carter about the initial shooting but then said that the gunman had moved round behind the Mini, in front of the van, to the offside of th
e Mini and saw a second man, holding a gun and pointing it into the Mini’s open passenger door. Still then heard three more shots and believed that they were fired by the man who had initially fired and then Still knelt down between the driver’s and passenger’s seats in the van while his brother-in-law got out. When he got up, he saw a man lying half out of the Mini’s driver’s door – his feet were still inside the car – and saw a man crouched over the body and hit him, twice over the head, with a gun. The man from the Mini was handcuffed and then Still saw the girl whom he had originally seen in the back of the Mini in the road. A woman was searching her, and the girl who was crying was saying, ‘But it’s not him, it’s not him.’ Still too heard the comment ‘You done well’ and then he and Carter both described how they were approached by a young uniformed officer who told both of them to ‘Fuck off’. Nobody admitted to making that remark. The incident had certainly unnerved both Carter and Still; when they volunteered their testimony to the police the following day they did so in the presence of a solicitor and requested copies of their statements.

  Mrs Mavis Connell was driving her dark blue Saab saloon along Pembroke Road with Samuel Fleming as her front seat passenger. The windows as well as the sunshine roof were all half open because both of them were smoking. Mrs Connell was in the offside lane, the middle lane was clear and in the nearside lane she saw a yellow Mini and drew up parallel to it; her view was quite uninterrupted. Traffic was at a standstill and Mrs Connell turned to speak to her passenger when she suddenly saw two men appear from the nearside of the Volkswagen van parked behind the Mini. Both men were pointing guns at the Mini; she heard what she thought were two shots and saw that the Mini’s passenger door window had crazed. Almost immediately, she saw four or five other men, all of whom appeared to be holding guns run up to the Mini from behind. She heard two shots fired and believed these to have come from the running men and she saw the Mini’s rear window craze over. One gunman she saw pointing his gun at the driver’s door and heard several more shots fired; she could see two people in the front of the Mini who were cowering down. Almost immediately, the driver’s door opened and the driver ran off and the Mini moved forwards a few yards, so that she could see the rear number plate, which she partly, inaccurately, recalled as being ‘CYF’. At the same time, the man who had been firing was reloading his gun.