NF (2010) Hoods

by Carl Fellstrom

  In a message clearly aimed at a local populace traumatised by the constant gunplay, Detective Chief Superintendent Neil James, head of crime for Nottinghamshire Police, said afterwards, ‘We would like to pay tribute to the courage of the witnesses and their willingness to support the investigation. A conviction would have been less likely without their evidence. I also want to reassure the communities of Nottinghamshire that we possess the skills, experience and the determination to continue to relentlessly pursue the individuals who have historically terrorised communities and committed serious acts of violence. We will leave no stone unturned. Our structures remain in place to tackle these issues and dismantle serious and organised crime to prevent it escalating. We will not tolerate a culture of lawlessness. Our objective is for people who live, work and visit the county to feel safe, reassured and enjoy a good quality of life. We are committed to providing a service we are proud to deliver and one that the public expects.’

  The landlady, who is now in the witness protection programme, had her own share of tragedy to deal with as well as the stress of helping the police. Her son had unwittingly handled the gun in the safe and was himself arrested in connection with Patrick Marshall’s murder. The young man would later commit suicide while still under suspicion for a murder he did not commit.

  Charles Marshall, Patrick’s brother, said on behalf of the family: “The last three years has been very hard for all our family. Today means we can start to rebuild our lives. We all still miss Patrick and only time will heal the wounds that we have from his death. Our dad was diagnosed with cancer about a year and a half ago and told that he had a limited time to live. At least he has survived to see justice done today. As it says on the plaque at our brother’s grave – “Justice is thine.”’

  IN THE SUMMER of 2007, Colin Gunn, now more than a year into his life sentence, went back on trial for the corrupting of police officers. In an unusual move, the Crown Prosecution Service applied for evidence of his bad character – chiefly his conviction for conspiracy to murder – to be revealed in court, arguing that the jury needed to know about the deaths of the Stirlands to understand this case and his motivation for seeking police intelligence. At the start of the trial, Gunn sacked his legal team and refused to take part. He failed to appear in court for most of the case.

  Not surprisingly, Gunn was convicted. ‘The Crown’s case was that using go-betweens, he asked for, and received, confidential information from Nottinghamshire police officers,’ said reviewing lawyer Stuart Laidlaw, of the CPS Special Crime Division. ‘Thankfully, the information he received had limited consequences, in part at least because the main police contact was under surveillance and the police were managing the risks that arose. Colin Gunn wanted to know what the police knew about various investigations which were of interest to him, such as the murder of the Stirlands, the shooting of jeweller Marion Bates in Nottingham and intelligence checks – or “MOTs” as they were referred to – on suspects. With this knowledge he hoped to keep one step ahead of the police.’

  In August 2007, Gunn was jailed for a further nine years, the sentence to run concurrently with his life term. Only then could he finally be named in the media after previous legal restrictions, and the floodgates broke. ‘Nottingham’s “godfather of crime”,’ declared the BBC. ‘Brutal ganglord who fell victim to his own drugs,’ headlined the Guardian. ‘Gangster No 1 finally unmasked,’ blazed The Sun. The Nottingham Evening Post, which had been waiting for five years to expose the extent of Gunn’s evil empire, produced a special thirty-two-page pullout which flew off the news-stands.

  As the CPS lawyer Mr Laidlaw said, ‘For a long time Colin Gunn stayed one step ahead of the law. The law has now caught up with him.’

  CHAPTER 14

  y the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was clear that new technology now defined our way of communicating and interacting with the rest of the world – including the criminal world. Just as the birth of the pay-as-you-go mobile phone empowered the street drug dealer in his daily task of evading the ‘feds’, so cyberspace became a place where organised crime could prosper in relatively covert comfort and crime lords could galvanise and rally their soldiers more effectively. For law enforcement agencies, these same technologies offered a wealth of intelligence material; it was the mobile phone which convicted Colin Gunn and his cohorts. Nevertheless, by November 2009 it had become apparent to Gunn that the Internet offered him a chance to communicate with his friends and members of the Bestwood gang on a much wider level and with greater speed than the flow of letters he was constantly penning from his prison cell, some of which failed to reach their intended destination due to the high level of security imposed on such a notorious Category A prisoner.

  Gunn enjoyed his letter writing and encouraged other prisoners to write to his family on the outside, which resulted in the letterbox of his mum Carol bulging with cards and greetings on birthdays and at Christmas, with regular postings from, among others, one Kenneth Noye, linked to the 1983 Brinks Mat gold bullion job and serving life for the so-called ‘M25 murder’ of Stephen Cameron. Gunn had become friendly with Noye while at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire, where the two had found much common ground. Gunn’s mum kept messages flowing to and from Colin and those he could not contact directly. She even relayed messages between Michael ‘Tricky’ McNee and John ‘Jon Jon’ Russell, who were in different prisons.

  Both Colin and David Gunn were moved around the prison system regularly from the date of their incarceration in 2005. In Colin’s case, it was unsurprising, given that he swiftly made a name for himself in prison. First, while on remand at the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, he and a fellow inmate attacked nine Muslims remanded on terrorist charges after he felt they disrespected Christmas. Then at Frankland Prison he attacked a prisoner who had upset him in the gym, leaving him battered and bruised. In October 2007, he hooked up with fellow inmate David Bieber, an American who had shot dead a West Yorkshire policeman on Boxing Day 2003. The two men were gym fanatics. Bieber hatched an escape plan which involved a helicopter and firearms. Colin Gunn asked him if he could come in on it. The plan was scuppered before it got anywhere and ended up in the pages of the News of the World.

  Yet in letters to friends on the Bestwood estate, Colin expressed deep frustration at having been moved several times between the top security prisons at Belmarsh, Frankland and Whitemoor, before finally arriving at Long Lartin prison, in Evesham, in October 2009. Police and prison security were well aware of the ability of both brothers to take over the wings of prisons and had been paying close attention to their activities on the inside. On the outside, representatives of the gang were said to be negotiating with the Turkish mafia to buy a twenty-plus-room property in Cyprus and even to set up a business running a brothel with the consent of local hoodlums. (During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Colin had become a company director of several firms he hoped would help him launder money. The companies have all since been dissolved and Colin was arrested before he had the chance to become a real-life Tony Soprano and take over a waste management company.)

  When David came to be released on parole in April 2009, it was immediately clear that the authorities would not be giving him a free bus ticket back to his old haunts. As part of his licence conditions, he was banned from certain areas of Nottingham, including Bestwood, and from key potential meeting locations such as service areas on the M1 motorway. He was to reside at a bail hostel in Northampton until he had proved he was keeping to the terms of his licence. Gunn launched an appeal against these restrictions, claiming that the licence conditions imposed were unreasonably excessive, disproportionate in their impact upon his family and private life, and were not ‘rationally connected’ with the reason for which they were imposed: the protection of the public and his rehabilitation. He also argued that the high level of risk assessment on him that led to these licence conditions was not supported by evidence.

  His appeal, however, was rejected
by the High Court. So angered was he that he turned to the Nottingham Evening Post to publicise his plight. ‘I have been unfairly treated,’ he said. ‘I was convicted of drugs offences, nothing more, and yet they have ranked me as a danger to the public. I think that is completely wrong.’ He failed to point out that he had been convicted of violent offences in January 1993 and of threats to kill in November 1998, resulting in jail terms totalling more than five years.

  He told reporters, ‘I don’t have any grievances against anyone. All I want is to have this ridiculous ban from my home overturned. If I have done anything else wrong, then why don’t they arrest me?’ He was particularly miffed by the argument that crime would rise if he was allowed back on the estate. “That is one thing they keep bringing up to use against me. It is wrong. If it wasn’t for us, it would have been out of hand. And we never used the name “the Bestwood Cartel” either. You don’t speak about your friends like that. We were just a group of school friends.’ He said the restrictions placed on him made it difficult for him to see his six children and three grandchildren, and put forward the unlikely thesis that it was also preventing him getting a ‘proper’ job. ‘I want more access to my kids,’ he added. ‘When they told me I was coming to the hostel, I said to them, “What is there to stop me from fleeing to Spain?” I think that’s why they put the curfew on. I really do believe I was better off in prison. I had better access to my kids from there.’

  The fact was within a few weeks of being out he had already hooked up with his old pal Darren Hayden (see Chapter Seven) and the two of them were seen together in a Ferrari visiting haunts in Eastwood and enjoying a meal with another former co-defendant, Shane Bird, who had been cleared with David of a murder conspiracy charge and who had visited him regularly in prison. David asked associates about a pub in Eastwood which he hoped to take over. However, neither he nor Hayden enjoyed freedom for long. Hayden was soon back in prison facing a seven-year sentence after setting up a £1 million amphetamine deal with supplies from associates in Liverpool. The drugs had been stashed away for two years awaiting Hayden’s return from prison. A single fingerprint on the goods, and video surveillance, was enough to convict him at Nottingham Crown Court in February 2010.

  Much as David Gunn talked of wanting to shrug off his past, it continued to haunt him. As a result of his appeal to the High Court in April 2009, information came to light about what he and Colin had allegedly been up to in prison. Police had been monitoring both brothers and amassing intelligence on their visitors: to Lowdham Prison in David’s case and Whitemoor in Colin’s case. A submission to the High Court included intelligence from both the prison and police that indicated both brothers were still a danger to the public, and a report from the public protection board MAPPA (Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements) outlined the intelligence they had been presented with:

  A police representative reported that David Gunn was part of the Gunn Crime Group and that Colin and David were still working the crime group from within the prison with particular emphasis on Bestwood. There is intelligence to suggest that Colin is first in the hierarchy and that David is second or third in command. Anything that happens in Bestwood is attributed to the Gunns. Crime has decreased in the North of the city – GBH, abduction, control and supply of drugs – since the Gunns have been in prison. Community competence has grown on the estate and a sense of normality has returned. Now that it is known that David Gunn will soon be released the estate is closing down and there is an unwillingness to give police intelligence. Notts Police assess the Gunn organised crime group as being the top threat of harm to the community.

  The court also heard prison security reports dating back to July 2007 which claimed the Gunn brothers were involved in ‘gang forming, intimidating staff, had a vast history of drugs, mobile [phone] history, and were an escape risk’. In addition, police had carried out a new intelligence assessment in January 2009 which laid bare some of the fears of the authorities. The assessment stated:

  Intelligence suggests that upon his release that Gunn will resume a position of control within the organised crime group and will settle scores with witnesses and others involved in the trial against him and his brother Colin, and with others who he believes have acted inappropriately whilst David has been in prison. There are individuals who are believed to owe money to David Gunn and he will be enforcing these debts on his release. The Gunns are believed to have a contract out on Michael O’Brien, currently serving life and held responsible by the Gunns for the death of Jamie Gunn. David Gunn has close ongoing associations with individuals involved in the supply of firearms and class A drugs and who are believed to deal on behalf of the Gunn brothers. David Gunn is still receiving an income from this activity with some of this money being forwarded to him in prison.

  The report stated that David Gunn was still considered a high risk to the public with regard to firearms and class A drugs and came to the conclusion that while in prison ‘David Gunn has continued associating with known criminals and still exercises a significant degree of control within the community. Upon release it is his intention to make his presence more prominent by reasserting himself’.

  Gunn, for his part, vigorously denied that he was a gang member or had been concerned with gang activity while serving his sentence. He called his risk assessment ‘ill-founded and inaccurate’ and his lawyer argued there was ‘insufficient hard evidence’ to support it. But Mr Justice Blake, sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand, was not swayed.

  David Gunn also announced his intention to sue Nottinghamshire Police after they mistakenly crushed his 3 series BMW car, which should have been used as part payment in the £18,000 assets recovery case against him. Police were able to retrieve £8,000 from the sale of jewellery and the remainder had been due to come from the sale of the now-obliterated BMW. But David’s decision to go to the media appeared to have backfired. Within a few weeks of speaking to the Evening Post, on 12 August 2009, police arrested him at the bail hostel in Northampton. He was found with more than £3,000 but was able to explain the cash. He was recalled to prison on the basis that he had flagrantly disregarded his curfew and was placed in HMP Ranby, a former army camp at Retford, Nottinghamshire, where he remained until he was shipped out to the Category A prison at Full Sutton, North Yorkshire, the following April. The move to ‘ghost’ him out of Ranby coincided with reports that an inmate had been scolded on the orders of Gunn, though there had also been reports from staff that Gunn was at risk of being attacked himself.

  Colin, meanwhile, was also finding that prison life was no holiday camp. In a series of letters sent out from Long Lartin, where he was being held in November 2009, he raged at the authorities’ treatment of him, particularly over prison visits and the opening of his mail. ‘All my visits are in a special room for high risk visits,’ he wrote. ‘The high risk is an escape classification which means there is far more security for me than other Cat A or B prisoners get. At our visit table a screw sits almost on it taking notes of all the conversations ... I’m trying to keep my head down here. I need to get off the Managing Challenging Behaviour Strategy they put me on. Its not a good look.’

  He also revealed that he was glad he had been moved from Whitemoor, as the regime at Long Lartin was more relaxed. ‘I was at Whitemoor for 18 months and was relentlessly pursued by the security department who seemed to think that I was the only criminal in there. My name was put up for anything that went off in there; assaults, drugs, phones – you name it. All this without one bit of evidence, all intelligence which we all know means “made up” and the word intelligence means we are never to see this on paper. Long Lartin was a good move for me, really. Things was only going to get worse at Whitemoor. Things got so bad for me there the security department started opening my legal mail ... I took none of this lying down and let my pen become my sword. I had lots of meetings with the security governor at Whitemoor, all along the lines of me being “influential” and the prison service getting lo
ts of security reports about me, at one stage 70 per cent of the intel reports involved me. This is absolute crap. It was just a phrase to use to refer me to their ultimate goal of putting me in isolation. Early October I had the mufty squad at my door [MUFTI is the acronym for prison officers dressed in riot gear and expert in restraint techniques], videotaped and taken off to segregation for concerns of bullying. I asked who I had bullied and again it came back “intell”. Ha, Ha.’

  At the same time, some of Gunn’s family members and associates in Bestwood were raided by the police as part of a money laundering investigation. By now even the guards at Whitemoor appeared to have had enough of Gunn’s name turning up on their intelligence reports. ‘Family and friends had the pigs raiding for money laundering ... coincidence?... yes right. Nothing was found, the pigs searching for masses of money took computers, phones etc ... Then on October 22, I was laying on my bed mid afternoon and they came and told me I was moving. As usual when I move anywhere its total secrecy, the whole prison gets locked down, phones turned off etc and then I am on the move flanked by armed police and helicopter, all overkill but what do you expect. So now I am at Long Lartin on a new wing. This is the 3rd time I have been here and about the 20th time I have been moved in the four and a half years since I have been locked up.’

  Colin signed off his letter in the usual manner, ‘Chin up, chest out. Thugz love.’

  One of the reasons Whitemoor prison officials had come down on him was because Gunn’s supporters had set up a website for him to put forward his case. He and his supporters viewed this book as a wholesale character assassination which had damaged his credibility. But the publicity the website received in the Nottingham media antagonised people on the outside, including Graham Allen, the MP for Nottingham North, who was outraged that such a prisoner should be allowed a public platform. The website was quickly frozen and Gunn was refused contact with the individuals running it. Nevertheless, he was so pleased that the website had worked – it had more than 15,000 visitors in the short time it was fully active – that he began to think more on the idea of using the Internet as a platform to get his message out.