Fog on the Tyne

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  ‘I know. I’ve already seen him,’ Paddy replied, before accelerating away.

  PC Noble, the officer in the police vehicle, immediately began to pursue him. After a few hundred yards, Paddy noticed that PC Noble had been joined by colleagues in another vehicle, and so he pulled over. As the two police cars parked alongside the Range Rover, Paddy wound down the window. ‘Conroy . . .’ PC Noble began, but before he could say another word Paddy interrupted by saying, ‘Fuck off you pair of daft bastards.’ He then slammed his vehicle into gear and sped away.

  For the next 15 minutes, Paddy was chased at speed by several police vehicles and a police helicopter around the Scotswood, Benwell and Elswick areas of Newcastle. Paddy knew that he didn’t have a chance of outrunning the police, but he had no intention of making their job easy. When Paddy had grown tired of the cat-and-mouse game, he drove on to a grassed area behind the Noble Street flats and stepped out of his vehicle with his hands raised. Paddy was then arrested on suspicion of abduction and taken to Newcastle City West Police Station, where he was informed that he would also be charged with dangerous driving.

  When Peachy and Collier arrived at the police station, Peachy sat in the waiting area and Collier went to the front desk, where he demanded to speak to the officers involved in the case. Collier was taken to an isolated room on the second floor, where he was seen by DS Thomas and DC Gallagher. Collier told the detectives that he owed money to people from Gateshead but he did not wish to name them. He said that he had been taken by five or six of these men and beaten. Collier was adamant that Paddy had not been involved in his abduction or assault. The detectives refused to believe Collier and urged him to tell the truth. However, Collier refused to be swayed and said that if the police refused to let him leave the station he would jump out of the window and onto the ground, some 25 ft below. Shortly after Collier had left the police station (via the front door), Paddy was released.

  Two days later, on Tuesday, 15 March 1994, Collier was walking near his home when he saw a white motor vehicle pull up approximately twenty yards from him. A man wearing a cap leant out of the window and pointed a gun directly at his head. As he turned to run, Collier heard two loud explosions, but fortunately the gunman had missed him. Later that day, in fear of his life, Collier contacted the police and asked for protection. When asked why he might need protecting, Collier blurted out a story about the attempt on his life being linked to his kidnap and torture. It’s not difficult to imagine the smiles on the faces of some of the police officers when Collier agreed to make a statement implicating Paddy Conroy. They arrested Glover two days later, and Peachy was taken into custody soon afterwards.

  Paddy was told about the arrests, and he warned Scott Waters that he too might have been implicated by Collier. Two weeks after Collier had walked back into the police station, Waters was arrested. Paddy continued to go about his everyday business as normal, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before the police would swoop on him. The day after Waters’ arrest, Paddy travelled to Leeds to meet a friend at the Stakis Windmill Hotel. He could sense that something was not quite right as soon as he arrived. Shortly after Paddy had gone to his room, there was a knock at his door, and when he opened it officers from the Drug Squad and the Regional Crime Squad burst in, waving guns and shouting that he was under arrest. Paddy was taken back to Newcastle, interviewed and charged with several offences relating to Collier. When he appeared in court the following morning, he was remanded in custody with his co-accused to await trial.

  While Paddy and Glover were on remand at HMP Holme House, in Durham, Glover talked of little other than escaping. He had managed to break free from captivity several times in the past and told Paddy just how easy it could be. At first, Paddy was sceptical, but the more Glover talked the more he realised that freedom was an option.

  On Wednesday, 27 April 1994, Paddy and Glover were due to appear at Newcastle Magistrates’ Court for a pre-trial review. On previous occasions they had appeared at court, Paddy and Glover had been transported in a minibus taxi and handcuffed to burly prison officers. This was because they were the only prisoners in HMP Holme House who were having a case heard in Newcastle, and it wasn’t cost-effective to send two prisoners there in a large prison van. Glover has extremely large, thick wrists, and he told Paddy that handcuffs didn’t fit him very well and so he was often able to slip them off. In order to make his task even easier, Glover had filled an empty peanut packet with washing-up liquid, which he secreted between the cheeks of his backside. The pair thought that they would be handcuffed together, which had been the case on previous occasions, but for reasons never explained they were manacled to two separate prison officers. Glover’s basic but admittedly feasible plan was in tatters.

  The place Glover had chosen to make the escape bid was along the Felling Bypass, a section of road that adjoins Newcastle and Gateshead and which was heavily congested at the time owing to ongoing roadworks. Two cars containing the associates of Paddy and Glover would be shadowing the taxi. A BMW was to transport the duo away from the scene, and a Range Rover containing four burly men was to ensure that if anybody intervened during the escape they could be dealt with. As the taxi neared the roadworks, Paddy looked out of the window and alongside saw the two cars full of his co-conspirators. Paddy nodded at the man in the front passenger seat of one vehicle, and he acknowledged him by smiling. Glover, who was sitting directly in front of Paddy, kept turning around and grimacing, as if to say, ‘Do something.’ Because both men were handcuffed to different prison officers and were seated apart in the taxi, Paddy didn’t for one moment believe that Glover was going to go through with his attempt to escape.

  They were still travelling at approximately 70 mph when Glover suddenly stood up and roared, ‘We have got fucking help! We have got fucking help!’ Glover then grabbed the handbrake with his free hand, and the minibus lurched across the carriageway before spinning round and round. After what seemed like an age but was probably just a matter of seconds, the minibus came to rest on the hard shoulder facing the wrong way up the road. The unsuspecting prison officers had been tossed around the taxi like rag dolls after Glover had pulled on the handbrake, and so they were still disorientated when the vehicle eventually stopped. Glover punched one of the officers in the face and shouted, ‘Get my fucking cuffs off!’ a request the stunned man felt more than obliged to comply with. The officer was assaulted again and suffered a broken arm. A female prison officer was struck on the head. Once free, Glover leapt out of the minibus, just as the getaway car pulled up next to him. People at the scene later told the police that the men in the car were armed with shotguns.

  Paddy was convinced that Glover was going to save himself and leave him shackled to a prison officer. Glover stopped suddenly and, almost as an afterthought, returned to the taxi and shouted at the officer to release Paddy. The prison officer who was handcuffed to Paddy glanced down at their wrists and then back at his keys. Paddy knew that he wasn’t going to resist, and so he raised his hands for the officer to release him. As soon as Paddy was free, he ran to the getaway car and jumped in. Glover grabbed a briefcase that was on the front passenger seat of the taxi before joining Paddy and their associates in the car. After the ambush, the prison officers ran into a nearby petrol station to call for help. The cashier later told police, ‘The female officer was shaking terribly and couldn’t talk coherently, she was so scared. At first I didn’t know who she was, but then I saw a badge on her shoulder and she said that she had been held up by a gang with shotguns and knives.’

  As the getaway vehicle roared down the road towards Newcastle, Glover opened the briefcase that he had stolen and pulled out a brown envelope, which contained £2,200 of Paddy’s private cash. It had been in the vehicle because the Prison Service is obliged to take all inmates’ personal possessions to each court hearing, just in case they are released. ‘Fucking hell! Two grand,’ Glover said as he tore open the envelope.

  ‘I’ll have that, thanks
. It’s mine,’ Paddy said, snatching the wad of cash from Glover’s grasp. As the getaway vehicle continued to make its way through the roadworks, a steady stream of police cars travelling in the opposite direction flashed past, with sirens blaring. The fugitives were left in no doubt that their audacious escape had now been reported. The speeding car entered Newcastle by driving over the swing bridge that spans the Tyne, before making its way down to the Quayside. Because progress was slowed to walking pace by the early-morning traffic, Paddy opened the car door and jumped out. ‘I will see you lads later,’ he said before disappearing into the crowds of commuters and shoppers.

  Paddy walked to a nearby scrapyard, owned by a friend of his, but the friend did not appear to be on site. Paddy waved down a vehicle that was leaving the yard and said that he had broken down and needed a lift to the home of the owner of the scrapyard as he had important business with him. The lift cost Paddy £40, but it was money well spent, because it got him out of the city centre and into the suburbs. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ the scrapyard owner said when Paddy knocked on his door. ‘You’re supposed to be in jail.’

  ‘The less you know the better,’ Paddy replied. ‘I need a lift to Scotland.’

  Later that night, Paddy was sitting in the home of a Glasgow acquaintance celebrating his freedom with an ice-cold glass of beer. The escape was the leading story on the news that night, and a police spokesman claimed that Paddy was now the most wanted man in Britain. Paddy’s host looked at the television, looked at Paddy and burst out laughing. ‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘I thought you said it was nothing serious?’

  The following morning, a press conference was held at Felling Police Station, in Gateshead. Alistair Papps, the manager of the Prison Service in the north-east, said, ‘We regret this incident very much, but we cannot always get it right. Given an open chequebook, we would always play safe on every occasion. Clearly, when we have high-risk prisoners, we use special secure vehicles. But it would just be too expensive to transfer all prisoners, regardless of their security risk, in secure vehicles.’ A spokesman for the Prison Officers Association added, ‘It is the government’s obsession with cost which is to blame, and the safety of the public and health and safety of our members is being put on the line by what is calculated neglect.’ A spokeswoman for Northumbria Police urged members of the public not to approach the escaped men. ‘They are considered to be extremely dangerous, and anyone seeing them should contact us,’ she said. Later that day, Frank Cook MP demanded a full inquiry into the Prison Service policy of using private vehicles to transport dangerous criminals around Britain. ‘It is nothing short of a national scandal,’ he said. ‘If we continue to expose our prison staff to appalling risks like this, we will before long have a tragedy on our hands.’

  When the furore surrounding the escape had died down, Paddy arranged for one of his friends to pick him up in Glasgow and take him to Gateshead, on the opposite bank of the River Tyne from Newcastle. Bensham is a run-down district of Gateshead inhabited by a large community of Jews and other assorted immigrants. Numerous bedsits and flats are always readily available to rent at generally low rates. In the area, few people know their neighbours or their business, and those that do pretend that they don’t. Bensham was the ideal location for Paddy to lie low. He knew that he could not stay there indefinitely, but until a more safe and permanent location could be found it would suit his needs ideally.

  While Paddy was hiding from the authorities in Gateshead, Willbow, who had organised the ‘Free Paddy Conroy’ marches in the West End, went to see him and said that he could get him out of the country. Paddy had no idea how Willbow knew where he was living, and so he was extremely suspicious of his intentions. Paddy asked Willbow how he had found him when every policeman in the country had failed to do so, but he never did get a suitable answer. A lorry was due to board a North Sea ferry to the continent, and Willbow explained that he could arrange for Paddy to be smuggled out of the country in the back of it. Customs officers rarely search vehicles that are leaving these shores, because their main purpose is to prevent people from importing rather than exporting illicit cargo. Paddy told Willbow that he was interested in his offer, but as soon as Willbow had left to arrange everything Paddy began packing his possessions. Ten minutes after his departure, Paddy was driving towards the Scottish border, where he knew that there were people he could trust.

  Shortly before the feud with the Harrisons had erupted, Dave Garside, whom Paddy considered to be a true friend, had become embroiled in a dispute with a man mountain from Middlesbrough named Brian ‘the Taxman’ Cockerill. During the 1990s, Cockerill made a name for himself in the north-east by robbing – or taxing, as he preferred to call it – drug dealers. Cockerill was an awesome fighter who few would even contemplate taking on. His sheer size deterred most hopefuls. It has to be said that Garside was no mug either. He had fought 45 professional fights in the ring, which included a British heavyweight title fight at Wembley and two British cruiserweight title fights. He had been present the night Abadom had been assaulted at the Oz nightclub, in South Shields, the very incident that had led to Glover being recruited by the police as an informant.

  One night, Cockerill had ‘taxed’ a drug dealer in a Middlesbrough nightclub who was friends with Garside. A few weeks later, Cockerill went out clubbing, and by his own admission he consumed ridiculous amounts of Bacardi and Coke and popped more than 20 Ecstasy pills over a long weekend. At 9 a.m. on the Sunday morning, Cockerill decided that the party was over and headed home. As he walked towards the door of the club he had spent the night in, a member of the door staff warned him that Garside was waiting for him outside with ‘two or three cars full of lads with hammers and bars’. To Cockerill’s credit, he refused to run or hide and walked out of the club alone into the morning sunlight and extreme danger.

  As soon as Garside saw Cockerill, he said, ‘We want the fucking money that you took off the lad.’ Dazed and confused by the drink, drugs and daylight, Cockerill was struggling to focus. Garside was standing side-on to Cockerill, and it looked as if he was preparing to land one of his powerful punches that had brought him so much success in the ring. Before Garside could do so, Cockerill head-butted him three times full in the face. To everybody’s amazement, including Cockerill’s, Garside staggered back and appeared to be out cold on his feet.

  ‘I’ve beaten you! Look at you!’ Cockerill shouted. As Garside began to fall to the floor, he made a last-ditch attempt to stay on his feet and grabbed hold of Cockerill. The two giants began to wrestle, and after a couple of minutes Cockerill threw Garside over his back and he crashed to the floor. Pulling Garside to his feet and throwing him against a wall, Cockerill sank his teeth into an ear and spat out a lobe. Then, locked in a bear hug, Cockerill and Garside fell struggling to the floor. Cockerill managed to get his opponent in a headlock and applied his vice-like grip to his throat. Bystanders soon began screaming, ‘Let go, Brian! Let go! You’ve killed him!’

  When Cockerill released Garside’s seemingly lifeless body, he got up and leant on the roof of a taxi, gasping for breath. To everybody’s astonishment, Garside picked himself up off the ground, walked up behind Cockerill and landed a devastating punch that broke his ribs. Cockerill didn’t even turn around. He just slumped to the floor, barely able to breathe. As Cockerill fought to compose himself, Garside began to kick him in the head and upper torso. Cockerill, still suffering from a weekend of excessive alcohol and drug abuse, had no more to give, and so he remained on one knee rather than getting to his feet to continue the fight. When Garside realised that the battle was over, he began jumping in the air and shouting, ‘I am the daddy! I am the daddy!’

  Following the fight, for reasons known only to himself, David Glover contacted Cockerill and his associates, saying that he ‘and others’ were going to kill him. Rather than respond to Glover’s threats, Cockerill threw himself into a rigorous training regime and vowed to revisit Garside when he was fighting fit. Whe
n Cockerill felt the time was right to take on Garside again, he arrived at a club in Newcastle with a gang of about 50 men in tow. Garside had been warned that Cockerill was looking for him, and so he had recruited approximately 50 men from as far afield as Manchester and Liverpool. Paddy Conroy, who knew Cockerill and who also happened to be in that particular club that night, was asked if a fight could be arranged with a £20,000 purse for the winner, but Garside declined, saying that he had not trained. As far as Paddy was concerned, that was the end of the matter. He certainly had no further involvement in their feud.

  The following night, Cockerill and up to 70 men armed with shotguns, handguns, machetes and baseball bats went to a rave club where Garside was working on the door. Instead of storming the front doors, they went to a rear door and used bolt cutters to gain entry. As his men kept the door staff at bay, Cockerill went to a small office, where he found Garside. According to Cockerill, one punch floored Garside, and he then began to kick and stamp on him without mercy. When Cockerill stepped back to admire his handiwork, Garside had suffered numerous injuries, including a broken nose, a broken cheekbone and a broken jaw. Everybody thought that would be the end of the matter, but both men had egos as big as their hulk-like frames.

  Tommy Harrison (unrelated to the Harrisons involved in the Conroy feud) is a legendary figure in the Teesside underworld. Men who live in the area, like Cockerill, have nothing but the utmost respect for him. When Harrison phoned Cockerill one evening and invited him to his home, Cockerill accepted and walked like a lamb to the slaughter. Unbeknown to Cockerill, Harrison had been forced to make the phone call, which was luring Cockerill into a trap, while staring down the barrel of a loaded shotgun. As soon as Cockerill knocked on Harrison’s door, a man from Newcastle answered and invited him in. As Cockerill stepped into the lounge, a dozen men pounced on him with a variety of weapons. Like a pack of wild animals, they hacked, chopped and stabbed Cockerill before leaving him for dead. The room resembled an abattoir. Blood had even splashed onto the ceiling.