Alan was a promising footballer who played for the county and had been selected for trials with Newcastle United. On this particular evening, Alan had left his school satchel at his grandmother’s house and had wanted to return with Freddie to collect it. Fortunately for Alan, his mother had insisted that he stay in and have a bath while she and Freddie went to Ella’s to pick it up. Grace and Freddie were a close couple. They had met and fallen in love at the age of 14 when they both attended John Marley School, in the West End of Newcastle. Their first son, John, had been born in 1977, but tragedy had struck when he was just nine years old. John had run into the road to retrieve a football and had been hit by a bus. Grace has said that Freddie never really got over the loss of their son. Freddie, Alan and his other son, Mark, used to go to the crematorium every Saturday to pay their respects to John. The loss of his son at such a tender age had certainly made Freddie extremely protective of his other children, who everybody agreed he adored.
Two minutes after Freddie made the call to his friend at St James’ Park, he and Grace arrived outside Ella’s home in Lutterworth Road. Freddie parked his van and began the short walk to his mother’s front door. As Grace followed her husband up the path, she saw a hooded man emerge from bushes just a few yards away. Without saying a word, Dale Miller pointed a shotgun at Freddie and fired. Grace could not believe what was happening; she was numb with fear and unable to move. The shot had fortunately missed Freddie, and so he had tried to make himself a more difficult target by crouching down on his mother’s doorstep in case the gunman fired again. Freddie’s attempt to save himself was in vain, because the gunman was determined to carry out his cowardly attack.
Rather than risk missing his target again, the gunman walked up to Freddie and from point-blank range shot him in the face. Eight balls of steel from the shotgun cartridge penetrated Freddie’s skull and destroyed his brain. He was dying before his wife’s eyes, and nobody was going to be able to save him. The gunman’s initial shot had slammed into Ella’s front door. The noise brought her and her neighbours rushing outside. When Ella saw Freddie lying on her doorstep, she knew that he was beyond help. All she could do was rub her son’s leg and plead with him to hang on to life until help arrived. Grace cradled him in her arms while neighbours brought towels to try to stem the flow of blood from his head.
By the time the ambulance had arrived, Freddie was already dead. After Miller had shot Freddie, he had run back to the Volkswagen, and Stewart had driven away at speed. Seconds later, Dixon had telephoned the man who had ordered the hit to tell him that Freddie Knights was no more. At 9 p.m., the gang arrived at a flat owned by a friend named Steven Carlton. Miller and Stewart washed and changed their clothing in the hope of destroying any forensic evidence. At 12.05 a.m., the clothes they had worn during the murder were put in the Volkswagen, which was then driven to a street in the West End of Newcastle and set on fire. The shotgun was later buried.
Paddy Conroy spent the last six and a half months of his imprisonment in solitary confinement. He had decided from the outset that he would complete the end of his sentence alone. The dispersal system is an environment few can begin to understand, unless, of course, they have had the misfortune to live through it. Violence is part and parcel of everyday life. Intimidation, stabbings and rape are commonplace. Inmates live in a constant state of alert. It is simply wrong to release a man back into a ‘normal’ environment after spending years in such conditions.
Paddy elected to be alone simply because he felt that he needed to adjust back to having some form of relaxed state of mind. In order to be put in solitary confinement, inmates have to have committed an offence. Rather than risk doing something serious that could have affected his release, Paddy simply refused to take part in an anger-management course. Initially, Paddy was told that he would be kept in the segregation unit for 14 days, but when he said that he was refusing to leave his cell until he had completed his sentence nobody argued.
Tommy Adams, the north-London crime boss, was in one of the cells next to Paddy. Paddy, however, refused to speak to him, because he had heard that a member of the A Team, as the Adams firm is known, had shot Mad Frankie Fraser in the head outside Turnmills nightclub in London. Paddy’s father had been friends with Mad Frank and had always spoken very highly of him, and so there was no way Paddy could bring himself to even acknowledge Tommy Adams.
Robert ‘the Cannibal’ Maudsley was Paddy’s other neighbour. He was considered to be so dangerous that the authorities had built a Hannibal Lecter-type box in which to house him. Within his cell, a solid-steel door opened into a small cage, which was encased in thick Perspex. A small slot at the base of this barbaric contraption was used to pass Maudsley food and other items. The only furniture he had was a table and chair, which were made of compressed cardboard. The toilet and sink were bolted to the floor, and his bed was a 4-in.-thick concrete slab. It is a sad indictment of our so-called civilised society to think that a fellow human being is incarcerated in such unnecessarily barbaric conditions.
Robert Maudsley was born in June 1953. One of twelve children, he spent most of his early years in Nazareth House, an orphanage run by nuns in Crosby, Liverpool. Maudsley, two of his brothers and his eldest sister had been removed from the family home because they were said to be suffering from ‘parental neglect’. Aged eight, Maudsley was placed in the care of Liverpool City Council. Occasionally, however, he and the other children were allowed to go back to their parents for ‘trial periods’. It was during these stays that Maudsley suffered mental and physical abuse at the hands of his father. His pleas for help fell on deaf ears.
During the late 1960s, Maudsley found himself in London working as a rent boy to feed his heroin addiction. Following several suicide attempts, he was referred to a psychiatrist, who he told he could hear voices telling him to kill his parents. In 1974, Maudsley was picked up by a paedophile named John Farrell, who paid him for sex. During their seedy encounter, Farrell showed him photographs of children he claimed he had sexually abused, and so Maudsley strangled him. After being assessed by psychiatrists, Maudsley was declared mentally unfit to stand trial and was sent to Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
Three years later, Maudsley and another inmate killed a paedophile. They grabbed the man, locked themselves into a room and tortured their victim before slaying him. A prison officer later gave a statement in which he said that Maudsley ‘fractured the man’s skull like an egg and then ate part of his brain with a spoon’. Maudsley was convicted of manslaughter for this crime and, having been found mentally fit to stand trial, was moved to the ‘normal’ prison dispersal system.
In 1978, Maudsley killed two convicts. The first was a convicted sex offender named Salney Darwood. Maudsley lured him into his cell, where he strangled and stabbed him before hiding the body under his bed. He then went on the prowl around the prison, eventually grabbing and stabbing to death an inmate named Bill Roberts. Maudsley then calmly walked into the office of the prison governor and told him that the next roll call would be two people short. Because of the prison killings, Maudsley was placed in the segregation unit. He has spent longer in solitary confinement than any other prisoner in British history. Maudsley has described his living conditions as like being buried alive in a concrete coffin. According to the authorities, he is ‘untreatable’ and will never be released.
Directly above Paddy’s cell was housed a prisoner named Ferdinand Lavelle, a black South American who is without doubt one of the most dangerous prisoners ever to have been held in a British jail. Forget Charles Bronson or John McVicar; this guy really did not give a fuck about who or how many people he had to fight in order to get his own way. ‘Absolutely fearless’ is the best way to describe him. Ferdinand would stab somebody, get dragged down to the segregation unit, emerge two months later and stab the same person again. The occasional inmate might have got lucky and put Ferdinand down, but their luck wouldn’t last, because Ferdinand would not stay down. He is l
argely unheard of outside the prison system, but within it Ferdinand Lavelle is without doubt legendary.
While at HMP Whitemoor, Lavelle was alleged to have thrown into the face of a prison officer a substance that inmates call ‘gee’. One or two pans of margarine are boiled until the ingredients separate. The pure oil rises to the top of the pan, and this is skimmed off and mixed with sugar. When the boiling oil is thrown at somebody, the sugar sticks to the victim’s skin, which maximises the damage caused. It is an evil weapon to use on a human being. It is said that the injured officer at HMP Whitemoor collapsed with his head literally smoking after the attack. Ferdinand stood trial on two separate occasions for the offence but was eventually found not guilty.
People loyal to the Sayers firm had been circulating an article in prison that had been published in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. An MP was allegedly outraged that David Glover ‘and others’ had been paid as police informants while continuing to commit crime. Inevitably, the article reported the gory details of the kidnap and assault on Collier. Unfortunately for Paddy, the newspaper published a photograph of him to accompany the story. When people read the headline and then saw Paddy’s photograph, some assumed that he was being exposed as a police informant.
Enraged, Paddy sent what is best described as a ‘stern letter’ to the editor of the newspaper, complaining bitterly about the article. When the letter arrived on the editor’s desk, he promptly contacted the police, claiming that Paddy had threatened him. Two officers were immediately dispatched to the prison to interview Paddy, but he refused to answer their questions, and so they merely advised him to stop writing to the editor and to stay away from him when he was released.
Three months before Paddy was due to be released, two detectives from the Northumbria Police intelligence unit went to visit him to ask about the murder of a man named Peter Gowling. Paddy considered Gowling to be little more than an ‘inbred mongrel’. Gowling had owed Paddy a sum of money, and it’s fair to say that he had sent him what can only be described as ‘urgent reminders’ that he should pay or risk having the matter handed over to the Conroy debt-recovery department. Gowling was in prison at the time Paddy had been in contact with him, but he was due to be released within days and so Paddy had guessed that he would flee.
On Valentine’s Day 2001, before he could flee anywhere, Peter Gowling was gunned down at his flat in Osborne Road, Newcastle. He died after suffering multiple gunshot wounds to the head, chest and back from a small calibre handgun. In 1996, Gowling had been arrested while travelling to Ireland with two suitcases stuffed with £540,000, which was going to be used to fund a drug shipment. He was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment, and £1 million worth of his assets were seized. As soon as he was released from prison, he made a point of telling a reporter, ‘I believe that my debts to society have now been paid in full.’ Paddy did not believe that Gowling was making such a statement for the benefit of the wider community. He believed that it was also a message to all those he owed money. Gowling believed that because he had served his time his debts should be wiped clean.
The police wanted to know every detail of Paddy’s relationship and business affairs with Gowling and repeatedly asked why he had been sending him demands for money. The answer was elementary: he owed it to Paddy, and the rest was none of their business. Paddy did not wish to appear rude or callous, but he did tell the detectives that he was pleased Gowling was no more and that if they had any decency they would not bother looking for those who had killed him. In Paddy’s opinion, the killer had done the world a favour. The officers were not impressed with Paddy’s outburst and threatened to have him arrested on the morning of his release so that they could talk to him in more detail about the murder.
Two months before Paddy’s release, he had a Category A status review. Nobody should be released from prison while they are still deemed to be Category A or, in layman’s terms, extremely high risk and a threat to society, and so Paddy was absolutely positive that he would be downgraded. However, for reasons never explained, Paddy was deemed to still be a Category A prisoner and was told that he would remain so until he walked out of the prison gates. The only people who are usually released as Category A prisoners are terrorists. What possible threat to society or humanity did the powers that be honestly think that Paddy Conroy posed? It was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, the only thing Conroy wanted to do was to go home to his family and sort out the editor of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle.
On the morning of his release, Paddy completed all the relevant paperwork, got changed into his own clothing and stood waiting for his escort to take him to freedom. Four prison officers led him out of the building and were then joined by two officers with dogs. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Paddy asked. ‘I’m going home. I’m hardly going to want to escape in the next five minutes.’
‘You are Category A, Conroy,’ a smug-looking officer replied. ‘And you will be treated as such until you cross from HMP property into the outside world.’
And so it was. Paddy was handcuffed to an officer and surrounded by his colleagues as they walked to the gate flanked by the dog handlers. ‘Raise your hands,’ an officer said as he fumbled for the handcuff keys. Seconds later, a door was opened and Paddy stepped through it to freedom. Paddy headed for the car park, looking all around him as he did so. He didn’t know why, but he was convinced that police officers were lying in wait to arrest him for ordering Gowling’s murder. Paddy had made his mind up that the first one to approach him was going to be knocked out.
‘Paddy! Paddy!’ shouted somebody with a Geordie accent. Paddy turned to see Dave Garside waving manically and gesturing him to his car. Three hours later, Paddy was reliving an experience of his youth, crossing the Tyne Bridge and gazing up at the two huge arches that seemed like arms embracing him. They had welcomed many a Geordie lad home to his beloved Newcastle. Crossing that bridge and looking down on the River Tyne after years in prison must have felt magical. For the umpteenth time in his life, Paddy did his best to settle down and live a straight life. He did visit the offices of the Evening Chronicle, but the editor who had enraged him had moved on.
Within a week of Paddy’s release, the police visited his home and warned him that his life was in danger. They said that an attack on him was imminent and that he should leave Newcastle immediately, but Paddy told them that he was not leaving his town or any other town for any man or gang. ‘Tell your informant to tell whoever is behind this that they should ensure that they get me first time around or it will be them leaving town, in a box,’ he said. Threats were an everyday reality of the life that Paddy had chosen to live, and he knew that only a fool becomes complacent and ignores them.
Paddy put certain security measures into place and armed himself every time he left his home. The police were informed about one or two of the measures that Paddy had implemented, and he was subsequently arrested after taking his children to school. A futile search of his home for firearms took place, but police did find a kitchen knife with an 8-in. blade wrapped in foil inside his jeans pocket. A further search of his car unearthed two more daggers, one in the glove compartment and another in the driver’s door.
Initially, Paddy tried to claim that officers had planted a knife on him, but he did eventually concede that the weapons were his. When Paddy appeared in court, his solicitor told the magistrates, ‘Mr Conroy told the police very frankly that he believed his life was under threat. He has a genuine belief that people in high authority are out to get him. You might think it’s paranoia, but he has a genuine belief that his life is threatened by people. This is not a case where he’s out in the street using the knives. The knife he had in his pocket was wrapped up. It was, as he said, for his own protection, not to cause harm to anyone, unless they were going to harm him. He has held, and he still holds, the belief that people are after him, and that’s why he has knives. Perhaps in extraordinary circumstances they might be used.’ The magistrates accepted Paddy’s explanation for p
ossessing the knives and ordered him to carry out 80 hours of community service and pay £55 in court costs.
The warnings that the police had given Paddy about people wishing to execute him proved to be anything but just cautionary. One evening, he was invited to a secluded house by a man he believed to be a friend. It was only when Paddy entered the house that he began to feel all was not well. His host kept glancing nervously towards the door, and when there was a tap on the window he appeared to turn white. The man tried to tell Paddy that he was going to see who was outside, but all he could do was stutter and mumble instead.
Now convinced that foul play was afoot, Paddy followed the man out of the room and saw that he was opening the door to a well-known figure from the West End who had gone to live in Spain several years earlier. As Paddy stepped into the hallway, he came face to face with the man, who immediately thrust his right hand into the inside pocket of his jacket. Instinctively, Paddy pulled out a knife and lunged at the man, who stumbled backwards out of the door before turning and running away. Paddy slammed the front door shut and telephoned his friends, who arrived amidst the sound of screeching brakes and skidding tyres.
Turning his attention to his host, Paddy politely asked the trembling man at knifepoint who had wanted to have him murdered. ‘It’s a policeman, Paddy. That’s all I know. It’s a policeman,’ he whined. Paddy had no way of telling if the man was telling the truth or if he was simply trying to protect the guilty. Paddy explained to the jabbering wreck now curled up on the settee and weeping that he would be requiring a full explanation about the incident at some stage. He then walked out of the door, climbed into his friend’s car and was driven away.
Fog on the Tyne Page 23