Essex Boys, The New Generation (29 page)

If there had been any more cartridges found in the gun, it wouldn’t have taken a super sleuth to work out that another gun had been used in the attack. As a result of this evidence, the police chose to ignore their own initial claim that two gunmen had burst into Carla Evans’ home. They also disregarded Boshell’s evidence about a double-barrelled shotgun being taken to the scene that night, and the victims’ evidence that up to six shots were fired.

Unlike a pump-action shotgun, a double-barrelled shotgun only holds two cartridges. When fired, the cartridges are not ejected from the weapon and therefore they wouldn’t have been found at the scene. The fact that an ‘arc of pellets’ were in a wall (one shot), the top of the settee had been blown away (two shots) and three people had received serious gunshot wounds (five shots) indicates that the victims and Boshell were telling the truth about a second gunman. Three shots fired by the pump-action shotgun and two by the double-barrelled shotgun tallies up with the physical evidence and statements by Boshell and the victims. The most convincing evidence to support this scenario came from a man called Jay Tolfree, who was in the house when the shootings occurred. He had been upstairs checking that the children were in bed when he heard a loud bang. Tolfree then heard gunshots and, after peering through the banisters towards the lounge, he said he saw two figures run along the hallway towards the front door.

This man had no reason to lie – he was not in shock or in danger and had an unobstructed bird’s-eye view of the gunmen that night – yet he was not believed. If Alvin was carrying a shotgun, as the evidence suggests, the police were wrong to offer him any sort of deal and he certainly should not have been allowed to plead innocent whilst blaming Percival.

One of the many disconcerting factors during the trial was the prosecution’s efforts to establish that Boshell had been murdered between 11 p.m. and 11.30 p.m. This was absolutely crucial to their case. Their version of events was that Gordon Osborne had heard Boshell being shot three times at approximately 11.30 p.m. and Damon Alvin had then run to the telephone kiosk, where he had telephoned his wife approximately eighteen minutes later. It was a credible theory supported by the fact that Osborne had intimate knowledge of firearms and the sounds they made when fired. Furthermore, he had no way of knowing that Boshell had indeed been shot three times. If Osborne could have been shown to be mistaken, the case against all three defendants would have collapsed.

Telephone records proved that a call had been made to Clair’s mobile phone at the time and from the location that Alvin had claimed. Griffiths, Percival and Walsh said that they had all been with Alvin at Walsh’s flat at the time the call was made to Clair and the time the murder is said to have taken place. The trio’s statements had only been challenged because Kevin Walsh had rung Alvin’s mobile at 11.17 p.m. and 11.47 p.m. Understandably, the police wanted to know why Walsh had to ring Alvin if he was in the same room as him.

Phone records have since proved that both calls only lasted a second or two and were not answered. This indicates that Alvin was initially telling the truth when he told the police that he had mislaid his phone. These two extremely brief calls had been Walsh, at Alvin’s request, ringing Alvin’s phone in the hope that he would hear and then be able to find it. On both occasions, the calls had gone directly to Alvin’s answering machine and so Walsh had immediately terminated the call. If Alvin had been at the allotments, as the prosecution claim, and Walsh had been ringing him from his flat, surely Walsh would have tried calling Alvin for longer than a second or two and again shortly afterwards. If a call goes directly to an answering machine, it often indicates that the person is currently on another call and might be free momentarily.

Clair and several others had also tried ringing Alvin numerous times that night without success. Alvin has since admitted that Clair had been sulking when she arrived at Walsh’s flat because he had not answered his phone. ‘I explained to her that I did not realise it was off,’ Alvin had said.

Alvin claimed that he had mislaid his phone and to prove that fact he had called his own phone twice using Clair’s, just as Walsh had done earlier. These two calls to Alvin’s mobile are recorded as being made from Clair’s phone at approximately 12.32 a.m. and the other a few seconds later.

Between 9.17 p.m. and 12.37 a.m. a total of 70 incoming calls were either diverted or forwarded to Alvin’s voicemail. This proves beyond doubt that Alvin had either mislaid or switched off his phone between the time he picked Boshell up and the time his wife arrived at Walsh’s flat. Walsh’s explanation, therefore, should have been accepted.

When Alvin faced the charge of murdering Boshell, he had denied being the one who had called his wife at 11.48 p.m. from the public telephone box. He said that he had been in Walsh’s flat at the time. One of Walsh’s calls to Alvin’s mobile had been made at 11.47 p.m. That is just one minute before the call that was made from the public telephone box. Everyone accepts that Alvin could not possibly have been in two places at once.

Alvin went on to accuse Percival of the murder and changed his story to say that it was he who had made the call to his wife. This version of events tied in nicely with Osborne’s evidence and so it was never scrutinised or challenged by the authorities. The fact that Clair had previously refused to sign her statement, in which she said that Alvin was the one who had made the call, should have set alarm bells ringing loud and clear.

Unable to reach Alvin because his mobile phone was being ignored or was mislaid or switched off, could it possibly have been Boshell who had telephoned Clair to ask where her husband had got to because he was waiting for him? What possible motive would a young girl of good character like Kate Griffiths have for lying about Alvin being at her flat? Clair, on the other hand, had assisted her husband in the past by claiming she had received death threats from fictional loan sharks. She also said that she had been frogmarched to a cash machine by a gang and was forced to withdraw large amounts of cash. Is it beyond comprehension that she may have lied for him on this occasion also?

It was cold, wet and windy the night Boshell died. They were certainly not ideal conditions for hanging around in the dark, waiting for a partner in crime to turn up. If it had been Boshell who had telephoned Clair, Alvin could have been picked up by his wife from Walsh’s flat shortly afterwards and then dropped off to meet Boshell at the allotments. It is a perfectly valid theory: unless, of course, Gordon Osborne is to be believed. According to his evidence, Boshell was already dead when the call to Clair was made. It was quite a shock, therefore, when the jury was informed that Osborne, one of the star witnesses, would not be attending the trial.

The prosecution explained that he was now living in Spain in fear of the defendant and his associates and had therefore refused to return to Britain. His fear was such that he had even declined to give his evidence via a video link.

Percival’s defence team seemed to think that Osborne might have had another reason for not wishing to return to the UK. Essex police had issued a warrant for his arrest in relation to an allegation involving a sex offence. When they had visited Osborne in Spain prior to Alvin’s trial, he had told them that he was aware of this allegation but refused to comment on it further. He insisted that this was not the reason he would not attend the trial, and this was, surprisingly, accepted by the court.

In June 2001, Osborne had made and signed a statement which included a declaration that he had done so of his own free will and was willing to attend court if required. He was, therefore, under no illusions about his obligation to attend court and give evidence. I say he was under no illusions because Gordon Osborne is no stranger to the workings of the legal system. Osborne has in fact been convicted of 65 offences, including theft, deception, burglary, assault and impersonating a police officer. I would suggest that the only reason Osborne did not want to return to England was that he did not want to risk exchanging his Spanish villa for a prison cell. He must have known that he would be arrested as soon as he set foot in the country in relation to the sex offence. As a result of the court accepting Osborne’s claim that he ‘feared for his safety’ and therefore wouldn’t attend the trial, his statement was read out to the jury and the defence were denied an opportunity to cross-examine him.

It was argued in court that Osborne had been mistaken about the shots he claimed to have heard and it was suggested that the murder had taken place much later that night. In an effort to substantiate this, the defence summoned Hansel Andrayas to tell her story. Like Osborne, Andrayas had spoken to the police during their house-to-house inquiries. She had told them that around 2 a.m. on the night of the murder she had heard a loud bang, a noise like an echo, and then further noises, like a fence being climbed or broken. She added that the noises had awoken her youngest daughter. Andrayas then described hearing a van driving fast along the road. The vehicle had made ‘skidding noises’ as it left the scene. The time given by Andrayas did not suit the prosecution’s version of events, and the judge appeared to agree that her evidence was irrelevant to the case. He suggested the noises Andrayas had heard were simply ‘things that go bump in the night’.

Andrayas’s home is one of the nearest buildings to the spot where Boshell met his death. If anybody near the scene of the crime was ever going to hear anything that occurred that night, it was the occupants of her home or a neighbour. It is also worth noting that her account is supported by the fact that her youngest daughter also heard the noises because she was actually woken up by them. The initial loud bang that Andrayas says she heard may well have been the first shot being fired. It is agreed by all parties that Boshell was standing a few feet away from the gunman when this shot was fired, therefore this sound would have been loud and clear. The muzzle was put to Boshell’s head when the second and third shots were fired into him, so his head would have acted somewhat like a silencer, muffling the sound of the last two shots. These noises could well have been the echo sounds that Andrayas described.

Another interesting point about Andrayas’s evidence is that Alvin appears to agree with some of it in his account of the murder. Her statement supported Alvin’s story that he had clambered over a fence in the dark, because she reported hearing sounds like ‘a fence being climbed or broken’. Likewise, Osborne’s evidence supports Alvin’s story that he fled to the telephone box after the murder and rang his wife. Is it merely a coincidence that after spending a year on remand, reading all the case papers, Alvin’s account of the murder just happens to be supported by the independent evidence of both parties? Some believe that he had incorporated every possible version of events into his story to ensure it sounded credible. Alvin certainly convinced a lot of the people present at Chelmsford Crown Court that his story was honest and true.

The jury took nearly 25 hours to reach its verdict. Kate Griffiths was found not guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Kevin Walsh, who faced the same charge, based on the same evidence as Griffiths, was found guilty and sentenced to three and a half years.

Ricky Percival was found guilty of all ten charges that he faced. Judge Christopher Ball QC told him: ‘You have been convicted of what I judge to be the brutal and cruel killing of Dean Boshell, one of your criminal associates, who had the misfortune that night to cross you. The manner of his killing has not surprisingly been described as an execution. This was the most wicked of murders by a man who plainly suffers from no psychiatric disorders, but simply a man with a grave and aggressive violent streak running through him. You are an unstable and volatile young man with a cold and ruthless streak. Anyone that crosses you, however slightly, is at great risk of harm.’

Rooted to the floor of the dock and staring directly at the judge, Percival listened in total disbelief as he was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he should serve at least 28 years.

The following morning it was refreshing to read in the local newspaper that Essex police had announced that they would be ‘reviewing evidence’ of criminal matters raised in the trial.

Surely now, I thought, the silent witnesses would be contacted and questioned and the truth regarding some of Alvin’s rather more bizarre claims would begin to emerge?

16

  SILENCE IN COURT  

The Wickford Robbery

As I read through the documentation
that had convicted Ricky Percival, I was astounded by the number of witnesses to crimes who had not been interviewed by police or called to give evidence at the trial. Former Detective Sergeant Moran, Nipper Ellis, Steve Penfold, Carla Shipton, Clayton Shipton, Stacie Harris, Trevor Adams and Ronnie Tretton to name but a few were all central figures in Alvin’s stories, but none of them were required to attend court.

It didn’t make sense to me at first. Surely, if Alvin was a witness of truth, DS Moran should have been charged with offences relating to corruption and Carla Shipton should have been charged with armed robbery. Trevor Adams should have been charged with assisting an offender and Ronnie Tretton, Nipper Ellis and Steve Penfold with serious conspiracy offences. As I began to think of more names that fell into this category, such as Danny Percival, Gavin Spicer, Martin Hall, Norman Hall, Henry Swann and Carlton Leach, the reason for their omission suddenly dawned on me. If the police had taken Alvin at his word and charged everybody he claimed was guilty, the trial would have consisted of more than 20 or 30 defendants calling Alvin a liar and Alvin alone pointing his accusing finger back, claiming that everybody but him was mistaken. No jury would realistically take the word of one man over that of twenty or thirty-plus people.

The decision by the police not to interview so many important witnesses is a concern. Surely it is their job to gather all the available evidence and then present it to the courts so that a jury can decide who is guilty and who is not. They would be failing the public if they cherry-picked whom they interviewed so that the evidence would fit their often misguided beliefs.

Rather than wait for the findings of the review that was allegedly being conducted by Essex police, I decided to make my own enquiries so that I could discover what evidence the jury had been deprived of hearing. The most important but absent witness from the trial in relation to the Wickford snooker club robbery was the assistant manager and Boshell’s ex-girlfriend, Carla Shipton.

Alvin claimed that Carla not only conspired with him to rob the premises but also actually assisted him. According to Alvin, Carla sat in his vehicle before the robbery. They had agreed, according to Alvin, that Carla would leave the snooker club door open when she was leaving the premises at the end of her shift.

Alvin went on to say that Carla might actually have rung him to reassure him that everything was OK before she had finished her shift that night. In my opinion, these claims were blatantly untrue because Carla was not at work at the snooker club that night. She couldn’t, therefore, have telephoned Alvin to advise him if any problems had arisen there. I decided to try and contact Carla to discuss Alvin’s allegations with her. It was no easy task.

I spent three days in Essex visiting her old acquaintances, several addresses I had been given and all her known haunts. Eventually, one of the numerous ‘please call me’ notes of which I had left a trail throughout Essex yielded a result. We arranged to meet at a quiet pub on the outskirts of Basildon one Saturday night. Twenty minutes after the agreed time, I had resigned myself to the fact that Carla had changed her mind and wasn’t going to appear. I was not relishing the long drive back to Birmingham knowing that my journey had been in vain, so I decided to ring her in the hope that she was simply running late.

‘Is everything OK?’ I asked when Carla eventually answered her phone.

‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘I don’t want to go into the main bar. I’m in the small room at the back of the pub. Where are you?’

Moments later, I was introducing myself to a tall, attractive girl whose eyes darted around the room nervously.

‘Promise me that Damon won’t ever find me,’ she said, whilst looking over at the door to check that I hadn’t brought company. ‘That’s all I’m bothered about. I’m really worried that he’s going to find me.’

I bought Carla a drink, found us both a seat and set about trying to calm her and reassure her. ‘Damon Alvin doesn’t exist any more,’ I told her. ‘He has a new identity and is subject to the rules and regulations of the witness-protection programme. If he was to contact, threaten or assault you or anybody else, the protection he and his family enjoy would be revoked and he would probably be returned to prison.’

‘You don’t understand what he is like,’ Carla replied. ‘Somebody upset him before – he saw them making a call in a phone box, he opened the door, squirted them with ammonia and set fire to them. I don’t know for sure if that’s true, but it’s what he used to tell me. Perhaps he was just trying to scare me into keeping quiet about matters that related to him, I really don’t know. But if he was just trying to scare me, it certainly worked.’

Once she had relaxed, which took quite some time, I asked Carla to tell me about the night of the robbery and the events surrounding it. Despite the passage of time, she remembered all that had happened quite clearly. Her fear no doubt ensures that her memories of Damon Alvin will never leave her.

‘On 20 August 1999, the snooker hall where I worked was robbed by two men,’ Carla began. ‘I wasn’t working that particular night, but I’d gone to the club to pick my brother up. He wasn’t employed there full-time, but he did work the occasional shift. When my brother and I were leaving that night, we saw a couple of guys hanging around outside, but that’s not unusual. The club was in an area that was regularly in the local newspapers at that time because of the problems caused by young lads hanging around there.

‘A few days after the robbery, the police interviewed all members of staff, including myself. Having assisted the police, I heard no more about it and considered the matter to be closed. The police contacted me again a few months after Dean’s murder and said they wished to talk to me. My life had moved on since my relationship with Dean had ended and I didn’t really wish to get involved, but they were insistent. They agreed that they wouldn’t come to my home and we could meet at a location of my choosing for an informal chat. I eventually arranged to meet them at a pub called the Shepherd and Dog, which is on the outskirts of Basildon.

‘Two officers came to see me, one was male, the other female. They didn’t ask, they told me that they knew Damon Alvin and Ricky Percival had carried out the robbery two years earlier at the snooker club. Whilst we were talking, the female officer received a call on her mobile phone during which Dean’s murder was discussed. I cannot say for sure, but it appeared to me that the call had been pre-planned. The female officer, who was sat directly in front of me, accidentally “let slip” that Damon had murdered Dean. The call, as far as I know, was from someone at police headquarters. I obviously couldn’t hear everything that was being said. After I had “overheard” that Damon had murdered Dean, the female officer feigned shock and said to me, “Oh, I am so sorry, you were not meant to hear that.” She then turned away from me and cupped her hand over the phone.

‘When the call had finished, the officers told me that I would have to make a statement saying that Damon and Percival had carried out the robbery. They said that if I refused to do so, I would be arrested for armed robbery. I told the officers that I had no idea who had robbed the snooker club and therefore, regardless of the consequences, I was unable to help them. Despite their threat to arrest me, the officers asked no further questions and left.

‘Approximately five years later, I received a phone call out of the blue and a detective informed me that they had now decided to arrest me for armed robbery. I was absolutely terrified. “I’m not in Essex,” I replied. “I have a new life in London, I don’t need this.” Despite my pleas for the matter to remain firmly in my past, the detective insisted that I should hand myself in.

‘I met the detective at a police station in Essex, where I was formally arrested for the snooker club robbery. I was told that the renewed interest in the robbery had arisen following Damon Alvin’s decision to turn supergrass. I was questioned at length, photographed, fingerprinted and bailed to reappear at the police station, pending further inquiries.

‘The police told me that Dean had used me to glean information about the snooker club so that they could rob it. I know that isn’t true. Damon controlled Dean. If anybody was using me, it was Damon. Dean didn’t have the brains to plan a robbery.

‘Because I was so frightened, I told the police that I saw Percival and Damon when I walked out of the snooker club on the night of the robbery. I said they were just standing there. I had walked past them and gone home. A few days before I was due to answer my bail, I received a phone call from the police, who advised me that there was no reason for me to attend the police station as no decision regarding charging me had yet been made. As far as I know, I am still on bail for armed robbery. It’s not a nice thing to have hanging over your head. My life is in limbo.’

I was already aware from reading Carla’s statement that she had named Percival as one of the men she had seen outside the snooker club. Carla had also said that she had known it was Percival because Alvin and Boshell had once taken her to his home. She had described Percival and his home in great detail and this appeared to be conclusive evidence of Percival’s involvement in the crime. But I spoke to Percival and his family and they were all adamant that neither Carla nor Boshell had ever set foot in their home. As I was to find out, like most of the evidence in this case, if it looked like it was true and sounded like it was true, then generally it wasn’t.

When I asked Carla to describe the night she had first met Percival, she said, ‘Damon was giving Dean and me a lift home from his house one night. He said he had to stop off somewhere. We were in Southend when he pulled up outside a house and said, “This is where Ricky lives.” We got out of the car and, after a few moments, the door of the house opened and we all went inside. When we walked in, there was a long hallway, which led into the kitchen. Adjacent to the kitchen was a conservatory. I was told to sit in the kitchen and not move. They all went into the conservatory and I was left alone. I would describe Ricky Percival as follows: six feet tall, muscular, shaved head, tattooed, staring eyes and a very deep voice.’

The house Carla had described does not resemble Percival’s in any shape or form, and her description of him is totally inaccurate. He is muscular, but he is not six feet tall. He doesn’t have ‘staring eyes’, he doesn’t have any tattoos and anybody who has ever heard him talk will tell you that his voice is the exact opposite of ‘very deep’. Whoever’s home Alvin and Boshell had taken Carla to that night, it certainly wasn’t Percival’s.

To confirm what I now assumed, I showed Carla a photograph of Percival taken around the time of the robbery. With a look of total disbelief on her face, Carla exclaimed, ‘I can say with one million per cent certainty that the guy I met with Alvin and Dean was not Ricky Percival. It’s just what they told me. I was led to believe that the person I met was Percival, but after seeing the photo I know it was not him. I did name Percival, but only because I was told it was him. I only had Damon’s word that it was true.’

The police should have arranged an identity parade or what is known as a ‘Viper identity parade’, which is a similar process using photographs or video images instead of people. I say that because in Alvin’s account of the robbery he says that the only time Percival and Carla ever met was in the car outside the snooker club. I find it odd that the police did not go back to Alvin and ask him about Carla’s alleged visit to Percival’s home. It is equally surprising that after Carla named Percival and Alvin as the people she saw outside the club that night, the police did not require her to attend the trial. There was certainly no other witness who identified the robbers.

I have no idea if Carla Shipton is being honest about whether she has met Percival or not – that should have been something for the jury to decide. I am in no doubt, however, that Damon Alvin lied throughout his account of the robbery. For instance, he has said that he punched the manager once, and, after securing his hands with cable ties, Percival stood guard over him with a gun. Alvin’s claim that he only struck the manager once is a far cry from his victim’s recollection of the attack.

The manager told the police, ‘I was squirted in the face with a substance which burned my eyes and made me lose my breath. One of the males then started to punch me in the face, which caused me pain and made me fall to the floor. The same male then started to shout at me, “Where’s the keys, where’s the fucking keys?” He continued to punch me as he shouted. I told them that I didn’t want any hassle and I would get them the keys. The male continued to shout at me and hit me. Whilst I was on the floor, I told the male that there was no point hitting me as I couldn’t show him where the keys were if he did. At some point, I noticed the other male was standing over me and appeared to be holding a silver-grey handgun. As a result of this incident, I have a black left eye, which is swollen. I have a number of red marks around my right eye and an eight-inch weal mark from my left eye to the top of my head.’

If Alvin could inflict so much damage with a single punch, he should have given up drug dealing and robbery and taken up boxing. It is my view that Alvin was being at best liberal with the truth during his account of the robbery. Boshell’s informant evidence regarding the incident raises more questions than it answers because of his lack of credibility. The victim’s testimony contradicts that of the prosecution’s star witness, and an extremely important witness was not required to attend the trial. How could a jury say with any degree of certainty that Percival was guilty of that robbery? Apart from Alvin, there is nobody who can say that Percival was even in Wickford that night.