Gangland UK: The Inside Story of Britain's Most Evil Gangsters (22 page)

Further arrests were made quickly, with Brian Field, Leonard Field, Goody, and Daly following Wilson into custody. The solicitor, John Wheater, was charged with conspiracy, and harbouring Leonard Field; the conspiracy charge being concerned with negotiations leading up to the sale of Leatherslade Farm. Finally, Roy ‘The Weasel’ James, who disguised himself by growing a beard, was arrested after a dramatic roof-top chase in St John’s Wood, where he had been living in a flat with Bruce Reynolds, who had fled much earlier. A further
£
12,000 in notes was recovered, but it would be another four years before the mastermind behind the heist was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in jail.

As there were over 200 Crown witnesses, the evidence took over three weeks to present. Most unforgettable was the unfortunate driver of the train, Jack Mills, unsteady on his feet, sometimes inaudible in his speech, gripping the top of the witness stand and plainly showing the
traces of the terrible beating he had received and from which he never recovered; indeed, he never returned to work. The total compensation he received from British Railways was a meagre
£
25. Due to the balaclavas the robbers had worn, he was unable to identify any of the men. In 1970, he died of leukaemia, which an inquest confirmed, perhaps unsurprisingly, to be unrelated to his injuries. As an innocent victim in such an infamous crime, he is very often mentioned when the subject is raised in the press, sometimes in the erroneous belief that his death was caused by his injuries from the robbery.

Most of the defendants then took the stand and testified in their own defence, although Wilson and James did not do so. It was difficult, if not impossible, to give any convincing answer to the Crown’s circumstantial evidence – for example, Hussey’s palm print on the lorry in the yard at the farm; Wisbey’s fingerprints on a bathroom rail; Welch’s palm print on a beer can; Wilson’s on the window sill; and James’s on a cat’s dish. Only Daly was lucky – his fingerprints had been found at the farm on a box of cards and tokens for playing Monopoly. But when his counsel submitted that there was no evidence to show when and where the prints got on the items – or, for that matter, where the set was at the time the impression was made – the judge accepted the submission and Daly was discharged and did not ‘Go to Jail’.

Another of the defendants, Ronald Biggs, had already been discharged by now – but only on a technicality which involved his being tried separately at a later date.

The verdict was delivered by the foreman at 10.30am on 26 March 1964, and public reaction to the sentences was, to some extent, shocked astonishment. Journalist
James Cameron, writing for the
Daily Herald
, pointed out that the gang would have been much more lightly punished if they had been convicted of second-degree murder, blackmail, and breaking a baby’s leg.

The story of the Great Train Robbery did not end with the trial, however. Two years later, in 1966, another member of the gang, James White, was sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment. That same year, Buster Edwards was also arrested and given 15 years. Bruce Reynolds had only
£
6,500 left when he was arrested in 1969 – and he went down for 25 years.

Bruce Reynolds was a career criminal, an accomplished housebreaker and jewel thief, who liked the high life and drove an Aston Martin. After the heist, he went on the run, living under several aliases abroad, and spending considerable time in South America before returning to Britain. Since his release in 1979, he has enjoyed a moderately high profile as a media ‘former criminal’ celebrity and his book,
The Autobiography of a Thief
, was generally well received. Reynold’s son, Nick, is a member of the group Alabama 3.

Charlie Wilson escaped from prison and stayed on the run for just over three years before being recaptured. On 12 August 1964 – just four months into his 30-year sentence – Wilson, then 32, was freed by a gang of three men who broke into Winson Green Prison in the early hours of the morning. They had stolen a ladder from a nearby builder’s yard to break into the grounds of a mental hospital next to the prison, and then used a rope ladder to scale the 20ft-high prison wall. They coshed one of the two patrolling warders on duty and tied him up, before opening Wilson’s cell door.

He took up residence outside Montreal, Canada, on Rigaud Mountain. In the upper-middle-class
neighbourhood
, where the large, secluded properties are surrounded by trees, Wilson was considered to be just another resident who enjoyed his privacy. It was only when he invited his cousin over from the UK to meet him, that Scotland Yard was able to track him down and recapture him on 24 January 1968.

Perhaps the best-known Great Train Robber, Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Biggs also escaped and lived with a beautiful young girlfriend in Brazil. Born in Lambeth, at the age of 18 he joined the RAF but was dishonestly discharged in 1949 for desertion and served two years in a military prison. In 1960, he married Charmian Brent, with whom he had three sons. He escaped from Wandsworth Prison in 1965 by scaling the wall with a rope ladder. He fled to Paris, where he acquired new identity papers and underwent plastic surgery. In 1970, he quietly moved to Adelaide, South Australia, where he worked in set construction for Channel 10. When a reporter recognised him, he fled to Blackburn North, Melbourne, staying for some time before again fleeing to Brazil in the same year. His wife and sons stayed behind in Australia.

In 1974, he was tracked down by British police in Rio de Janeiro, but could not be extradicted because the United Kingdom did not benefit from reciprocity of extradiction to Brazil. Additionally, Biggs’ then girlfriend, Raimunda de Castro, a nightclub dancer and prostitute, was pregnant; Brazilian law would not allow the parent of a Brazilian child to be extradicted. Therefore, he was able to live quite openly in Brazil, completely untouchable by the British authorities.
Despite evading justice for so long, however, Biggs admitted that life in Brazilian exile was not necessarily idyllic. ‘My only wish is to walk into a pub a British man and have a pint of bitter,’ he said wistfully. He spent the next three decades of his life as a fugitive and became something of a celebrity, despite having played a rather minor role in the actual robbery.

Eventually, just about broke and unable to meet mounting medical costs due to failing health, Biggs expressed a desire to return to his native country, fully aware that he would be arrested upon his arrival in England. He returned voluntarily on 7 May 2001, and was immediately arrested and re-imprisoned. The trip, on a private jet, was paid for by the
Sun
, which reportedly paid his son, Michael,
£
20,000, plus other expenses in return for exclusive rights on the news story. He still had 28 years of his sentence to serve.

Since then, Biggs has made several attempts at being released on compassionate grounds, and failed. In December 2007, he issued a further appeal from Norwich Prison. ‘I am an old man and often wonder if I truly deserve the extent of my punishment. I have accepted it and only want freedom to die with my family and not in jail. I hope Mr Straw (the then Home Secretary) decides to allow me to do that. I have been in jail a long time and I want to die a free man. I am sorry for what has happened. It has not been an easy ride over the years. Even in Brazil, I was a prisoner of my own making.’

Today, almost 45 years after the heist, it is still not certain how many people were involved in it or its organisation. No one knows who hit Jack Mills over the head and, if they do, they are not grassing anyone up.
Only some
£
400,000 of the total haul has been recovered. Even so, just like the Securitas job, the Great Train Robbery was a disaster for most of those involved in the daringly conceived but finally unsuccessful ‘big job’.

Train enthusiasts might be interested to note that one of the post office carriages involved in the robbery is now preserved at the Nene Valley Railway, near Peterborough, and has been restored to operational condition. The English Electric 2,000 hp Co-Co 1 Type c(4) designated D326 was cut up at Doncaster yet seemed to carry a curse. On 4 August 1965 it was stabled in a siding near Winson Green with no crew when it careered off in the direction of Birmingham New Street. At Monument Lane it crashed into a permanent way train and was derailed; to be towed away to Crewe on 17 August for major repairs.

As a result of this robbery, the British Railways rule book was amended. If stopped by a red signal, drivers had previously been instructed to contact the signaller by telephone – requiring them to leave the driving cab. After the change, drivers of mail trains were no longer allowed to leave the cab at any red signals and were always to keep their cab doors locked. These rules remained in force until the retirement of mail trains in the UK.

S
treet gangs, now more than ever in the UK, are developing strangleholds on their local communities to an unprecedented extent. And our current Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, proposes to slash British police manpower by 12,000 officers, and replace them with a police ‘Dad’s Army’ using the Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

And far from being a phenomenon limited to the capital, writer Paul Lashmar notes, ‘London is far from the only city infested by gun gangs.’

Teenagers Letisha Shakespeare, 17, and Charlene Ellis, 18, died on Thursday, 2 January 2003 when they were caught in the drive-by, gang-related crossfire of a violent
feud between Birmingham rivals, the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew. Charlene’s twin, Sophia, and their cousin, Cheryl Shaw, 17, were badly injured. The legal term to describe what happened is ‘transferred malice’. This means those responsible can still be charged with murder – even if they had meant to kill a member of a rival gang instead.

Gun crime is at an all-time high across the Midlands. In Nottingham, police declared themselves ‘astounded at the bravado’ of openly armed drug-dealers. Manchester has been nicknamed ‘Gunchester’ because of the gang shootouts in Moss Side, Longsight and Hulme. And the St Paul’s area of Bristol has become a battleground for the Aggi Crew and their rivals – the Hype Crew, the Mountain View Posse, the Back to Back Gang and the Gucci.

The events that led up to the drive-by shooting deaths of Letisha and Charlene began on Friday, 6 December 2002, when 24-year-old Yohanne Martin was shot dead as he sat in his Mercedes in West Bromwich High Street. Yohanne – whose street name was ‘13’ was a ‘shot-caller’ (a key member) of the Burger Bar Boys, whose territory included nearby Smethwick and Handsworth. The Johnson Crew were based in Aston and Lozells, the latter a loosely-defined area in the West of Birmingham. It is centred on Lozells Road, and is known for its
multiracial
population.

Later, in 2005, Lozells Road was the scene of violent riots on the night of 22 October, which left two men dead and a police officer shot and wounded. The riots were started by a rumour about a girl being raped, which had been broadcast on a pirate radio station.

Yohanne’s brother Nathan Martin, 26 – whose street
name was ‘23’ – believed the Johnson Crew were behind the killing, and particularly a man who was at the time known as ‘Mr X’. Martin began plotting his revenge, and later commented in the injustice that he perceived in the way the media was reporting the gangland feuds. ‘The shooting of the girls was in the headlines for weeks and weeks, but my brother’s death had been in the headlines for a day.’

Soon, Martin found a willing recruit in Michael Gregory, 23, whose sister Leona had been Yohanne’s girlfriend and had had a child with him. He also recruited 24-year-old Marcus Ellis, another gang member known as ‘E-Man’, who was coincidentally the half-brother of Charlene Ellis. Known as ‘Chunk’ because of his size, Gregory was given the job of co-ordinating the hit, and he bought a pay-as-you-go mobile phone and used it to negotiate the purchase of the getaway car, a red Ford Mondeo, from a dealer in Northampton. It was the use of this mobile phone that brought about their downfall.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 2002, the car was brought back to Birmingham and the windows were tinted because the gang did not want witnesses to get a good look at them – a motive the specialist tinter was unaware of. All the gang needed now was an opportunity, and it arrived in the early hours of 2 January 2003.

Rodrigo ‘Sonny’ Simms, 20, another member of the Burger Bar Gang, was at a party at the Uniseven salon, a hairdressers in Aston, which his cousin owned. He spotted several members of the Johnson Crew there and guided the killers into position just after 4.00am. Earlier that night, Jermaine Carty had been ‘bigging it up’ in
Rosie O’Brien’s nightclub in Solihull, taunting the Burger Bar Boys. Carty was later named in court by witnesses as being in the rival Johnson Crew, something he denied. Nevertheless, Carty was said to be one of the principal targets when the shooting started outside to the rear of the Uniseven salon.

Dressed in their favourite party clothes and ‘shades’, four teenage girls were on top form when they were dropped off by one of their mothers at the start of the new year’s night out. They posed for a photo in front of a Christmas tree, giggling and teasing each other, before heading off to a club. They began their evening on 1 January at RB’s club in Solihull, near Birmingham. From there, they moved on to an after-party at the Uniseven salon, in Aston, a few miles from Birmingham city centre on the A34. The A34 road acts as a boundary between the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew, both vying for control of the crack cocaine trade in central Birmingham.

Just after 4.00am, the girls joined a crowd seeking relief from the pounding music in the alley behind the salon. Jermaine Carty, who was regarded as having links to the Johnson Crew, had also appeared and was standing ominously nearby.

While the friends gossiped, the red Mondeo, its windows tinted, headlights off, cruised slowly by. ‘I noticed it because I saw a gun outside on the passenger side,’ Cheryl Shaw was later to tell the jury. ‘I saw the gun. I heard gunshots. It was like a machine-gun. I fell to the floor and got up and started running.’

The men in the Mondeo were armed with three weapons, including a Mac-10 submachine-gun (Military Armament Corporation Model 10), which can unleash a
six-second burst of fire. Nicknamed the ‘spray and pray’ because its fierce recoil makes it almost impossible to aim accurately, about 40 .45 ACP bullets were fired, in what was described as a ‘fusillade of shots’. This weapon is the most popular of its kind used by street gangsters in the US today.

After completing their bungled attack, they crew drove off and, a few hours later, the getaway car was found burned out; it was some time before Martin, Ellis and Simms were arrested and charged with murder.

As a chilly dawn broke on 2 January, residents were already blaming the shooting on the two gangster crews. Over the past ten years, the gangs had grown rich on drug profits. Young black males, often poorly educated with few prospects, had become powerful and feared. But many had been killed. If a gangster was murdered, a rival was hunted down and taken out. If passers by were caught in the crossfire – too bad.

While police quickly dismissed any rumours that the victims had been involved with the gangs, or drugs, they did initially focus upon the killing of Christopher Clarke in March 2000. Yohanne Martin had been charged with Clarke’s murder but the case was dropped. Detectives believed that after Martin’s death, the Burger Bar gang put together a team and ‘killing kit’ – mobile phone, car and weapons – and waited until they heard that Carty was at the Uniseven party and targeted him.

Establishing a motive was one thing; identifying those responsible was quite another. The pressure for a result was huge. The mothers of the girls claimed the authorities were failing to tackle the gangs, and the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said he would not rest until
the killers were found. But police hit a brick wall when they looked for witnesses. They identified 75 people they believed could have provided valuable evidence and, as might be expected, all refused to testify.

Eventually, officers started looking at Yohanne Martin’s associates, particularly at those who were closest to him at the critical times. Largely through analysis of telephone records, they established that, around a month before the shooting, his younger brother Nathan had visited a car dealer in Northampton with a friend, Michael Gregory – whose sister was mother to Yohanne’s child. The pair sent two stooges to buy the car – the red Mondeo, a vehicle identical to the one used in the murders and identical to the car found burned out shortly afterwards. This was a solid lead.

Further telephone traffic analysis showed that, as they arrived back in Birmingham, Nathan made a further call to a Marcus Ellis. The net was tightening on the gang, and police intelligence confirmed that Ellis was a
shot-caller
for the Burger Bar Gang.

Yet more probing led detectives to what they believed was a ‘team phone’, bought to co-ordinate the attack. Gregory had been in charge of that phone, and police and police liaison officers with the mobile phone company soon plotted a time/call graph, and focused on calls between the phone and a man called Rodrigo Simms, who was at the Uniseven party. Simms received a string of calls just before and after the shooting. He had been the ‘spotter’ who had guided the ‘gun car’ in.

In the weeks after the shootings, there was a lull in the violence but it soon began again. One of the most shocking killings came at the end of 2003 when another
teenager, 19-year-old Daniel Bogle, was ‘blown away’ by masked gunmen in Smethwick, between Aston and West Bromwich. Tumbi ‘Muscles’ Beckford, 21, and his accomplices were found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

When the double murder case came to trial, Nathan Martin admitted playing a part in buying the Mondeo but he said he didn’t know what the car was intended for. He also denied being a member of the Burger Bar Gang and having anything to do with the shooting, claiming that old favourite alibi, ‘I was at home in bed with my girlfriend when it happened.’

When asked why he had failed to mention this ‘alibi’ beforehand, he said, ‘It’s bad what happened to them girls, but I didn’t want to get involved. My brother had been murdered, my mum was having a very bad time, I was the only thing my family had left. I lied to protect myself and my family.’

None of this, of course, washed with prosecuting counsel, Timothy Ragget QC, who snapped, ‘Your brother
was
a gangster and you
are
a gangster. You committed crimes together… you were inseparable.’

Martin, who made every effort to look like butter wouldn’t melt, replied meekly, ‘No. We were close, he was my only brother but he was trying to reform… to put behind him, to make something of his life.’

During the trial, another man, Tafarwa Beckford – half-brother of pop star Jamelia – was acquitted of murder on the judge’s directions because the only evidence against him came from a witness, a jailbird known by the secret name of ‘Mark Brown’, whom the judge had concluded had been lying in an effort to have
a current prison sentence reduced. Another sibling, Kairo Beckford, 21, was later convicted of shooting Daniel Bogle three times in the head. Beckford and his
codefendants
– Josiah Faure, 23, David Perry, 27, and Anslow, 22 – will each serve a minimum of 18 years.

DS David Mirfield, who led the double murder inquiry, admitted that the gang still saw themselves as ‘untouchables’, but today hopes the murders of the young girls – and the convictions of the killers – will lead to change. ‘Four young, innocent girls were shot and two were killed,’ he has said. ‘If that does not wake up a community and a nation, then nothing can.’

Another large gang rivalling the Burger Bar Boys in the Midlands is the Muslim Birmingham Panthers, which was formed in the early 1990s. The members are mostly Pakistani Pashtuns and Mirpuri/Kashmiris, and there are also other Muslims of other ethnic groups such as black Africans, Bangladeshis, Indians, black Caribbeans and Afghans. The Panthers operate in Lozells, Handsworth, Alum Rock, Sparkhill, Sparkbrook, Aston and Small Heath. It was formed to protect the Muslim community of Birmingham from white power skinheads and black gangs such as the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Gang. Membership of the Panthers is around 1,000, and they also have many members from Niazi and Durrani clans.

London, being the nation’s capital, is today the centre of street warfare. Ladbroke Grove is run by a variety of Jamaican and black British drug gangs, none of which has overall control.

Harlesdon is mainly run by the Jamaican Lock City Crew, who see themselves as the real Yardies, while the Much Love Crew are mostly local homeboys. Three deaths and 45 other attempted murders or non-fatal shootings took place on this patch in the first half of 2003 and the numbers are rising.

Southall is the home turf for Asian gangs with such names as Holy Smokes and Tooti Nung, and the up-
and-coming
rivals, the Bhatts and Kanaks.

Camden is crewed by the Drummond Street Boys, who are a much smaller set-up than their rivals but very keen to recruit and expand their territory.

Not surprisingly, Soho and Chinatown are run by the Triads who specialise in gambling, drugs, extortion and people trafficking.

King’s Cross is where the Albanian gangs rule and traffic girls to feed prostitution rings in all of Britain’s major sex districts, and they are running an increasing number of ‘saunas’. The Metropolitan Police estimates they control up to 80 per cent of off-street prostitution in London, as well as smuggling immigrants from the Balkans. Well armed, they are challenged by the Turks for control of heroin supplies.

Islington is the home turf of the white, ‘working-class’ A-team which still holds sway in this part of inner-city north London, despite intense police operations over the past 15 years.

Finsbury Park is dominated by Turkish gangs who run heroin rackets, despite frequent armed police raids and arrests among many of the main families. Politicised Kurdish gangs also run drugs through a network of clubs like the Turks, and with them control an estimated 70 per
cent of the 30 tonnes of heroin imported into Britain every year.

Tottenham hosts two major black gangs – the Spanglers and the Fireblades – who take their name from the Honda Fireblade 2 motorcycles ridden by gang members.

Bangladeshi and other Asian gangs proliferate around Brick Lane, and are widening their power base beyond local drugs sales and petty crime. Second-generation teenagers give themselves names such as the Brick Lane Massive and the Stepney Posse. Lesser groups include the Bengal Tigers, Cannon Street Posse, the Shadwell Crew, and the East Boys of Bethnal Green.