Gangland UK: The Inside Story of Britain's Most Evil Gangsters (5 page)

‘Yardie’ is a term stemming from the slang name given to occupants of government yards in Trenchtown, a neighbourhood in West Kingston, Jamaica. Trenchtown was originally built as a housing project following devastation caused by Hurricane Charlie in 1951. Each development was built around a central courtyard with communal cooking facilities. Due to the poverty endemic in the neighbourhood, crime and gang violence became rife, leading the occupants of Trenchtown to be in part stigmatised by the term ‘Yardie’. Today, in the UK, they drive top-of-the-range BMWs, flaunt designer gold ‘bling-bling’ jewellery and carry automatic guns as a weapon of choice. In terms of a reputation for ruthless violence, they could one day rival the Triads or Mafia.

But if the Gunns thought they could even begin to emulate these ‘gangstas’, in terms of drug and arms dealing, as well as robbery, a lifestyle synonymous with violence – impulse shootings and gangland-style executions used to sort out internal squabbles – then they had to be living in cloud cuckoo land.

To further debunk their pseudo Robin Hood image, the Gunns most certainly did not rob from the rich to give to the poor. To begin with, the investigation into the Gunns and their activities cost millions of pounds, all of which was provided courtesy of the taxpayer. For that matter, they hadn’t even had the intelligence to rip off the rich – theirs was not a world of international banking frauds, credit-card-cloning, international
carring
enterprises or links with Eastern European master criminals. In reality, the Gunns robbed, brutalised, dealt in drugs, threatened, extorted, bullied, corrupted, terrorised, tortured, murdered and conspired, all with
the sole aim of filling their own wallets at the expense of others.

And the seat of the Gunns’ empire? A rundown council house on the Bestwood Estate, Nottingham, with their communications centre only a short walk away… at their mum’s house.

And how did the Gunns spend their ill-gotten gains? No Rolexes or Bentleys for them, but they could muster up a clapped-out old car or two, and drink themselves stupid in a few local pubs – one of which has since been demolished in remembrance of Colin’s patronage.

Perhaps Colin Gunn’s crew could bear comparison with Robin’s Merry Men? Unfortunately not – they turned out to be a bunch of semi-illiterate hoodies, who would ‘grass’ up their own grandmothers to save their own skins. Two crooked cops, one of whom sold his soul for measly discounts on cheap suits. It should also be remembered that Robin’s legendary band of men managed to live in hiding undetected in Sherwood Forest, leaving the Sheriff exasperated at every turn. Colin Gunn, however, intellectually challenged as he was, managed to leave a critical paper trail that led the Sheriff’s men to his own front door.

Levity aside, the Gunns have caused mayhem within the confines of the City of Nottingham. Sure, they plundered and murdered and, in some respects, they ‘took care of business’ on their own doorstep. They committed crimes which the city would rather forget – indeed, my many requests for the local newspaper and the local police to contribute to this chapter have been ignored. One may wonder why.

At the end of the day, it is the people of
Nottinghamshire who have had to foot the bill for its law enforcement agency’s efforts to bring the Gunns to justice. It has been a million-pound expenditure, one that has been funded by decent, law-abiding, citizens. And one view prevailing among many in the area is that if the police had adopted a proactive approach – akin to the old Bobbies on the beat – to dealing with local crime when the problem first arose, instead of consigning finite financial and manpower resources to form filling and office filing, the problems caused by the Gunn brothers may never have escalated to such destructive proportions.

In retrospect, the lack of inner-city, proactive,
three-strikes
-and-you’re-out policing and hardline law enforcement was a major contributory factor in giving the Gunn brothers licence to continue as they did. And some connected with the Gunns’ history in Nottingham believe that the police must bear some responsibility in the murders perpetrated or sanctioned by the Gunns. It also beggars belief that two Nottinghamshire police officers and two BT workers were part of this criminal enterprise.

The vacuum left by the Gunns on the Bestwood Estate will be filled by other wannabe gangsters. The police, with one eye on their ever-diminishing budget, and the other eye focused on looking after more affluent areas – the better addresses always receive a faster response time – may inevitably allow the lessons from Brothers Gunn to slip conveniently into local folklore.

Robin Hood? Somehow, during the writing of this chapter, I have kind of warmed to the guy… tights and all. Do Colin Gunn and his cronies bear comparison?

No comparison at all.

A
t the time of writing, Kenneth James Noye, Britain’s most infamous villain, is 60. The essential difference between him and other gangland figures such as the Krays and the Richardsons is that he had the vision and the means to infiltrate legitimate business.

And the comparisons between Colin Gunn and Kenny Noye are as chalk and cheese – an untaxed, beaten-up Skoda or a top-of-the-list Land Rover, with which Kenny Noye, as we shall soon learn, was uniquely linked. Kenny had class by the truckload; the Gunns had none.

Noye would regularly drink at the Hilltop Hotel near his home where the then aristocracy of gangland, the Krays and the Richardsons, the Haywards, Frankie Frazer and others would gather to quaff Dom Perignon
and watch the cabaret. The Gunns mixed with juvenile chavs, watched the occasional porn video, urinating the proceeds of their crimes against a pub wall.

Kenneth Noye Esquire dealt in millions of pounds of gold bullion, while Mr Gunn, according to his police arrest paperwork, wore a few items of over-the-top ‘yellow metal jewellery on his person’.

Kenny Noye built up a solid reputation as a ‘fence’ who could shift anything, and he was an ‘armourer’, who could provide guns through his pal Sidney Wink. And while Colin Gunn lived on a rundown estate, Kenneth Noye owned a 20-acre private estate in West Kingsdown, a civil parish and a small village near Sevenoaks, Kent. Colin did own some property – a garden shed. He did not have a villa overseas, as did Kenny, who owned a hilltop mansion in Altanterra, Spain.

Colin Gunn was married to Lisa Unwin, upon whom he showered food vouchers, milk tokens, and allowed her the use of a beat-up old car. Mr Noye, on the other hand, bought his wife, Brenda, a squash club, and lived what only can be described as the lifestyle of the
nouveau riche
– sporting expensive clothes, jewellery and limos – and had several ‘tabloid-stunner’ female companions on the go. These included his exotic South American mistress, with her equally exotic name – Mina Al Taiba.

Kenny Noye was slim, well-proportioned and handsome. Colin Gunn was not what you would call good-looking. He was shaven-headed, with a phsyique not built for speed, except in short, breathless bursts when running from the law. The former, one might introduce to one’s daughter; the latter, you would hide the dear girl in a cellar, probably for many years.

Mr Gunn used low-life thugs to do his dirty work, while Mr Noye used a worldwide web of heavy-hitters to do his bidding. Gunn didn’t have a bank account, while Noye had more banking options than the Inland Revenue.

The doorbell of Kenny’s Hollywood Cottage, in West Kingsdown, Kent, triggered a stereo blasting out Shirley Bassey singing the theme tune to the James Bond film
Goldfinger
. The Gunns favoured hammer-on-the-
door-til
-you-get-a-response’.

In 1997, after being arrested by Scotland Yard for receiving stolen goods, Kenney joined a Freemason’s lodge which had a large number of police officers among the Brotherhood. He mixed with ‘premier league’ villains such as John ‘Little Legs’ Lloyd, and the legendary Freddie Foreman. He had enough folding money to be able to fly to Miami with
£
50,000 to invest in land. One deal alone resulted in a net profit for Noye and his associates of
£
600,000.

But the real money came from gold smuggled in from Africa, Kuwait and Brazil. Between 1982–84, Kenny ran smuggling operations worth a staggering
£
35 million, and his own cut was just under
£
4.5 million.

Kenny Noye stabbed an undercover cop to death. He was acquitted of this ‘murder’ because DC John Fordham, wearing a balaclava and clothing reminiscent of an extra in
Mission Impossible
, was in the dead of night effectively trespassing, without even a warrant to enter Noye’s Kent estate. A ‘startled’ Kenneth Noye allegedly feared for his life.

Freemason Kenney Noye also stabbed a young man to death following a road-rage incident on the M25. And for this offence, he is serving a life term in a
supermax 
prison facility ‘somewhere in England’, according to the Home Office. Actually, he is at HMP Full Sutton, near York.

Yet, strangely, both criminals now share a few things in common. They both used corrupt police officers. They are now post-conviction brothers-in-arms, serving life sentences in prison cells, and their chances of release are minimal.

Neither of them could be described as contemporary Robin Hoods and, essentially, whatever course their criminal career paths may have followed, and however rich or pathetic their lifestyles, they have both been reduced to the same outcome. They went into prison wearing smart suits, and they’ll most probably be released wearing the wooden variety. In a nutshell, they are both fucked!

Yet if one were to thrust both men on to a reality TV show and judge them for their antisocial talents – on, say,
Crim Idol
– Kenny would be voted back for the finals. He would have survived the first auditions because of his panache, cheeky smile and cold-blooded attitude. He would have survived ‘boot camp’; his accomplishments – already established in the Brinks Mat robbery – easily outstripping any that a panel of judges could have hoped to have completed in several lifetimes.

Colin Gunn? A pathetic wannabe by comparison. If Col had got as far as appearing before the judges in the first place, they would have sent him packing, and before the studio doors had closed, his mother would have stormed back in, protesting vehemently that Col would go on to do great things. History proves that he didn’t.

1947 was the year of the first known sightings of UFOs by Kenneth Arnold, whose attention – while flying over Washington – was drawn to nine luminous disks in the form of saucers. It was then that he uttered the immortal words: ‘God dang! What the holy shit was that?’ Shortly afterwards, on Wednesday, 2 July, it is said that a UFO crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, disgorging strange little men over a small area, the incident giving rise to worldwide panic that we were about to be invaded by aliens.

Still up in the air – albeit at an altitude of a mere 70 feet – this time over California, designer Howard Hughes performed the maiden flight of the
Spruce Goose
, the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built. On 2 November 1947, after a series of taxi tests with Hughes at the controls with co-pilot Dave Grant and a crew of two flight engineers, accompanied by nine invited guests from the press corps, the Hercules lifted off from the waters off Long Beach. The aircraft singularly distinguished itself by lumbering along for just under a mile before it landed – never to fly again.

Chuck Yeager did much better. He flew a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight, or, for that matter, any sort of flight.

In the UK, significant events were conservatively confined to terra firma. The Gatwick rail crash on 27 October 1947 raised a few eyebrows when the
Flying
Scotsman
express from Edinburgh Waverley to London King’s Cross derailed, killing 27 people; two bumbling electric commuter trains collided in fog, killing 32 people near South Croydon railway station; the Thames inconveniently flooded; and the country was gripped
with excitement when Gravesend, Liverpool Edge Hill and Normanton held by-elections.

However, of more interest to us was that Kenneth Noye was born in Bexleyheath, Kent, on Saturday, 24 May 1947. On the Taurus-Gemini cusp, his astrological strengths are to be expressive, incisive and socially involved; his weaknesses are identified as being
self-centred
; caustic and closed. He is all of those things… and much much more.

As a youngster, he was a perky and mischievous lad. By the time he had reached 12, he was a strikingly
good-looking
boy, 5ft in height with a well-defined face, strong eyebrows and deep, dark, narrow brown eyes. Some of the boys in his class were jealous of his good looks; subsequently, he was sometimes bullied in the
playground
between classes. However, he rapidly learned to defend himself and the bigger, older boys rapidly learned to leave Kenny Noye alone.

Within a few years, Kenny had embarked on juvenile crime. Breaking and entering and interesting himself in dodgy deals, he became fascinated by the tough, edgy characters in their sheepskin coats who seemed to have endless bundles of
£
5 notes in their pockets. According to Wensley Clarkson, author of
Killer on the Road
, ‘These twisted values intruded upon young Noye’s life with increasing frequency and made him fairly confused about morals… He was also developing a terrible temper. If he didn’t get what he wanted, he often became violent.’

Those close to him noted that he had a hair-trigger reaction which would be provoked by the smallest incident. Instead of taking a deep breath and walking
away from potentially difficult situations, Kenny would steam straight in. He was fearless.

By the age of 14, Kenny Noye was operating a successful stolen bicycle racket, charging younger children protection money at school, doing an early-morning paper round and selling programmes at the greyhound track where his mother worked.

Aged 15, he found himself Saturday employment in the men’s department of Harrods in Knightsbridge, and started dressing more smartly. As a result, Kenny Noye became fascinated by all the rich and famous people; he watched their wallets closely and they style of clothes they bought, and he would return home to dream about his future.

It is doubtful that Kenneth Noye was aware of this at the time, but within his small frame and sharp mind were all the ingredients – the building blocks, if you like – to form a first-rate criminal. Good-looking, amiable when it suited him, yet hard as nails – he had the ambition to devise cunning schemes to amass all the folding money he could lay his hands on, and dress himself as ‘class’. Working at Harrods, mixing with those who had ‘real ’class, was an education to him, in much the same way as a lowly butler often pretentiously assumes the airs and graces of his lordly employer.

And, to give Kenneth credit, by the age of 18 he was earning enough money to make his first material dream come true. Graduating from being a ‘Mod’, and tearing around on a scooter, he bought himself a bright yellow Ford Cortina Mark 1. He had sprung up to 5ft 8in tall, he was fairly muscular and looked older than his age. He started visiting some of the legendary clubs and bars in
and around the Old Kent Road, where, keeping in the background, his education was furthered observing some of the most infamous criminals of the mid-1960s. He was intrigued. He wanted some of the action – the big cars and mohair suits. He wanted respect.

Perhaps even the Great Train Robbery in 1963 played a part in his ambition; south-east London at the time was a hot-bed of cutting-edge criminal activity, where the status of such criminals put them on a par with film stars. But his first serious brush with the law was when he was arrested for handling stolen vehicles, and he ended up with a one-year sentence in a Borstal near Shaftesbury, Wiltshire.

If it had been the intention of the sentencing magistrate to make an example of young Kenny Noye by handing him a stiff prison term, it backfired. Noye took the inconvenience in his stride. He made contacts, took down names, addresses and phone numbers of his fellow cons. He listened to what they had to say, kept his own counsel, and was determined to learn from their mistakes. He vowed that when he was released he would run his own ‘business’. No one would grass him up in the future and, with this in mind, he believed that he would never be outwitted by the Old Bill again.

Upon his release from Borstal, Kenny met a young, blonde girl. Petite and neatly dressed, Brenda Tremain had good looks and a forthright personality. The couple were soon mixing with the wheelers and dealers at their local pub, The Harrow. Perched midway along the relentlessly grey, grimy and desolate Northern Road at Slade Green, The Harrow was a large, downbeat, smoky old pub, which, at the time, was run by a close family
friend. It was, and still is, the sort of place that favours locals and is unlikely to draw outsiders, bar the lost or perversely curious.

One particular acquaintance was Micky Lawson, who owned a used car showroom opposite the Tremains’ family home. From The Harrow, the two men gravitated to pubs in south-east London – the Frog and Nightgown, The Connoisseur, the Prince of Wales and The Beehive in ‘Del Boy’ Trotter’s Peckham, and it was inevitable that Noye would start mixing with some of the hardest gangsters in London. In the 1960s, this was the Richardsons’ manor.

The Richardson gang was a tight-knit group of pug-ugly villains and blackguards less well-remembered than their rivals, the notorious Krays. Nevertheless, in their heyday, the Richardsons were held as being one of London’s most infamous and sadistic gangs. Also known as ‘The Torture Gang’, their socially responsible ‘speciality’ was pinning victims to the floor with 6in nails and amputating their toes with bolt cutters.

The gang’s leader was Charlie Richardson. He and his younger brother, Eddie, turned to a life of villainy when their father abandoned the family home leaving them penniless. Charlie’s ‘legit’ side of the business included investing in scrap metal, while Eddie operated a fiefdom of fruit machines. These businesses were merely fronts for underworld activities which included extortion, murder, fraud, theft and handling stolen property.

Eddie was a persuasive entrepreneur who seemed to have no problem in convincing pub landlords to buy one of his machines. He would make an initial sales pitch
and, if the offer was politely declined, the landlord risked heavies smashing up his premises before his very eyes. With a number of bent coppers on the Richardson’s payroll, complaining to the Old Bill was not an option.