The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (29 page)

The prosecution was led by Barbara Mills QC (later Dame Barbara and also the Director of Public Prosecutions), an extremely astute barrister. Stephens was charged with four counts of handling goods stolen by Martin, and Purdy and Enter, two similar charges; all the defendants pleaded not guilty.

Briefly, the facts of the case were that Stephens had put the property into storage at Pickfords on 16 August 1982, using the name she had used as a model and had paid the majority of the storage charges. However, payment of the charges fell into arrears and near to Christmas 1982, Pickfords sent her a final reminder. She telephoned the company, telling them that she had had an accident and that she would settle the account after Christmas. There the property had remained until two weeks after Martin's escape from Marlborough Street Magistrates' Court when she, Purdy and Enter had collected it and taken it to Enter's flat at Ladbroke Grove where it was discovered when he was arrested. In fact, said Mrs Mills, it was alleged by the Crown that Steven Waldorf had been present when the property had been moved.

Because of the sheer quantity of the property, two trips had to be made on consecutive days, 6 and 7 January 1983. Stephens had paid the outstanding amount of £74 and Purdy signed for the goods using the name ‘Perry' – this, in fact, was his mother's maiden name.

On the second occasion, it was alleged that only Stephens and Purdy were involved, taking the property to Enter's flat which was put into a spare bedroom. The three defendants all gave different stories when they were arrested, said Mrs Mills, plus by the time the police raided Enter's flat two weeks later, two of the chests containing the stolen goods had disappeared. Detective Sergeant Roger Driscoll told the court that when he had searched the Mini in Pembroke Road on the night of the shooting, he had found Purdy's wallet which contained the £74 storage receipt from Pickfords. I gave evidence that Enter had claimed that Stephens had told him that the containers held her clothes but he had looked and saw that the boxes contained ‘Martin's stuff'. ‘I don't know where it all came from,' he said, ‘but I knew it was Martin's. I know he is a villain and I know it couldn't have been straight.'

Cross-examined by Richard Crabtree for the defence, I was accused of grabbing Enter by his shirt front, telling him, ‘We're not the local nancy-pansy boys; we're the Flying Squad.' Naturally, the allegation was untrue and I denied it, but the ‘nancy-pansy boys' jibe followed me around for years!

Stephens stated that she believed the items to be household goods and had no reason to believe they had been stolen and Purdy admitted that he was suspicious and thought that some of the property was stolen. In a statement made by him that I read out to the court, Purdy stated in part, ‘It just didn't seem right that a girl should have that sort of stuff.'

Stephens admitted in court that it was her information which had helped police catch Martin but denied that she had accepted or had been offered a reward; in fact, on the few times she had met him between escape and capture, she had, she said, entreated Martin to give himself up. However, she told the jury that she was ‘in no doubt' that after Martin's arrest in September 1983, she had told police of the whereabouts of the property at Pickfords, but they had never taken her up on it. Several officers were called in rebuttal to say that she had never mentioned the goods in storage, which made sound sense; had she informed the police, it was in their interests to recover the property as soon as possible, not months later.

Stephens said that after Martin's arrest, she had gone to see him at Brixton prison but that she became bored with having to visit him. ‘He was obsessed with me all day and I was trying to drop him nicely,' she told the court. In addition, she said that Purdy had become her boyfriend – she had told police this when she was first interviewed following the shooting at Pembroke Road – but after pressure from Martin's probation officer and vicar, who told her he would go on hunger strike or commit suicide, she returned to see him at Brixton. ‘Without that pressure,' she informed the jury, ‘I would never have gone to see him again.'

On the fourth day of the trial, Stephens was cleared, on the directions of Judge Babington on one of the charges of receiving stolen goods, which included security equipment and surveillance devices. However, the second receiving charge was still in place, as were two more charges alleging handling the goods for David Martin's benefit. It appeared that little if any of the trio's testimony impressed the jury of seven women and five men who on 21 November found the three defendants guilty. Judge Babington told them:

All three of you have been convicted on the clearest evidence of offences concerned with lending assistance to a very dangerous criminal by helping him to conceal proceeds of a crime.

Stephens, who had no previous convictions, had been represented by Ronald Thwaites QC, a barrister described as ‘capable of producing results that others can only dream of', but not, alas, on this occasion. He told the court that she had helped the police catch Martin, stated that she had received several poison pen letters, that she would ‘be in danger in jail' and that she now wanted to start a new life carrying out voluntary work in Africa. However, as the judge told Stephens, ‘No doubt you were infatuated for a time by David Martin. That is a reason for your offence but not an excuse' and sentenced her to six months' imprisonment. Purdy, who had had several minor brushes with the law including a spell of Borstal Training, was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, as was Enter; the following day, they sought leave to appeal against their sentences, which were duly suspended. This leniency was reflected in a comment by Steve Holloway: ‘My view of these people was that they were not out-and-out criminals; but just people who got caught up in situations which happened to be criminal.'

The day before the trio were sentenced, there was a column in the
Sunday Express
which mentioned that the allegation had been made in court that Steven Waldorf had helped the defendants move Martin's stolen property. ‘May we be told why Mr. Waldorf is not in the dock with them?' was the question posed by the newspaper. The answer is quite simple. The matter was referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Having carefully considered all the circumstances of the case, he decided – as he did in the case of Detective Constable John Deane – to take no further action.

  
1
.  In fact, this was quite understandable; at that time, London was in the grip of a major IRA offensive.

  
2
.  A popular and gung-ho, gun-toting American police detective TV series of that time.

W
hile he had been on remand at Brixton prison awaiting trial, Martin had begun a sentimental albeit unlikely friendship with the serial killer Dennis Nilsen. Prison officers saw them constantly whispering together and came to the conclusion that they were plotting an escape and separated them. Nilsen was apparently so upset that he attacked three warders with a chamber pot.
1

However, following Martin's conviction, the couple were briefly reunited at Parkhurst maximum security prison. Nilsen had been convicted of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder and had been sentenced to life imprisonment, with a whole life tariff. Martin told his friend, ‘Twenty-five years is worse than a life sentence. If I can't get out of here, I'll kill myself.' In fact, during their last meeting, Martin had told Mark Bryant, ‘I won't do my time in prison.' Separated from ‘Natasha' and now also Nilsen, Martin resumed his correspondence with Stephens. He had already told police, plus anybody else who would listen, if his demands were not met ‘you will have a dead body on your hands'.

‘I just want to see you once more and then I will end it. That is the escape' was part of one of the letters he had previously written to Stephens from Brixton prison, and in another: ‘You are the only one who can help me, as your love is all that can bring me my happiness or release me from the life I lead.' Stephens later said, ‘I honestly think that he will do it. To cage him up for twenty-five years is to say that the man has no future. He is the kind of man who likes to be active. He is very intelligent and will go mad in jail. I fear for what is going to happen.' While on remand at Brixton, Martin had been taken to hospital having swallowed a cocktail of paracetamol and barbiturates.

Among Martin's fellow prisoners at Parkhurst were Donald Neilson, the so-called ‘Black Panther' who in 1976 had been convicted of a series of armed robberies and murders, the fourth of whom was Lesley Whittle, an heiress, and Neilson had been sentenced to life imprisonment, with a whole life tariff; and Henry MacKenny, who had been convicted of four contract murders in 1980 and who would be cleared on appeal twenty-three years later. Martin's mind was now unravelling. He had been noted as a potential suicide risk and had been placed in a special security wing at Parkhurst with six or seven other prisoners where there was a high staff ratio. He had become involved in a row with Neilson regarding the use of a video recorder which Martin used a lot; on this occasion, he wanted to record a nature programme but it was Neilson's turn to use it. When Senior Prison Officer Donald Smith ordered Martin back to his cell, he became ‘very hysterical' and as Smith would tell the inquest held on 21 May 1984 at Newport, Isle of Wight, ‘He had lost face with the other prisoners. The other prisoners knew he was in the wrong. One of them had told him, ‘‘Come on, David, go back to your cell and grow up.'”

Martin was put on a special fifteen-minute observation, later lifted to a thirty-minute watch. The following day, Smith tried to persuade him to get back into normal prison routine because when he got into a black mood, he would generally emerge from his cell, to associate with Neilson or MacKenny and he would then have a cup of coffee with them.

But not this time. Martin was found hanged in his cell on 13 March 1984; in a bizarre twist, it was the same cell that Terrance John Clark aka Terry Sinclair, jailed for a gangland murder, had been found dead, ostensibly from a heart attack, the previous year. Prison Officer Jonathan Austin had visited Martin's cell that evening to find the door ajar and the light turned off. ‘I pushed the door three or four inches and I could feel something behind it,' he told the inquest jury. ‘It turned out to be a chair. As I entered the cell, on the right, I could see Martin hanging with flex around his neck.' Martin had used a piece of flex, taken from a prison washing machine. The plug was then re-fitted on the remaining cable so that no one would know that the twenty-one inch length of flex was missing. Even in death, Martin was meticulous in his preparations; and for the last time in his life, he was, as always, in complete control. A note to Susan Stephens, found beside his body contained the passages: ‘All I have is death to take away the pain of not being with you … Whatever death is, it can't be as bad as waiting each day to see you – and not.'

The principal medical officer at Parkhurst said that Martin's paramount problem was his obsession about getting back together with Stephens who had not visited him since beginning his sentence. Senior Prison Officer Smith concurred, saying, ‘I think this time, David Martin had decided to kill himself and he was trying to draw attention to this fact because normally he would not argue over the video.' Psychiatrist Dr Brian Cooper had examined Martin on several occasions. He told the inquest, ‘Martin was a clever and resourceful man and there is some doubt as to whether this was a genuine suicide attempt. He came from a group of people in prison who put very little value on their lives and who try to use them as blackmail.' Cross-examined by James Storman, solicitor for the Martin family, Dr Cooper was asked if he believed Martin would try to kill himself if his relationship with Sue Stephens totally ended; his reply was ‘Yes.' ‘Do you think he ever got over Sue Stephens?' asked Storman and the psychiatrist answered, ‘No.'

The jury, having also heard from Ralph, Martin's father, returned a verdict of suicide. Upon hearing the news, Steven Waldorf's father said, ‘I never met David Martin,' and then characteristically added, ‘but I am rather sad to hear that he is dead.'

In interviews with the press, Martin Sr was almost triumphant about his son's demise, while taking the opportunity to blame everybody else for it. He told
Daily Mail
reporters, with the type of rhetoric which had become his trademark:

When they gave him twenty-five years, they might as well have put a bullet through his head. I knew weeks ago that this would happen. He told me. He said there was no way he could do all that time. The governor of the prison wrote to me saying maybe he would settle down and do his time. But he was thirty-seven – how can you face twenty-five years in prison at thirty-seven?

He has taken the can back for the Waldorf shooting. To me, he has done them in the eye. He is better off where he is now. It is the police and the system that killed him. I told them all what would happen and they did nothing. David was cleverer than any of them. He just bided his time until he got the opportunity. Nobody can hurt him anymore. In the finish, he beat them anyway.

I suppose it's difficult to argue against logic that is as twisted as that.