Tucker was then shot on the right side of his face again, this time just above the jaw. The blast exited through the left side of his mouth; pieces of his jawbone, teeth and tissue splattered all over the dashboard and windscreen. A third shot slammed into the back of his head, causing his skull to fracture so severely a gaping fourth wound appeared above his right ear. The pathologist later said that Tucker’s head had ‘exploded’.
Tate was screaming throughout the onslaught, begging for mercy, but he was never going to be shown any. The gunmen had agreed upon a pact whereby each of them would fire shots into the victims’ bodies so one could not give evidence against the other should they be arrested.
During the executions, one of the weapons fell apart. One gunman grabbed his accomplice’s pump-action shotgun and shouted, ‘Give me some cartridges! Give me some cartridges!’ When they were given to him, he reloaded, then walked around the car to the window nearest Tate and shot him through the back of the head at point-blank range. Tate received a second shot to the head, but this only caused a superficial wound. When the weapons fell silent, the gun smoke cleared to reveal the carnage. Rolfe, Tucker and Tate lay dead. Flesh, bone and brain tissue were sprayed throughout the car. Blood poured from their wounds. It was a gruesome scene.
Throughout the night, Tucker’s loved ones, unaware that he was dead, left messages on his mobile’s answering service. One female in tears pleaded, ‘For God’s sake, Tone, phone me. Speak to you later. Bye.’ Another caller said, ‘We are worried, ring as soon as you can.’
The following morning farmer Peter Theobald and a friend, Ken Jiggins, scraped the ice and snow from their Land Rover and set off to feed their pheasants. Driving down Workhouse Lane from the farm, they saw the Range Rover parked in front of the gate. They thought it might belong to poachers. Jiggins got out of the Land Rover and tapped on the passenger-side window because he thought the occupants were asleep. He didn’t think the vehicle had been there overnight because there was no ice or snow on the windows, unlike on his vehicle, which had been parked only a few hundred yards away in identical conditions. There was no response, so Jiggins peered inside. He saw the blood-soaked bodies and rang 999 on his friend’s mobile phone. The call was logged at 8.05 a.m.
In a state of shock Jiggins explained to the emergency operator, ‘We just drove down our farm track to go and feed our pheasants and we came across a Range Rover with three people in it. At first, we thought they were poachers, but when we looked inside we realised they were dead. There is blood all over the motor and all over them.’
Within a short time, the quiet farm track was swarming with police, as the investigation began. Tucker’s answering service continued to record appeals from his loved ones to contact them. They would soon realise that reports of three men found dead in a Range Rover appearing in the news bulletins could well be Tucker, Tate and Rolfe.
A female left a message saying, ‘Tone, it’s only me, time now is five past ten. I still have not heard from you. Could you ring, please, and let us know you are all right because at the moment I think you are dead. They have just said on the television that there are three men dead in a Range Rover. I think it’s you.’
All traces of what happened down the lane that night are now gone. The five-bar gate has been replaced and the sign warning walkers about the use of guns on the land has also been removed. A new sign advises the public of a different kind of danger: ‘Warning – snakes.’ Fortunately, the biggest snakes ever to visit this lane are long gone.
Although there is nothing to see, I felt a need to come here. Walking away from the scene of those grotesque executions, I feel relief tinged with sadness. Relief because the nightmare is over, sadness because every other step I take on my journey back to the main road brings to mind an incident or a face from my dismal past. Disco Dave bowling to the front of the queue outside Raquels nightclub; Larry Johnston, currently serving a life sentence for murder, launching himself at some unfortunate customer he deemed to have upset him; Chris Lombard, a gentle giant, saying for the hundredth time that he was giving up working the door at Raquels because his girlfriend thought it was too rough. Chris is now dead, cut down in a hail of bullets. Kevin Whitaker, murdered by Tucker and Rolfe, his body discarded like rubbish in a roadside ditch. John Marshall, shot dead; Kevin Jones, Andreas Bouzis and Leah Betts, poisoned in their prime by Ecstasy supplied by my associates. I am recalling names as if off a war memorial and then picturing the face of each fallen comrade or foe in my head. The victims, of course, didn’t fall in any war, but at times it felt like we were fighting one. It’s hard to understand how so many young people connected, directly or indirectly, to such a small circle of friends could end up dead or imprisoned for life.
I’m at the top of the lane now. Cars are driving along the A130, taking commuters to work in Chelmsford and Basildon – normal people going about their everyday business. That’s what I want to do: be fucking normal. I’m tempted to turn around and look down the lane for a last time, but I don’t. I have to look forward and keep on looking forward if I am ever going to escape my past. I first told this story six years ago in a book called
Essex Boys
. A few of the incidents surrounding the murders remain as I told them then, but fresh evidence concerning the murder convictions of Whomes and Steele and startling revelations about the victims’ tyrannical behaviour have only recently come to light and, until now, have remained untold. I am therefore going to tell this story for the last time and then I am going to try and forget that the terrible events described in this book ever happened.
Chapter 1
Like all parents, Jack and Pam Whomes wanted what was best for
their five sons – Terry, Jack, John, William and David – and daughter Jayne. When Pam and Jack had been kids, the East End of London had been a relatively safe place. The fact everybody knew one another within the close-knit community of Canning Town, where they lived, ensured that. But in the 1970s, families began to move out of the East End to new towns, like Basildon in Essex, to be replaced by immigrants. The mood in east London began to change.
Pam and Jack talked about starting a new life elsewhere, but it remained just talk until one afternoon when their eldest son nearly lost his life. Terry, then aged 11, was confronted by an Asian youth on his way home from school on the Barking Road in Canning Town and stabbed in the face. His parents decided enough was enough and moved out to rural Suffolk the very next weekend. Jack Whomes senior set up his own business as a motor mechanic and after two years the family purchased a property with thirteen acres of land in the village of Haughley Green.
The family’s arrival was met with resentment by some members of the community: these locals felt their idyllic way of life was being threatened by East End migrants – or East End yobs, as they often referred to them. The parish magazine reported that Haughley Green was being targeted by families moving from London to escape city life. But the Whomes family soon settled in and eventually people in the village did warm to them. Children would flock to their house because Terry, Jack and John had motorbikes and old cars that they drove around the fields. This interest in cars and motorbikes developed as the Whomes brothers grew older, and they all became extremely good mechanics. Jack, in particular, was very proficient.
In 1990, Suffolk Police arrested Jack and John Whomes in an early-morning raid. The brothers had two cars and a van, which had been stolen and their registrations and engine numbers changed. Jack and John denied any involvement in the thefts, so the police bailed them pending further inquiries. Those further inquiries dragged on for two years until eventually Jack and John were charged with conspiracy to obtain property by deception and handling stolen goods. The brothers stood trial at Ipswich Crown Court.
After three weeks, they were convicted and bailed so that pre-sentence reports could be compiled. In February 1992, they returned to court, where they were both sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment. It was, to say the least, a shock for the brothers, as it was the first time they had been in trouble. At Norwich prison, John and Jack were given the job of working on the servery at meal times, but, after just ten days, they were moved to an open prison called Hollesley Bay in Woodbridge, Suffolk.
In 1887, Hollesley Bay was founded as a colonial college that trained people intending to emigrate. When the Whomes brothers arrived, its purpose was to provide different regimes for adult Category D offenders: life-sentence prisoners at the end of their custodial time and young offenders. It was the largest prison farm within the Prison Service and had a stud of Suffolk Punch horses, which were shown at local, county and national shows. Inmates were pretty much free to roam for up to two miles around the grounds, which included an area of the local beach. It was a prison to which inmates did not mind being sent.
John and Jack were put into a wing called the Cosford Unit. One evening, while queuing for their meal, they got talking to a man who introduced himself as Darren Nicholls.
Nicholls had appeared at Chelmsford Crown Court on a charge of distributing counterfeit currency and was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Eight months earlier, he had been invited to a meeting with two men he believed were faces from Basildon’s criminal fraternity. The two men dropped the names of Basildon hard men and claimed they wanted to get their hands on as much counterfeit money as possible, as they were planning to ‘pay’ for drugs off a rival gang with it. Nicholls, an impressionable loudmouth, told the men he could supply them with £250,000 worth of counterfeit £10 notes at a cost of £2 each. Nicholls was purchasing the notes for £1.50, so stood to earn £25,000. The deal was struck and the conversation turned towards the drug deal rip-off the two men said they were planning. One of the men asked Nicholls if he was concerned about getting ripped off himself. Nicholls laughed and said, ‘Listen, right, I’ve got a gun at home. If anyone ever tried to rip me off, I’d blow their fucking brains out.’
Nicholls agreed he would meet the men at a hotel at the South Mimms service station on the M25 once he had got the counterfeit notes together. When Nicholls arrived at the hotel a few days later, he was surrounded by armed police and arrested. The two ‘Basildon faces’ he had done the deal with were undercover police officers.
After a short spell at Chelmsford prison, Nicholls was transferred to Hollesley Bay. Despite the relaxed regime and stress-free environment, he proved to be extremely unpopular with the other inmates. Many of them believed he was informing on them to the prison officers. This conclusion was reached because Nicholls seemed to spend more time trying to win favour with the officers than he did socialising with his fellow prisoners. However, a month after Nicholls began his sentence, his luck changed dramatically. There was a protest by the prisoners over the quality of the food they were being served. They insisted that it be replaced. They shouted, banged tables and refused to move until their demands were met. The prison officers listened to their grievances at first but eventually told the inmates that if they did not comply with their request to leave the canteen, they would have them shipped out to a closed prison where they would lose all of the privileges they enjoyed at Hollesley Bay.
Nicholls and three other inmates were the only ones who refused to budge. Finally, the prison governor went to speak to Nicholls and his fellow protestors. The governor listened, examined the food they were complaining about and agreed he would look into the matter. As none of the four had eaten, he arranged to have fresh ham and cheese rolls prepared for them. When the men sat down together to enjoy their food and their victory over the prison officers, one of them, a large, intense-looking man, leaned towards Nicholls and held out his hand.
‘Michael Steele. But you can call me Mick,’ he said. From that moment on, Nicholls’s life in prison changed dramatically. Steele, who was well respected by the prison staff and other inmates, took Nicholls under his wing.
Steele was serving a nine-year sentence for drug importation. In the early ’80s, he had purchased a 33-foot motor cruiser in which he would sail over to Ostend once every two weeks. Upon his arrival, he would purchase a large quantity of tobacco from a shop near the harbour, load it onto his boat and sail back to England. Once the route and technique were tried and tested, Steele switched to smuggling cannabis. It’s a fault of human nature, I suppose: whatever we have, we always want more. Mick Steele is no different. He used the profits from his trips to purchase a single-engine Cessna aircraft for £38,000. Soon, he was flying back and forth to the Continent, importing large loads of cannabis into England.
Customs officers had been tipped off about Steele’s activities and mounted Operation Water-ski in an effort to catch him. But Steele, a very intelligent man, realised he was under surveillance and decided to outfox Customs officers rather than cease his smuggling operation. With financial restraints on their surveillance team, Customs couldn’t afford to follow Steele all of the time. They reasoned that if they just watched his plane, they would catch him red-handed importing drugs. Steele realised what Customs were up to and purchased a second aircraft, which he kept at a different airfield. Steele would drive out of his home and notice the Customs officers following at a discreet distance in his rear-view mirror. If Steele drove in the opposite direction to the airfield where his first plane was kept, Customs would pull over and leave him be. Within just a few hours, Steele could fly to Holland using the second aircraft, pick up the consignment of drugs, unload them and be back home with Customs thinking he had just popped out to do some shopping.
But in May 1989 Steele’s luck ran out. He arrived at the Albert pub in Colchester to hand over his latest consignment, which he had transferred from his plane to a white Fiat van. Two Customs officers had followed him but didn’t have the back-up to arrest him. Steele noticed them and drove off at speed. In desperation, the Customs officers tried to ram Steele’s vehicle, but he managed to avoid them by crossing the central reservation and driving the wrong way down a dual carriageway.