The week that Nicholls, Whomes and Steele were charged and Larry committed murder, Tate’s friend, John Marshall, went missing. John had been holding the syndicate’s money for Tate in the Head sports bag. I knew John well; I often collected debts for him. He made his living in the motor trade, but he wasn’t averse to the occasional drug deal. On the day he disappeared, John told his wife he was going to Kent to ‘do a bit of business’. He had £5,000 in cash with him and was carrying the Head sports bag. The police have never been able to establish what was in the bag because it was taken by his killer. John’s wife made various appeals for him to come home or to at least get in touch, but there was no response.
A week after John left home, his body was found in his car on Roundhill Road, Sydenham, south London. A parking ticket had been slapped on the windscreen, indicating that John’s metallic-blue Range Rover had been there for some time. John was under a bale of straw in the back of the motor. He had been shot once in the chest and once through the head. The £5,000 in cash remained in the glove compartment. The only thing missing was the sports bag.
And so another blue Range Rover with a dead occupant was put on a police transporter. It was taken to Essex, where the murder inquiry team was based. Despite appeals from the police neither the bag nor its contents have ever been recovered and John’s killer has not been brought to justice. Jack Whomes and Mick Steele certainly weren’t responsible – they were in police custody at the time of his death. Could it have been members of the syndicate recovering their money? An empty Head sports bag was found in the Range Rover at Rettendon. The police considered it to be of no significance. It was never tested for traces of drugs or other evidence. The police have always denied there was any link between the murders, but if there wasn’t, why would Essex Police investigate a murder committed in Kent or London? The area certainly doesn’t fall under their operational jurisdiction.
As Nicholls, Steele, Whomes and others faced their own particular dilemmas, the spectre of Raquels and the firm’s grisly affairs decided to visit me. On Thursday, 20 June 1996, two detectives, whose job it was to escort me to court for the committal proceedings concerning the Leah Betts case, picked me up from my home. The night before, I could not sleep. I sat at the end of my bed in the dark, wrestling with my thoughts. I had made the agreed statement about the illicit drug deals in Raquels, but I knew that today was the day that mattered. If I didn’t turn up, the case would collapse and I could face three months’ imprisonment for ignoring a witness order. It almost seemed worth it. It would solve many of my problems and I would be back on side with my associates. I looked in at my sleeping children. I could not betray them. Any chance I had of making my life worthwhile lay with them. I had to do what was right despite the fact that doing right felt so wrong.
I walked out to meet my escort. I wasn’t stupid: they weren’t there for my protection, they were there to make sure that I turned up at court. On the journey to Southend Magistrates’ Court, the detectives made casual conversation, most of it about Tucker, Tate and Rolfe. One of the detectives had been present at Broomfield hospital in Chelmsford when the three had been laid out in the morgue. He told me that Tucker and Rolfe had been badly disfigured. ‘Big fucking geezers, weren’t they, Bernie? Their heads were a right mess.’
I wanted him to shut up. I didn’t want him to make conversation with me. I didn’t even want to hear him speak. The thought of getting friendly with the police made my stomach churn. It wasn’t the men – I had known decent police officers – it was their authority, their uniform and the past experiences I had endured that filled me with loathing. When we arrived at Southend, I was driven straight into the police station via a back entrance. I was told they didn’t want the press or cameramen getting anywhere near me. ‘Let’s keep it low-key, Bernie,’ one of them said.
Once inside the police station, I was led through a maze of corridors, the detectives flashing their warrant cards to get numerous locked doors opened. We passed through the custody area and eventually into the court building. We climbed a dozen narrow, wooden steps and emerged into the dock of the court. The proceedings had not yet started, so the court was empty. I looked across from my more familiar position in the dock to the witness stand. I was going to have to stand on that platform and publicly assist those I had spent my life hating.
I was once more in turmoil. If I walked out now, I would be condemned as the man who had brought about the collapse of the trial concerning Leah Betts, a girl who, in death, had become a national icon in the war against the evil drug trade. The papers would have a field day speculating as to why I would rather face prison than awkward questions. The bitter finger of suspicion would once more be levelled at me. I could face prison, I could put up with the press and the gossip, but could my family and my children? They didn’t deserve to have to endure anything since they had done nothing. The detectives must have sensed my anguish because they suddenly decided that we should all leave the court and get some tea that had been sent up to another room. I laughed out loud, but I didn’t tell them why. I was thinking of my mother. Whatever the crisis, however dire the situation, she always resorted to saying, ‘We had better make some tea.’
At 10 a.m., I was called into court. Old-style committals are, in effect, dress rehearsals for a Crown Court trial. The magistrates listen to the evidence and the witnesses under cross-examination and decide whether the matter should proceed to a full trial with a jury. I was in the witness box for an hour and three-quarters. At the end of it, the magistrates decided that the case would go to trial.
I felt dirty leaving the court, but the police were jubilant. It was a real kick in the teeth when they actually thanked me. I couldn’t wait to get home. I wanted to get away from these people. I wanted the events of 1995 to have some sort of closure.
The police dropped me off, wished me luck and disappeared down the drive. I knew that they would be slagging me off and laughing. Paranoid? I doubt it. If 1995 had been a bad year, 1996 was proving to be no better, if not worse.
Raquels doorman Chris Lombard had left our firm because he said the club we worked in was too violent. He had gone to work at the Island nightclub in Ilford instead. I hadn’t heard anything of Chris after that until Thursday, 5 December 1996, almost one year to the day since Tucker, Tate and Rolfe had been blown away in their Range Rover. I had stopped at a newsagent’s outside Liverpool Street station in London to pick up a paper as I had to wait half an hour for a train to Essex. I glanced at the front page and then stared in horror. I could not believe what I saw or what I began to read. The headline read ‘Murdered doing his job’ and alongside was a picture of Chris.
The report said he had been shot dead and another man seriously injured after a hail of gunfire ripped through the club where they worked. Chris, only thirty at the time, was fatally wounded when seven shots were fired through the glass of a locked door at the club.
A group of young men had turned up a few minutes after the doors had closed to customers. They had demanded to be let in, but Chris had told them he was not allowed to do so because a condition on the club’s licence prevented people entering after a certain time. The men became abusive, vowing to return. Shortly afterwards, as the door staff chatted in the foyer, shots rang out and Chris lay dead. The club, which I knew well, was just yards from the local police station, but this fact had not deterred the gang. Chris had been shot once in the head and twice in the chest with what police believed was an automatic pistol. The head doorman, Albert St Hilaire, aged 40, had been shot once in the back, the bullet lodging itself near his spinal cord. The third doorman escaped injury when a bullet grazed his neck.
Having regained the ‘respect’ they thought they had lost by not being allowed into the club, the gang fled into the night. Chris, a giant of a man, had a passion for basketball. He had coached a local school team and taken part in tournaments in America as a semi-professional player. He hated door work and always said he was only doing it to tide him over. Now some wannabe gangster had snuffed out his life because he had dared to refuse him entry to a nightclub. It was a terrible waste of a life.
As the year drew to a close, I looked back and realised I hadn’t moved forward at all. Twelve months earlier, I had been wishing away 1995 and now I found myself counting the days to the end of 1996. I kept telling myself that once the Betts trial was over, I could get on with my life. However many times I told myself that things would get better, I still found it hard to believe that my life could ever return to any sort of normality. Debra was feeling the strain too. We had begun arguing, and when we weren’t arguing we were not even talking. I couldn’t blame Debra: the shit we were in was all my fault.
On Monday, 9 December 1996, the Betts trial finally opened at Norwich Crown Court. The first day was taken up with legal arguments, which I didn’t have to concern myself with, but I was told to prepare myself to be called the following day or the day after. I spent that night at home like a caged animal. I couldn’t sit down or think straight. I paced the room, trying to talk myself in and out of my forthcoming ordeal. The trial at Southend Magistrates’ Court had been the dress rehearsal for this trial, which would be scrutinised and reported on by all sections of the media. Now, if ever, was the time I was going to take some flack. The police phoned me a couple of times to see if I was OK, but I knew they were just checking that now the pressure was on I hadn’t done a bunk. I was also treated to the sight of a patrolling police car, which drove up and down the lane outside my home. I lived at the end of a remote farm track, the sea to our right, a mile of woodland to our left – hardly mean streets, certainly not worthy of a regular police patrol.
When I was called into court, I remained in the witness box for the entire afternoon. Stories about Tucker and Tate threatening to shoot me, their executions and Mark Murray being responsible for supplying the pill that killed Leah rather than the man on trial kept those in the public gallery mesmerised. When it was all over the police escorted me to a waiting room. Alone at last, I felt a great sense of relief. I just wanted to get out of there. Nothing happened for ten or fifteen minutes, and then suddenly I was off in a rush between two detectives. I was taken outside and told to lie in the back of the van. A blanket was thrown over me.
When Leah’s parents emerged from the court, the press surrounded them. At the same time, the van I was in slipped away into the evening traffic. I sat at home the following day, waiting for news of the trial. The final witnesses gave evidence on Friday, 13 December. The jury was told it wouldn’t be sent out to deliberate until Monday because it was too late in the afternoon. That weekend dragged on like no weekend before or since.
On Monday, 16 December, the jury retired, but there was no further news all day. The judge arranged for the jury to spend the night in a hotel and they deliberated throughout the following day. Eventually, they told the judge they were unable to reach a verdict and they were discharged. I was absolutely devastated. I knew the prosecution wouldn’t throw in the towel. I knew I would have to go through the whole thing again. I was going to spend 1997 wishing yet another year away.
On Monday, 24 February 1997, the second Leah Betts trial began at Norwich Crown Court. It was far more low-key on this occasion: the media had milked the story dry and the whole country was suffering from ‘tales of Ecstasy’ fatigue. I was called to give evidence on the second day of the trial. The questioning wasn’t as detailed as before and I was only in the witness box for 20 minutes. To be honest, I didn’t care how long I spent in there because I knew, whether there was a verdict or not, the prosecution would not seek a third trial. Whatever happened that day, my ordeal would be over. I could begin the new life I had been trying to start for two years. When the defence barrister asked me his last question and sat down, the judge asked the prosecutor if he wished to ask me any further questions. ‘I don’t, my Lord. Mr O’Mahoney will no longer be required.’
No longer fucking required! No longer fucking required – it felt like I had just been given a clean bill of health after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. I savoured those words. These people had entered my life like a runaway train, they had fucked up my head with worry and now they were saying, ‘We’ve finished with you, goodbye.’ At the outset, the police had talked about assistance with moving, even a new identity, but I had declined. I had made my decision, I had to live by it. I wasn’t going to pretend it hadn’t happened and I wasn’t going to deny who I was for anybody. We all make mistakes.
When the police dropped me off they thanked me and wished me well. I had got to know them quite well on our trips to and from court, the trouble one of them had with his mortgage and their silent admiration for some of the more colourful, less-serious criminals. I could not thank them, though I did wish them well.
On Friday, 28 February, the trial ended and the jury retired to consider its verdict. But once more they could not agree. Mr Justice Wright formally found the defendant not guilty after the jury foreman said that there was no realistic chance of them reaching a majority verdict in the case after four hours of deliberation.
For me, the ordeal was over. But the legacy of misfortune that remained for former members of the Essex Boys firm was like a bad disease. As one firm member emerged from a crisis or was lost within it, another became infected.
In March 1997, I read in a local newspaper that ex-firm member Chris Wheatley had been jailed for seven years after admitting his part in a major drugs operation in Southend. Detectives had swooped on Chris after a lengthy undercover operation. They found more than 200 grams of cocaine, 2.63 grams of amphetamine, 357 Ecstasy pills and £950 in cash. The court heard that Chris had become addicted to drugs in 1995, he had been unable to work and his marriage had been ruined.