Extracts of other recorded interviews were played. In one, Nicholls, being his usual bold and brazen self, almost casually described a sequence of events, then suddenly stopped and said, ‘I’ve fucked the story up here again.’
‘No, you’re all right, mate,’ a voice said. ‘Go on.’
On another tape, Nicholls stopped talking when he failed to remember the name of a person. In the background, a faint yet audible voice was heard before Nicholls suddenly remembered the name he was trying to recall. In other interviews, defence experts stated that it sounded as if he was reading from a prepared script rather than speaking in his own words. What sounded like papers being shuffled or sifted through could also be heard. Mr Parkins invited the jury to read the statements that Nicholls had made first. None, he said, told the same story as the one Nicholls had now told the court. Mr Parkins also pointed out that Nicholls only started blaming Steele and Whomes for the killings after he himself had been told he would be charged with the murders.
While Nicholls had been giving evidence for the prosecution, he had appeared relaxed and confident. Under cross-examination by the defence, he was unsure and forgetful.
‘Has anyone told you to keep it vague?’ Mr Parkins asked him. ‘I put it to you that the final version of what the jury has heard is not your own work. You have been prompted, helped and guided by other police officers.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Mr Nicholls, are you a truthful man by nature?’
‘I don’t think you could say I am.’ After a long pause Nicholls added, ‘But I’m telling the truth now.’
‘But, Mr Nicholls, how does one know when you are lying and when you are not? You are both a blatant and persistent liar. An opportunist, I suggest, grasping at straws to save yourself. By 6 December, you knew Mr Steele very well and had the means to make up a plausible story about him and his colleagues.’
‘Yes, if I wished to do so, but they did do the killings.’
‘Are you falsely accusing these men when you know who was really responsible?’
‘They did it.’
‘Do you want to protect yourself and others who are not before this court?’
‘No, they did it.’
‘Were you involved in these murders yourself, with other men?’
‘Look, I’ve told you, I picked them up from the murders they committed. I was badly affected by it.’
‘Were you indeed? You told those officers you didn’t really want anything to do with Mr Steele after the killings. You had been duped into ferrying the men to and from a triple shooting. If you are telling the truth, an awful, evil thing has been done to you.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Mr Steele would hardly be on your Christmas card list.’
‘No.’
‘Can you explain, then, why you sent his family a card for Christmas 1995?’ Nicholls stood rooted to the floor of the witness box, his head dropped. He didn’t reply. Mr Parkins continued. ‘You also gave this man you claim was a killer a case of canned beer and a bottle of wine.’
‘Yes,’ Nicholls mumbled, ‘but only because he gave my children a present.’
‘Ah, yes, a radio-controlled aeroplane in which you went flying at Mr Steele’s house. Isn’t it true that you then took your children to the house of this triple killer so they could watch the rabbits running in the garden?’
‘Yes,’ Nicholls whispered.
When Mick Steele was called to give his evidence he said that at 5.01 p.m. on 6 December 1995, the precise time Nicholls had claimed he was meeting him outside the motorbike shop at Marks Tey, he had absolute proof that he was elsewhere. Steele produced a credit card receipt he had signed himself that showed he had purchased petrol from a Texaco garage some eight miles and at least twenty minutes away from the bike shop. Additionally, the vehicle that Nicholls claimed Steele was driving when he met him ran on diesel. This was without doubt as strong as alibis get.
Steele said he and his partner, Jackie, then drove to Tesco and he waited in the car while Jackie went in and purchased two bottles of wine. After leaving the supermarket, they drove to the village of Bulphan, where they picked up a boat trailer from the house of Dennis Whomes, Jack’s uncle. Steele told the jury that he and Jackie drove home, arriving at around 7.25 p.m. The murders of Tucker, Tate and Rolfe had, according to the prosecution, been committed by this time. Steele said that five minutes after arriving home his sister-in-law and her daughter arrived to view his property because they were considering buying it.
‘Did you go to Rettendon on that night?’ asked Mr Parkins.
‘Nowhere near Rettendon,’ Steele replied. ‘We came straight home.’
When Jack Whomes was called to give evidence, he broke down in the witness box. Wiping away tears, he told the jury, ‘I could not even kill a sparrow. Anyone who knows me, knows I am not capable of killing. To say I killed those men is ridiculous. I did not know Mr Tucker and I did not know Mr Rolfe. The last time I saw Pat Tate was when he was being transferred from a prison near Haverhill with my brother, Johnny. He was a friend.’
When it was suggested that Whomes was asked to do the shooting by Steele, Whomes raised his voice. ‘I would not do it for anybody. I could not do it. Why would I want to do it? I deny it. I deny any suggestion that I had anything to do with drugs or murder. All the stuff about the duff drugs deal is rubbish. I would much rather put money into motors. I would never deal in drugs.’
Whomes told the jury that while he had been working as a bouncer, he had seen a girl high on drugs take her clothes off and dance naked. ‘There was a girl like Leah Betts. She’d had some bad gear and was foaming at the mouth. That worried me sick and I called an ambulance for her. I asked undercover police to come in and search for drugs.’
Whomes leaned forward at this point and began sobbing loudly. ‘I didn’t do anything like that. What they are suggesting is ridiculous. You don’t know what I’m going through, being locked up. They won’t even let me cuddle my own son.’
Other witnesses testified to the poor condition of the Passat Nicholls claimed was used as the getaway car. It had no heater, a noisy exhaust and a clutch that was unusable. The idea that anybody would use it as a getaway vehicle for a triple murder was laughable. No tyre marks were found along the lane matching those of the Passat and no traces of oil were found despite the vehicle’s poor condition. Forensic tests failed to find any blood, glass or gun residue inside the Passat; in fact, they failed to find any link whatsoever to tie it to the murder scene, even though Nicholls described Whomes as entering the vehicle dripping with blood, body tissue and brains following the shootings.
Although Whomes allegedly lay in wait for the Range Rover in the bushes by the gate, he managed to glide invisibly away leaving no forensic trace, an impressive feat for a man 6 ft 2 in. tall and weighing almost 19 stone.
Finally, there was only a single footprint found on the ground by the offside back door of the Range Rover where the assassin would have stood. Forensic scientists identified the print as coming from a size 8 or 9 Hi-Tec training shoe. Whomes’s barrister, Mr David Lederman QC, pointed out that Jack Whomes wore a size 11 and, according to Nicholls’s evidence, was wearing wellington boots when he carried out the murders. There was nothing whatsoever to suggest that Mick Steele or Jack Whomes had ever been down the lane where the murders were committed.
‘If the jury look at the facts,’ said Mr Lederman, ‘Whomes could not possibly be responsible for the murders.’
After four long months, the trial ended. In his summing up, the Honourable Mr Justice Anthony Hidden told the jury that they should treat the evidence of Darren Nicholls with ‘great caution, as it was in his own interest to become a prosecution witness’, adding, ‘knowing he will have to come back to court for sentence, he hopes to get less time to serve’.
The jury deliberated for four and a half days and on Tuesday, 20 January 1998, Mick Steele and Jack Whomes were found guilty of importing cannabis and of murdering Craig Rolfe, Tony Tucker and Pat Tate. Steele was cleared of possessing the shotgun Nicholls had hidden in his barn. Whomes and Steele looked at each other in disbelief before turning to look at the judge.
‘There is no other sentence I can pass on you for these horrifying murders of which you have been convicted than that of life imprisonment,’ Mr Justice Hidden told the pair. ‘There is little that can be said usefully about either of you at this stage. You two were responsible, in my view, for taking away the lives of these three victims in a summary way. You lured them to a quiet farm track and executed them. They had crossed your path and you showed them no mercy. There is about these killings a hard and ruthless edge which can only horrify and stagger the non-criminal mind. You are extremely dangerous men and you have not the slightest compunction for resorting to extreme violence when you thought it was necessary.’
Mick Steele and Jack Whomes were both told that they would have to serve three life sentences and a minimum of 15 years in prison. But Home Secretary Jack Straw later reviewed this and demanded a minimum of 25 years. The distraught family of Jack Whomes stood outside the court trying to come to terms with the fact their son and brother might be behind bars for the rest of his life. Jack Whomes senior said his wife, Pam, was devastated by the verdict. ‘How would any mother feel?’ he said. ‘She just cannot talk about it at the moment. The whole family is gutted.’ Jack’s brothers and sister were also present to hear the jury foreman announce they had found the thirty-six year old guilty of three cold-blooded killings.
Mrs Whomes had appeared at the Old Bailey on the first day of the long-running trial wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Jack Whomes is innocent’. She sat in court day after day to hear the evidence against her son but refused to believe he could be involved in anything so horrendous. Jack’s wife, Gail, was left to break the news to their two children, JJ – Jack Junior – and Lucy, that their father would not be coming home.
Craig Rolfe’s mother, Lorraine, told reporters that she had no hate for the killers of her youngest son. ‘I do have a lot of anger,’ she admitted, ‘but I can honestly say I don’t have any hate in me. I never have.’ She heard the pathologist tell the Old Bailey about Rolfe’s horrendous head wounds. They had been inflicted by a shotgun into his head at point-blank range. However, medical experts said Rolfe wouldn’t have had time to know what was happening. ‘It was vicious the way they died,’ she said. ‘Craig didn’t deserve it, but when I heard how quick it was that did put my mind at rest.’
Mrs Rolfe remained on friendly terms with Whomes’s mother throughout the trial. ‘There was no point in falling out. I would bring her copies of the local newspaper because she didn’t get to see what was being written about the trial,’ she said. ‘I was very close to Craig, he was the youngest, the baby of the family. I saw him near enough every day. As far as I knew, he was working for Tucker on the security side. I called him a gofer. Tucker supplied security men to the stars and that’s what attracted Craig. He was on a high, living that lifestyle. But I don’t blame Tucker for his death – Pat Tate was responsible. If he hadn’t come on the scene, they would have been alive today.’
The news of the convictions came on the radio as I was driving home. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I pulled over and tuned in to another station. Surely, I had misheard it. I couldn’t believe that the jury had accepted what a man like Nicholls had said. The story he had told was just not right. This saga, I guessed, was far from over.
In September 1998, Nicholls found himself back in custody because he was required to give evidence in the case concerning Russell Tate and six others for drug smuggling. Despite Nicholls telling police that Whomes and Steele were heavily involved in this operation, they were never charged or required to attend court. Nicholls claimed he was not interested in giving evidence in Russell Tate’s trial. He said he had only given evidence against Steele and Whomes because they had threatened to kill him, a claim he had not made previously. Nicholls said that everyone seemed to think that just because he had informed on his former friends, he was willing to grass the world up.
‘The truth was,’ he conceded in an interview, ‘I hated what I had become and I wanted to get on with my life.’ Nicholls appears to have forgotten that he had not only been informing on his associates all of his life but had also been involved in conspiring to frame innocent people on several occasions. Regardless of what Nicholls wanted, the conditions of the witness protection programme were that he cooperate fully with the authorities – and that included giving evidence against Russell Tate and his gang. Nicholls spent two days in the witness box detailing his and others’ involvement in the importation of cannabis from Spain.
When Russell Tate was called to give his evidence, he stunned the packed courtroom by claiming he had only got involved in the smuggling venture because he knew all along Steele had murdered his brother and he wanted to bring him to justice. Tate said he believed that by befriending Nicholls and Steele he might eventually gather some evidence that would help police convict those responsible for murdering his brother. Only Nicholls was alleged to have imported drugs with Russell Tate; Steele was neither charged nor in court as a witness, so it was not a very plausible story and he was found guilty.
Mr Justice Jeffrey Rucker agreed and said Russell Tate had prepared ‘an ingenious story as a way of explaining his involvement in the conspiracy, but it did not simply bear the scrutiny of common sense and day-to-day experience of life – it was wholly untrue. In listening to the evidence, I do not for one moment believe that Tate had ever suspected Steele of murdering his brother.’
Russell Tate was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and Craig Androliakos, who had been stopped driving the car Nicholls had hired, received two years.