Driving home, I was excited and happy for Steele and Whomes. This, I knew, would be important evidence that may help them secure an appeal.
Chapter 17
In April 2000, Pat Tate’s old friend and business associate Kenneth Noye
was convicted of murdering 21-year-old Stephen Cameron, a man with Essex connections who had visited Raquels on more than one occasion. Danielle Cable, Cameron’s fiancée, who witnessed the attack, said Noye had thrown the first unprovoked punch after cutting up their Rascal van on a motorway slip road. When she had screamed and begged other motorists for help, Noye had produced a knife and plunged it twice up to the hilt into Cameron’s chest. As he lay dying at her feet, Cameron had managed to say, ‘He stabbed me, Dan. Get his number.’
Noye drove off in his Land Rover Discovery at such speed that other motorists had to swerve to avoid him. The vehicle, which he had registered in a false name at a friend’s address, was crushed within hours at a local scrapyard. When the case came to court, Noye, who had boasted of the party he would hold when he was cleared, told the jury in response to the question of why he had disposed of the car, ‘I don’t want no one to know where I live. I don’t want no one to know what cars I have. I don’t want no one to know nothing.’
The day after the stabbing, wearing a flat cap and carrying a briefcase full of cash, Noye flew by private helicopter to a golf course in France. He then travelled by private jet from Paris to Spain, where he hid on the south coast until Danielle Cable was flown out with police officers from Kent and asked if she could identify Noye, who was in a restaurant. When she pointed him out, Noye was arrested by Spanish police. He fiercely fought extradition proceedings, but was eventually returned to England to stand trial. The police have since suggested that had Noye returned to Britain immediately after his arrest and challenged Cable’s identification before a magistrate, the case could have been thrown out. Kent Police strengthened their evidence during the nine months in which he tried to remain in Spain by finding other witnesses who were able to identify him at the murder scene.
After his return to Britain, he was placed on an identification parade, where one motorist picked him out. Noye had claimed to Spanish police that he was not at the scene but later changed his story to say that Cameron had sworn, kicked and punched him as he walked towards the van. Noye told the jury that he feared Cameron would land a lucky punch, take the knife he had produced to warn him off and use it on him.
After Noye had been sentenced to life imprisonment, detectives announced they wanted to interview him about the murder of John Marshall, whom Tate had entrusted with the syndicate’s drug money. Marshall had been shot in the head and chest the day before Stephen Cameron had been stabbed to death. His body had been found hidden under bales of straw in the back of his Range Rover fewer than ten miles away from the scene of Cameron’s murder. Police said they were interested in Noye’s relationship with Marshall, who was suspected of supplying him with false number plates for several vehicles, including the Discovery Noye had been driving when he murdered Cameron.
Despite establishing the link betwen Marshall, Noye and Tate, the police could not prove that Marshall was holding the syndicate’s drug money for Tate and that a proportion of it was money that Noye had lent to Tate when I was with him at the meeting at a pub near Brands Hatch. To this day, John Marshall’s murder remains unsolved. His family have always strenuously denied his involvement in any drug-related criminal activities.
The release of the film
Essex Boys
in July 2000 gave the campaign to free Steele and Whomes a breath of much-needed fresh air. The Whomes family, and my partner Emma and I, were all invited to attend the premiere, which was being held at the Odeon cinema in Southend-on-Sea. We decided we would all go together because it would give us an opportunity to talk to the media about the case and hopefully attract interest.
We were not disappointed. Sean Bean, Alex Kingston, Jude Law, Bill Murray and others who appeared in the film attended the premiere, ensuring that not only newspaper reporters but also various TV channels and radio stations were there in force. Jack’s mother Pam, his brother John and I all gave TV, radio and newspaper interviews. We were more than pleased with the publicity we managed to give Jack and Steele’s plight.
After watching what I considered to be an at best poor film, we were all invited to a private party that was being held by the film company. John and I had been asked to have our photographs taken with Sean Bean and others who starred in the film, and as we were doing so a woman appeared and started shouting at the top of her voice.
‘You’re a fucking bastard, O’Mahoney! You’re fucking scum. You blamed my dead brother for killing those bastards! I hate you.’
Before I had a chance to ask the lady to calm down and stop casting doubt on my parentage, she started kicking and punching me. I genuinely had no idea who the woman was, but she certainly knew me and disliked me intensely. It wasn’t the first time I’ve had that effect on a woman. The door staff grabbed hold of her and asked her to calm down, but she became more distressed.
‘You’re a bastard, O’Mahoney,’ she kept shouting. ‘You fitted my dead brother up.’
Eventually, the door staff led the woman away and she was ejected.
In the early stages of the investigation into the Rettendon murders, police had arrested a man named Billy Jasper, an East End villain with all the right connections and a crack cocaine habit. Billy had told the police that he was having a drink in a bar called Moreton’s when his friend, Jesse Gail, came in. Jesse invited Billy to a nearby Mexican restaurant, where a man named Dean joined them.
The conversation turned to Tucker and Tate and a drug deal that was going to happen in the near future. Billy claimed Dean asked, ‘Why can’t we rob them?’ and that Jesse had replied, ‘We can’t rob them because there will be comebacks.’ Dean is then alleged to have said, ‘We will take them out of the game, then.’ Turning to Billy, Dean asked, ‘Do you want to earn five big ones [£5,000] to do a bit of driving?’
Billy told police he later drove Dean to a meeting with Tucker, Tate and Rolfe and that Dean had shot them. Gail, he said, had met himself and Dean earlier in the evening and supplied Dean with the firearm used to carry out the shootings. The police investigated Jasper’s claims, but they found little or no evidence to support anything he had told them. To this day, Billy Jasper stands by his version of events. Jesse Gail was killed some time later in a bizarre car accident. Dean, the alleged gunman, understandably denies any involvement.
I was later told that the woman who had attacked me was Jesse Gail’s sister. It was Billy Jasper, not I, who had claimed that Gail and the other man had been involved in the murders of Tucker, Tate and Rolfe – I had merely repeated what Jasper had told police in my book
Essex Boys
.
Around the same time as the film was released, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) announced that it was going to look into the Rettendon murder case. Mick Steele’s partner, Jackie Street, told a local newspaper that this had come about because Geoffrey Couzens, a former protected witness who had been kept in custody at HMP Woodhill at the same time as Nicholls, had now come forward and made a statement claiming Nicholls had told him that the evidence he was to give in court was a pack of lies. ‘We are feeling very confident and believe this will prove what we have said all along – that Mick and Jack are innocent,’ Jackie said.
She accepted that nothing was going to happen overnight and that the CCRC would not start full-time work on the case for three or four months. But it had been acknowledged there was significant new evidence to put before the appeal courts.
‘Mick has never wavered – and has always refused to take part in programmes in prison which would make his situation easier and reduce his status as high risk,’ Jackie added. ‘He will not do that because it would mean admitting his guilt. He is innocent and will prove it. We feel that the tide is finally turning and we are 100 per cent confident that the truth will now come out.’
The search for the truth was not limited to those who had been imprisoned. Darren Nicholls’s former police handler, DC Bird, had been suspended from duty following his arrest. DC Bird was charged with conspiracy to supply cannabis although the charges were later withdrawn. After four years on full pay, which was a salary of £26,000 a year, and an annual housing allowance of £4,000, Essex Police announced that a disciplinary hearing would take place at their headquarters in Chelmsford.
Steele’s and Whomes’s legal teams applied to Essex Police to permit a solicitor from their office to attend the hearing because they felt important information regarding Nicholls and his evidence may be divulged. This application was refused and they were told that the hearing would take place behind closed doors.
When John Whomes heard the news, he was incensed. He called it a cover-up and decided that he would protest in a way that would make not only the police but also the whole country listen. At approximately 9 a.m. on 22 May 2000, John and another man chained themselves to a gantry above the M25 at Thurrock in Essex and displayed banners declaring his brother’s innocence and complaining that a disciplinary hearing involving two Essex Police officers had begun in private. The police closed the motorway because they were concerned drivers would be distracted by the protest that was being held above all three lanes. Diversions were set up around the M25, resulting in rush-hour chaos.
As the police tried to talk John and the other man down, John spoke to the media on his mobile phone. ‘I’m doing it because two police officers at Chelmsford Police headquarters face disciplinary hearings which involve a supergrass who gave evidence in my brother’s case. I want a legal representative at that hearing so we know exactly what this supergrass has been up to. I want the Home Secretary Jack Straw to know I’m up here and I want him to refer my brother’s case back to the Court of Appeal. Jack is innocent of those murders, 100 per cent innocent.’
At 1.20 p.m., a trained police negotiator climbed the gantry and asked John to come down because he had made his point.
‘I’m not coming down until Jack Straw knows I’m up here and why I’m up here,’ John replied.
‘The whole fucking country knows you’re up here and why,’ the policeman said. ‘You’re on every TV station and every radio programme.’
Confident he had made his point, John agreed to come down, but he told police they would have to free him and the other man first because they had chained themselves to the gantry and thrown away the key. When John and the other man reached the ground they were arrested and taken to Grays police station, where they were questioned about causing danger to traffic. They were bailed pending ‘further enquiries’, but no charges were ever brought against them.
A year after John’s protest, Essex Police announced, much to the disappointment of Steele and Whomes, ‘DC Bird has tendered his resignation from the force. Having regard to his duties under the Police Act to maintain an efficient and effective police force and in exercise of his discretion, the chief constable has accepted the resignation. The disciplinary proceedings against DC Bird will therefore automatically conclude. A settlement between the parties has been reached.’
‘You will see that an officer has resigned. A clause of confidentiality was signed,’ said Anthony Peel, chairman of Essex Police Authority. ‘I cannot make any further comment.’
Nobody therefore knows the details of DC Bird’s settlement with Essex Police when he resigned and nobody will ever be able to find out just how much or how little he knows about the validity of Darren Nicholls’s evidence.
Those re-investigating the case on behalf of the CCRC didn’t take long to discover that Darren Nicholls’s evidence was far from convincing. Nicholls had given police elaborate details of phone calls and meetings between himself, the alleged killers and the victims. A key piece of evidence in the trial centred on two mobile phone calls made by Whomes to Nicholls just before 7 p.m. on 6 December 1995 – just minutes after he had allegedly shot dead the three victims.
The first call cut off after a few seconds and the next, Nicholls claimed, was Whomes telling him to ‘come and get me’ from Workhouse Lane, where the shootings had taken place. The two calls were picked up on two different transmitters, meaning Whomes must have been using his mobile phone in an area where they overlapped. Workhouse Lane was in the centre of that area.
But Whomes denied that he was down the lane. He said that he was at the Wheatsheaf pub in Rettendon to pick up Nicholls’s broken down VW Passat. During John Whomes’s visits to prison, his brother Jack had repeatedly told him to test the mobile phone. Similarly, Whomes’s solicitor repeatedly requested to have access to the phone, but every request was denied by Essex Police. It took two years for the defence team to get hold of Whomes’s mobile phone for tests to prove his story. Telephone specialist David Bristowe, who had supplied mobile phone evidence that helped convict former Essex man Stuart Campbell for the murder of his niece, Danielle Jones, and who had also been a prosecution witness at the Soham murder trial of Ian Huntley, was appointed to carry out the tests.
It is important to understand that in certain places, a mobile call can connect to any one of three or four different servers. Whomes’s call connected to what is known as the Hockley transmitter. David Bristowe made 20 test calls from the Wheatsheaf car park (where Whomes said he was) and 40 calls from Workhouse Lane (which was Nicholls’s story). His results show that of the 20 calls he made from the Wheatsheaf, more than a third were picked up by the Hockley transmitter. Of the 40 calls from the murder scene on Workhouse Lane, not one connected with the Hockley transmitter. The calls were made with Whomes’s own phone at the same time of year as the murders and the same time of day. It seems as though when Jack Whomes said he was in the Wheatsheaf car park and not at the murder scene, he was telling the truth.