Essex Boys, The New Generation (13 page)

Previously, Boshell would have accepted his fate and served his time, but in the past he had not had a girl who loved him, a daughter he treated as his own or a golden opportunity to fulfil his dream of becoming part of a ‘real’ family.

Between 1996 and 1998, the courts had rewarded Boshell with discounted sentences for snippets of information that he had given to the police about his criminal associates. Desperate to avoid losing his ready-made family, Boshell asked the officers involved in his case if he could once more trade information for a reduced sentence. No promises were made, but Boshell was told that the judge who was going to sentence him would be made aware of any assistance he offered.

This bargaining process with criminals by police is a fairly common practice, but anybody who agrees to become an informant has to adhere to strict rules which attempt to ensure the information given is genuine and that the informant is not encouraging others to commit crime which he can then tell the police about.

Documentation generated by the police at the time describes Boshell as a ‘previously untried source’ and suggests that ‘the authenticity of any information he may give should be doubted’.

Rules regarding informants had changed since Boshell had first offered evidence to the police in 1996; all informants now had to be registered, which involved their meeting a senior police officer, having the terms and conditions explained to them and then signing the agreement, if deemed suitable. The officer who dealt with Boshell wrote in his notes: ‘The source was told in no uncertain terms that he must tell us everything in relation to crime. He was told that if he were arrested, then the fact that he is an informant would not assist him in any way. He was told that there could be, in exceptional circumstances, a situation where he could have minimal involvement in a crime but only after he has been given authorisation by us and not before.’

Rules, regulations and the law had never meant much, if anything, to Boshell. He considered himself to be one of life’s players, the type of guy who would agree to go through the motions of any scenario so long as it was ultimately beneficial to himself. Nobody can deny that some of the information that Boshell went on to give to the police proved to be reasonably accurate; likewise, nobody can deny that some of it proved to be entirely false. The problem that exists in the here-and-now is that nobody can say with any certainty which evidence falls into which category.

Sadly, Dean Boshell is no more and cannot be questioned about the authenticity of any of the information that he gave. Considering the views of all those who knew him and his inability to tell the truth, everything he told the police should be regarded as unreliable. As his former lover Carla Shipton so eloquently put it, ‘Dean had a problem with telling the truth: he didn’t know what the truth was.’

7

  SNOOKER LOOPY NUTS ARE WE  

It became clear from the outset
that Boshell was never going to give the police his full cooperation, as he had promised. Instead, he decided to cherry pick crimes with which he could tempt the police. He began to play a bizarre game that he believed would result in the police needing him more than he needed them. Boshell thought that once he had the upper hand, he could then negotiate a better deal when he came to be sentenced for the burglary at Jewson’s. The criminal company that Boshell kept meant that he didn’t just have a good hand of cards with which to play the police, he had an entire pack.

Testing the water, rather than diving in head first, Boshell initially offered the police details of fairly minor crimes and criminals of which they were already aware. He named one man who was selling stolen tax discs, another counterfeit designer clothing. He also told them the identity and address of the person who stored Alvin’s stolen goods for him. Boshell’s information was received with thanks but little enthusiasm. The police were told about these sorts of matters more often than time allowed or their limited resources permitted them to prosecute those committing the crimes. Sensing that Boshell was holding back on far more serious criminal activities, his police handler felt the need to remind him – ‘in no uncertain terms’ – that he had to tell the police everything that he knew in relation to crime if he wished to continue being an informant.

Keen to appear compliant, within a month Boshell had begun telling the police about one of Percival and Alvin’s plans to rob a drug dealer from Basildon using guns. He also said that he had information that might be relevant to the Locksley Close shootings. Boshell said that Alvin had told him that he could lay his hands on cyanide and hand grenades. Asked what Alvin intended doing with such lethal weapons, Boshell said that Alvin had bragged to him, ‘The Trettons could end up getting a syringe full of cyanide being injected into a milk bottle on their doorstep, or a hand grenade being thrown through their letterbox.’

Finally, the police appeared to sit up and listen. If Boshell was telling the truth, it would prove that Alvin had a deep-seated hatred for the Tretton family and therefore a clear motive for wanting to shoot them.

Only Boshell knows why he decided to discuss aspects of the Locksley Close shootings with the police. It was a crime that he had been actively involved in. Although he never went so far as to implicate himself in any serious wrongdoing, Boshell must have known that if the police did arrest his accomplices there was a possibility that they would talk about his involvement. Those who knew Boshell have since commented that as the date for him to appear in court approached he became noticeably depressed and increasingly desperate. Boshell was painfully aware that if he was given a lengthy prison sentence he would lose his girlfriend Elizabeth and all that their relationship had promised.

His darkest secrets could, he realised, become his guiding light. If Boshell told the police everything he knew, maybe, just maybe, he could escape a custodial sentence and set up home with the family he longed for. Seven weeks before Boshell was due to appear at Southend Crown Court for sentencing, he concocted a story for the police that was a combination of fact and fiction about the Locksley Close shootings.

He said that he had been the driver of a car on the night of the shootings and his passengers, Alvin and Percival, had been in possession of a double-barrelled shotgun. The inclusion of Percival was an obvious choice for Boshell to make since most people in the area believed that Percival was guilty or at least involved in the shootings because he had already been arrested.

Boshell told the police that the three of them had been ‘spooked’ by a police car and ‘his bottle had gone’, so they had abandoned the vehicle. ‘Later the same evening,’ Boshell continued, ‘Alvin had asked me to drive to Locksley Close, but I had refused to do so. Alvin had called me a cunt for not doing as he had asked, but the following day he acted as though nothing had happened.’

The police did their best to convince Boshell to tell them more about the shootings, but every time he agreed to discuss the incident the story seemed to change. In one of his versions of events, Boshell said that Ricky Percival and ‘a doorman named Dave’ were responsible. Up until this point, none of the officers had heard of ‘doorman Dave’.

Beginning to doubt the authenticity of Boshell’s information, the police reminded him that he had agreed to be truthful with them at all times. In an effort to prove to them that he was honouring the agreement that he had made, Boshell offered to take the police to the drain in which the shotgun used in the shootings had been dumped. Boshell knew that the gun was not there because he had already searched for it with Alvin. Regardless, Boshell needed to prove that he was a trustworthy informant and so decided to act out his part and feigned surprise that it was no longer there as he stood at the drain accompanied by the police.

In fact, the police also knew that the gun was no longer there because they had recovered it. They just wanted to test Boshell’s knowledge of the crime and ensure that he was telling them the truth.

Unwittingly, the police had failed miserably with the second half of their objective: Boshell was now considered to be trustworthy. In reality, he had earned his status by telling the police half-truths and lies.

The general public are in the main of the opinion that if the police know who has committed a crime they should lock them up. Fortunately or otherwise, depending on which side of the fence you live your life, the police are not supposed to be able to do this.
Thinking
that they know who is guilty of a crime is a world away from
proving
that somebody has actually done anything. That is why the police are duty-bound to painstakingly gather all the available evidence before they charge a suspect and present everything to the courts so that the guilt or innocence of the accused can be ascertained by a jury. Because of forensic tests and the time it takes to gather and evaluate evidence, it can be months before any arrests in a major investigation are made. The police had already arrested Percival for the Locksley Close shootings and so arresting him again would have been pointless – Boshell’s information was not only contradictory but was also made up of the same gossip that every villain in Essex had been repeating since the incident first happened.

Not wishing to dismiss Boshell’s efforts out of hand, the police tasked him to find out all that he could about the incident. Boshell’s court date was now only a few weeks away and his chances of securing a reduced sentence were looking increasingly slim. He had taken the information regarding the shootings as far as he dared, so, in a last ditch attempt to win favour, Boshell told his handler that the robbery of a drug dealer, which Alvin had been talking about for some time, was now imminent.

When asked to find out who was going to be robbed, when and where, Boshell said that he had not yet managed to discuss the job in any detail with Alvin because he was away working in Kent. However, he said he would be returning shortly.

Boshell told his handler at their next meeting that he had spoken to Alvin and he had been asked to steal a car. Alvin required a vehicle for use in the robbery and he was prepared to pay Boshell between £150 and £300 for stealing one. Boshell said that Alvin, Percival and a man named Nipper Ellis would be the three men robbing the drug dealer and they would be armed with two handguns. The reason they were going to be armed, according to Boshell, was that their intended target received regular visits from ‘trigger happy niggers’. Boshell told the police that Alvin and Percival trusted one another ‘110 per cent’ but neither completely trusted Nipper Ellis. This was because they thought that he was capable of anything after allegedly shooting Essex Boy enforcer Pat Tate the year before he had been murdered in the Range Rover at Rettendon.

Boshell was disqualified from driving, so initially he was told that if Alvin did ask him to drive he was to give an excuse as to why he was not able to do so, like he had to babysit. However, after a risk assessment of the planned crime, those allegedly involved and Boshell’s driving ban, the handler was instructed by a senior officer to provide him with a vehicle for use in the robbery. Boshell was offered an estate car, which he refused, but he did accept a Mondeo after explaining that the only cars he ever stole were Fords.

The police plan was that when the would-be robbers had reached the busy arterial road that runs between Southend and Basildon, an armed response unit would stop the car on the pretence of searching for drugs and the occupants would be arrested. Over the next few days, Boshell was constantly on the phone to his handler, giving excuse after excuse about why the robbery hadn’t yet taken place. Eventually running out of excuses, Boshell said that he was waiting for a call about the robbery from Alvin but had heard nothing.

For reasons never explained, the robbery, if ever planned, did not take place. When Alvin was asked about this robbery many years later, of course he blamed Percival and Nipper Ellis as the driving force behind the conspiracy. He told police: ‘The reason we focused on robbing drug dealers was because they were easy targets. They had what we wanted: money and drugs. We also knew that they wouldn’t squeal to the police. Who in their right mind would report the theft of their drugs? I think the first one we planned to do was a mixed-race guy in his 30s. He was quite flash and wore expensive clothes. He mainly dealt in heroin and crack cocaine. He lived in Basildon on one of the council estates. I had met him once in the Woodcutters Arms some time before we ever discussed robbing him. I was aware that Nipper Ellis or Percival knew one of his runners and he had agreed to give us access to the guy’s premises so that we could rob him. Various tactics were discussed regarding gaining entry and it was eventually decided that the runner would also have to get a slap so there was no suspicion raised concerning his involvement. One night, myself, Percival and Nipper went round to the man’s address to do a reconnaissance of the area.

‘Whilst I was in the car, Nipper produced a handgun; it was like an old revolver. I don’t know why he was carrying it that night, but it might have been for his own protection, as a price had been put on his head for shooting Pat Tate. We looked around the area where the drug dealer lived. It was near a pub called the Watermill.

‘We left shortly after arriving. Nipper still had the gun on him. For some reason, the robbery never did take place, I don’t know why. It could have been because we had found another drug dealer who had more money and more drugs than the mixed-race guy. This other dealer also lived in Basildon and we referred to him as JH.

‘Again, this robbery was organised by Nipper. I had never heard of JH, but I knew he was an old-time villain in his 50s. There was talk that there would be in the region of £100,000 in his home. We decided that we would watch him and his house for a couple of days so we could get to know his movements. We did this by using different cars and communicating by walkie-talkies. Through our surveillance activities we discovered that he drove a Mercedes and he had another property near Southend. During the planning stage, Nipper said that if we were going to go ahead with the job we would need to arm ourselves, as he believed the guy had firearms in his house. The talk of firearms didn’t appeal to me; I thought it was a bit out of my league. I didn’t trust Nipper either. I thought he would probably put a bullet in both Percival’s and my head if we came out of there with a large amount of cash.

‘I decided not to take part in the crime. I can’t recall how I got out of it, but there was no further mention of it. It never did take place.’

The reason the robberies never did take place is because they were probably no more than drink- and drug-fuelled fantasies of Alvin’s. Boasting to his entourage of impressionable young men like Boshell, Alvin would regularly talk about ‘big-time villains’ whom he knew or associated with. Unfortunately for Nipper Ellis, he was one man Alvin loved to talk about because he had such a colourful past.

These days Nipper works hard, making an honest living for himself, but more than a decade ago he became embroiled in a dispute that has made him part of Essex gangland folklore. Nipper was initially reluctant to talk to me about his past because he feels the need to move on, but he agreed to do so after reading the ‘bloody rubbish’, he said, that Alvin had told the police about him.

In 1994, Nipper was friends with Tucker, Tate and Rolfe. I used to see him on a fairly regular basis at the clubs and parties that we all attended and I can only describe him as being a thoroughly decent and polite guy. One day, Nipper made a silly remark in jest about Tucker and one of his numerous mistresses. This got back to Tucker and in a drug-induced rage he decided to teach Nipper a lesson – a lesson from Tucker usually entailed his pupil being beaten senseless or tortured, or both. One particularly troublesome pupil who refused to absorb Tucker’s words of wisdom concerning a personal healthcare plan was murdered and his body dumped in a ditch.

What occurred in the weeks that followed Nipper’s misdemeanour can only be described as cowardly and disgraceful. Recalling his own particular group session with Tucker and his friends, Nipper explained: ‘Tucker stuck a loaded pistol into my temple and threatened to kill me. Tucker, Tate, Rolfe and others then came after me with a machete and threatened to hack off my hand and foot. They looted my home and smeared their shit all over the possessions they left behind.’

Nipper was not the only one these cowards had tried to intimidate: his father and sister were threatened with all sorts of unsavoury punishments and injury.