Authors: Paul Britton
Mr John Hinch, managing director of Heinz, warned mothers to be particularly vigilant and said the company would withdraw products and replace them with fresh stock only where contamination was reported.
‘Withdrawing products doesn’t solve the problem. This man could come back tomorrow, the next day or the next month and do it again.’
Unusually for me, I followed events in the newspapers and nightly television bulletins. It almost seemed surreal as the story snow-balled. Within twenty-four hours, the number of reported contaminations had risen to forty, not just affecting Heinz but also baby food rival Cow & Gate. By the weekend the reports had risen to 300 and three people had been arrested for wasting police time and money.
Police believed that the blackmailer was responsible for only two of these cases - each of them clearly flagged -while the rest were the work of copycats, hoaxers or were false alarms. Sadly, people were trying to cash in on the panic, hoping to extort money, gain notoriety or claim insurance payouts. This had been a major concern expressed by both of the companies and investigating teams, but was accepted as an inevitable price for alerting the public.
A Ł100,000 reward was posted by Heinz and Cow & Gate, while the Home Office called an emergency meeting with the police and manufacturers to discuss future strategy. Officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the departments of Health and Social Security were also present.
One by one, various retail outlets decided to remove Heinz products from their shelves, unwilling to take the risk. The company stood firm and planned to replace all of its jars with tamper-resistant containers. The changeover took time and was costing millions of pounds.
Meanwhile, the police came under attack from parent and consumer groups who were critical of the delay in alerting the public. Anger increased when it was revealed that the blackmailer had been trailed for seven months.
A team of executives from Heinz flew from the US to mastermind the company’s response. Mr Ted Smyth, director of corporate affairs, stepped from his Concorde flight at Heathrow and branded as ‘thugs and terrorists’ the people who were contaminating baby food. He vowed that Heinz would not pay any money to the blackmailers. ‘I’m absolutely outraged and disgusted,’ he said. ‘These people are attacking the most vulnerable sections of our society - babies.’
The wave of copycat contaminations and hoaxes spread across Europe and similar cases were reported as far away as Australia and America. Three supermarkets in Illinois removed Heinz products from the shelves after a babysitter reported finding pins in two jars. The company was reported to have lost Ł25 million in a single week and, despite its best efforts, the first tamper-resistant jars wouldn’t be in supermarkets until 15 May. Later it was reported that the senior executives actually put a plan to the US board proposing to close the entire UK operation of Heinz which employs 5,000 people. Only political intervention saved their jobs.
Heinz continued to insist that it wouldn’t ‘give in’ by recalling goods or paying the ransom. Angered by this, the blackmailer made anonymous telephone calls to supermarkets, police stations and the media about forthcoming contaminations to increase the panic caused. His letters grew more threatening.
‘You should know by now that we do not bluff. An infant’s death will be another statistic as far as we are concerned, but at least we will not be ignored.’ Another message warned, ‘Babies will not be able to inform their parents that the product does not have its normal flavour. Their systems are also much less resilient.’
At the same time, his demands grew, instead of the one-off payment of Ł300,000 he now wanted annual payments over five years that totalled Ł1.2 million.
By the end of June he was known to have spiked jars and tins that were put on the shelves of supermarkets in Luton, Tunbridge Wells, Rayleigh, Basildon, Oxford, Croydon and Royston. In each case the store and local police were telephoned but one woman almost ate Heinz Weightwatchers minestrone soup saturated with more than five times the fatal adult dose of caustic soda.
Finally, the company accepted a change in tactics. As ordered by the blackmailer, eight accounts were opened with the Woolwich and National Provincial building societies in the names of Ian and Nina Fox. The cash-point cards and PIN codes were to be sent to several accommodation addresses in South London.
These were put under round-the-clock surveillance by the South East London Regional Crime Squad in an operation codenamed Stab. It also involved the longest media blackout ever requested by Scotland Yard. The blackmailer didn’t collect his mail and the operation was effectively blown when he next contacted Heinz on 5 September.
Pretending to be another party, the blackmailer wrote a letter that contained deliberate spelling mistakes such as the word ‘syanide’ so as to appear to be an illiterate informer rather than the extortionist. The ‘informant’ said he knew the identity of the blackmailer but couldn’t reveal it straight away because the man concerned was ‘a bent cop’. If the company paid him Ł50,000 he’d name names.
The letter contained intimate details of the police investigation and referred to ‘Operation Stab’ and the most senior officers involved.
Now there could be no doubt that the blackmailer had inside knowledge. He could even be in league with a policeman close to the heart of the investigation.
In an unprecedented move, Scotland Yard set up a covert ‘operation within the operation’ designed to stop the leaks. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Simon Crawshaw, head of the Yard’s serious crimes branch, took charge of the ‘leak-proof inquiry, setting up a secret headquarters outside of Scotland Yard. He took with him three trusted officers, ostensibly on compassionate or sick leave, and another forty were drafted in from Special Branch.
Effectively there were now two investigating teams, but the blackmailer would hopefully only know about one of them.
Meanwhile, Heinz paid Ł19,000 into two building society accounts that had been nominated by the ‘informant’ and daily withdrawals began in early September. Five weeks later, the money was disappearing fast and the police were still no closer to identifying their target.
In mid-October, Friday the thirteenth, a last-ditch surveillance operation codenamed Agincourt was mounted by DAC Crawshaw. He selected fifteen Woolwich machines in and around London and had them continually watched outside business hours. The Special Branch teams were detailed to stay close to the machines but out of sight. When the blackmailer’s cards were inserted, a computer would pick up the transaction, alert the incident room and the surveillance team would be informed by radio to move in.
Despite the technology, the withdrawals continued and Ł14,000 had been taken by the morning of 20 October when the blackmailer made his fifty-sixth withdrawal from the Enfield branch of the Woolwich.
That night the operation ran into difficulties - a severed electricity cable had brought down all the cash-point machines in the London area. Crawshaw and Detective Chief Superintendent Pat Fleming decided to maintain the surveillance and shortly after midnight two Special Branch officers posted near a machine in Enfield, North London, saw a burly, grey-bearded man park his car nearby.
He approached the cash-point machine, realized it was out of order and retraced his steps.
Why is he carrying a crash helmet? thought one of the officers and they moved in.
When challenged, the man said, ‘No problem, guys, I know what this is about, but I am innocent.’ Then he fainted.
The following day’s headlines announced that it was over.
‘POISONED FOOD ARREST - Ex-detective quizzed over blackmail plot,’ trumpeted the Daily Mail. ‘Ex-CID man is arrested over poisoned food’ declared the Daily Telegraph.
It went on, ‘A former detective was arrested yesterday in connection with an attempted Ł1.5 million campaign of extortion and food contamination against the Heinz and Pedigree food companies.
‘The man was once a member of the London-based Regional Crime Squad which has been investigating the blackmail plot since August last year. He is well known to the officers who arrested him in Enfield, north-east London, and before his retirement on health grounds he was for a time under the command of Det Chief Supt Patrick Fleming who is in charge of the blackmail inquiry.’
Rodney Whitchelo, aged forty-three, was taken to Paddington Green police station for questioning. The blackmail cash-point cards were found in his wallet and a search of his home revealed papers relating to the accounts, a syringe, drill and caustic soda. As I’d predicted, he lived in Hornchurch, Essex.
From the very beginning Whitchelo refused to cooperate and, given his knowledge of interview techniques and police procedure, the inquiry team had to make sure every loose-end was tied up. Slowly the life and times of the ‘baby food blackmailer’ unfolded.
Born in Hackney in 1947, he passed six O levels and was studying for his A levels in chemistry, physics and maths at Hackney College when he left school in the middle of his course. He joined the electronics firm Plessey in 1967 and by 1976 had reached the position of electronics engineer grade one.
At the age of twenty-nine, seeking a new challenge, he joined the Metropolitan Police Force and proved to be an impressive recruit, finishing top of his class at the Hendon training college and quickly passing his exams for the rank of sergeant. Later as a detective based at Gerald Road police station, he was involved in the inquiry into how Michael Fagan was able to break into Buckingham Palace and make his way unchallenged to the Queen’s bedroom.
It was a flying start to his police career and soon afterwards he joined the Regional Crime Squad, based at Barkingside, East London. Unfortunately, things then stagnated. Whitchelo believed he was better than most of his senior officers but felt he was being held back because he wasn’t a Freemason.
In July 1986, he attended a training course to learn advanced techniques for police surveillance work. It included a case study of the extortion attempt made against Bernard Matthews, the poultry producer, by William Frary, twenty-three, a microbiologist and struggling businessman.
This is how Whitchelo had learned of the previous extortion. All the details were laid out in front of him, including the mistake that Frary made in not casting his net wide enough when he came to withdraw the ransom from the building society accounts. Inspired by the plan, Whitchelo knew he could improve upon it. He’d open more accounts, make withdrawals from all over the country and keep track of the police investigations by using his mates in the Regional Crime Squad.
He returned home to Hornchurch, Essex, and began opening building society accounts under false names. Two years later, in August 1988, he sent his first letter to John Simmens of Pedigree while still serving as a detective sergeant. In October he retired on health grounds, thus giving himself the freedom to travel the country withdrawing money.
Meanwhile, he drank in the same pubs as his police mates and went to their Christmas Party. Occasionally, he dropped into the Regional Crime Squad office and glanced up at the white-boards dealing with Operation Roach. At one stage, when two of his mates were staking out a building society, Whitchelo sat chatting to them in the back seat of their car.
His attempt at committing the perfect crime with total extortion demands amounting to Ł3.75 million had netted him just Ł32,000. In all, he was linked to seventeen contaminations.
I heard nothing from the inquiry team until midway through 1990 when I received a visitor at Arnold Lodge. A senior policeman explained that the trial was approaching and the prosecution were tying up the final details of their case against Whitchelo.
‘Given that your advice was so accurate in describing the offender and managing his behaviour in the field, counsel feels it would be extremely useful to have you give evidence,’ he said. ‘We want you to explain how you came up with your offender profile.’
The officer had brought with him a considerable amount of material, much of it found in Whitchelo’s house. Apart from business-related papers, there were letters that he’d written to women after advertising in sex contact magazines for bondage partners. He was aroused by domination games and constantly looking for like-minded women.
Although living at home with his widowed mother, he travelled widely for sexual liaisons and some of the building society withdrawals matched the locations that he’d visited.
Other statements also supported my original conclusions that the blackmailer would tend to be fanciful and grandiose. He’d told a former girlfriend that he’d gone undercover to infiltrate the IRA. He also started a pen-pals club for sadomasochists using bondage magazines but the club flopped because not enough women joined.
Similarly, a journalist acquaintance, George Webber, a former night news editor of the Daily Mirror, said that Whitchelo had suggested they co-write a book about the perfect crime. Several of the completed chapters contained details of accommodation addresses and building society accounts used in the extortion, although Webber had no idea they were real.
Nothing that I read surprised me; it simply filled in the subtle colours of Rodney Whitchelo. I’d never seen his photograph or heard the sound of his voice, but I knew what went on inside his head.
Even so, I felt uncomfortable about giving evidence at the trial because I didn’t think I could move the prosecution case forward. I explained, ‘When I gave the psychological profile I talked in general terms about the person responsible - I couldn’t tell you his birthdate, or the colour of his eyes, or whether he’s got good teeth. I dealt in strong probabilities, not absolutes. I’ll give you an example. When I’m asked about what degree of probability I associated with, let’s say, my belief that he was a policeman, I’d have to say ninety per cent. That automatically leads to the next question, “So Mr Britton, you’re saying there is at least a ten per cent probability that he was something else?”
‘So you see, it doesn’t strengthen your case. If counsel wants me to give evidence, I will, but I think you either have the evidence against this man or you don’t. Nothing I can say will help your cause.’