Bonded by Blood (24 page)
Authors: Bernard O'Mahoney
I know Chris took the treatment he had received from Tucker badly following Tate’s release. They had been good friends until Tucker had got involved with Tate and kicked Chris into touch. From being Tucker’s right-hand man to becoming the subject of his jokes and snide remarks hurt Chris deeply.
On New Year’s Eve 1995, Chris and I had worked on the door at a private function and he had told me he was glad Tucker and Tate had been murdered. He was rambling on in a drugged up, confused, barely audible mumble. It was terrible to witness. I never saw Chris alive again. His drugged, vacant features are another of the many images my friends have left me with and that I have been trying to erase from my mind ever since. Shortly after Chris was released from his seven-year prison sentence, he died after collapsing outside a gymnasium. Another of our number dead, another family devastated. I reckon the only people who ever made serious money out of our firm were undertakers and florists.
Chapter 14
There are two very distinct types of protected witness. The first is the
innocent bystander – for example the man who witnesses a murder in the street outside his home. If he agrees to give evidence, he can be settled in a new job, be paid a ‘salary’ equivalent to what he was earning and, in extreme cases, he may even be relocated overseas. The second type of protected witness enjoys no such privileges. He is a career criminal who has decided to inform on his former associates in order to avoid a lengthy term of imprisonment. The authorities never let this type of witness forget that he is a criminal. Rather than being housed in a hotel or a safe house, he is more likely to spend his time being moved between police stations and specialist prison units. He must also confess to every single crime he has ever committed or witnessed, or of which he has knowledge. He must plead guilty in court and accept whatever sentence is imposed upon him. Any ideas Nicholls may have had about becoming some sort of celebrity witness for the police were soon dashed when he arrived at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes to a unit known only as HMP Alpha.
innocent bystander – for example the man who witnesses a murder in the street outside his home. If he agrees to give evidence, he can be settled in a new job, be paid a ‘salary’ equivalent to what he was earning and, in extreme cases, he may even be relocated overseas. The second type of protected witness enjoys no such privileges. He is a career criminal who has decided to inform on his former associates in order to avoid a lengthy term of imprisonment. The authorities never let this type of witness forget that he is a criminal. Rather than being housed in a hotel or a safe house, he is more likely to spend his time being moved between police stations and specialist prison units. He must also confess to every single crime he has ever committed or witnessed, or of which he has knowledge. He must plead guilty in court and accept whatever sentence is imposed upon him. Any ideas Nicholls may have had about becoming some sort of celebrity witness for the police were soon dashed when he arrived at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes to a unit known only as HMP Alpha.
The unit is a secure prison within the prison. The idea is not to prevent the inmates from escaping but to prevent those who they are about to give evidence against from breaking in. Nicholls was told that everything within the unit was kept secret, but as soon as he walked in the other inmates were saying, ‘You’re that geezer who’s grassing up the blokes over the triple murder, aren’t you?’ They all then sat around Nicholls wanting to know the details of the case.
While he was on the unit, Nicholls became friendly with another protected witness named Geoffrey Couzens. Unbeknown to Nicholls, Couzens kept a prison diary in which he detailed all of the conversations he had with other inmates. In this diary, he wrote that he first met Darren Nicholls on 24 October 1996.
When a new person joins the Witness Protection Scheme, there is a natural interest by other members of the unit to find out who they are and the reason for their involvement in the scheme. Darren Nicholls was no exception, as he readily spoke to members of the unit about his involvement in the Rettendon Range Rover murders.
Darren was only on the Protected Witness Unit for a few days before he was returned to police custody. During this period, I recall that he was in general conversation with the inmates on the unit. He told them that while he had no prior knowledge of, or involvement in, the murders, he had taken two men in his car to the murder scene, four men arrived at the scene in the Range Rover and after the murders had been committed Darren took three men from the scene in his car. When he told his version of events, which was on an almost daily basis, he always laboured the point that he had no prior knowledge that the men were going to be shot. I formed the impression that he did know and he was lying. The impression was just my gut feeling based on the amount of times he kept denying his involvement over and over again.
As I mentioned, Darren left the Unit after a few days and I next met him after the Unit had been transferred to HMP Parkhurst in November 1996. Darren’s story concerning the murders had changed dramatically. I recall overhearing Darren engaged in a conversation with the inmates on one occasion. He was talking about the murders and although I wasn’t directly involved in the conversation, I was listening to him and heard what he said. On this occasion, he said that he had taken two men to the scene in his car and another three men had arrived in the Range Rover. He never said who had travelled in which vehicle, whether it was the gunman or the deceased. I noticed the number of people in each account did not tally up. Darren also said that he knew everybody’s movements because they had traced their mobile phones to various transmitters or relay stations. I asked Darren if they could get an accurate triangulation fix on a mobile phone, but he just gave me a blank look. From that, I took it to mean that he didn’t understand the technicalities of police methods or the word ‘triangulation’. Darren did say that he was aware it would cause problems if his statement did not fit the mobile phone evidence.
On one occasion while Darren and I were in my cell, Darren asked my opinion on a matter associated with charges against him. He told me that he had been charged with involvement in the importation of cannabis but he wondered whether he should admit to involvement in Class A drugs. The logic was that if Darren admitted more serious offences, his credibility when he gave evidence would be higher in the eyes of the jury, but he would not be the subject of a more severe sentence by the judge. I told Darren that such an idea did not make sense to me. While it was necessary that he did admit all he had been involved in – otherwise the defence may be able to challenge his honesty when he gave evidence – there was no reason for him to admit things that he hadn’t done.
He said that he wanted the new identity being offered and a fresh start, and that if that meant admitting to offences he hadn’t committed and committing perjury, then he was willing to do so.
Beyond the prison walls, Nicholls’s wife Sandra and their children were struggling with a world that had been turned upside down. As soon as Nicholls had agreed to give evidence against Whomes and Steele, his family had been taken from their home in the middle of the night. The children – young, confused and frightened – were told they had to leave because an old Second World War bomb had been found nearby. Isolated from family and friends in a police safe house, Sandra was terrified of saying anything to anybody in case it placed her and the children in danger. When neighbours asked innocent questions, such as ‘Where do you come from?’ or ‘What do you do?’, Sandra would just turn and walk away.
The Nicholls family was not the only one being torn apart by the events that had led to the demise of the Essex Boys firm. Although we appeared to be emerging from the doom and gloom in which the events of 1995 had immersed myself and my family, the underlying strain on us all proved to be too much.
Paul Betts had appeared on television, calling me a bastard and saying I was responsible for the death of his daughter Leah. He based his allegations on the fact I had admitted in court that I had turned a blind eye to the drug dealing that went on in Raquels. The publicity generated by his allegation resulted in older children telling my children at school that their father was a murderer. How can you tell your tearful son or daughter to ignore such nonsense? What can you possibly say when they ask if it’s true? In an effort to stop this ridiculous witch-hunt, I wrote an open letter to Paul Betts, which was printed in the press. I urged him to confront me on live TV so we could debate who was really responsible for Leah’s death, but, unsurprisingly, he declined.
It was becoming apparent to me that remaining with my children was causing them to be unfairly tarnished. Debra, a decent, honest woman, was also being subjected to an unjustified whispering campaign. My family were suffering for something none of us was directly responsible for. Paul Betts’s accusations were causing the children so much upset, Debra suggested, and I agreed, that we should part for their sake. Debra and I had to look at the situation in a cold, clinical manner and do what was best for them and not what suited us. We sold our home in Mayland and Debra moved to a home near her mother. I returned to Basildon. True love is an extremely painful thing to acknowledge.
I did not arrive in the best of moods. I was in turmoil over my family and I was tired of being blamed for causing the death of a girl who had been foolish enough to take drugs. It wasn’t as though Leah was experimenting for the first time; she had regularly taken Ecstasy and speed and had smoked cannabis. I felt Paul Betts’s allegation was ridiculous; it was like somebody blaming a pub landlord for getting him or her convicted of drunk-driving. He should learn that we all have choices in life and we all have to take responsibility for our actions, however unsavoury they may be. It’s not always somebody else’s or society’s fault. Likewise, his son, William, is soley responsible for his recent assault on two girls, aged thirteen and fourteen, which resulted in his name being added to the sex offenders register. Unsurprisingly, Mr Betts was not so vocal about his son’s behaviour.
My decision to help the police put me out in no-man’s-land; not only were the firm’s victims’ families condemning me, but my former associates and their sidekicks were also swearing bloody revenge on me for daring to assist the police. Whichever way I turned, Bernard O’Mahoney had done wrong. I grew sick of hearing about so-called gangsters in Basildon who were allegedly trying to kill me, and I was sick of being advised by police where I should or should not go to avoid my imaginary assassins. So many people appeared to have opinions about me, yet few knew me and none had ever had any dealings with me. If people didn’t like me living in Basildon, it was a matter for them, not me. I had been driven out of one home; I was not going to be driven out of another.
I started drinking in my old haunts. Most people I met droned on and on about the murders of Tucker, Tate and Rolfe. Few in the town believed the men accused of the murders were guilty; in fact, many believed I had been instrumental in luring the trio to their deaths. Nobody said they had a problem with me personally and several had nothing but good memories of the trouble-free rave nights we had created at Raquels.
A few months after moving back to Basildon, I bumped into a girl named Emma Turner, whom I had first met at Raquels. Emma and I had always been good friends and we found we had a lot to catch up on, which resulted in us spending more and more time together. Not least was the fact that our close friendship had resulted in the Rettendon murder squad detectives giving Emma a hard time.
Back in April 1996, DC Scott from the Essex drugs squad had contacted me about ‘Tucker’s girlfriend’, Emma Turner. An informant had said ‘the head of the firm’ was going out with Emma and the police had assumed the informant was referring to Tucker when in fact the informant was talking about the head doorman at Raquels, which was me. DC Shakespeare, who had been tasked to contact and interview Emma, turned up at her mother’s home and left a message saying that if she continued to avoid him, she would be arrested. Fearing she was in some sort of trouble, Emma contacted me and I telephoned the police to explain the situation on her behalf. Eventually, DC Scott was able to confirm that there had been a mistake and Emma had had no involvement with Tucker whatsoever.
Emma and I began to go out together regularly. Eventually, I gave up the flat I had rented and moved in with her. Since the catalogue of court appearances connected to the Betts case had ended, I had been able to take on a full-time job driving a tipper lorry. Within a short period of time, I was given a managerial position and offered a post in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. I didn’t want to move away from my children because being able to see them every other day had lessened the trauma of being separated from them. Instead, I chose to drive to Peterborough every day, leaving the house at 4.30 a.m. and returning at 8 p.m. Being straight was proving to be a real strain and the rewards were hardly compensatory.
John Rollinson, or ‘Gaffer’ as he liked to call himself, the dealer who had bankrolled Mark Murray after the police raid at Club UK, had been telling people in Essex that he was looking for me. He was apparently unhappy that I had named Murray as a drug dealer at the Betts trial. Rollinson may have been well advised to keep his big mouth shut about the fact he had financed the batch of drugs that led to Leah’s death, but he wasn’t the brightest of people. He was the type who tried to make himself seem important by having views and opinions on villains others looked up to.
Gaffer
(Blake Publishing, 2003), a recent book published about Rollinson’s life, describes him as ‘one of the most dangerous men in the country’. It goes on to claim that Rollinson has made the villains’ Hall of Fame after a ‘lifetime of unmitigated violence, driven by a fearsome rage’. Only the gullible and naive take any notice of the likes of Rollinson and his ridiculous boasting.
Gaffer
(Blake Publishing, 2003), a recent book published about Rollinson’s life, describes him as ‘one of the most dangerous men in the country’. It goes on to claim that Rollinson has made the villains’ Hall of Fame after a ‘lifetime of unmitigated violence, driven by a fearsome rage’. Only the gullible and naive take any notice of the likes of Rollinson and his ridiculous boasting.
It was a good friend of Rollinson who told me he had been badmouthing me, but I was not the slightest bit concerned. I had never done anything to Rollinson. If he had just cause to be upset with anybody, it should have been his tailor. I knew that he had no right to have a grievance with me because I hardly knew the mug. ‘It’s Gaffer trying to involve his name in a high-profile case,’ I told his friend. ‘You know what he’s like. The boy’s a fool, he just wants to feel important.’
Then one evening, when Emma and I were out having a drink over at the Festival Leisure Park in Basildon – a large entertainment complex comprising bars, nightclubs, a bowling alley, a cinema and fast food restaurants: some of the more witty locals refer to it as ‘Bas Vegas’ – a small, thin drug-ravaged man started shouting ‘Fucking cunt!’ at me. He threw his baseball cap on the floor and kept spitting each time he did so. ‘Cunt, fucking cunt,’ he shouted. I thought the man may have been mentally challenged or was suffering from some sort of embarrassing disorder, so I thought it best to ignore him.
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