Essex Boy (21 page)

While serving one prison sentence at HMP Chelmsford Boshell found himself in a cell next door to Damon Alvin. Boshell was impressed with the confident, smooth-talking hard man that had become his neighbour. Alvin appeared to be everything that Boshell had dreamed of being one day. As soon as Alvin realised that Boshell admired and looked up to him, he decided to exploit him. At first, Alvin presented himself as an extremely friendly and helpful man; he would read and write letters for Boshell and supply him with any contraband that he required. Once Boshell was securely hooked, he asked Alvin if he could do anything for him in return and, within a few days, he was selling drugs on his hero’s behalf.

Another resident at this establishment who befriended Boshell was 45-year-old Christopher Wheatley. He had been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment after police had raided his flat and found 30 grammes of cocaine, 3 grammes of amphetamine, 357 Ecstasy pills and £950 in cash. A further 170 grammes of cocaine were discovered hidden under the seat of his car. The drugs had an estimated street value of between £10,000 and £17,000. Wheatley’s solicitor told the court that he had become addicted to drugs after losing his job as a doorman. Five years earlier, Wheatley had been a prominent member of Tony Tucker’s Essex Boys firm. When a more ‘useful’ individual, named Patrick Tate, was released from prison in 1993, Tucker disposed of Wheatley and replaced him with Tate.

The drugs that Wheatley had once sold with ease and relative safety, through his job as head bouncer at one of Tucker’s clubs in Southend, suddenly became a commodity he could only offload at great risk. A steady stream of punters knocking on Wheatley’s door soon came to the attention of the police and, after a short period of surveillance, they raided his home and caught him red-handed. While in prison, Wheatley continued to deal in drugs and one of the men he employed to distribute them was Dean Boshell. An unlikely friendship developed between the two and Wheatley, a competent and powerful athlete, introduced Boshell to the world of bodybuilding, supplements and steroids.

With his ever-expanding frame and ego, coupled with his new gangster friends, Wheatley and Alvin, Boshell really believed that he had finally fulfilled his dream and become one of the big boys. He told fellow inmates that when he was released he was going to set up a drug-dealing empire and live lavishly off his ill-gotten gains. When the duo were released from prison, Alvin and his new sidekick Boshell immersed themselves in a criminal partnership. Everywhere that Alvin went, Boshell would either be at his side or not too far behind. In the pubs and clubs around Southend, Alvin introduced Boshell as his mate but Boshell would tell people that they were, in fact, brothers. It was Alvin who introduced Ricky Percival to Boshell around this time.

Percival told me that he thought Boshell was a ponce who couldn’t keep his dick in his trousers, that he would never buy a drink and that he would not hesitate to sleep with any female so long as she had a purse and a pulse.

Apart from seeing each other occasionally in our local pub, the Woodcutters Arms, there was no other contact between Boshell and Percival during this period, and nobody has ever come forward to dispute that fact.

As the first anniversary of Malcolm Walsh’s killing had drawn near, the raw emotion that we all felt and the threats against the Tretton brothers and their family intensified. Two weeks before the anniversary of Malcolm’s death, Percival and a few friends had gone on holiday to Cyprus. Dealing with the death of a friend as a teenager is difficult enough, but when that friend has been murdered the entire grieving process is intensified tenfold. Percival had added to his own burden by doing all that he could to help and comfort Malcolm’s brother and three sisters. Pamela Walsh had taken Malcolm’s death particularly hard, so much so she had been prescribed antidepressants by her GP. Her weight plummeted and her general health became a concern for all those that knew her. Percival had begun visiting Pamela regularly in the hope that he could help her come to terms with her loss. Before he departed for Cyprus, he made a promise to visit Pamela as soon as he returned.

While Percival was enjoying his much-deserved break, a man who I shall call Gary Baron arrived at Alvin’s home and said that he was looking for Dean Boshell.

Describing the incident several years after the event, Alvin said, ‘He asked me if he could leave something with me to give to Boshell. I asked him what it was and he answered by opening the boot of his car. I looked in and saw a shotgun wrapped in a jumper. I opened up the boot of my car, he picked up the shotgun and put it in my vehicle. I said to him that I would give it to Boshell when I saw him. Because of all the threats that had been made about attacking the Trettons, I knew what it was going to be used for. Two hours later, Boshell turned up at my house and I told him that Gary Baron had left something in the boot of my car for him. Boshell took my keys, went outside, transferred the shotgun from my car to his and drove home. Five minutes later he reappeared and gave me back my keys.’

On the anniversary of Malcolm Walsh’s death, Alvin and Boshell were in the Woodcutters Arms in Leigh-on-Sea. Ricky Percival was also present and telling the bar staff about the holiday in Cyprus from which he had just returned. Alvin and Percival didn’t speak that night because Alvin appeared to be preoccupied with ‘a problem’ that he did not wish to discuss. He was drinking heavily and most people in the pub just thought that he was drowning his sorrows thinking about Malcolm.

At closing time, Alvin and Boshell left the pub and got into a stolen white Vauxhall and drove to a park on the opposite side of which stood the Trettons’ family home. After sitting in the car talking for approximately twenty minutes, the two men got out of the vehicle and walked across the park. Both were wearing balaclavas and were armed with shotguns. As they crept up to the Tretton home there was little sign of life but they noticed that a neighbour and close family friend was having a party. Alvin walked to the rear of the neighbour’s property to see if he could see who was in the lounge. Peering through the window he saw members of the Tretton family were present and so he went back to the front of the house to inform Boshell.

‘Are there any kids in the house?’ Boshell asked.

Alvin, who knew the family, replied, ‘There are, but it’s late and they will be in bed, so don’t worry about it.’

Alvin was standing motionless outside the premises and Boshell asked him what he intended doing. Alvin replied that he was waiting for the people to leave. Getting agitated, Alvin began walking from the front of the house to the back trying to see through the windows to establish who was where and doing what. As he did this, he put his shotgun down by a white picket fence. Somebody must have walked into the kitchen because suddenly the light came on. The open kitchen door amplified the sound of music and muffled the voices that were coming from the lounge inside the house. Alvin told Boshell that he thought that it was pretty lively inside. Cold and tired, Boshell had told Alvin that it was late, he had been waiting for ages, nothing was happening, so he was going home.

Alvin replied, ‘No, just wait, just wait. I am going to do it. I am going to do it.’

Five minutes later he picked up the shotgun, pulled his balaclava down over his face, ran up and kicked open the front door. The revellers were stunned into silence by the almighty bang as the door frame splintered.

Raymond Tretton jumped to his feet and shouted, ‘What the fuck was that?’

Before anybody could answer the lounge door was flung open and balaclava-clad Alvin and Boshell stood before the terrified room full of people, brandishing shotguns. Raymond looked at the gunman nearest to him and, through holes that had been crudely cut in the balaclava, he could see that he was staring straight back at him. The sound of the shotguns’ loading mechanisms struck terror in Raymond’s heart, but the only words that he managed to mutter were, ‘Oh shit.’

The blast that followed threw Raymond’s body across the room and into a wall. His left hand, which he had raised in an attempt to protect his face, was shredded and he also suffered pellet wounds to his head, chest and arm. Both Alvin and Boshell unleashed a salvo of shots at their screaming victims. As they did so, Raymond ran into the back garden via the patio doors. Once outside he attempted to grip the garden fence in an attempt to climb over it and escape, but as he did so he called out in pain. Looking down at his hand he saw that he had lost the ring and middle fingers and was bleeding profusely. In shock and excruciating pain, Raymond managed to drag himself over the fence and two further fences before coming to rest on the roof of his sister’s garden shed. After catching his breath, he rolled off the roof and lay gasping for air in his sister’s garden, wondering what to do next.

Stuart Tretton, who had been relaxing in an armchair when the gunmen had burst in, had also leapt to his feet. Initially, he had been tempted to laugh at the men wearing balaclavas because he thought they were friends of his playing some sort of sick joke. But when the barrel of a shotgun was aimed at his face, Stuart realised in an instant that he was in grave danger. As he raised his hands instinctively to shield his face and head, the gunman laughed and slowly squeezed the trigger. The deafening bang caused Stuart to spring from his seat and follow Raymond out of the patio doors and into the garden where he climbed over a fence to reach his mother’s home. Rather than knock at her back door, Stuart began to kick it repeatedly until it eventually burst open. As he staggered up the stairs and into his mother’s bedroom Stuart began to shout, ‘Help me, Mum, help me. I’m going to die.’

His mother sat up in bed terrified, she could see that her son’s hand was hanging from his arm by a thin, shredded piece of flesh and skin and he was losing a lot of blood. He also had a gaping shotgun wound in his chest, which she later learned had punctured his lung. As his mother raced downstairs to call the emergency services, Stuart called out in pain and begged for help.

When his mother reached the foot of the stairs, Raymond entered the hallway via the back door and began shouting, ‘Look what they have done to me. Look what they have done.’ Drenched in his own blood, his face totally expressionless, Raymond suddenly fell silent as if in shock, turned and walked away.

Jenny Dickinson had looked at her fellow revellers in disbelief when she had heard the front door being kicked open by the gunmen. Curled up in the foetal position and screaming at the top of her voice, Jenny had watched in absolute horror as Raymond and then Stuart were blasted. As the wounded men made good their escape, one of the balaclava-clad gunmen had turned and pointed the smoking barrel of his gun at Christine Tretton, who was sitting next to Jenny. In an act of heroism, Jenny grabbed hold of Christine’s shoulder and pulled her towards her. The gunman fired and the shot punched a huge hole in the top of the settee where moments earlier Christine’s head had been. A split second later, there came another deafening explosion. As Jenny leapt to her feet to escape certain death she felt excruciating pain and realised that the some of the lead shot that had been aimed at Christine had struck her. In a blind panic Jenny ran to her nearby home, where her ex-partner was babysitting their children. When she arrived, she saw that part of her left hand was missing and blood was gushing out of the wound. Jenny’s daughter attempted to stem the flow of the blood and calm her while they awaited the arrival of the emergency services.

Back at the scene of the carnage, Christine had stopped shaking and was sitting zombie-like on the settee. Blood was splashed across all of the walls and lumps of human skin and flesh were scattered around the floor. A spray of shotgun pellets arced across the lounge wall and large chunks of the seats where the victims had been sitting were missing. Getting slowly to her feet, Christine followed the trails of blood out of the patio doors and into the garden. Dazed and confused, Christine’s next clear memory is of running into her sister Lydia’s bedroom and screaming, ‘We have been shot. We have been shot.’ Christine lifted her sweatshirt, which was soaked in blood and saw that she had been hit in the shoulder. Fearing she might die, Christine became hysterical, begging her sister to activate the panic alarm that had been installed in her home following the nuisance calls.

‘Calm down. Calm down,’ Lydia kept saying as she tried to reassure those that had been wounded.

Locksley Close was soon filled with the sound of wailing sirens and blue flashing lights, which intermittently illuminated the horrified faces of neighbours and other local residents. Exercising caution, the police cordoned off the street and refused to allow anybody near the scene of the house where the bloodbath had occurred. When a fleet of ambulances arrived to take the wounded away they, too, were prevented from entering the police cordon and so the injured were forced to walk up the street in order to get medical assistance. When a police officer noticed the severity of the victims’ gunshot wounds, he asked a friend of the Tretton family, who lived nearby, to return to the scene of the incident to search for hands and fingers that had been shot off.

After leaving the carnage that they had created Alvin and Boshell had run back across the park towards the stolen car. As soon as they were both in, Boshell had started up the vehicle and sped away. Alvin had his shotgun with him in the front seat and was trying to unblock it. He told Boshell that they would need it in case they got pulled over. He didn’t say that he was going to shoot the police if they were stopped, but Boshell was in no doubt that was exactly what he was implying. Boshell pleaded with him to put the weapon down because it was clearly visible and he was trying to drive. Laughing, Alvin had said that he had enjoyed shooting the Tretton brothers.