Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (45 page)

Once the last of the not guilty verdicts had been returned against the remaining men, Tony ‘
Toad
’
Graham
, Nigel ‘
Scroat
’ Parvis
of the club
,
and
Steve ‘KK
’ Robinson, and Peter ‘
Spider
’ Sherbourne
who are members of The Fallen, an alleged ‘puppet’ or ‘support’ club
, the
J
udge thanked the jury for their service in the case and instructed that the defendants be
freed
. As they stepped
down
from the dock, the five were greeted
by the men who had remained in
Court
with a round of quiet bear hugs,
handshakes and low-
voiced conversations
.

As the defendants
and their escort then
left the Court free men, outside on
the steps
they were greeted by a large group of their fellow club members
and other supporters. As the crowd reached the bottom of the steps, the five men halted while
the club’s press spokesman
,
who gave his name only as
Bandit
,
read out a
short
statement to waiting journalists.

OUTSIDE BROADCAST VTR
INSET OF CLUB SPOKESMAN READING A STATEMENT:

Once again members of our club have wa
lked free from a trial despite all the lies and rubbish that are told about us
and we would like to thank the good sense of the jury for seeing through the way that we were being set up
.

The truth is, we are different, and that’s what the cops can’t stand about us. That’s why they keep bringing these bullshit charges against us.

We are a band of brothers who enjoy riding our bikes and partying together, who treat each other will Love, Loyalty, Honour and Respect, and the cops just need to leave us alone to be free
to
do our own thing.

END VTR INSET

OVER VTR INSET OF DEPARTING CROWD OF BIKERS, FOLLOWED BY BIKER CONVOY HEADING AWAY DOWN NEWCASTLE QUAYSIDE.

And with that Peter
,
they were gone, the group walking up the road to a nearby car
park where the bikers had been congregating for much of the morning, and from which a huge and noisy convoy of
Harley Davidsons and other large bikes emerged a few minutes later, to roar off in a disciplined convoy out and away along the Quayside.

END VTR INSET

And is there any idea of where they have gone, and indeed
wh
at happens next in this story?

Well Peter, police sources have told me that they believe that the convoy is heading for the club’s northern clubhouse, the centre if you like of the events that have been critical for this trial, where the police understand other bikers hav
e been arriving over the past fe
w days as the trial has reached its conclusion.

Police are anticipating that the bikers will be holding a large party
over the coming weekend
to celebrate the outcome of the trial, but as for where the case goes from here,
Chief Inspector
Hester
told
me that the cases will remain open and under investigation
. However
no one here that I have managed to speak to can really tell me anything
about what other leads the police may have to go on
.

After all, as the
D
efence
have apparently successfully argued to the jury, these ar
e alleged murders with
no bodies with which to confirm that murders have actually taken place.

Now in English legal history, that’s not unprecedented, the
P
rosecution does
not actually have to produce a body as it were to prove a murder, but in this case where the
D
efence
has been able to sow so much doubt about the reliability of the other evidence involved, it certainly hasn’t helped the
P
rosecution
.

So where does that leave us
, Eamon
?

Well I think that in the case of a high profile trial like this,
Peter,
the police will obviously want to go back and review the evidence they have in detail, to see if there is anything that they have missed
. B
ut in the end it
may sim
p
ly be that the
y and the
Crown Prosecution Service
will have to leave these cases open pending any new evidence being uncovered at some point i
n the future, whatever and when
ever that m
ight
be.

Thank you very much
Eamon
.
Eamon
Reynolds there, our legal correspondent talking to me live from our Newcastle studio about the jury’s verdict
this morning
in the biker murder trial.

Now, in the rest of today’s news…

Following the
sensational
result
of the
hearing
there was a frenzy of
Press
speculation about the events leading up to the trial and discussion of the outcome. By way of a conclusion, and to illustrate the type of rumours that became current as a result of the case, we have included below a copy of an article that appeared
at
the week
end
after the verdicts
had been delivered
, which seems to us to cover most of the threads of the debate
which
then ensued.

The Guardian

Page 3

Saturday 18
th
June 2011

Moorland mystery

Missing bike gang
’s
millions and missing bodies

What really happened that night on
Enderdale
moor?

Raymond Chandler
was famous for feeling that clear cut resolutions to a plot were usually a scam.
The ideal mystery
he once said,
was the one you would read if the ending was missing
.
If so, he would have been enthralled by the case just heard at Newcastle Crown Court.

On
Fri
day
, Mr Charlie
Graham
, effective president of the The Rebel Brethren MC, and four associates
,
were a
c
quit
t
ed of murder charges relating to Mr
Steve ‘Wibble’ Nelson
, his predecessor at the club, Mr
Peter ‘Bung’ Milton
, another member of the club and
Mr
Iain Parke, a former journalist on this paper
, who had previously been missing for
over six months
.

The case lasted
two weeks
and at times seemed more like the plot of
one of Ch
a
ndler’s
thriller
s
or a gangster film than a sober trial in an English Crown Court as the jury heard an extraordinary tale unfold
, one in which it seems the end really still is missing
.

The
P
rosecution alleged that the men had been the victims of a professionally staged ambush
on the evening of
Friday
5th March
last year,
after the car
in which
they had been travelling was found burnt out and riddled with bullet holes only four miles from the club’s northern club house which they had just left following a meeting with Mr
Graham.
The motive alleged by the Crown was a power struggle within the club over the issue of its future direction
,
a
s well as
the extent to which the club and its members were involved in a
n allegedly
highly
organized
and profitable
drugs smuggling operation.
According to the Crown, the dead men had been attempting to take the club back to its roots as a motorcycle club, whilst the current leadership were busy recruiting active drug dealers to increase its activities in this area.

At the same time, there were also suggestions that some or all of the profits from this trade, estimated to be in the millions of pounds, had gone missing following the still unsolved death in prison of Mr Martin ‘Damage’ Robertson in
July 2008
.

However
no bodies were ever found at the scene and the
D
efence
successfully argued that there was no proof that any murders had been committed.
Central to the
P
rosecution case was a journal allegedly maintained by Mr Parke in which he recorded the events leading up to the fateful day.
Counsel for the Defence
,
Mr
Adrian Whiteley QC
, called into question the reliability of this as evidence. Mr
Whitel
e
y
then went on to suggest that in fact the three men had been actively involved in the alleged drugs trade, which the accused had been seeking to stop, had been involved in the murder of Mr Robertson in order to embezzle the drug scheme’s profits
,
and had then
carefully
staged the ambush
and Mr Parke’s evidence,
to cover their escape with the stolen funds.

In the end the jury found the defendants not guilty and
they walked from the
Court
as free men, but leaving behind them a series of unanswered questions.

Are the men dead, or are they alive?

Was there actually an ambush? If so, who carried it out, and why? If not, was it
in fact
a cleverly staged distraction to cover their getaway?

If it was a getaway, what were they getting away from? And where are they now?

Had the club, or individual members within it, been actively involved in drug smuggling or not? If so, were the missing men attempting to change that, or to prolong it?

If large scale drug smuggling had been taking place, where have the proceeds gone? Has some or all of this alleged cash gone missing?

While none of the police officers involved in the investigation, or club members, will speak openly, each theory in this case has its strong proponents and both sides in the debate point to similar evidence to support their case, but place very different interpretations on it.

For example,
Steve
‘
Wibble
’ Nelson
was married to former model
Jonquil
O’Hara
and had two children,
Sam
aged
7
and
Benji aged 5
. All three are also
missing
and were last seen on
the morning of Friday 5
th
March
2010
, the day before the alleged shootings
.

Meanwhile in Ireland, in a fact that the
Judge
ruled should not be made public at the time in the UK media in case it might prejudice the trial, although it was widely reported in Ireland and elsewhere and references to it repeated on biker orientated websites, the cottage that Iain Parke had been staying in was burnt down.
Fire investigators believe that the blaze was clearly a case of arson, having been deliberately set and from the evidence of accelerants, believed to be petrol, having been spread throughout the building.
The couple’s guard dog was found locked up in an outbui
lding and later rehomed by the I
SPCA.

Eamur McEown
, Iain Parke’s girlfriend
who had been living with him at the property while he had been in hiding
was missing, however
again,
no body
has ever been
found and she remains unaccounted for.

Some parties cite these additional disappearances as evidence of those involved making arrangements for their partners to disappear with them. Given the potential sums
that may have been
involved, the costs of establish
ing
new identities for the
ir families as well as the men themselves
in their chosen refuges are likely to be immaterial it’s argued.