The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (15 page)

Mrs Connell saw the Mini's passenger emerge from the driver's door, holding his bloodied head in his hands and collapse into the road. The gunman nearest to Mrs Connell shouted, ‘Don't move!' to the man in the road and as a pedestrian emerged from in front of her car, the same man shouted, ‘Get back, we're police.'

‘This,' said Mrs Connell, ‘was the first time I heard the word ‘‘police'' mentioned.'

She could hear a girl screaming – this of course was Stephens – and the gunman plus a man in motorcycle gear (this was DC Jenner) pulled the wounded man out of the Mini, on to the roadway and handcuffed him.

Mrs Connell's passenger, Samuel Kenneth Fleming, heard two cracks, although at the time he did not immediately identify them as gunshots. Looking to his left, he saw a man pointing a gun at a yellow Mini, saw there were three people inside it and then heard the sound of several more shots. Initially, Fleming got the impression that blanks were being fired because he did not see a barrel flash or any of the weapons ‘kick'. Several more men ran towards the Mini and Fleming heard a number of other shots discharged; he saw one man by the Mini's rear offside reloading his revolver. At that moment, the driver's door opened, a man ran off, the car rolled forward a few feet and then more shooting came from the rear of the Mini. A man scrambled across the driver's seat and then collapsed into the roadway and Fleming saw a motorcyclist handcuff the man.

‘The traffic started moving and before our way ahead was clear, we were peremptorily instructed to move on,' said Fleming, adding ‘or words to that effect'. This may or may not have been a tactful way of echoing the less than tactful police officer's words heard by the occupants of the Volkswagen van.

The traffic in Pembroke Road had been travelling so slowly that Keith Victor Daniels turned off the engine of his Hillman Hunter saloon which was in that thoroughfare's offside lane. He was about thirty yards from the junction with Earls Court Road when he heard a bang, followed seconds later by several more. He looked across the road, at an angle of forty-five degrees, saw a yellow Mini and over the top of it, a man by the nearside door. He was unable to see the man's arms but then heard the sound of more bangs and saw the rear window of the Mini shatter. Daniels saw the driver run out, across the road and then saw two men with guns go to the Mini's offside. One of the men reloaded his gun and both men pointed their weapons at a man who was sprawling out of the open driver's door and then Daniels believed he saw one of the men hit the man in the roadway with his gun, anything between two to four times; at the time, the man had both hands on top of his head. Before he drove on, Daniels saw a woman in a brown cape who ran to the scene, spoke briefly to a motorcyclist and then ran back in the direction from which she had come.

This was Jane Rosemary Lamprill, a secretary for the Press Association and also a trained state registered nurse. From her flat in Pembroke Road, she heard the sound of shots; she looked out into the street but all she could see was a traffic jam. She ran out into the street, saw the Mini and a man holding a gun, heard that someone had been shot, ran back to her flat and telephoned the police, ambulance and her employers. She returned to the scene, carrying first-aid materials and saw a man, obviously injured, lying in the road. By now, he was no longer handcuffed and a number of uniformed officers were in attendance. She felt his pulse, checked that he was breathing and tried to ascertain the extent of his injuries. Lamprill saw that he was losing blood from the right side of his temple and the back of his head, so she applied packs to the head injuries and bandaged it. A police officer opened part of the man's clothing and she could see a lot of blood; she also saw the police officer pick up a bullet from the man's shirt near a chest wound, so she placed a bandage as a pack over the wound to prevent both air getting in and blood coming out. Lamprill suspected, quite rightly, that there was liver damage. An ambulance arrived and she accompanied the man, whom she described as being aged about 30, slight to medium build, shoulder-length fairish hair with blue eyes, to St Stephen's Hospital. She comforted him and heard him saying, ‘It hurts.' Also in the ambulance was Stephens who appeared to be in pain and was agitated.

One odd point: Lamprill had spoken to DS Tom Martin at length but when she asked for his details, he appeared reluctant to give them and told her, ‘I don't want to get involved.' It was a strange thing to say, because Martin quite definitely was involved and furthermore, Stephens would later say that following the shooting, Martin came round the car to her and when she asked, ‘Why? Why?' he allegedly replied, ‘I don't know, we are all frightened.'

Lamprill also told police that in her opinion, the photograph of David Martin shown on the front page of the
Daily Express
dated Saturday 15 January 1983 bore a likeness to the man she had treated. However, she also stated that the photograph of Steven Waldorf published in the same newspaper three days later bore ‘little resemblance to the man I attended in the street at the time of the shooting on 14 January 1983'.

Undeniably, most of the witnesses' testimony was slightly confused and contradictory, quite normal and understandable given the shocking circumstances of the incident. One witness said that she had not seen any brutality by the police; indeed, she stated, they were ‘quite gentle' and this was backed up by another bystander. Another witness said he saw two men running away from the car and yet another said that the shots had been fired by motorcyclists. A woman stated that she saw the shots fired; then in a follow-up statement said that she didn't and another was sure that the police were carrying rifles.

Although Finch asserted that he had shouted ‘Armed Police!' (and perhaps he had, or truly believed that he had), nobody – police or any of the eighty-three members of the public who lived in, or were in, the area who had been interviewed by the investigators – had heard a warning given.

B
oth Waldorf and Stephens were taken to St Stephen's Hospital in the Fulham Road, Chelsea. Stephens, who believed she had been hit in the back by a bullet, was seen by Dr Pauline Ann Cutting at 6.24 p.m. She had a bruise measuring three by one-and-a-half inches on the lower back of her chest with an abrasion half that size over the left lower ribs posteriorly. There were no other apparent injuries and to exclude any underlying injuries or the presence of ‘any foreign body', X-rays of her chest and abdomen were taken, the wound was cleaned and dressed, she was given an antitetanus toxoid booster injection and was discharged. In fact, one of the bullets fired by Deane – it was later found lodged in the back of the Mini's front passenger seat – had scraped across Stephens's fur coat (fibres from the coat were found on the bullet) and it was this which had caused the abrasion on her back. After questioning at Kensington police station, at 5 a.m. she was taken home to her flat by a female police officer.

Waldorf was, of course, a different matter. Six bullets had entered his body and when his blood-soaked clothes were cut off him they revealed – including entry and exit holes – a total of eleven bullet holes in his clothing. At just over one-and-a-half inches long, the .38 Special ammunition that had been fired from the police revolvers were low pressure cartridges which travelled at rather low speeds; their maximum firing range was fifty yards. However, from the distance they had been fired at Waldorf – practically at point-blank range – they had caused appalling damage and his life now hung in the balance.

Peter Opie, the Senior House Officer, was in the hospital's accident and emergency department when he received a phone call informing him of an approaching patient suffering from gunshot wounds. Waldorf was brought into the resuscitation area; he was conscious but moaning with pain. Mr Opie commenced an intravenous infusion in his arm and the nurses started to cut away the blood-soaked clothing. He noted that Waldorf's pulse rate was ninety-two and that his systolic blood pressure was found to have ninety millimetres of mercury. There were two small cuts, one on his right temple and another on his upper right abdomen, over the liver. On his right and left shoulders were bullet wounds, two in each shoulder, front and back, and also two in his left thigh, some of which contained pieces of clothing and another bullet lodged over the left lung. Radiographical examination commenced and films were taken of the chest and skull. There was a depressed fracture on the right-hand side of the skull and Mr Opie initially guessed, incorrectly, that this might have been caused by a ricocheting bullet. Waldorf's right hand was swollen with two small cuts to the back of the hand and the third metacarpal bone was fractured at its base. As Waldorf was turned on his right-hand side, a bullet was discovered from the wound in his clothing. By the time he was taken to the operating theatre, his blood pressure had increased to 120.

The surgeon who next saw Waldorf was Nasser Ahmed Nasser. Although Mr Opie had intravenously administered five milligrams of diamorphine, Mr Nasser noticed that nevertheless Waldorf was crying out in pain. He immediately informed Ronald Hoile, the Senior Surgical Registrar, who subsequently met Mr Nasser in the operating theatre.

Waldorf was prepared for an exploratory operation and surgery commenced at 8.10 p.m. Mr Hoile was the surgeon and he was assisted by Mr Nasser and two other surgeons and three anaesthetists were also in attendance. In addition to the other injuries, a wound was found at the back of the right armpit, measuring two centimetres. The exploration of the abdomen revealed that the bullet had shattered the eighth and ninth ribs, had penetrated the right lobe of the liver and initially appeared to be lost in the diaphragm; however, that bullet had already been recovered at the scene. There was a large ragged cavity in the liver, which was just missing the inferior vena cava – the veins that convey blood to the heart – but the tissue destruction was extensive because of the profuse bleeding. Therefore, the cavity in the liver was temporarily packed to stop the bleeding, the vessels involved were tied off and the right lobe of the liver was cut back and the edge was stitched. The abdomen was closed with drainage and a chest drain was inserted on the right. Bullets from his shoulders were removed and those wounds, together with those in the left thigh, right flank and temple, were excised. Waldorf had lost five litres of blood and nineteen units of blood were transfused.

Over the next forty-eight hours, Waldorf's condition stabilised. However, by 7.30 p.m. on Sunday 16 January it became obvious that he was bleeding intra-abdominally and he was taken back to the operating theatre. The inferior vena cava had in fact ruptured, probably due to the contusion of the bullet which had caused the liver injury, and once more there was profuse bleeding. Thankfully, during the ninety-minute operation, the vena cava was able to be repaired, but the following morning staff in the intensive care unit discovered that one of Waldorf's lungs, punctured by a bullet, had filled with blood. This was swiftly dealt with and his condition, once again stable though still critical, gradually started to improve and he was transferred to the intensive therapy unit.

When the consultant forensic pathologist Iain Eric West examined both Waldorf and his X-rays on Friday 28 January, he came to the conclusion that the skull fracture had not occurred as the result of a bullet wound or a fall on to flat ground. He believed that it was consistent with a blow from a hard object which could have been caused by the frame or cylinder of a revolver. Similarly, the fracture to the metacarpal he believed to have been caused by being struck on the back of the hand with considerable force, on probably two occasions by ‘an object of limited striking area'.

It was thanks to the brilliance of Ronald Hoile and his team at St Stephen's Hospital – and quite possibly the prompt action of Jane Lamprill at the scene – that Steven Waldorf's life was saved.

Back at the scene of the shooting, witnesses were being spoken to and the area was being meticulously searched for spent bullets, cartridge cases and any other items of interest; uniformed police officers assisted in the search, scenes-of-crime officers bagged up exhibits and in the early hours of Saturday morning, the yellow Mini was loaded on to a trailer. It was then conveyed to the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory at 109 Lambeth Road, Lambeth where it was placed in an examination room, and the room locked.