The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (27 page)

After deliberating for three hours on 10 October, the jury foreman told the judge that ‘there was no prospect of reaching an agreement on all the counts' that day. Telling them, ‘You must not be under any pressure; take as long as you like,' Mr Justice Kilner-Brown directed that the jury be sent to what the press referred to as ‘a secret London hotel' for the night. He had previously revealed an almost avuncular side of his nature, praising the jury when they asked a question: ‘May I say how very much I appreciate the fact that you are paying attention to the evidence?' and also showing concern for their catering arrangements: ‘You must say if you are tea or coffee people.'

On 11 October, the jury returned their verdicts: guilty (by a majority of 11–1) of causing grievous bodily harm to PC Carr, with intent to resist arrest. He was also convicted of possessing the guns with intent to resist arrest when he was shot in the neck six weeks later. He was found guilty of breaking into the offices of
Guns Review
– which he admitted during his trial – and also the theft of the money from the robbery where the guard was shot. He might have known that there was going to be a snatch of the money, Martin had told the jury, but he had no idea that guns were going to be taken along, let alone used and he claimed he had not shot the security guard, it was the other man whose name he didn't know who had been responsible for that. Since the statement of the security guard had been read to the court, he was unable to be cross-examined, so Martin was acquitted of causing grievous bodily harm to the guard as well.

It seems slightly incredible that he was acquitted of the burglary at the gunsmiths in Covent Garden or the burglary at Eurotell Security Specialists where the surveillance equipment was stolen. He admitted being in possession of equipment stolen from Eurotell but that was not the same as being a burglar, who in that case had inelegantly sawn through the shop's grill to effect entry. He, Martin grandly told the jury, always used duplicate keys.

He was also acquitted of the thefts of the Volkswagen Golf convertible and the Mercedes and also the alternative charges of receiving them; it was quite possible, he had told the jury, that he might have borrowed these vehicles from a friend who had naturally neglected to tell him the cars were stolen. It is more understandable that he was also acquitted of possessing firearms with intent to endanger life, since the prosecution had dropped the charge of attempting to murder PC Carr. As Sir Ivan Lawrence later said, ‘Seldom can a defendant have been given so many benefits of the doubt,' which I suppose is one way of describing those verdicts.

When it came to sentencing, Martin tried for the last time to assert his own form of authority on the court, by standing up and attempting to walk down to the cells before the judge could speak, but the security guards, who after fifteen days were quite possibly tired of Martin's behaviour, were having none of it. He was grabbed and pulled back, to hear Mr Justice Kilner-Brown say:

The fact remains that the growing rise in the carrying of loaded guns has reached alarming proportions. Those who carry loaded guns to shoot their way out of impending arrest must accept very severe sentences, indeed. And that is what you are going to get. In my judgement, the least sentence I can impose is one of twenty-five years.

Martin ‘appeared distressed by the sentence' and his latest paramour, Natasha, who must have possessed limitless amounts of patience vowed that she would ‘wait for him'. The press, eager for a predictably imbecile comment from Martin's father, got one: ‘If I had a gun, I'd go and shoot the judge, myself.'

In mitigation, Ivan Lawrence had stated, ‘He is clearly a bad man but by no means completely evil.' PC Carr's view of Martin certainly took a different view, but he contented himself by saying that he was ‘just another nonentity'; and being described as ‘a nobody' was probably the unkindest cut that Martin could have received. He had had his day in court. Martin was all set to be consigned to the history books. It was all over – almost, but not quite.

T
he nine-month wait between arrest and trial was undoubtedly the longest in Finch and Jardine's lives. They had been committed to stand their trial at the Old Bailey from Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court by Magistrate Kenneth Harington on 17 March 1983.

Jardine had been born in 1945 and joined the Metropolitan Police twenty years later. He was posted to Acton on ‘X' Division in West London and a year after joining there had been an explosion at an electrical substation and Jardine had crawled through the twisted wreckage to pull a workman, overcome by carbon dioxide fumes, to safety. In recognition of his bravery, he was awarded a testimonial from the Royal Humane Society. He later passed the advanced driving course at Hendon and became an area car driver and in June 1969, Jardine attended a basic firearms course where he qualified as a marksman. In the late 1970s, he became a member of the ‘X' Division Crime Squad and in 1982 was selected for the C11 surveillance team.

Peter Finch had also been born in 1945 but had joined the police slightly earlier than Jardine. He had been commended on two occasions and had attended the basic firearms course in October 1981 and he too had qualified as a marksman; and to qualify for that classification, it meant that the officer had to have an aggregate score of 90 per cent or higher.

Speaking to me thirty years later, Jardine told me that during that long wait he had received the most enormous encouragement from his colleagues (even though he was kept segregated from them), as well as hundreds of letters of support, including one from the comedian Eric Sykes. ‘The biggest problem I had was with the press,' he told me, ‘especially the
News of the World
. They'd come right up to our house and photograph me through the window.' Matters became so bad with the intrusion of certain members of the press that when Jardine, his wife and two sons wanted to leave their house in Pinner, Middlesex, they would have to exit through the back door, go down the garden, then cross into a neighbour's garden to get to the family car which was parked streets away.

‘I'm certain – in fact, I know – that my phone calls were intercepted,' Jardine told me and when I expressed surprise at why anyone from his own department (since C11 was responsible for telephone intercepts) would wish to do so, he shook his head. ‘Not the police – the press,' he replied and on this matter he was absolutely adamant. However, many police officers in a similar dilemma have firmly believed that their telephone calls were intercepted by the press, but certainly not in this pre-2000, pre-digital case.

Peter Finch suffered similarly. ‘I always had trouble with the press ever since my address appeared in the newspaper,' he told me. ‘I used to exit and enter my house very quickly and I managed to ward off photographers until the Sunday before my trial when in the afternoon, I went with my two sons to a park behind my house. That Monday, on the front of the
Daily Mirror
, my photo with one of my sons appeared. Sods!'

Like Jardine, Finch received ‘excellent treatment from my colleagues; they even had a whip-round which they sent me, every week'. Fellow police officer who were close friends were obliged to submit written requests to their senior officers to permit them to visit him in order not to fall foul of the Discipline Code. Finch too received much support, including from luminaries such as Sir John Mills and David Tomlinson.

Detective Inspector Bob Cook recalled driving along the A406 North Circular Road and seeing on a bridge, spanning the carriageway, painted in large white letters, ‘Finch and Jardine – Guilty'. He believed it was there for months, although Jardine who also saw it thought it was there for years. ‘I remember the ‘J' of ‘Jardine' was painted the wrong way round,' he told me, adding humorously, ‘but it must be difficult to get something like that right, when you're painting upside down!'

At long last the trial of the two detectives commenced in No. 1 Court at the Old Bailey on 12 October 1983.

The judge was 68-year-old Mr Justice Sir David Croom-Johnson. The Second World War had interrupted his legal career and at the conclusion of hostilities, Sir David was discharged from the Royal Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander and for his highly dangerous work during the D-Day landings he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. He was much admired as a courteous, deep-thinking judge and a good listener, although as one of the Greenham Common women later opined, ‘It would take a bomb to move him.'

Jardine had the immense good fortune to be defended by John Mathew QC who, according to
The Guardian
, ‘looked like a bishop' but was an extremely sharp defence barrister. He, together with Finch's barrister, Michael Corkery QC, who had been appointed senior treasury counsel in 1970, had both prosecuted the organised gangs who had been targeted by the Yard's Serious Crime Squad.

In opposition, there were political and legal heavyweights. The prosecution was led by the current attorney-general. Robert Michael Oldfield Havers PC, QC (later Baron Havers), was known as Sir Michael Havers; his career was dogged with controversy. He had prosecuted in two of the most notable and long-running miscarriages of justice in English legal history – the Guilford Four and the Maguire Seven – which would later result in severe condemnation for him. In 1981, Sir Michael appeared for the prosecution in the case of Peter Sutcliffe (‘The Yorkshire Ripper') who was charged with thirteen counts of murder. When Sutcliffe offered a plea to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, this was accepted by Sir Michael but in an almost unheard of intervention, the trial judge demanded a detailed explanation of Sir Michael's reasoning for accepting the lesser plea and having heard it, overruled him – after a two-week trial, Sutcliffe was convicted of the murders. So the verdict was a triumph for Sir Michael – albeit one which had been forced upon him – but he let himself down badly when in his opening speech he mentioned Sutcliffe's victims, telling the jury, ‘Some were prostitutes but perhaps the saddest part of the case is that some were not. The last six attacks were on totally respectable women.' Unsurprisingly, the English Collective of Prostitutes was incandescent with rage, accusing him of ‘condoning the murder of prostitutes' and demonstrating outside the Old Bailey with placards. Fortunately, Sir Michael had Roy Amlot QC, a highly respected barrister who was then senior prosecuting counsel for the Crown and Mr E.J. Bevan QC to assist him.

Both defendants were charged with attempting to murder Steven Waldorf, both with causing him grievous bodily harm and for Finch, a further charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm; this latter charge referred to the pistol-whipping. Each of these charges carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and to all these charges, they pleaded not guilty.

In fact, there was very little in the facts to dispute; the defendants naturally did not deny shooting Waldorf and the prosecution conceded that everything that happened was as the result of a genuine mistake by the officers; the question for the jury was: were their actions justified?

Not, of course, according to the attorney-general. ‘It does not matter, in fact, whether it had been Waldorf or Martin because there was no need, in the submission of the Crown, to take those actions at that stage – either to shoot at him, as Jardine did when he was half-in, half-out of the car, or to fracture his skull with a revolver, as Finch did. Whether Finch was standing or crouching, in order to strike Waldorf hard, at least twice, surely he must have been in a position to stop him getting a gun, even if he had a gun to go for. If you are pistol-whipping a man that closely, you must be in a position to restrain him.'

Sir Michael added that there was ‘a remarkable similarity between Waldorf and Martin,' adding, ‘This is one of the misfortunes of the case you are now trying. In fact, Waldorf did not know Martin and had never met him.'

In addition, Sir Michael told the jury, ‘He [Finch] then fired two shots into the rear nearside tyre, deflating it. Why that was necessary is difficult to see. The car was stuck in the traffic.' It appears that Sir Michael completely missed the point that in situations such as this was perceived to be, desperate men take desperate actions. Simply because a car is stuck in traffic, it does not mean that there is no way out; a car can mount the pavement or – in this case – could pull out to the offside, because there were no vehicles in the middle lane. Unlike police officers, desperate men do not have to observe the niceties of the Road Traffic Act; they can and will drive incredibly recklessly to the danger of pedestrians and other road users, as Martin had already demonstrated. Of course, Purdy was driving and he could not remotely be described as being ‘desperate' but Finch was not to know this and he had to make a split-second decision and he took it.

Students attending a firearms course are not told
not
to fire at tyres but as Acting Chief Superintendent Robert Wells stated, ‘Students are merely told that the action is usually ineffective and dangerous.' Although television programmes and films depict tyres being deflated by means of gunshots, a fully inflated tyre is unlikely to be hit successfully to cause deflation and even a stationary tyre will resist most bullets fired by handguns. In fact, this stationary tyre
was
deflated by Finch firing at it; was this a correct course of action to take? With hindsight, it probably was.