The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (32 page)

It was Lester Purdy who some thirty years after the incident mentioned a number of theories to me. One was that someone was wearing the black wig in the car to pretend that they were Sue Stephens, so that she could slip away to meet Martin. Really, this is nonsense. Both Purdy and Peter Enter had put the wig on as a joke, the latter at Stephens's address on 14 January. Stephens had suggested he wear it for a dare in the street and he did; he kept it on until the others got into the Mini, when Stephens snatched it off him and threw it into the Mini and there it remained. ‘I think that theory was made up by the police to make us look bad because it fooled them into attempted murder,' Purdy told me. Well, this was a new one to me. The fact remains that the wig was used, but only by Stephens when she had previously met Martin.

The next of Purdy's rumours was that it had been suggested they had deliberately set out to decoy the police, to make them believe that Martin was in the Mini; however, he added, ‘what would have been the purpose of that?' Purdy was quite right; to decoy the police away from what? If that had been the case, the police would have had to have believed that Martin was in a certain place, at a certain time, as would the occupants of the Mini in order to draw the police away from him, but this was simply not the case. The car's occupants correctly said they were going to Coulsdon to pick up a car for a film shoot. The Mini was hired in Purdy's name and paid for with a cheque drawn from his account, not the sort of behaviour one associates with conspirators.

Neil Dickens agreed. ‘These speculations are totally wrong,' he said. ‘The tragedy of this whole sad affair was the genuine mistaken identity of Waldorf.' Steve Holloway concurred. ‘Personally, I think they were just going about their daily business,' he told me. ‘Like you, I can't see any credence in a decoy theory. I'd be surprised if they were actually capable of thinking that way and I can't see a reason to do so.'

So that's the theory of them being a decoy dispensed with, but nonetheless their behaviour in the car was certain to draw attention to them. At the car hire company, DC Robert Bruce saw Waldorf, who at that time was standing on the pavement outside the company, ‘go to the Capri and leaned in to the rear of the vehicle and took what appeared to be a briefcase and brolly from the rear'. During his interview (and referring to the yellow Mini), DC Deane said, ‘I saw that Purdy was driving, the unknown man [Waldorf] … was sitting in the front passenger seat and he was motioning towards Susan Stephens who was in the rear seat, to keep lying down'. DC Cyril Jenner said, ‘… it had been observed that the front seat passenger kept going down as if delving into a case or bag, but this was some time prior to the shooting'.

And during his interview with Commander Taylor, Jardine said, ‘I think it's probably relevant to say at this point that on the approach to the Shepherd's Bush roundabout, DC Deane and I noticed that Susie kept ducking or lying down on the back seat. We also saw the front passenger from time to time was leaning over to the back seat and opening or tampering with a briefcase and some packages. DC Deane and I discussed between ourselves the possibility that Susie was either trying to avoid surveillance or had been told to keep her head down in case some trouble started.'

Even David Still, the passenger in the Volkswagen van behind the yellow Mini in Pembroke Road, stated, ‘I also noticed a girl in the back of the Mini who had been sitting up and looking out of the back window and then lying down out of sight. She appeared to do this, several times.'

This odd behaviour was unravelled by Lester Purdy. He explained to me that he had been part of a group of Second World War fanatics who bought up a number of ex-wartime vehicles and carried out manoeuvres, mainly in Wales, using large fireworks which they set off at ground level. ‘We were on pot and LSD,' he told me, ‘so it was real to us.' One morning after a party, Purdy's address was visited by two men, whom he described as being ‘Special Branch, and armed'. A lot of the guests were still there. The officers questioned him about the manoeuvres and the explosions and asked if he had any political affiliations but Purdy gave them a truthful explanation as to the activities, which they accepted. ‘They could of easily busted us all for pot, etc., they saw it and joked about it, then left,' said Purdy.

However, Purdy thought that the Special Branch officers might tip off the Drugs Squad and this appeared to be confirmed a few days before the shooting when he, Stephens and a friend were driving in the King's Road, Chelsea. He felt they were being followed, but as he told me, ‘I didn't try to lose them, just made them aware we knew; I had nothing to hide, anyway.'

But on 14 January there was something to hide. When Purdy and co. left West End Lane in his Capri, he did not believe he was being followed and after transferring to the Mini, his mood of optimism continued because as Purdy told me, ‘I must have been at ease because pretty much every red light we stopped at we all had a snort, Steve was chopping up lines on my briefcase and we were passing it back and forth, which is what we were doing in Pembroke Road.'

The behaviour in the Mini does tend to confirm that witnessed by the police and civilian witnesses but what did the occupants of the Mini have to say about it? The answer is, differing versions.

Purdy was being fairly ambiguous when he told Neil Dickens, and also his solicitor Arwyn Hopkins, ‘Prior to leaving the flat at West End Lane on the Friday, I didn't take any drugs and I didn't see anyone else take any. But when I got home, I took some drugs because I was shocked.'

Susan Stephens was slightly less disingenuous. Telling the investigating officers that she laid down in the Mini, she suggested a contributory factor to her weariness may have been, as she later told a newspaper, ‘The night before, I had been to an all-night video party:
E
.
T
.,
The Poltergeist
and lots of pot.' Referring to the day of the shooting, she said, ‘Yesterday, I took a small amount of drugs. I had a line of heroin and cocaine, mixed,' although she stated that this was prior to getting into the Mini. In a further statement made to Detective Chief Inspector Siddle in the presence of her solicitor, Michael Caplan, and referring to Waldorf, she added, ‘Steven is not an addict but he does take heroin, occasionally. I have no knowledge if he took heroin that day. Lester Purdy also takes heroin but I have no knowledge whether he took any that day or had any in his possession.' Upon their arrival at the hospital and referring to Waldorf, Jane Lamprill heard her say, ‘Be careful what drugs you give him, he's on heroin,' and Stephens agreed in essence with that statement. This was taken on board by Dr Peter Opie at St Stephen's who in treating Waldorf carried out ‘… tests for the presence of the Hepatitis B Surface and Antigen, as we heard that the accompanying female was a known hepatitis risk'.

What did Steven Waldorf say? Probably the frankest of them all, he told Neil Dickens, ‘I have been asked if I heard Susie say anything about my having taken heroin. I have in the past experimented by smoking heroin but when I have taken drugs more recently, it has been cocaine. I would like to add here that having experimented, I am now against them. I do not consider myself to be an addict in any way.' However, he added, ‘When we were in the Mini that evening, some time before we arrived in the traffic jam where I was shot, I had taken a line of cocaine. That means sniffing a small amount up my nose.'

The last of Purdy's theories is that when he ran from the car, it was said that he was in possession of a gun. Telling me, ‘The gun theory also doesn't make sense; I ran for my life', and I could find no one who disagreed with him. ‘I would have thought that most people would try to save themselves when being involved in such a firearms incident,' said Neil Dickens and as Steve Holloway with characteristic bluntness told me, ‘he was saving his own arse.'

But Purdy persisted that the police had put this rumour about. ‘The police knew I didn't have a gun and it was very convenient that I got away; it meant anything could be said,' he told me. ‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time – surely you realise that?'

As a matter of fact, I do.

Blame was freely apportioned and responsibility abdicated. Martin agreed that he had shot PC Carr but added as a corollary, ‘it is his fault for actually grabbing my hand and wrenching my arm about.' Martin's father, blithely disregarding his son's chequered criminal history, claimed that his conviction and sentence had come about because ‘he had taken the can back for the Waldorf shooting'. Following her daughter's conviction, Mrs Patricia Stephens said, ‘My daughter is being victimised for being a friend of David Martin.' Sir Ivan Lawrence appeared to blame the prison officers for not earlier finding the flex with which Martin hanged himself. Only in the case of Jardine and Finch did they say, in effect, ‘Yes, we did it, we made a terrible mistake and we're sorry.'

But when all was said and done, as one officer who was marginally involved in the case told me with masterly understatement, ‘It was not the Met's finest hour.'

He was right; it wasn't.

  
1
.  This condition can materialise in as little as one month after being involved in a traumatic incident.

  
2
.  For a fuller version of this heroic event, see the author's book
The Brave Blue Line
(Wharncliffe Books, 2011).

O
ver forty years ago, I knew a detective who had a preoccupation with his looks, an overpowering arrogance and an unshakeable belief in his sexual attractiveness. He was a prolific womaniser although an indiscriminate one; on three occasions his dalliances resulted in him being infected with a dose of the clap. As well as nervously avoiding the lavatory seat in the cubicle which he had recently vacated in the washroom, the rest of us grew mightily fed up with the way in which he admired his reflection. We mere mortals would simply glance in the washroom's mirror to check that our hair was neatly combed; he preened himself for what seemed like hours in front of it. At last, I could tolerate this state of affairs no longer. ‘Tell me, John,' I said (while ensuring that a crowd as large as possible was present). ‘If you could live your life all over again, would you still fall in love with yourself?'

This brings us to David Martin, who you may agree was not dissimilar in several respects to ‘John'. No doubt, I shall be asked by the media in the years to come ‘Didn't you have a sneaking regard for Martin?' The answer is not something I shall have to ruminate about for too long; the answer will be a flat, unequivocal ‘No'. I did not hold him in any kind of regard at all, sneaking or otherwise. I described Martin at Knightsbridge Crown Court as being ‘the most dangerous man in London' and although over thirty years have passed since then, I still adhere to my description of David Ralph Martin. Before and after that investigation, I met criminals who were tougher and more violent plus some who, like Martin, had no redeeming features whatsoever, but for sheer professionalism, coolness, resolution and ruthlessness, Martin reigned supreme. As far as I was concerned, Martin was a near-psychotic, out-of-control, manipulative, murderous piece of garbage. Harsh words? Yes, I agree but I happen to think they're the most appropriate ones.

Even if one were to accept – which I most conspicuously do not – his denial in court that it was not he who pulled the trigger when security guard Edward Burns was shot, he was part of that cold-blooded robbery and in possession of one of the stolen guns. There was no denying that he certainly pulled the trigger – three times – when confronted by Police Constable Carr whom he shot one week later; and it was not his fault that PC Carr did not die from his injuries. And six weeks after that, I am under no illusions whatsoever that if he had been given the opportunity to use either of the fully loaded handguns in his possession when he was arrested by DC Peter Finch and PC Steve Lucas, he would have done so, with murderous intent.

Was there any truth in Martin's assertions in court that he wished to acquire firearms in order to kill himself, in the event that he was threatened with capture? No, in my opinion, none at all. I believe that at the moment of his arrest, he wanted the police to shoot him, hence walking towards them refusing to raise his hands. Had that occurred, in his twisted psyche, he would have achieved iconic status, since he would have engineered his own death. And looking at matters from a common-sense point of view, why would anyone go to all the trouble – while being London's No. 1 wanted man – to break into an office, to get details of people who wanted to sell guns and go and photograph the exterior of their home addresses, presumably prior to breaking in and stealing the firearms, simply to commit suicide? The whole concept is ludicrous; especially when you consider there are far easier ways of committing suicide, as Martin found out.