The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin (6 page)

At 10.50 a warder opened a cupboard to be confronted by three prisoners, two of whom were members of the Wembley Mob, and one of the gang, Micky ‘The Fish' Salmon, pointed a gun at the warder and his keys were demanded; in fact, the gun was made of soap, blackened with shoe polish, together with silver paper to add to its authenticity but it was sufficiently realistic for the warder to hand over his keys to David Martin. He was not a member of the gang but he had been included because he had previously memorised the warder's keys and knew exactly which key fitted which lock; and accuracy and speed were essential for the execution of the plan.

Several of the gang were released and they rushed out into the yard and headed for the dustcart. In doing so, they left the doors behind them unlocked and other prisoners, not associated with the Wembley gang, also took the opportunity to escape.

Seventeen prisoners were now in the compound. Philip Morris, one of the Wembley gang, dragged the driver out of the dustcart's cab, climbed in, and as he turned the truck around, other prisoners leapt aboard. With the prison alarms wailing, the warders rushed out and several of the prisoners grabbed the shovels and brooms from the truck and used them to attack the prison officers; Morris put his foot down and the truck roared towards the rear gates. The truck smashed straight through the wooden gates and the line of warders who had assembled outside in Lyham Road would certainly have been badly injured or killed had the truck emerged any further into the street – but it didn't. The hydraulic arms of the tipper were in the raised position and they jammed into the overhead frame of the gates.

Eleven of the prisoners stumbled out of the truck and into Lyham Road where they fought a running battle with the warders. Bruce Brown and four more of the Wembley Mob got into the waiting Rent-a-Van, started the engine and put it into gear but neglected to release the handbrake; it gave warders sufficient time to smash the windscreen with their truncheons. As the five men scrambled out of the van, Brown threatened a warder with a club and was cracked over the head with a truncheon. He slid to the roadway, suffering from a fractured skull and the rest of the robbers appeared to lose heart and they too were herded up.

Meanwhile, the four dog teams assigned to the prison were all off-duty but because they and their handlers were housed in married quarters adjacent to the prison, upon hearing the commotion they rushed into the prison grounds, where savage hand-to-hand fighting was taking place and the dog handlers accounted for four of the prisoners who surrendered.

Other prisoners, including Martin, stopped a passing Toyota at the junction with Lyham Road and Chale Road, pulled the driver out and got in. A warder leapt on to the bonnet but before he could smash the windscreen, the car shot forward and he was thrown into the roadway. The Toyota collided with another car, driven by another escaped prisoner. Martin was obviously not privy to the existence of the two getaway cars parked in nearby Clarence Crescent because he by-passed them completely. After a mile, the prisoners abandoned the hijacked car, but Martin and another prisoner hailed a taxi. However, as they drove away, they were followed by a police helicopter; a police car blocked their way in Bedford Road, Clapham and following a fierce fight they too were recaptured. Two other prisoners got clean away.

A number of prison officers had been injured – the number of casualties, one of whom sustained a broken wrist, varied between twelve and nine – and as Detective Superintendent Roy Ranson of Scotland Yard, tasked to head the inquiry into the breakout, told Ivor Mills of ITN, ‘They did a marvellous job, here; we can't commend them sufficiently.' Martin might not have agreed with these effusive comments; he was thrown into solitary and, according to prison folklore, savagely beaten up.

Eddie Roach was furious that Martin had escaped, albeit temporarily; he called for statements from the police officers who had arrested him and discovered that Martin had been dressed in light slacks, a shirt and a suede leather jacket with fringes in the sleeves. Unconvicted prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes but this was a privilege, not a right. As a known escaper, the prison governor had housed Martin in the secure wing, but although in theory the governor could have insisted that Martin should wear prison issue clothing with yellow patches on the trousers, this was seldom if ever done at Brixton. Nevertheless, Roach submitted a report to the Home Office which probably coincided with the inquiry carried out by Superintendent Ranson and ensured that from then on Martin was handcuffed to two officers when he was conveyed to and from court.

The time had come for a reckoning with Martin and it arrived a fortnight later; he and his co-conspirators appeared at the Old Bailey before His Honour Judge Edward Clarke QC (described by defence lawyers as being ‘fearsome') on an indictment containing thirty counts. All of the co-defendants – with the exception of Martin – pleaded guilty. Janet Norman-Phillips was sentenced to a total of three years' imprisonment, Clive Green to two years' imprisonment, Bruce Wood to twelve months' imprisonment and Hugh Bestic to Borstal Training.

Martin did not plead not guilty – he looked up from the book he was reading and simply told the judge, ‘I do not recognise this court' and that being so, there was little reason to appoint counsel for the defence. It was a ridiculous (and not to mention provocative) way to behave but His Lordship simply smiled thinly and said, ‘Very well, Mr Martin, continue reading your book' and instructed the clerk of the court to enter pleas of not guilty. His trial lasted just three days and it took the jury no time at all to find Martin guilty of everything and on 14 June 1973 he was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment.

In October 1974, the Wembley Mob who, the previous month, had been sentenced to very long terms of imprisonment, appeared at the Old Bailey to be dealt with for the Brixton riot and breakout. Telling them, ‘This was a mass enterprise prepared with great skill worthy of a better cause,' the Recorder of London, Sir Carl Aarvold OBE, TD sentenced Michael Salmon, Danny Allpress, Bruce Brown, James Jeffrey and Philip Morris to twelve months' imprisonment, to run consecutively to their serving sentences.

Also in the dock was 27-year-old David Martin. He received the same punishment. He was now serving a nine-year sentence.

From an early age, Martin had dressed in his mother's clothes. As he grew older, he also grew out of his mother's apparel, and so acquired female clothing of his own and at some stage, possibly before or perhaps during his time in the penal system, he became bisexual. In those times, for those in authority – police and prison officers – this also marked him out as wayward. Martin liked to refer to himself as ‘Davina Martyn' although he was known to the other prisoners as ‘Dave the Rave' because, as one of them said, ‘he was a raving pouf'. As such, he was mainly ostracised by the other (primarily heterosexual) prisoners who possessed the usual prison prejudices; less so, by the homosexual inmates.

In the grim, austere surroundings of a high-security prison his appearance was quite extraordinary; his shirt could not really be described as such – it was more like a blouse. Martin wore moccasins and his painfully thin legs were encased in painfully thin jeans. At five feet ten, he appeared taller due to the sparseness of his physique and his large hooked nose was framed by his long, flowing blond hair. The overall effect, in ornithological terms, gave him the appearance of a cross between a rather benign vulture and a gorgeously plumed bird of paradise. He formed several sentimental attachments and delighted in stealing away a willing partner from an already formed and stable relationship but only on the understanding that he, Martin, would be in total control of the situation. However, Martin's long, undulating golden locks and mincing gait also attracted the attentions of very large, muscular and predatory homosexual prisoners. Heterosexual inmates who possessed similar herculean physiques sensibly avoided any kind of encounter with these prisoners and while Martin might have dictated who did what to whom with more amenable partners, this was not necessarily the case in these invasive situations.

In addition, Martin could not in any way be regarded as ‘a hard case'; because of his physical frailty, prison opinion was that ‘he couldn't have a fight to save his life'. But the views of the mainly hard-line would-be escapers began to change radically after Martin began to display his expertise when it came to locks. He fashioned lock picks out of any available commodity, metal or plastic. Magpie-like, he would collect nails and paperclips to utilise them for future use. He said he needed to see a key only once to be able to make a facsimile, and this was no idle boast – it was a gift granted to many ‘keymen', including ‘Johnny the Boche' aka Leonard Wilde, later sentenced to twenty-three years' imprisonment for his part in the 1975 Bank of America robbery.

All the time prior to, during and after his incarceration, Martin was learning: studying alarm systems and the workings of locks. He dissected locks to discover their workings and in a pin tumbler deadbolt lock, he saw how the five to eight key pins stopped in the middle of the radius of the cylinder above the key wald. Martin learnt the use of hook picks, diamond and snake picks, as well as a torque wrench to open those locks.

Wafer tumbler locks, of the type used in jewellery display cases, purported to have six pins. Martin discovered they had none. In more complicated and expensive locks, Martin discovered which way to turn the tumbler and some locks contained two sets of pins, with the second set being known as the master pins. They required two different keys to open them; they soon did not represent a problem for Martin.

He studied electronic circuit boards for security devices. He saw that single zone circuits contained independent exit and entry delays, but also that instant zones, tamper zones and personal attack zones could be added. There were circuits with timed bell cut-offs and resets and he discovered how pressure mats and inertia sensors were used. He learnt about the workings of alarm control keypads and also that some premises had alarms fitted to their fire doors. These doors could be opened to allow access but they had to be shut afterwards; if they remained open longer than thirty seconds, the alarm would sound. Martin discovered how to neutralise these and other door alarms.

He arrived at Parkhurst high-security prison on the Isle of White in 1974 with good credentials, having just been moved from Albany prison – similarly high-security – from the other side of the island following an escape attempt. Yellow stripes down the sides of his trousers announced that he was an ‘E' Man – a potential escaper. It wasn't too long before the ‘potential' was removed from his description. Martin offered to make a key which would open all the gates in the jail for a group of latent escapers and in addition a key to fit a double lock; and he was successful. Over a period of months, one by one, the other would-be escapers dropped out of the plan, leaving Martin and one other prisoner. They had also acquired items of warders' clothing, bit by bit, which were skilfully altered to fit them. On the morning of the escape, Martin and his companion, dressed in their prison officers' uniforms, unlocked, walked through, then locked one door after another. The prison security camera followed their movements but all that could be seen, to all intents and purposes, were two warders going about their duties. First, one gate with a double lock was opened and relocked, and now they were in the compound. They walked through to the second and massive double gates which were unlocked and then secured and now in front of them was the perimeter fence. Martin produced a pair of bolt cutters which had been smuggled into the prison and started cutting his way through the fence to freedom. Almost, but not quite. Sod's Law intervened when a prison dog handler from nearby Camp Hill prison was walking past. The dog took exception to Martin trying to emerge from the hole in the wire, his handler sent out a call for assistance on his radio and once more, Martin was thrown into solitary.

His key had not been discovered, however. It was slipped inside a thin, cylindrical tube which also contained a hacksaw blade; the tube, in turn was slipped up his rectum. That night, Martin extracted the tube, partially sawed through the hinges of his cell door and the following morning, eased the door open, released his companion and opened the punishment block gate. They were spotted by a warder and taken back to solitary confinement. During the time he actually spent in his own cell – and that was little enough – he was still up to mischief, drawing plans of the prison on pieces of paper and leaving them on his bunk, knowing that in his absence, they would be found by the staff. To Martin, winding up the staff was a pleasant way of passing the time, as was referring to the IRA prisoners as ‘thick paddies'. Since the IRA was maintaining a mainland offensive with an appalling loss of life, Martin knew that he could well rely on the rest of the mainly staunchly monarchic inmates to protect him against retribution from those intrepid freedom fighters, but he also enjoyed antagonising other prisoners with stupid, spiteful comments. Perhaps he felt that his expertise in neutralising locks and escape attempts would elevate his status and act as a barrier from receiving a pasting, but on several occasions matters came very close to his convex nose becoming concave.