Essex Boys, The New Generation
Read Essex Boys, The New Generation Online
Authors: Bernard O'Mahoney
Copyright © Bernard O’Mahoney, 2008
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by
MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY
(EDINBURGH) LTD
7 Albany Street
Edinburgh EH1 3UG
ISBN 9781845963125
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This book is dedicated to the memory of
Dean Fergus Boshell
Resting where no shadows fall
13 April 1976 – 28 February 2001
‘I won’t ask for forgiveness, my sins are all I had’
To my late beautiful wife and friend Emma,
my loss is an open wound that will never heal
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dicky Rutter RIP
My mother Ann, my sons Adrian
and Vinney and my little girl Karis have inspired me in writing this book. I am also most grateful to the following people, who have assisted me or in some other way helped in telling this story: Natalie, the Bump, Michael, Carol, Finn, Lily, Paul, Colleen, Ami, Michael, Miles, Leanne, Tino and family, Debra King, Bilbrook Earl and Martin ‘Whizz Kid’ Moore; the intensive care staff at Selly Oak hospital, Birmingham; Father O’Connor; Dr Hull of Harborne; Dr Wilson of Market Deeping; Shane Smith, Gilly, Ross, Bingley, Rachie, Hughie, The Cowleys, Mike West, Mad Andy, Battersea Steve, Brett Dunn, Wez, Shanae and Zoe the ‘geezer bird’ (according to Jade Goody), Champagne Steve and Beverley Boshell; Danny, David, Sandy and Ricky Percival, Kevin Walsh, Gavin and Sue, Carl Eve, Gina Marsden, David Giles, Ronnie Tretton, Nipper Ellis, the lady who tends (so graciously) to plot 7 on the Manchester Drive allotments and Southend Sarah; Martin, Steve and Storming Norman Hall, Stacie Harris, Sean Fallon, Carla Shipton, Ann Lippett and Steve ‘Penfold’.
A very special thank you to those of you who have assisted me but asked for your names not to be mentioned in this book. Your admirable courage is appreciated. Too many others have chosen to stand by and do nothing, an attitude that permits lies and evil to prosper.
Last, but by no means least, Jacquelyn Lippett, for friendship, guidance, photography and partially made cups of tea. Thank you, Lippy. I wish you luck and happiness.
For more information about this case and other books written by Bernard O’Mahoney, please visit:
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Sounds of Silence
1
A Mother’s Tale: Beverley Boshell
2
A Mother’s Tale: Sandy Percival
6
Ain’t Nothing but a House Party
Introduction
THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE
Tuesday, 3 April 2007. The prison
warder unlocked the door and pointed towards the street. ‘Sorry, Mr O’Mahoney,’ he said, ‘I regret to inform you that you cannot come into this prison. You have been listed as a banned visitor.’
I had just travelled 130 miles from my home in Birmingham with an approved visiting order to meet twenty-seven-year-old Ricky Percival, who is serving four life sentences with a recommendation that he is not considered for parole until he has completed at least twenty-eight years. There was little opportunity to argue: after taking just one step out of the visitor’s centre, the door slammed shut behind me.
It had been my intention to sit down with Percival in the hope that I could begin to make sense of the case against him, but it was not to be. Security staff at HMP Chelmsford in Essex had denied me access and so I had no choice other than to get in my car and retrace the long journey home.
I spent the majority of the following rain-drenched day staring out of my window, then back at a blank computer screen. It’s not that I was suffering from writer’s block or that I didn’t have sufficient material to write this book; my problem was that I didn’t know where to begin. How was I to unravel a web of lies and deceit that was so well constructed it managed to fool not only the police but also a judge and jury? How was I to explain in simple terms a complicated, well-thought-out weave of fact and fiction so that you, the reader, could understand fully the enormity of one man’s deception? This has undoubtedly been the most challenging story I have ever attempted to tell.
Every conceivable hurdle that could have been erected to try and prevent me from learning the truth has been put in my path. A grieving mother who is desperate to learn the truth about her son’s murder was advised by the police not to talk to me. Security staff and the governor at HMP Chelmsford sent me a visiting order but then did an inexplicable U-turn and banned me when I arrived. After appealing that decision and, at the governor’s request, signing a lengthy undertaking not to discuss, disclose or publish anything other than matters related to the case, access to Percival was still denied. Despite never being given a reason for this ban, I was then informed that no further appeals from me would be considered. ‘As far as Bernard O’Mahoney is concerned,’ one officer told me, ‘the gates of Her Majesty’s Prison Chelmsford are to remain closed.’
In 1999, five Law Lords ruled that a ban on journalists visiting prisoners and writing about their cases was an unlawful interference with free speech. They said that prisoners who protested their innocence often had no other means of searching out the fresh evidence needed to have their cases looked at again. Their decision was strongly influenced by an affidavit from Gareth Peirce, a solicitor who has acted for more than 20 miscarriage-of-justice victims. She pointed out that there was no legal aid available to prisoners for investigations and more than 90 per cent of applicants to the Criminal Cases Review Commission had no solicitor. The resources available to the national and local media provided the best chance of discovering new evidence, she added. Concluding their judgment, the Lords said that freedom of speech was ‘the lifeblood of democracy’, acting ‘as a brake on the abuse of power by public officials’.
In Percival’s case, the brake appears to have been firmly re-applied; but, despite the ban, which has made progress slow, my thirst for the truth has never diminished.
Tracing and interviewing witnesses in sensational cases involving murder is normally a time-consuming but relatively simple task because people feel a need to unburden themselves and talk about their experiences. However, many of the potential witnesses that I have contacted to interview for this book have either been advised against assisting me or have instructed their solicitor to request that I do not contact them again. A message on my website requesting people to contact me who might have been able to contribute to the book was viewed by 2,785 people, but not one responded. One witness whom I approached at his place of work was so reluctant to talk to me he leapt over his shop counter and fled down the street.
After several meetings in the most unusual of places, and after convincing people that my intentions were completely honourable, I have managed to uncover what I believe is the truth about one of the most vicious crime waves in Essex’s bloody gangland history. Now that I know the truth, I am not surprised that certain people actively tried to prevent me from ever discovering it.
This is a story of senseless murder, psychotic violence, drug dealing and deceit that has culminated in an unparalleled miscarriage of justice occurring. I am not saying that I know Ricky Percival is innocent and I am certainly not saying that he is guilty – nobody is in a position to do either because he was not given a fair trial. Until such a trial takes place, nobody should level an accusing finger in Percival’s direction.
The beginning of this remarkable story is, I guess, at the end of another equally disturbing yet remarkable story, so perhaps I should begin there.
In December 1995, Patrick Tate, Tony Tucker and Craig Rolfe were lured to a deserted farm track by the promise of a lucrative drug deal. They died from multiple gunshots to the head as they sat in their Range Rover. Two farmers, who discovered the bodies in the blood-spattered vehicle, initially thought the men were asleep. The executions had been carried out so swiftly and with such ruthless efficiency that the victims had no time to react. A seven-year reign at the top of the criminal heap – which had resulted in the deaths of three teenagers who had taken drugs supplied by the gang, numerous beatings, stabbings and shootings, and the murder of a young man for his part in a botched drug deal – was finally over. The two men jailed for life for the triple murders, Michael Steele and Jack Whomes, have always protested their innocence. They were convicted on the word of a former friend turned supergrass named Darren Nicholls. A self-confessed drug dealer, liar and thief, Nicholls himself was accused of the killings before he turned on his friends.
The murders and the trial of the accused unleashed a bout of tortured hand wringing by politicians and community leaders, who pledged to wage war on drug barons and their minions. The events dominated the news, causing the county of Essex to come under intense media scrutiny. An area that has produced more than its fair share of hoodlums, Essex was branded as ‘Crime County’ and the ‘Drug Capital of England’. Its law-abiding citizens were horrified and complained bitterly about their unwanted badge of dishonour. Some even suggested that the extraordinary amount of adverse publicity the county’s criminals were attracting would cause house prices to plummet.
Nina Stimson, MP for Southend West at the time, complained that the drug capital label was yet another insult to a county that has had to put up with being branded ‘sleazy’. She said, ‘A few years ago, we had the silliness which suggested that all Essex men went around wearing shell suits and medallions, and Essex girls were brainless bimbos in white stilettos. That was rubbish, and it is just as far from the truth now to portray Essex as being a crime- and drug-ridden area.’
But not everybody in Essex reacted to the publicity in the same way. Young up-and-coming criminals in the county revelled in their new-found fame. To be an Essex Boy meant that you were a top boy, a geezer, a real somebody amongst the criminal fraternity. Impressionable teenagers who had never even heard of the trio before they were executed began claiming that they used to do business with them or were ‘close personal friends’. Any link, exaggerated or fabricated, that associated them with the now glorified Essex Boys firm enhanced their reputations within the circles they moved.
The death of such powerful, prominent gang members left a huge vacuum in the drug-distribution network in the south-east of England. Detective Inspector Ivan Dibley, who led the investigation into the murders, told a press conference: ‘There is not a villain in this country who isn’t talking about these murders. The void these three men have left will be filled very quickly because there is big money to be made.’
Unfortunately for the good people of Essex, DI Dibley was correct in his assumption. Like the head being cut from the Hydra, evil quickly replaced evil. The older, wiser and more hardened criminals in the county were suddenly presented with an army of gullible, willing, but, more importantly, expendable young wannabes who were eager to make a name for themselves in the murky criminal underworld. One such impressionable youth was Dean Boshell. He was in his late teens at the time of the Rettendon killings and was striving, like many of his naive teenage friends, to gain a reputation as a hard man in the area where he lived. The main thrust of Boshell’s efforts revolved around a wannabe gangster named Damon Alvin, whom he had met in HMP Chelmsford. Alvin was a drug dealer with a fearsome reputation whom Boshell described as a ‘kind of older brother’.
The respect and admiration shown to Alvin by Boshell was, however, not reciprocated – it was ridiculed. Boshell would be publicly taunted and humiliated, apparently ‘to keep him in his place’. Alvin’s cruel, sadistic streak was an invaluable asset in the violent drugs world that he inhabited and controlled, but it was his weakness that inflicted the most pain upon people. Whenever Alvin faced a crisis or was accused of wrongdoing, it would always be somebody else’s fault and someone other than Alvin was always made to pay, regardless of innocence or guilt.
This is the true story of when Percival and Boshell met Alvin. It is a story many people never wanted you to read.