Essex Boys, The New Generation (10 page)

‘I must say that Damon appeared to look after Dean; for instance, he bought him a white Astra to drive. I don’t know what, if anything, Dean had to do for Damon in return for this gift.

‘In order to provide for my daughter and me, Dean gave in his notice at the pub and got a job with a cleaning company. Like Damon, Dean was extremely generous and became what I would describe as a family man. He would go shopping and buy my daughter treats, walk the dog, do the housework and assist me around the house in any way that he could. His dream, he often told me, was to be part of a proper family. Dean told me once that he had a daughter named Emma. The subject arose because he had the name ‘Emma’ tattooed on his chest and I asked him who she was. Dean was really upset by my question and began to cry. He said that his daughter’s mother wouldn’t allow him to see her. Because he had been so distressed by our conversation, I never mentioned his daughter again and neither did he.’

One can almost imagine the sigh of relief that Boshell must have breathed when Elizabeth pledged never to mention his ‘daughter’ Emma again. Trying to keep his other ongoing relationship with Carla from Elizabeth must have been difficult enough without introducing his ex-girlfriend into the equation.

I genuinely felt for Elizabeth. Apart from Beverley Boshell, she is without doubt the only person that I have spoken to whilst writing this book who truly loved Dean.

In the autumn of 2007, I finally managed to track down Carla Shipton, the other female in the Boshell
ménage à trois.
After going through a now almost routine procedure of reassuring potential witnesses that my intentions were honorable, I arranged to meet Carla at a pub near Basildon to discuss her relationship with Boshell and other related matters. Like most of the women Boshell had romanced in his short life, Carla still held a soft spot in her heart for him and spoke with great affection about their time together.

‘One night Dean appeared at the snooker club in Wickford where I was employed as the assistant manager,’ Carla told me. ‘He said he had just popped in for a drink and we got talking. I liked him instantly; he was really easy to talk to, had plenty to say and was exceptionally sweet. He gave me a lift home in a little blue car when I finished work. He started it with a screwdriver, which didn’t fill me with confidence, but he just laughed and said that he had lost the keys. I remember thinking at the time that the rightful owner of the car probably still had them.

‘We saw each other regularly after that night and before long we were an item. When I introduced Dean to my parents, they adored him. Mum used to say, “He’s lost. He’s a sad soul who needs a family around him.” She really had a soft spot for Dean. I don’t know much about Dean’s own family because he rarely talked about them. He did tell me that his mum and dad lived in Basildon, but he said he didn’t get on with either of them. He also said that he had a brother and a sister, whom he claimed he adored. To highlight just how much he thought of his sister, Dean told me that he had paid a small fortune to have her hair permed and cut at a top hairdressing salon. I thought that was a really sweet gesture because throughout the time that I knew Dean he never had much money. I have recently learned, however, that he never had a sister. I wasn’t surprised that he had lied to me: Dean had a serious problem with the truth. He didn’t understand what it was.

‘I found out that there was an ongoing dispute between Dean and a former girlfriend of his named Emma, who also happened to work at the snooker club. He said that she had refused to give him his possessions back when they had separated. When I asked Emma about it, she said that he was using it as an excuse to harass her and that she didn’t have any of his belongings.

‘It was whilst this dispute was ongoing that I met a man called Damon Alvin, whom Dean introduced to me as his best friend. He had been going on and on for ages about this great friend he had whom he always referred to as his brother. I didn’t believe Damon was his brother; I just thought it was a phrase Dean used for somebody he thought a lot of. He used to use a lot of phrases like gangster, brethren and homie that he picked up from gangster lyrics by Eminem and other rap artists that he would listen to.

‘One Sunday afternoon, Dean announced that he was going to take me to Damon’s house to meet him and his wife. The way he was going on about it, I thought we were going to Buckingham Palace to meet the Royal Family. When we arrived at Damon’s (not Buckingham Palace), Dean appeared to fall under some sort of spell. If Damon had asked Dean to jump that day, he would genuinely have disappeared through the ceiling. Damon pulled Dean’s strings like he was some sort of puppet. I think Dean looked on Damon as a cross between a father figure and a big brother. Damon, on the other hand, looked upon Dean as a cross between a lapdog and an annoying little brother he didn’t have time for.

‘After that first meeting, Dean and I would visit Damon’s house every Sunday and occasionally during the week. I became very good friends with Damon’s wife, Barbara, and in time we began to go out together, mainly to play bingo in Southend.

‘When Dean mentioned to me the trouble he said he was having recovering his possessions from Emma, Damon said that he was going to go round to her flat, kick the door in and retrieve them. I have no idea if he ever did that, but he was certainly capable of doing that sort of thing.

‘Just two weeks after meeting Dean, I found out that he had been stopped and arrested by the police for drink-driving in his little blue car. I was annoyed with him for being so stupid as to drink and drive but pleased to have it confirmed by the police that he at least owned the vehicle. They didn’t inform me as such, I just assumed that he had not stolen it because they didn’t take it off him.

‘I ended up finding out most things about Dean via the police. He would tell me one story, get himself arrested and only then would I find out what he had really been doing. Knowing what I know now, I am grateful that he habitually lied to me; the truth would have been far too terrifying to contemplate.’

As Mrs Boshell, Carla Shipton, Elizabeth Reece and everybody else I have spoken to who knew Dean Boshell have confirmed, he was totally untrustworthy. He deceived and lied to everybody with whom he came into contact, without exception. Boshell led a double life and constructed well-thought-out lies to fool those he pretended to be loyal to. But Boshell was not the only man guilty of living a double life in Southend at that time. Damon Alvin portrayed himself in public as a family man and a hard-working builder. This facade, however, was no more than a ruse to mask his drug dealing and the cowardly violence he employed to sustain his position in the drug world.

If people have any doubt about the true make-up of Alvin’s persona, they only have to ask the elderly man whose ankle he broke, the young man he stabbed in the leg three times, Lee Harris, who was clubbed with a hammer, or an unfortunate man named Malcolm Winters.

Alvin was introduced to Winters through a mutual friend. By his own admission, Winters had a fairly serious drug habit and Alvin had been recommended to him as a supplier of reasonably priced, good-quality cocaine. When Winters first met Alvin, he arrived in a pick-up truck accompanied by another male. Expressionless, Alvin had given Winters a gram of cocaine and demanded £50. Before driving off, Alvin had told him that any time he needed drugs, he should call him. In the months that followed, Winter’s cocaine habit had spiralled out of control and he found himself ringing Alvin more often than he could afford. Unable to control or fund his habit, Winters requested and was given cocaine on credit. Within a very short period of time, he owed Alvin approximately £1,000. It might not seem like a lot of money, but it is when you have nothing and you owe it to an extremely violent thug.

One afternoon, Alvin telephoned Winters and said that he needed to see him as a matter of urgency to discuss how the debt was going to be settled. When Alvin swept into the car park where they had agreed to meet, Winters took a deep breath and started to walk towards the vehicle. Forcing a smile, he greeted Alvin, who glared back, said nothing and motioned for him to get into the vehicle alongside him. As he did so, two men, who appeared to be intoxicated, approached the car. Neither Winters nor Alvin had seen the men before. The men asked Winters if he had any spare change, but before he could answer, Alvin ‘went ballistic’. He jumped out of the car and head-butted one of the men before punching the other to the ground. Both men were left unconscious.

Winters ran away, whilst Alvin jumped back into his car, slammed it into gear and disappeared out of the car park amidst a cloud of dust and smoke caused by the burning rubber of his tyres. A few weeks after this incident, Alvin contacted Winters again and arranged to meet him outside his workplace. On this occasion, Alvin was sitting in the passenger seat of a BMW and another male was driving. When Winters climbed into the back of the vehicle, he noticed that Alvin was holding a knife, which had a 12-inch-long blade. ‘How are we going to sort this out?’ Alvin asked, whilst restlessly tossing the knife from hand to hand.

Eyeing the blade nervously, Winters told Alvin exactly what he wanted to hear. He did so because the unprovoked attack on the two drunken beggars several weeks earlier was still fresh in his mind. After accepting an offer to ‘pay back some money next week’, Alvin told Winters that he was free to go.

The following week, Alvin arrived at Winters’ home, accompanied by another male. He took £500 from Winters and gave him a gram of cocaine. Winters was then informed that his debt had started to accumulate interest and if he did not sort it out soon he would be getting another visit and somebody would ‘put one in his head’.

Nobody knows if Alvin would have carried out his threat and it’s fair to say that nobody knows if Lee Harris, beaten senseless for allegedly urinating on Malcolm’s grave, was guilty of doing so. Talk is undoubtedly cheap, but as Harris found out and others were to learn, it can be extremely dangerous. Fortunately for Winters, before Alvin could carry out his threat or collect his debt, he had managed to flee from the Southend area and Alvin never did get his money.

Of course, not all threats are veiled or empty; some are followed through with ruthless efficiency. As the first anniversary of Malcolm Walsh’s killing drew near, high emotions and the threats against the Tretton brothers and their family intensified.

Emotions were also running high amongst Malcolm Walsh’s friends and relatives. There was talk of tossing hand grenades into the Trettons’ home, poisoning the milk on their doorstep and shooting them. The majority of this talk was fuelled by alcohol or grief; nobody truly believed that anything would happen. Ricky Percival had added to the personal grief that he felt by doing all that he could to help and comfort Malcolm’s brother and three sisters, one of whom, Pamela, had taken his death particularly hard. Her weight plummeted and her general health became a concern for all who knew her. Percival had begun visiting Pamela regularly in the hope that he could help her come to terms with her loss. Two weeks before the anniversary of Malcolm’s death, Percival, his brother Danny and their friends were due to go on holiday to Cyprus. This caused Pamela a certain amount of distress because she said she felt alone, but Percival reassured her that she would be OK and made a promise to visit her as soon as he returned.

Whilst Percival was enjoying his holiday, a man whom I shall call ‘Gary Baron’ arrived at Alvin’s home and said that he was looking for Dean Boshell. Describing the incident several years after the event, Alvin said, ‘He asked me if he could leave something with me to give to Boshell. I asked him what it was and he answered by opening the boot of his car. I looked in and saw a shotgun wrapped in a jumper. I opened up the boot of my car, and he picked up the shotgun and put it in my vehicle. I said to him that I would give it to Boshell when I saw him.

‘Because of all the threats that had been made about attacking the Trettons, I knew what it was going to be used for. Two hours later, Boshell turned up at my house and I told him that Gary Baron had left something in the boot of my car for him. Boshell took my keys, went outside, transferred the shotgun from my car to his and drove home. Five minutes later he re-appeared and gave me back my keys.’

I find it very hard to believe that a villain would deliver a shotgun to a person who was not directly involved in his conspiracy or crime. Firearm offences are very serious matters. Surely Baron would have kept the firearm until he met Boshell in person. Anybody planning to commit such a serious crime would hardly risk involving people who had no reason to know about their intentions.

A more likely scenario is that Alvin had ordered the gun, it had been delivered to his home and he had telephoned for his gofer Boshell to collect it for safe keeping. A few weeks later, on the anniversary of Malcolm’s death, Alvin was in the Woodcutters Arms with Boshell and several other men. Ricky Percival was also present, having returned from his holiday in Cyprus. According to Alvin, he didn’t recall talking to Percival and even if they did speak, he said, it would have been nothing more than a cursory greeting. When it came to closing time, Alvin claims that he was extremely drunk.

He has since given the police two different versions of what happened when he left the pub. In both, Alvin does his best to distance himself from knowingly being involved in any criminality. Initially, Alvin claimed that he got into a car with Boshell and Percival after asking for a lift home. ‘We got into a white Vauxhall Nova. Dean was driving, Percival was sat in the front passenger seat and I noticed that he had a shotgun between his legs,’ said Alvin.