Essex Boys, The New Generation (14 page)

Nipper Ellis is nobody’s fool and, like any man with dignity, he refused to stand by and allow thugs to bully him or his family. He confronted Tucker and Rolfe with a loaded shotgun and they fled to the nearest police station, where they both made statements complaining about Nipper threatening to kill them. Fearing an armed reprisal, Nipper purchased a Smith and Wesson handgun for £600 and a bulletproof vest for £400. Tate, who had been telling anybody who cared to listen that he was going to execute Nipper, was shot soon afterwards. A brick was thrown through his bathroom window and when he went to investigate, he was hit. ‘I might be small, but someone had to stand up to those scumbags,’ Nipper said.

After the botched attempt on Tate’s life, Nipper was invited to meet him in hospital to ‘sort out the misunderstanding’, but Tate had a gun hidden in his hospital bed and was planning to blow his brains out as soon as he stepped into the room. Nipper found this out and rather wisely didn’t bother turning up for the visit. A nurse found the gun when she was making up Tate’s bed and called the police, and he was eventually jailed for possessing a firearm.

Nipper was arrested for shooting Tate, but there was insufficient evidence to charge him. He was, however, jailed for seven and a half months for illegally possessing firearms.

‘When I was in jail, I received numerous death threats,’ Nipper said. ‘On one occasion, two men came up to me and told me that a £10,000 contract had been put on my head. As soon as I was released from prison, I was ordered to leave town. I was told that if I ignored the warnings Tucker and his gang would retaliate. A hit man went to my dad’s door looking for me. My family were told that Tucker and Tate planned to snatch my little sister and cut off her fingers one by one. She was only 15 at the time and was absolutely terrified. The threats only stopped when Tucker, Tate and Rolfe were murdered at Rettendon in their Range Rover. Those three were nasty, vicious bullies. They are not missed. They were scum and the world today is a better place without them.’

Telling Boshell and others that he was involved with a character like Nipper really boosted Alvin’s ego. He felt good thinking that people associated him with some of the country’s most infamous gangsters. But the truth was very different.

Nipper said: ‘I am not involved in crime any more, but if I was I certainly wouldn’t be involved with a loser like Alvin. To suggest that I planned to rob drug dealers with him or anybody else is pure fantasy. What would anybody expect to get off some lowlife drug dealer holed up in a council cave in Basildon – £50? Trust me, if I was going to risk going to prison for ten to fifteen years, it wouldn’t be for the worldly possessions of a two-bob drug dealer.

‘I did know Alvin, but he was not my mate. I recall being at his ex-partner’s house when he turned up clearly out of his head on cocaine. Alvin was ranting about Malcolm Walsh because it was the anniversary of his death. I thought he was trying to look big in front of me by saying, “Tonight’s the night those bastards will be meeting Malcolm again.” I didn’t take much notice of him, but the following day I heard that they had been shot.

‘Alvin was like the Pied Piper of Horror around Southend, luring younger, weaker people than himself into drugs so that he could bully, use and discard them. The geezer makes me feel sick. If I had been involved in planning these robberies or possessing firearms, why haven’t the police bothered to talk to me? As for Boshell telling his police handler about me, I had never even heard of Boshell at the time. He was obviously just passing on shit he had heard from Alvin.

Alvin knew that burglary had become a crime of the past – safes were just too secure and alarms were becoming too sophisticated. He had noticed that Ricky Percival was making a good living out of selling drugs and so he decided that he would hang up his gloves, put away his crowbar and concentrate all of his efforts in and around the lucrative drug world.

Drug dealing is an extremely risky business: if the police do not bring you down, rival dealers or informants most certainly will. Counter-surveillance techniques have to be employed when combating the police and extreme violence has to be used to deter or destroy rival dealers and informants. Alvin thought he was well equipped on all fronts – what he failed to appreciate was that rival drug dealers will think twice about taking on a powerful man, but drug-dealing informants will have no hesitation whatsoever in passing on information to the police to bring down a man who threatens them.

Somebody else facing up to the problems that a lifestyle change brings was Dean Boshell. Nobody knows for sure if he made the robbery stories up or if he exaggerated beer talk and boasting that he had heard and turned it all into conspiracies that he genuinely believed. What is known is that the police were losing patience with Boshell. The information that he had given had not resulted in a single arrest. Boshell knew he was going to have to come up with something more than idle gossip. He needed to tell the police about a serious crime that he knew was going to be committed or the names of the perpetrators of one that had already taken place. Failure, he realised, would result in him appearing in court with zero bargaining power. A lengthy prison sentence would undoubtedly be imposed and Elizabeth and the family he craved would slip from his grasp.

If affairs of the heart were not enough for Boshell to contend with, his police informant status was about to be exposed.

A man named Mark Bradford was on police bail in connection with the murder of a 24-year-old heroin addict named Danny Davies. A father of one, Davies had died ten hours after being stabbed once in the buttock during a fight over a drug deal in Basildon. Bradford was completely innocent of any involvement in this murder and did not face any charges in connection with it; however, his bail conditions whilst the murder was still being investigated included signing on at a police station every day to ensure that he did not abscond. Waiting to be attended to at the reception desk one day, Bradford saw Boshell walk out of an office accompanied by a man dressed in a suit whom he assumed was a detective.

‘Boshell and I acknowledged one another before he walked out of the police station,’ Bradford said. ‘A few days later, I met Alvin and told him about Boshell being with the police. Initially, Alvin didn’t seem too concerned, but one or two days later he rang me up, asking what day and what time had I seen Boshell. He also wanted to know if the man with Boshell had been in uniform or plain clothes. Alvin seemed really concerned about Boshell being in the company of a policeman; he told me that he had found out that he was a grass.’

When Alvin questioned Boshell about what Bradford had seen, Boshell explained that the police had been trying to obtain information from him. Alvin appeared to accept this and told Boshell that he would get in touch with the officer concerned and offer him money to pass on information about police matters that might be of use to him. It is not known if Alvin did actually contact or try to bribe the police officer. Regardless of what Alvin says today, the seeds of doubt concerning Boshell’s loyalty to him must have been firmly planted in his mind at the time of this incident.

Seeds grow, so too does animosity, which can fester into feelings of extreme dislike or even blind hatred. Boshell was living dangerously – he knew what the punishment for being an informant was in the Essex underworld – but to save his dream of having a family and escape a lengthy term of imprisonment he was prepared to take his chances.

Boshell would have been acutely aware that the atmosphere between himself and Alvin was changing for the worse. Despite being warned by police that he should not encourage others to commit crime or take part in criminal activities himself, Boshell encouraged Alvin to rob the Wickford snooker club, where Carla Shipton, one of his girlfriends, was working. Whilst conspiring to commit the robbery with Alvin, Boshell also kept his police handler abreast of the plans that he was accusing Alvin of making. The manager was going to be grabbed after he had locked the premises up, his keys taken, the alarm disarmed and the safe emptied. Unfortunately for the police, Boshell claimed that he had no idea when the robbery was going to take place or, apart from Alvin, who was going to be taking part in it, but he admitted that the idea to do the job had been one of his from a year earlier.

After being tasked by his handler to find out more about the robbery, Boshell reported back that firearms would not be used as the manager was an old man, but that they would put him in the boot of a car. In the hope of deflecting his involvement in the planning of the robbery onto Alvin, Boshell didn’t mention that his girlfriend was the assistant manager at the snooker club. He did point out, however, that Alvin’s wife ‘associates with a barmaid from there’.

The information that Boshell was now prepared to give to the police indicated that he was not only trying to secure a reduced prison sentence but was also keen to have his one-time hero, Damon Alvin, removed from the scene. No reason – other than that Alvin had discovered that Boshell was an informant – has ever been given for this.

Unlike the two previous robberies about which Boshell had talked to the police, the robbery at the snooker club did eventually go ahead. Describing the robbery to police several years later, Alvin said: ‘Dean Boshell first started talking about robbing the Wickford snooker club about a year before the crime was actually committed. Boshell was dating a couple of girls who worked at the snooker club – one was named Emma, the other Carla Shipton. He went in the club regularly and told me that it was potentially a robbery target. I don’t remember meeting Emma at any point, but I do know she shared a bedsit with Boshell in London Road, Leigh-on-Sea. I met Carla – Boshell used to bring her around to my house and we socialised together with my partner. Carla seemed a nice girl, and she and Boshell seemed pretty fine together.

‘When Carla used to come to my house, she would always talk about her job at the snooker club. I asked how successful it was, how much money it took, about the alarm system, cameras, panic alarms, and when would be the best time to rob it. Carla answered all of my questions without hesitation and didn’t spare any detail. I extracted everything I needed to know from her over a period of time. It must have been obvious to her that I was up to no good and she would have sensed this. As time went on, I then began discussing with Carla how and what I was going to do. I still hadn’t involved Ricky Percival at this stage or even checked the premises out.

‘The plan discussed with Carla was that she was going to let me in after her shift had ended. I wasn’t going to do the job on my own and was planning to get someone in to help me. I think I may have asked Boshell first, as we were good friends, but I can’t recall. He may have declined to get involved for one reason or another. At some stage I approached Percival, explained the job to him and what plans were involved. He agreed that he would assist me with the robbery.

‘A week or so before the job actually took place, myself and Percival went to the club late at night. I can’t remember if we had contacted Carla to let her know that we were coming, but I recall attracting her attention as she left the club. We were sitting in our vehicle in the car park and Carla walked over and got in the back. I don’t think Percival or Carla knew each other, but if Carla did know anything about Percival it would have only been things that Boshell would have told her. As she got into the back of the vehicle, she began to tell me about the layout of the building, security issues and any concerns about the manager. I did all of the talking, as Percival did not know her.

‘I think we may have met Carla on one more occasion before we carried out the job. It was at the same location, just to go through again what we had originally discussed. Carla agreed with us that when her shift concluded and she was the last remaining staff member on the premises she would leave the front door open for us to gain entry. This would ensure that the manager was alone in the club. I think if there were to be any problems or complications on the night concerning staff and people being left in the club, then I think Carla would have probably rung me.

‘I discussed the final details of how we were going to do the job with Percival. We decided that we would take balaclavas and gloves. Percival may have said that he was going to take ammonia. The reason we probably took ammonia was to disable the manager. There are not many people who can fight and still be aware of everything that is going on around them after being squirted with ammonia. I had never carried anything like that before. On the day of the robbery, I picked up Percival from his home address.

‘It’s possible that when I picked Percival up, I may have seen him with a “squirty” bottle of ammonia. I recall that this was a small, white washing-up bottle. I believe that we may have arrived at the club around midnight, which would have roughly been the time that Carla was due to finish work. Once parked, we got out of the car and walked towards the club. It looked as if it had already closed, as there were no lights on in the entrance area. I can’t recall how long we were waiting outside, but it didn’t seem long. Carla may have rung me on my mobile to say that she was finishing soon.

‘Whilst we were waiting, I didn’t see anyone exit or enter the club. I remember approaching Carla from where we were standing and as she held the door open for us I asked her if the manager was alone. She replied, “Yes, he is,” and then went on to tell me that he was by the bar drinking. Carla didn’t seem at all bothered by what she knew was about to happen. When we had finished talking, Carla walked off, but I don’t know if she caught a cab or walked home. Percival and I made our way into the front entrance of the club and hid on the stairs. When we were happy that Carla had left the area, we began to climb the stairs towards the bar.’