Essex Boys, The New Generation (16 page)

Alvin’s initial thoughts on Boshell warning him about the police interest in him was that it was an act of loyalty. This reinforced his trust in Boshell rather than making him wary of his sincerity. After asking Boshell the names of the officers who had been to the prison, Alvin immediately phoned them to ask what it was they wanted to know about him. He advised the officers that if they wanted questions answered about his business in the future, they should contact him and not Boshell.

Alvin did not get any sort of satisfactory response from the police and he heard no more about it. Perhaps it was drug-induced paranoia or simply intuition, but however hard Alvin tried to put the incident to the back of his mind he kept wondering, toying with the idea that maybe, just maybe, his friend Boshell was informing on him to the police. Alvin wondered if Boshell might have only told him about the visit because he could have been frightened that a fellow inmate might have seen the officers talking to him. Whatever conclusion Alvin reached, his relationship with Boshell was never the same again. Trust was replaced with open hostility. Fearing that he had been found out, Boshell refused to talk to the police ever again and concentrated on rebuilding Alvin’s trust in him.

Boshell’s Judas-like behaviour towards his friend was without question despicable, but Alvin’s was not much better. His outward display of affection for Boshell masked a sinister and deceitful pattern of behaviour that can only be described as abhorrent. When Carla Shipton was alone with Alvin, on more than one occasion he tried to lure her into his bed and he regularly ridiculed his so-called friend Boshell in her company.

Carla told me that when it was coming up to her birthday Boshell had asked Alvin if he would buy her a card on his behalf, sign it and hand it to her. His prison income didn’t stretch to a card and a gift, but he didn’t want to ignore her special day.

‘Damon agreed to do this for Dean and, as an additional favour, he said that he would enclose some money, say it was from Dean and tell me to get myself a present,’ Carla said. ‘I, of course, did not know anything about this at the time. When Damon gave me the card and I opened it, there was a two-pence piece inside. “What’s this for?” I asked. He started laughing and said, “That’s all your boyfriend could afford to give you.” I didn’t know what to say or do; Damon was still laughing and so I pretended to see the funny side of it, but inside I felt sick.

‘Occasionally, Damon would give me a lift to the prison to visit Dean. One time, the prison drug-detection dog, which is led past all visitors, barked when it reached Damon. He was taken out of the queue by an officer and I was also asked to step aside, simply because I happened to be with him. We were told that the dog had indicated that one or both of us was carrying or had been in contact with controlled substances and we would either have to leave the premises or have a closed visit. Ordinarily visits take place at a table in a large hall, which permits private conversations and physical contact between prisoners and their visitors. Closed visits are conducted within the confines of a small room. Prisoners and their visitors are separated by a glass partition, which prevents any physical contact, and conversations are monitored.

‘Damon and I, not wishing to disappoint Dean by not seeing him, opted for the closed visit. When we sat down to talk to Dean, Damon began laughing and joking with him about drugs. They began talking about smoking huge spliffs and snorting really long lines of cocaine off the visiting-room table. At the time, we did not know that our conversations were being monitored, but we found out as soon as the visit was over. Two detectives greeted us as we opened the door to leave. “Would you mind accompanying us?” they said to Damon and me. “We think you might know what this is about.” One officer led Damon away and the other escorted me through the prison. I was taken from one office to another because they were trying to locate two female prison officers so that I could be searched.

‘Images of big, butch lesbians with gnarled spade-like hands flashed through my mind, striking terror in my heart. Fortunately before my worst nightmare could become reality, the officer with me was informed that drugs had been found on Damon and he had confirmed that I had no knowledge of them. I’m wrong when I say drugs had been found
on
Damon – they were actually found in him. Damon had secreted cannabis that he had intended to give to Dean in his anus.

‘Disappointment at not being able to kiss my boyfriend that day quickly turned to relief, and thoughts of mouthwash, toothpaste and violent scrubbing with a hard toothbrush.

‘Having extracted the incriminating evidence from Damon, we and “it” were taken to a local police station “to be processed”. After what seemed like an age, Damon and I were eventually released. Damon was in a foul mood. He said he’d been charged with possession of cannabis with intent to supply and the likelihood was that he’d be sent to prison. I wasn’t particularly pleased myself. Despite doing no wrong, I was informed that I was now banned from visiting anybody in that particular prison. Dean would not be happy with this news but, because his hero Damon was involved, I knew that he wouldn’t say much, if anything.

‘When Damon appeared before magistrates in Norwich some time later for this incident, he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment.

‘On the way home from our disastrous visit with Dean, Damon said that he had to stop off at Woolworths to spend some gift vouchers he had. It was near Christmas time and so I assumed that he was going to buy some presents. When he came back to the car, he seemed to have cheered up. He started asking me about my relationship with Dean, then started groping my leg. I was really shocked and demanded that he stop at once, but he ignored me.

‘I got quite scared and kept saying that I was going to be late for work. I was really upset because I was his wife’s best friend and he was supposed to be Dean’s. I didn’t dare tell Dean or Barbara what Damon had tried to do because they both would have been devastated. I put it down to Damon having a little too much Christmas spirit and decided to try and forget about it.

‘When Barbara’s birthday came around, we celebrated it by going out clubbing in Southend. I was getting ready at Damon and Barbara’s house when the phone rang. It was Damon. He told Barbara that he was sending a man to the house for a change of clothing. He wanted Barbara to have a set ready and told her not to ask any questions when the man arrived to collect them. Not long afterwards a man did come to the house, Barbara gave him the clothes and he left without saying a word. When Damon eventually arrived home, he was wearing the clean set of clothing.

‘Barbara told him, “I’ve made you chilli con carne for your dinner. It’s in the saucepan,” but when Damon lifted off the lid and looked at the food, he said, “I can’t fucking eat that, it looks like the geezer’s head I’ve just done.” Nobody dared to pass comment.

‘We went out shortly afterwards and ended up at a nightclub called Tots, in Southend. Barbara appeared to be upset by whatever Damon had done to the person earlier; she certainly wasn’t herself. We went back to their house when the club closed and Barbara went upstairs for some reason. I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Damon came in behind me, put his arms around my waist and tried to shove his hand down the front of my trousers. There was a large mirror in the lounge and as I turned to face Damon I could see Barbara in it coming down the stairs. I pushed him away and said, “Get your hands off me. Have you no respect for Barbara?” At that moment, she walked into the kitchen, totally oblivious to what had been going on. Damon looked at me with a sneer and walked off into the lounge.

‘I thought Damon was sick for behaving the way he did, especially as it was Barbara’s birthday and it was her best friend that he was trying to seduce. The fact I was Dean’s girlfriend and he worshipped Damon made it even more disgusting. I really wanted to tell Barbara, but Damon would have sweet-talked his way out of it and probably blamed me. I decided once more, for everybody’s sake, to keep quiet about it. I continued to socialise with Barbara after that night, but I always ensured that I was never left alone with Damon.

‘When Dean was eventually released from prison, he rang me up and we arranged to meet at Damon’s later that night. Barbara and I assumed Dean would be going out to celebrate his release with Damon and they wouldn’t be home until late and so we went to play bingo. When we returned, Damon was home and he said that he hadn’t seen Dean. I rang Dean’s mobile, but he never answered, so I waited up all night for him. He didn’t arrive. The following morning I was in a foul mood. I rang his mobile again, but there was still no answer. I got so annoyed I stormed round to his old flat and hammered on the door, but there was no response.

‘Disheartened, I turned to walk away, but as I did so I caught a fleeting glimpse of a figure behind the net curtain of an upstairs window. I began pounding on the front door with the flat of my hand and continued until I saw somebody approaching through the frosted glass. When the door opened, a large black male said, “I am Lester, who are you and what do you want?” I didn’t answer; I pushed past him and hurried upstairs. Dean’s bedroom door offered no resistance, as I barged it open. Two young girls lying naked on the bed stared up at me in total shock. They were too afraid to speak. “Where is he?” I demanded. “Where is Dean?” The girls averted their eyes from me and glanced at an old wardrobe in the corner of the room.

‘As I approached it, the doors opened and Dean stepped out, dressed in just his boxer shorts. “You bastard,” I shouted. “How could you do this? These girls are only about fourteen!”

‘Dean didn’t answer. He just shrugged his shoulders and put his hands out as if to say it’s a fair cop. I glared at him in total disgust and walked out of the flat. I decided there and then that I wanted nothing further to do with him. He would ring me occasionally to apologise when he was pissed, but I was determined not to renew our relationship. I continued to socialise with Barbara, but even our friendship dwindled and died before too long.

‘I was sad about all that had happened, but none of us can change the past. Dean chose others over me and I couldn’t accept that.’

Carla Shipton is, of course, right: we cannot change the past. Today’s decisions mould our future and so we should always think hard before we embark upon any particular path. A life littered with lies, deceit and deception had left Boshell’s dreams for the future in tatters. What he couldn’t have known was that his chosen path was about to end his short life.

9

  INTO THE ABYSS  

Pretty 19-year-old Kate Griffiths was the
former girlfriend of Daniel Langley, one of Damon Alvin’s closest friends. During their relationship, the couple used to go to the Woodcutters Arms to socialise and it was there that Griffiths was introduced to Malcolm Walsh’s younger brother Kevin. Following the break-up of her relationship with Langley, Griffiths began dating Kevin. Romance blossomed between the two and before long Griffiths was living between her mum’s house and Walsh’s flat in Shannon Close, Leigh-on-Sea. Life for the couple revolved around regular, mundane visits to the Woodcutters and work. Griffiths managed a launderette that she and her father owned, and Walsh was employed on a casual basis in the construction industry. That was until Dean Boshell washed up at the pub one night after being dumped by not one but two girlfriends.

Boshell was in the company of his friend Damon Alvin and his partner Clair Sanders. Alvin had somehow convinced Sanders to allow Boshell to live in their home until he was able to secure an address of his own. On his release from prison Boshell had hoped that he could take up residence with either Carla or Elizabeth, but he had soon learned that his shoddy behaviour had resulted in both of those bridges being burned. Homeless and unemployed, he had turned to Alvin in desperation.

Thinking that Alvin had resolved his accommodation problem, Boshell began to celebrate and it wasn’t long before he was staggering around the pub drunk out of his mind. Sanders was outraged when she saw the state Boshell had got himself into. Pulling Alvin to one side, she told him that under no circumstances was Boshell to go near their home.

Embarrassed but too weak to oppose Clair’s will, Alvin told Boshell in front of everybody that his invitation to stay had been withdrawn. Despite Griffiths and Walsh having only been introduced to Boshell earlier that evening, they felt deeply sorry for him. ‘Don’t be like that,’ Walsh said to Alvin. ‘He’s just got out of jail and has nowhere to go.’

‘Fuck the cunt,’ Alvin replied. ‘If you’re so fucking worried about him, you take him home.’

Rather than leave Boshell roaming the streets, Walsh invited him to stay at his flat until he found a place of his own. Once installed in Walsh’s home, Boshell appeared to be in no hurry to resolve his housing problem – he would hang around the flat all day and ask Walsh’s friends to buy him drinks in the Woodcutters Arms at night. Because he suffered from a stutter, Boshell was subjected to a degree of light-hearted banter from the locals, but he gave back as good as he got.

His choice of female company was also the butt of many jokes because he appeared to care little about size, species or their origins. One of his many lovers was described as ‘five-foot-three tall, three-foot-five wide, woolly-haired and possibly human’.

Regardless of all the mickey-taking Boshell endured in the Woodcutters Arms, those who knew him say he was genuinely well-liked and he never once complained about the treatment he received.

It took a month for Boshell to secure his own accommodation and he only achieved this with the assistance of Alvin. Ever prudent, Alvin had employed jobless Boshell initially as a labourer; however, once Boshell had become financially dependent upon Alvin, he was easily coaxed into selling cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis for him.

To avoid any large quantities of these drugs being found at Alvin’s home, he had decided it would be a good idea to provide Boshell with his own flat where the drugs could be stored and distributed from. Alvin paid the £350 deposit on the flat on Elmsleigh Drive in Leigh-on-Sea and Boshell moved in later the same day. To thank Walsh and Griffiths for accommodating him, Boshell invited the couple round to his flat and made them dinner. Neither Walsh nor his partner showed any sort of animosity towards Boshell during his rent-free residency at their home; in fact, Griffiths has very fond memories of him.

‘I thought Dean was really sweet. He spoke to me a lot more than he spoke to Kevin. He was really easy to talk to. He was definitely better at talking to girls than men.

‘He never talked much about his past, but he did tell me that he was from Beverley in Humberside and that he didn’t get on with his family. He said he had two sisters, but I can’t ever remember him going to visit them.

‘All in all, Dean was a really nice bloke, but he could sometimes be a bit unreliable. The one thing I didn’t like was that I knew he was seeing other girls as well as my friend Natalie. He had loads of girls’ numbers stored on his phone and kept asking me not to tell Natalie if he went clubbing in Southend. After he moved to his new flat I seemed to see less and less of him.’

The reason Griffiths was seeing less and less of Boshell was because he was getting more and more involved with Alvin and the murky drug world that he was striving to control. Every weekend Boshell would visit the pubs and clubs that litter Southend seafront, plying Alvin’s illicit substances. On Friday and Saturday nights, the town is awash with revellers and so Boshell had no shortage of customers, drinking partners or pretty girls to choose from. He would flit from bar to club to bar feeling something that he had never felt before: important. Everybody, it seemed, wanted to be his friend, not because they liked him but because the drugs he was selling were of good quality and reasonably priced. Having experienced hard times himself, Boshell was not unknown to give drugs to people on credit, so long as they promised to pay him the next time they met. Unfortunately for Boshell, the chance of a drug debt being honoured that was agreed in a nightclub when both parties were pissed is about as likely as world peace.

Boshell didn’t help himself by acting out his fantasy of being a gangster to impress the steady stream of females he was constantly trying to seduce. He would supply them with free pills or free lines of cocaine, or peel off notes from a wad of Alvin’s drug money to buy them drinks. Before Boshell knew it, he was accumulating numerous small debts that amounted to him owing Alvin one large one. Tensions between the two men were becoming more intense, not only because of Boshell’s playboy lifestyle but also because of Alvin’s own excessive use of cocaine. He started to believe that he was somehow invincible and treated everybody he met with contempt.

One night, two girls, Lisa and Donna, were making their way home after an enjoyable evening out in Southend when, as they passed Tots nightclub, Lisa was grabbed around the waist by a man. Laughing, he said, ‘Hello, Nicole.’ It wasn’t a case of mistaken identity; people often remarked how much she resembled the Hollywood actress Nicole Kidman.

The person who had accosted Lisa was in the company of another man named Sean Buckley and a female, who walked off as soon as she saw what had happened. ‘My name’s Dean Boshell,’ the man said as he released Lisa’s waist and held out his hand. After talking for half an hour in the bitter cold, Boshell invited the girls to join him and Sean for a drink at his home. When they arrived at Elmsleigh Drive, they went up to Sean’s flat, which was above Boshell’s in a converted house. Boshell began to play Eminem on the stereo and told the girls it was his favourite music because he loved gangster lyrics.

In a statement made later to the police, Lisa said, ‘After a while, Dean said to me, “Do you want some charlie?” I didn’t really know what he meant by this. He then got up and disappeared down the stairs to his flat. When Dean came back up, he was holding a clear plastic bag that was about the size of a 2 lb bag of sugar. He held it up and said, “That’s charlie, you know, coke?” It was then that I realised he was holding a bag of cocaine. I wasn’t at all comfortable with this. He then put a line of powder on the table, rolled up a £10 note and snorted it up his nose. Sean did the same, but Donna and I refused to have any of it. I also noticed that Dean had a big roll of cash, about £600. I don’t know why, but he did tell me that this was not his money. Dean asked me if I wanted to go down to his flat; I agreed, and left Donna with Sean. There wasn’t a lot in the flat. He had a mattress for a bed, a three-piece suite, a TV and a video. Dean did wear nice clothes, though. They were all designer labels. And he also wore a thick gold chain and a Krugerrand sovereign ring.

‘Dean went to have a shower and I went into the kitchen to make a coffee. As I looked around, I saw a further three bags full of white powder on top of the freezer. These were the same size as the bag Dean had brought up to Sean’s flat earlier. I don’t know a lot about drugs, but I do know that the amount of cocaine Dean had must have been worth a lot of money.

‘When Dean came out of the shower, we both sat on the settee and had a cuddle. Dean was initially stuttering, but very soon relaxed and started to talk normally. I asked Dean about the cocaine and he said that whilst serving a prison sentence for burglary he had been bullied by two men who had forced him to deal drugs for them. He told me that one of these men was called Chris. Dean explained that these people used to smuggle pills into the prison for him hidden in the butts of cigarettes and he would then have to sell them to other inmates.

‘Dean said he wasn’t happy with the situation, but he didn’t have much choice other than to go along with their demands. When he was released from prison, Dean said the people he’d been forced to work for had tracked him down and made him continue to sell their drugs. That’s how he came to be in possession of so much cocaine – it belonged to these people.

‘Dean seemed to be under extreme pressure. He said they were blackmailing him and had threatened to harm his brother. He clammed up when I asked about his family – he said that he never talked about his mum or dad. He told me he had a daughter.

‘I sensed that Dean had many regrets about his family, particularly regrets concerning his dad.

‘I remained with Dean until Sunday morning and then went home. Dean and I spoke to one another on the phone every night thereafter. The following weekend Dean picked me up from my home in a cab and we went to Clouseau’s pub, had a few drinks and then went back to Dean’s flat. When we sat down, Dean really opened up to me. I was quite shocked by how emotional he was. He said he was stuck in a situation that there was no way out of. He started crying, saying he was suicidal and wanted to get a gun. He kept saying he had a problem that he desperately needed to sort out and that he was really frightened. “I need to face up to this and get it sorted,” he said.

‘It really upset me to see how distressed Dean was. Unfortunately, he refused to go into detail about just what his problem was. The following morning I went home. During the next couple of weeks, Dean would text or telephone me at all sorts of silly hours. He would either be stoned, drunk or both. Sometimes he would be fine with me, but other times he would say that he needed help or that he missed me a lot. He would say things like, “I’m stuck in a situation that I want to get out of” or “I’m going to have to deal with this problem, so that I can settle down with you.”

‘The next time I saw Dean was in the Chameleon nightclub. He was really off with me and moody; I wasn’t happy with his attitude at all, so I left the club and went home. At about 3 a.m., he phoned me. I told him I was unhappy about the way he had behaved and he apologised. I never saw him again; however, he continued to text and telephone me. One message I received said: “Miss you. I am not a liar. You are special. I need to sort business out once and for all. Be in touch.” I tried to phone him back, but he didn’t answer.’

The story that Boshell told Lisa about being forced to sell drugs for a man he had met in prison named Chris was in part true. He was selling drugs for a man he had met in prison – but his name was Alvin, not Chris. The only Chris that Boshell had encountered whilst in prison was ex-Essex Boy member Chris Wheatley.

He had been released from his seven-year sentence for drug dealing around the same time as Boshell. On 14 November 2000, two weeks before Boshell had met Lisa, Chris had collapsed with heart failure after a particularly strenuous workout at a Southend gym. He was rushed to Basildon hospital but pronounced dead on arrival. The cause of his death was determined as bronchial asthma.

Boshell had been lying when he told Lisa that he was working for and being threatened by Chris, but he certainly feared somebody. Shortly after meeting Lisa, somebody kicked in his front door and he disappeared from his flat. His landlady made enquiries about his whereabouts amongst his associates and in the local pubs, but nobody seemed to know where Boshell had gone or why he had left so suddenly. When the landlady had exhausted all avenues of enquiry, she arranged for the broken door to be repaired, packed Boshell’s belongings and handed them in at the local police station before re-letting the flat.

It is still a mystery why Boshell left or why his flat had been broken into. What is known is that Boshell was admitted to Southend hospital around this time suffering from a severely swollen testicle.

Alvin claimed that he inflicted the injury during a bit of horseplay whilst Boshell was working for him as a labourer. ‘It was lunchtime and my wife had dropped off some sandwiches for me,’ Alvin said. ‘Dean grabbed a sandwich without asking and so I grabbed him by the bollocks. I took it off him and he ended up in hospital. I was only fucking about. He rang me the next day and said that his bollocks were hurting. He had a couple of days off work and then he admitted himself to Southend hospital. I remember going up to see him. I took him in a phone and a McDonald’s meal. He stayed in there for a few days and then he rang me and said that he was staying with some girl.’

Alvin’s explanation of Boshell’s hospitalisation did not ring true to me and so with the kind permission of his mum I obtained her son’s medical records from the hospital. They make very interesting reading.