Essex Boys, The New Generation (19 page)

Sean Buckley, whom the other witnesses had also mentioned, made his statement after the police had raided his flat in error. He said he had left the group early in the evening and had no contact with Boshell and so proved to be of little use in the investigation.

Walsh had spent the evening in Griffiths’s company and so when he made his statement it unsurprisingly turned out to be almost identical in content to hers.

When officers visited Clair Sanders and asked her to give an account of her movements on the relevant night, her statement agreed with everything in Alvin’s. However, for reasons known only to Sanders, she refused to sign the declaration that her testimony was true to the best of her knowledge.

Within weeks of the murder, Boshell’s funeral had taken place at Pitsea Crematorium, near Basildon. The hearse carrying Boshell’s coffin passed the last resting places of Patrick Tate and Craig Rolfe, two victims of the infamous Essex Boys murders, who were buried as they lived, side by side. It would also have passed the grave of Kevin Whitaker, an innocent young man murdered on a whim by Rolfe and Tony Tucker. Dean Boshell’s dream of being just like one of the ‘big boys’ had finally come true. He was young, dead and being buried full of bullet holes, just like his heroes.

The unwarranted reputation Ricky Percival had revelled in since his arrest for the Locksley Close shootings was to come back to haunt him with a vengeance as soon as Boshell was dead. Twenty-year-old Jason Spendiff-Smith, who had never met Percival but had heard all the rumours about him, was about to drag him onto centre stage of the murder investigation.

Shortly after Boshell’s murder, Spendiff-Smith telephoned his uncle, who happened to be a serving police officer. In a complete panic, he had explained that he might be in trouble because he knew that Boshell had been planning ‘a job’ and he had provided dark clothing for him so that he could carry it out. Spendiff-Smith’s uncle advised him to calm down and contact the police immediately. After doing so, Spendiff-Smith was asked to make a witness statement, the contents of which resulted in his being asked to make several more. The numerous statements that followed never did quite make sense to detectives. Every time he talked about events surrounding Boshell’s death his story changed dramatically. Thinking he was involved in the killing or shielding the killer, the police decided to arrest Spendiff-Smith on suspicion of murder.

During interviews made under caution, Spendiff-Smith gave a fairly detailed account of his movements during the day of Boshell’s death. He told the police how he had given dark clothing to Boshell for use in a crime which, he understood, involved the theft of drugs from a farm building. This evidence was important when linked to statements made by Boshell’s work colleagues at the café. They said Boshell had told them that he had purchased guns and planned the theft of the drugs from a farm building with ‘his brother’. Detectives had, by this stage, established that more often than not Boshell referred to Damon Alvin as his brother.

Unfortunately for the police, just as they thought Spendiff-Smith was making himself useful he would tell them something that they knew was blatantly untrue and, in doing so, he would totally discredit himself. Spendiff-Smith had only been required to give a straightforward account of his knowledge of Boshell and matters that might have had some bearing on his murder, but he soon proved to be totally incapable of telling the truth.

He told officers, ‘When Dean said, “My mate has organised the job,” I believed that he was referring to Ricky Percival. I thought this because, apart from me, Percival was the only other person that he referred to as his mate.’

When detectives pressed him for more details about Percival, he said, ‘I got that wrong. At no time did Dean mention Ricky Percival – that was only an assumption. Sorry about that.’

The police effectively had to tear up Spendiff-Smith’s statement and ask him to make another. In the account that followed, the police were told about a gun that Boshell had supposedly shown him, which had been hidden under the mattress of his bed. Remarkably, he had failed to mention this in his earlier statement and, when asked to explain how he could forget such an important detail, he replied, ‘I was worried because I didn’t want to get Boshell into any more trouble.’

When the interviewing officer pointed out that getting Boshell into any further trouble was most unlikely because he happened to be dead, Spendiff-Smith meekly replied, ‘Oh, yeah.’

Despite the officers repeatedly explaining the need for total honesty, each of Spendiff-Smith’s statements continued to be riddled with inaccuracies or lies. One moment the detectives were elated by the prospect of a major breakthrough in the case, the next they were deflated, realising they had just been told yet another barefaced lie.

Spendiff-Smith told the by now weary detectives that on the night Boshell left his flat he had received a very strange call on his mobile phone. He was asked to describe this call. ‘At about 9.20 p.m., my phone rang and I saw that the caller had withheld their number,’ he said. ‘When I answered it, a bloke said, “This is Rick, Dean’s mate Rick. Is Dean there?” I replied, “No, he has gone out.” Rick had then said that if Dean came back, I was to tell him to meet him at 9.30 p.m. at the same place. Rick then started to talk to me about football; I told him that I supported Manchester United, which he said he didn’t like. He asked if I had found a job yet and asked me how my friends were. The call lasted about five minutes. The voice was that of a male and was deep and husky.’

The officers asked Spendiff-Smith if he thought this caller was Percival and he replied, without hesitation, ‘Yes, because he said he was Dean’s mate, Rick.’

In order to give the story a little flavour, Spendiff-Smith added, ‘It sounded as if the caller had been on something, you know, all hyper.’

Spendiff-Smith claimed that the day after Boshell’s body had been found, he had received a second call from a withheld number and that this caller had also said that his name was Rick. They had exchanged greetings and then Spendiff-Smith alleged that Rick had told him to ‘keep his big mouth shut’. After asking what he was supposed to keep his mouth shut about, Spendiff-Smith says that he was subjected to a torrent of abuse and threats.

‘He was saying, “I know where your parents live, I am going to fuck your mother then cut her up. Keep your big mouth shut or you’re going to get your throat cut. I will do it or get somebody else to do it.” Only then did it hit me what these calls were all about,’ he said. ‘When I saw it in the paper about Dean’s death, I started getting worried. I formed the opinion that Ricky Percival had either killed Dean, had something to do with Dean’s death or perhaps was present when he died. I was very frightened and still am. These calls went on for days; he was wasting his phone credit really, because I had heard him the first time. He started saying that he was keeping an eye on me and I had better not go to the police. “I will find out where you live,” and stuff like that. That’s why I didn’t go to the police at first because if he found out that I had I was in trouble.

‘Dean regularly spoke about Percival and mentioned that he had a nasty streak. He told me he wasn’t a nice person and would kick you in if you did anything against him. He said he’d been with him once and he’d fired a sling shot at one of the doormen at Tots nightclub because they hadn’t let him in. If it was Ricky that had killed Dean, then maybe he was going to get me as well. I took these threats so seriously that I sold my phone, and I loved my phone.’

The sound of Percival’s name being linked to such damning evidence must have been like music to the ears of many in the police service, but, sadly for them, Spendiff-Smith had already proved himself to be a complete fantasist. To the credit of the interviewing officers, they questioned Spendiff-Smith meticulously until he was forced to concede that he had not received any threatening calls whatsoever. He also admitted that he had lied about the reason he had disposed of his phone. ‘I sold it for eight or nine pounds,’ he said, ‘because I needed the money.’

The reason for this catalogue of lies, according to Spendiff-Smith, was that a senior police officer had mentioned during one interview that if he knew anything about Boshell’s murder that he was scared to talk about he could possibly get supergrass status on the witness-protection programme.

Spendiff-Smith told the interviewing officer, ‘I decided to lie so that I would get that protection and be able to start my life off anew, as mine at the moment is awful; in fact, it’s horrible, absolutely horrible. That’s what I have wanted to do for ages, start a new life, but I have never had the money to do it. If I told you I had only got one call, it wouldn’t have sounded as though I was in any danger and you might not have helped me.’

Like most revellers who frequented the pubs and clubs around Southend, Spendiff-Smith’s knowledge of Percival would have been gleaned from alcohol-fuelled gossip and rumours about the Locksley Close shootings. This isn’t speculation on my part: during his marathon of interviews, Spendiff-Smith had told the police: ‘I sold my phone because I had people coming up to me in nightclubs, saying, “Sorry about your mate dying, but the bloke who did it should not be fucked about because he’s not a nice person.” When I asked whom they were talking about, they said, “We all know who did it – Ricky Percival. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of him. If he can make contact with you in any way, make sure you’re not there.” I automatically sold my phone. I’m still scared of the bloke now and I don’t even know who he is.’

Clearly, Percival had been tried and convicted by the good people of Southend long before the police had even considered him as a suspect. Little wonder that as time went by everybody ‘knew’ who had killed Boshell.

After weeding out what police believed to be the lies, hearsay and innuendos that had formed the basis of Spendiff-Smith’s statements, the officers finalised an account from him that a jury was asked to believe. Spendiff-Smith claimed that Boshell had talked about the proposed theft of cannabis from a farm with his brother, he had been shown a gun by Boshell and he had given him dark clothing to wear the night of his death, but, other than that, everything else he had told the police had been discarded.

Three and a half months after he was first interviewed during the door-to-door inquiries, Gordon Osborne was asked to make a further witness statement. Unlike his first rather vague recollection of the night of the murder, Osborne was this time able to recall events with extreme clarity.

‘I went to bed about 9 p.m.,’ he said. ‘My bedroom is at the rear of my house and overlooks the allotments. At about 11 p.m., I was awoken by the sound of two or three shots coming from the direction of the allotments. My bedroom window is always open and I got up to look out of the window towards the allotments, but could not see anything, as it was pitch black. I can say from my experience in the armed forces that the shots I heard were from a handgun and not a shotgun. I did not see anything at all that night. The following day I learned that a person had been found dead on the allotments.’

Osborne claimed that he had heard two or three shots, which was consistent with the number of gunshot wounds Boshell had suffered. Detectives, therefore, assumed that the shots Osborne had heard were the shots being fired into Boshell. They thought it would be unlikely that he would be mistaken; he had boasted that because of his military training he could distinguish the sound of one particular firearm from another. It followed, therefore, that Boshell must have met his death at around 11 p.m. With an approximate time of death established, the police were able to begin constructing their case. They knew that Boshell had left Spendiff-Smith at approximately 9.30 p.m. and so anybody who had been in his company up until the time of his death, a mere two hours later, would be considered a suspect.

Officers had always harboured a niggling doubt about Alvin’s story regarding the loss of his mobile phone. It seemed to be too much of a coincidence that he just happened to lose it on the very day Boshell had died. The fact that Alvin had replaced it so early the following morning was equally suspicious. Most people would search high and low before accepting their handset was truly lost.

Curious to know why Alvin might not have wanted detectives to examine his phone, they investigated further and learnt of his number by simply asking his friends.

Boshell’s mobile phone was also missing, but ‘CJ’ McLaughlin, who had been in Spendiff-Smith’s flat on the evening of the murder, had told police that Boshell had used his phone at 8.32 p.m. to call a friend that he was going to meet. Detectives retrieved the number Boshell had called from McLaughlin’s mobile and soon established that it belonged to Alvin’s missing phone. This was the first concrete evidence to link Alvin to Boshell on the night he died.

Officers were extremely encouraged by the breakthrough because Alvin had claimed that he had not seen or spoken to Boshell that day. The icing on the detectives’ cake was CCTV footage seized from within the Woodcutters Arms, which showed Alvin answering his mobile phone at the precise moment that Boshell made his call.

The decision by police to gather all the CCTV footage they thought might be relevant proved to be an extremely significant and constructive one. At 9 p.m. on the night of the murder cameras had recorded Boshell and McLaughlin walking to Woodgrange Drive in Southend and waiting outside Lidl’s for Boshell’s friend to arrive. At 9.15 p.m., CCTV at the Woodcutters had recorded Alvin leaving the premises.

McLaughlin told police that at 9.26 p.m. Boshell had telephoned his friend’s mobile from a public telephone situated on Woodgrange Drive. Telephone records revealed that this call had also been made to Alvin’s phone. McLaughlin said that Boshell’s friend had turned up not long afterwards in a red car. Detectives knew that Alvin drove a red Audi convertible.