Essex Boys, The New Generation (9 page)

Damon Alvin’s feelings following the murder of his friend were mixed. After being dumped by his first love, Clair Sanders, Alvin had been heartbroken to learn that his childhood hero and so-called friend had started having an affair with her. The thought of any man being with her was upsetting enough, but the fact that it was his best friend, and that he had heard that Malcolm was beating Clair, made it particularly hard for Alvin to take.

A few months after Richard Rice’s funeral, Alvin had been imprisoned for burglary. Shortly after his release, Alvin had visited Malcolm’s ex-wife Bernadette. It was mid-morning and she had been kind enough to cook him breakfast. As he sat talking to Bernadette at the kitchen table, Malcolm had burst into the house and started ripping up carpets and destroying furniture. He tipped over the fridge-freezer, causing all the food to spill out onto the kitchen floor. Shouting and screaming abuse, he dragged the fridge outside and attacked it. When he had finished kicking it, Malcolm barged his way back into the house and told Bernadette that he was going to remove everything that he had paid for; to highlight this, he wrenched the toilet seat off and walked out of the door with it under his arm. Alvin claims that he just sat at the table throughout Malcolm’s tirade without uttering a word, and that he didn’t get involved or even acknowledge him because his feelings towards Malcolm were running so high.

Now that Malcolm was dead and Clair was alone, Alvin became desperate for them to be reunited. Alvin was aware that Clair was grieving for Malcolm and the last thing she would want to hear was her ex-boyfriend rubbishing her deceased lover’s name, so, biting his tongue, Alvin became her rock. He volunteered to be a pall-bearer at Malcolm’s funeral and remained at Clair’s side, consoling her, night and day.

Everybody knew that somebody would have to pay for Malcolm’s death; it was what he would have wanted. Nobody took liberties with him when he was alive, so why should anybody get away with it now that he was dead?

Word spread around many of the pubs and clubs around Southend that a member of Russell Jones’s gang, whom I shall call ‘Lee Harris’, had stood over Malcolm’s grave and urinated on it. Nobody bothered to ask if it was true or not; the very fact that Harris had had the audacity to even say such a thing meant he would have to suffer some form of terrible retribution.

Alvin, who confided in close friends that he resented Malcolm, was said by many casual associates to have appeared incensed by the rumour that somebody had desecrated his best friend’s grave. In an act designed to prove to Clair that he was not only a decent man who was mourning his friend but also a worthy contender to fill his shoes and win her affections, Alvin decided to teach Harris a lesson. According to Alvin, he and five other men – whom he later named as Kevin Walsh, Trevor Adams, Danny Percival, Ricky Percival and Gavin Spicer – arranged to meet at Kevin Walsh’s flat. Alvin said that Walsh had told those present that he didn’t want anybody to carry a knife because he didn’t want anybody to get seriously injured or hurt.

‘I was given a balaclava, along with everybody else,’ Alvin said. ‘We all then left in Walsh’s white Transit van. My impression was that it was going to be a fight and weapons would be used, like hammers and bats, but no firearms or knives. We were told that Harris lived in a three-storey building that had been converted into flats. I was aware that Walsh knew someone called Badger who lived there and he was going to let us in through the security door.

‘When we arrived, we all got out of the van. Three of us went round one side of the building and three around the other. Danny Percival rang Badger’s doorbell. There was no answer, but a minute or two later I saw that two people were approaching the flats. From everybody’s reaction, I guessed that one of these people must have been Badger. Somebody said that the guy with Badger was Harris and everybody seemed to get really excited. When the two men reached Danny, I could see Badger motioning with his eyes towards Harris, as if to say, “That’s him, that’s him.” Danny took a few steps forward, pulled out a washing-up bottle from his jacket and squirted a noxious fluid into Harris’s face.’

According to Alvin, Harris’s face and jacket began to melt. Screaming for help and clutching his face, Harris tried to run off back down the garden path.

‘Danny began to wrestle with Harris in an effort to get him to the floor. I ran forward and began to hit Harris repeatedly around the legs with a hammer. He fell to the floor, but I continued to hit him around the leg area, as that was the clearest part of his body. I remember Danny pulling a hammer out of his jacket and him starting to beat Harris around the body because he had curled up into a ball on the floor. By this time, there were a few of us laying into him. I don’t know how, but my hammer got knocked out of my hand. As I went to retrieve it, I can remember standing and watching some of the others punching and hitting Harris as he lay on the floor. I was also aware that the majority of our group were wearing knuckledusters. Kevin Walsh’s knuckleduster was a manufactured brass-type, with a blade protruding from the side, but all the others were handmade. I personally didn’t have one.’

The assault, according to Alvin, ceased only when passing vehicles halted and their occupants began to shout and scream for the onslaught to stop. Instead of returning to the van and making good their escape, the gang ran towards the seafront and mingled with the crowds of holidaymakers. That is, of course, except for Alvin. He claimed that he had run back to his home and he met up with the other gang members later that evening.

‘I found out that Ricky Percival had taken a knife with him,’ he said. ‘He told me that he had stabbed Harris. He said that he had stuck the knife in him up to the handle and the blade had snapped off. Percival told me that he had said, “This is for Malcolm,” as he stabbed Harris.’

Alvin’s apparent shock at discovering that Ricky Percival had defied Kevin Walsh’s request not to carry knives is laughable when one considers Alvin’s description of the weapon Walsh was alleged to have been carrying.

His claim that Walsh had requested that nobody should carry guns or knives to prevent the intended victim from being seriously injured or hurt is equally bizarre, considering the fact that Harris was squirted with a substance that melted his jacket and he was beaten with hammers and knuckledusters.

Gavin Spicer is one of my closest friends and has been for many years. Together we dealt with countless violent incidents as we stood on the door of Raquels nightclub in Basildon. Occasionally, weapons were used by all parties, but I have never known my friend to take part in or condone an attack on a defenceless man by a gang. I have read Alvin’s account of the incident to Gavin and, when he had stopped laughing, he described it as ‘total bollocks’.

‘Alvin is an idiot,’ Gavin said. ‘He doesn’t know where fact starts and fantasy ends. The guy is full of shit. He might have been there when this person was beaten up, but I certainly wasn’t. I am quite sure that the police would have questioned me if I had been present, but nobody has ever spoken to me about it. Using that sort of mob-mentality cowardly violence just isn’t my way of resolving matters. If somebody upsets me, I deal with it personally; I don’t invite an audience. It sounds to me like Alvin has been spending time in fantasyland. I am aware that he is a regular visitor.’

Having carried out several gallant tasks, talked himself up and shed numerous tears, Alvin had made sure the required image was firmly implanted in the grieving widow’s mind, and it wasn’t long before Alvin and Clair had rekindled their teenage romance. They did not conduct their affair openly, but the Walsh family have told me that they are in no doubt whatsoever that they had been reunited before Malcolm had even been buried. Regardless of the exact timescale, Barbara had found out about Alvin’s infidelity and asked him to leave her home within weeks of Malcolm’s funeral. Rather than apologising for his bad behaviour and seeking reconciliation with Barbara, Alvin dutifully packed his belongings and moved into a flat with Clair.

The ill feeling generated by Malcolm’s passing was not going unnoticed by Essex police. In an effort to calm the situation and reassure the Trettons and their relatives that they were safe, the police agreed to install personal panic alarms in their home. These alarms, when activated, would have an armed police-response unit racing to their location within minutes.

In March 1999, 54-year-old Terry Watkins appeared before Chelmsford Crown Court charged with the murder of Malcolm Walsh. He pleaded not guilty but, after a two-week trial, was convicted of an alternative charge of manslaughter and sentenced to life imprisonment. Manslaughter usually attracts a lighter sentence than murder, but in Terry’s case the judge imposed life after hearing that Watkins had been jailed in 1986 by the same court for two counts of wounding with intent. Back then, he had forced his way into an ex-girlfriend’s home, where he had stabbed her and the man she was then in a relationship with.

Dabbing her eyes, Clair Sanders told reporters outside the court: ‘I would have liked the jury to have found that Malcolm was murdered, but as long as life means life then Watkins has been given the punishment that he deserves.’

The Walsh family also issued a statement: ‘We know Malcolm was no angel, and we are not saying he was, but he would not have had anything to do with drugs. The court was told that he was high on cocaine that morning, yet the post-mortem examination found nothing. It isn’t fair on those left behind to have to deal with what has been said. We want to put all of this behind us and remember Malcolm for what he was – a loveable rogue. Because of the tests on Malcolm’s body we were not able to bury him until two months after he was killed. It was a really stressful time. We wanted to put him to rest, but we couldn’t. It’s almost a year later now and it is still not over.’

Unbeknown to the Walsh family and everybody else affected by Malcolm’s premature death, their problems had only just begun and they would continue to impact on their lives for many years to come.

5

  THE SOUND OF THE SUBURBS  

A persistent criminal rather than a
serious one, Dean Boshell was no more a successful human being than he was a villain. The many mistakes he had made in his short life were not all of his own making.

On 22 October 1998, he found himself incarcerated within the confines of HMP Chelmsford. There was little he could do about his situation after the police had caught him handling stolen goods and a judge had sentenced him to nine months’ imprisonment; however, he could have, and should have, steered clear of the prisoner in the cell next to his own.

Boshell was impressed with the smooth-talking, flash wide boy who had become his neighbour. Damon Alvin appeared to be everything that Boshell had one day dreamed of being. Never one to miss an opportunity to exploit somebody, Alvin had cultivated his friendship with Boshell and effectively made him his errand boy. In return for the numerous trivial tasks Boshell carried out for his new friend, Alvin would fill out the occasional prison application form and help him with his reading.

Describing their first meeting, Alvin said, ‘He was teased a lot because of his stutter and I felt rather sorry for him. He seemed a bit simple but pleasant enough. I sort of took him under my wing. I do not know whether he could read or write properly, but I used to read his mail for him and also write letters to his girlfriend on his behalf.’

Over the next few months, the pair were transported to and from court together to attend their respective hearings and these days out cemented their friendship further. Alvin had been remanded in custody for his part in a botched burglary on a furniture shop.

Together with his brother Darren and another man, Alvin had stolen a Luton van from a local hire company and driven it to John James furniture store on Southchurch Road, Southend. There was no need for the would-be burglars to clamber onto the roof or force windows and doors because Alvin had a key for the back door of the premises.

A few days earlier, he had been browsing in the store with his partner when he noticed that a key had been unwittingly left in the back door by a member of staff. Continuing to browse, he noticed an expensive cabinet that he fancied would look good in his recently acquired flat. Deciding to return to the shop with a van for some late-night shopping when the staff had gone home, Alvin took the key out of the back door and slipped it into his pocket. Stealing a Luton van to transport the stolen furniture home turned out to be as effortless as gaining access to the shop. Customers at a local van-hire company who returned vehicles after hours were required to drop the keys through a letterbox. Alvin simply fished out a set using a long piece of wire with an improvised hook on the end. He then read the registration number on the key fob, located the vehicle in the car park and drove it away.

After entering the furniture shop, the three men selected items of their choice and began to load the van, which was backed up to the open door. When it was completely full, they drove to one another’s homes and unloaded the goods before returning the van to its rightful owner and dropping the keys back through the letterbox. Thinking they had committed the perfect crime, the men couldn’t resist boasting to their friends about the ease with which they had stolen their new furniture and it wasn’t long before this loose talk made the police aware of Alvin’s involvement in the audacious crime. In an early morning raid, Alvin was arrested at his flat, charged with handling stolen goods and remanded in custody at Chelmsford prison.

Another resident at that establishment who befriended Boshell was 45-year-old Christopher Wheatley. On 8 August 1998, he had been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment after police raided his flat and found 30 grams of cocaine, 3 grams of amphetamine, 357 Ecstasy pills and £950 in cash. A further 170 grams of cocaine were discovered hidden under the seat of his car. The drugs had an estimated street value of between £10,000 and £17,000. Wheatley’s solicitor told the court that he had become addicted to drugs after losing his job as a doorman.

Five years earlier, Wheatley had been a prominent member of the Essex Boys firm. His boss, Tony Tucker, had often introduced Wheatley to people as being ‘like my brother’. It’s a term I had heard Tucker use often. The true meaning of his words were, in fact, ‘This is the latest man I am going to pretend to befriend, use and when exhausted of use, abandon.’ And so it was with Christopher Wheatley. When a more ‘useful’ individual named Patrick Tate was released from prison in 1993, Tucker disposed of Wheatley and replaced him with Tate.

The drugs that Wheatley had once sold with ease and relative safety through his job as head bouncer at one of Tucker’s clubs in Southend suddenly became a commodity he could only offload at great risk. The steady stream of punters knocking on Wheatley’s door soon came to the attention of the police and, after a short period of surveillance, they raided his home and caught him red-handed.

Whilst in prison, Wheatley continued to deal in drugs and one of the men he employed to distribute them was Dean Boshell. An unlikely friendship developed between the two and Wheatley, a competent, powerful athlete, introduced Boshell to the world of bodybuilding, supplements and steroids. With his ever-expanding frame and ego, coupled with Wheatley and Alvin, his new gangster friends, Boshell really believed that he had finally fulfilled his dream and become one of the big boys. He told fellow inmates that when he was released he was going to set up a drug-dealing empire and live lavishly off his ill-gotten gains.

When Boshell did eventually walk out of prison in the spring of 1999, he left his friend Alvin behind, but he did promise the man he now referred to as ‘brother’ that he would not forget him. In an attempt to walk the walk and talk the talk, but not quite managing to master either, Boshell contacted Alvin’s girlfriend, Barbara, and assured her that whilst his ‘brother’ remained in prison, he would look out for her.

‘You have nothing to worry about,’ he told her. ‘I am out and I will be taking care of business for Damon from now on.’

• • •

In the weeks and months that followed, Barbara would give Boshell and his girlfriend Emma Moore a lift to the prison and the foursome would enjoy visiting time together. It was the first time in many years that Boshell had experienced any sort of stability in his life. In Alvin and Barbara, he had two new friends, and in Emma he had a girl he thought he loved – so much so that he had her name tattooed on his chest.

As the relationship went from strength to strength, Boshell and Emma decided to move into a flat together on London Road, Leigh-on-Sea. Instead of trying to set up the drug-dealing empire that he had dreamed of, or securing gainful employment, Boshell signed on the dole and topped up his state benefits with the proceeds of petty crime. In the main, this involved him stealing property from cars or occasionally supplying scrap-metal merchants with stolen vehicles to order.

Unlike her ne’er-do-well boyfriend, Emma made an honest living as a barmaid at a snooker club in Wickford, a small village on the outskirts of Basildon. Boshell used to visit Emma regularly at her workplace and was subsequently introduced to her work colleagues, one of whom was Carla Shipton. There was an instant attraction between Carla and Boshell, which in time flourished into much deeper feelings. The smiles and knowing looks between the two didn’t escape the attention of Emma, who convinced herself that her boyfriend was being more than friendly with her workmate.

When Alvin was released from prison, he and his new sidekick Boshell immersed themselves in a criminal partnership. Everywhere Alvin went, Boshell would either be at his side or not too far behind. In the pubs and clubs around Southend, Alvin introduced Boshell as his mate, but Boshell would tell people that they were, in fact, brothers. It was around this time that Alvin first introduced Ricky Percival to Boshell.

Percival’s memories of Boshell are hardly complimentary. ‘He was a ponce who couldn’t keep his dick in his trousers,’ he recalls. ‘He would never buy a drink and he would not hesitate to sleep with any female, so long as she had a purse and a pulse.’ Apart from bumping into one another occasionally in Percival’s local pub, the Woodcutters Arms, there was no other contact between Boshell and Percival during this period and nobody has ever come forward to dispute this. If Alvin hadn’t taken Boshell to the Woodcutters Arms, it is unlikely he would have ever met Percival.

Always looking for ways to impress Alvin, Boshell had told him all about the Wickford snooker club, where his girlfriend worked, and suggested that it was a prime target for a robbery. Alvin agreed that the premises were worthy of further investigation and advised Boshell to make mental notes of where the safe was located, where security cameras were positioned and where keys to the gambling machines and doors were kept.

Equally keen to impress the ladies in his life, Boshell was out shopping one day when he noticed that one particular store had no alarm fitted to the front door. He told Alvin about this lapse in security and together they decided to break into the premises. That night Boshell smashed a pane of glass at the front of the shop with a small hammer, put his arm inside and unlocked the door. Laughing at their own ingenuity as they entered, the pair filled two bin liners with garments before returning to Alvin’s car, which was parked nearby. Instead of making good their escape, Alvin and Boshell returned to the shop and stole so many clothes that they completely filled the back seat of the vehicle. Only when they were unable to stuff any more into the car did they drive to Boshell’s flat to unload their ill-gotten gains.

Not usually the snappiest of dressers, Boshell couldn’t wait to show off his finest threads, not only to Carla but also to Emma, who wanted to know how he had managed to afford them. Proud of the ease with which he had broken into the shop, Boshell was only too pleased to inform Emma where, how and with whom he had stolen the clothes. The outrageous flirting that Emma had witnessed between Boshell and Carla and his sudden desire to smarten up his appearance convinced her that his intentions were far from admirable.

A few days after Boshell had committed the burglary, Emma confronted him with her suspicions about Carla and, despite his denials, she left him.

Tensions at work between Emma and Carla soon boiled over and in the ensuing argument Emma was threatened with a snooker cue and warned to stay away from Boshell.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, they say, and in the experience of most men ‘they’ are more often than not right. Emma, unhappy about the way Boshell had treated her, picked up the telephone, called the police and told them who was responsible for breaking into the clothes shop. The following morning Boshell and Alvin were arrested and the stolen property was recovered. Boshell had little choice other than to plead guilty to handling stolen goods because the clothing was found in his flat, but Alvin denied any involvement and elected to stand trial. Boshell was hoping that the magistrates would sentence him, as they only had the power to impose a maximum six-month term of imprisonment, but to his dismay they declined to do so and referred the matter to the Crown Court.

Instead of rebounding from one lost love into the arms of another, Boshell bounced around the bedrooms of several Essex girls before settling into the arms and lives of two particular females. Neither of these girls was aware of the other until I contacted them recently. Carla was already sharing Boshell’s bed before Emma finished their relationship, but the other girl, whom I shall call ‘Elizabeth Reece’, met him just a short while after he almost became single.

With a prison sentence looming on Boshell’s horizon, he decided to secure a job which he could tell the judge about when he appeared in court. He reasoned that it would be unlikely for any young man who had secured gainful employment and was working hard to mend his ways to be imprisoned. Boshell applied for and was given a job as a barman at the Castle public house on Southend seafront. When Boshell was introduced to fellow staff member Elizabeth Reece, the attraction was instant. Elizabeth, a pretty single mum, was bowled over by Boshell’s old-fashioned charm and the many compliments that he plied her with. Faithful, sensible and hard-working, Elizabeth represented everything that was lacking in Boshell’s chaotic life. Had Boshell chosen a life of normality with Elizabeth over a life of crime with Alvin, he would undoubtedly still be alive today.

After several months of searching, I managed to make contact with Elizabeth by telephone. Initially, Elizabeth refused to discuss her relationship with Boshell because she said she feared reprisals from ‘his friends’. After much negotiation, and giving certain assurances to Elizabeth, she finally agreed to tell me her story.

‘I was instantly attracted to my friendly and thoughtful new work colleague,’ she said. ‘We spent our first evening behind the bar together laughing, joking and giving one another those looks you can’t explain but both know their meaning. Before heading home that night, Dean and I agreed to meet on the beach opposite the pub the following day. That meeting turned out to be one of the happiest days of my life. Accompanied by my daughter Lauren, I spent an unforgettable day sitting in the sunshine, chatting to Dean and watching the world go by. He was funny, charming and thoughtful, and I just knew he was the man for me.

‘Over the next few weeks as I tried to get to know Dean, he refused to say too much about himself other than that he had no contact with his parents but saw a brother named Damon regularly. He introduced me to some of his friends and I met his brother. I could tell that Dean looked up to Damon – he would do anything for him. Unfortunately this included helping him commit what Dean described to me as minor crime. Despite the fact that Dean was committing crime, and I was making my disapproval of this known, we did spend several extremely happy months together.