Shotgun Murders Crime Photos, Statements, Articles
Retro
On the 23th January, in the High Court, the legal representatives of
Jack Whomes and Michael Steele will apply for leave to appeal the
convictions imposed on their clients at the Old Bailey on the 20th
January 1998.
In seeking leave to appeal they will contest all the convictions
against them including the 'Conspiracy to evade the Prohibition on the
Importation of Cannabis' but their greatest concern will centre on
gaining leave to appeal the conviction for the murders, in Essex, of
three men on the 6th December 1995.
Michael Steele and Jack Whomes were, jointly, found guilty of murder
and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment each. The killings became
known as The Rettendon Murders. The victims were Anthony Tucker, Craig
Rolfe and Patrick Tate, three ruthless and powerful gangland figures
who controlled a drugs and protection empire in Essex. They had forged
a reputation which moved police to describe them as underworld figures
comparable with the Krays and their criminal dynasty of the sixties.
The three had even taken to describing themselves as "The Firm", a
sobriquet favoured by the notorious East End hoodlums when they were
at the pinnacle of their infamy.
The case against Whomes and Steele relied entirely on the evidence of
a known police informant, Darren Nicholls, who at the time of
co-operating with the police was in custody and facing a very severe
sentence for a major drugs offence. There was no forensic, scientific
or direct evidence against them other than a very frail and confused
case built around a series of mobile phone calls which their defence
claimed pointed to their client's innocence rather than the
interpretation placed on it by the judge and subsequently, the jury.
There was no identified motive for Whomes and Steele to murder the
victims. Indeed a pointer to the tenuous nature of the case against
the accused was underlined when an undercover police officer tried to
manufacture a motive by posing as an IRA gangster trying to entrap
Steele into saying that he owed a large sum of money to the victims
and the IRA had bought the debt. Evidence of this laughable ploy was
captured on a tape in the possession of the defence counsel of the
convicted men.
The officer was later prosecuted for corruption and was the same
officer who had been responsible for 'running' Darren Nicholls. as an
informant when he gave evidence against Whomes and Steele.
Motives Galore
Interwoven into the murky world of drugs and violence inhabited by the
three victims was a history which produced a plethora of people who
had clear motives for the gangland assassination. Those who had been
knifed, shot or tortured by them or their henchmen were manifold.
One victim actually shot Pat Tate. Steve 'Nipper' Ellis was so
persecuted by the three that in a moment of blind panic he shot one of
his tormentors.
A contract was put out on Ellis by them and the plan was to lure Ellis
to Tate's bedside at the hospital to discuss their grievances, where
it was planned Tate would shoot him, arguing that Ellis had come there
to finish Tate off.
Somebody who worked with Tucker and Tate had tipped Ellis off and the
shooting never took place. Tucker knew who had told Ellis, and, they
suspected, the police and it was another score they would settle when
the moment was right especially when Tate was found in possession of
the gun and was returned to prison.
That man was Bernard O'Mahoney, a friend of Ellis and a prominent
figure in the drugs and violence empire controlled by the three
murdered men. O'Mahoney, a crack marksman who had been in the army and
served in Northern Ireland and had worked in South Africa in a so
called mercenary police force, where he had been jailed for attempted
murder and illegal possession of firearms, ran the security operation
at Raquels at the time of the Leah Betts Ecstasy death scandal and was
high on the police list of suspects as the supplier of the fatal
tablet.
O'Mahoney was a prime suspect in the Rettendon murders at one time but
his profile waned in this investigation when he co-operated with the
police in providing evidence against a suspect in the Leah Betts case.
It was later learned that the suspect had been threatened by O'Mahoney
with his life and the 'torching' of his home if he did not say the
right things at his trial.
O'Mahoney wanted the whole of the security and drugs operation in the
Basildon area for himself and he frequently clashed with Tucker
challenging his powerful hold on the illicit empire. Tucker had
threatened to kill O'Mahoney on several occasions and actually
acquired a machine gun with which to commit the crime shortly before
the gruesome assassination at Rettendon. A man was charged with
supplying the weapon.
O'Mahoney was embarrassingly deposed as security head at Raquels by
Tucker just before his death and ten days after the murders O'Mahoney
regained his grasp on what for him was a very lucrative operation and
a flattering power base.
The macabre death of known drug dealer Kevin Whittaker was widely
ascribed to Tucker and Rolfe. Tate was in hospital at the time of his
death having been shot by Ellis. Tucker and Rolfe were questioned by
police along with Rolfe's girlfriend Donna Jagger. Whittaker had
supplied 'The firm' with a large quantity of drugs and they had
decided they were big enough not to pay him for them.
When Whittaker made noises about their non-payment he was invited to a
flat to talk about what looked like something which could escalate
into a gang war.
It was there that Whittaker was attacked and injected in the testicles
with a large shot of heroin from which he died. In a book, "So This Is
Ecstasy" later written by O'Mahoney as a result of the Betts tragedy,
he talks of a visit to Tate in hospital by Tucker when Darren Nichols,
the police informant in the Wholmes and Steele murder trial, was
visiting Tate, where Tucker tells Tate "We wont be getting any more
trouble from Mr Whittaker". These were exactly the words used by
Nicholls when he described at the trial what Steele had said after the
Rettendon shootings.
Doubtless Whittaker had acquired the drugs from somebody else who
would be extremely unhappy that their paymaster had been wiped out.
Rumour was rife that it was a very high profile London crime syndicate
and the matter was not to end there.
Among the flotsam and jetsam of depraved humanity which permeated the
grotesque world of the three hoodlums there were a myriad of wronged
victims who would have taken great satisfaction from gaining revenge.
Cruelty
Such was the level of savagery they were capable of stooping to that a
friend of Tate's girlfriend who went to pick her up from their home at
the time of a domestic split was tortured by the trio, stripped naked
and burned all over his body with lighted cigarettes until he was a
complete physical and mental wreck in need of psychiatric counselling.
It was acts of barbarity like this which had established their
reputation for a level of ruthlessness which, they believed, had made
them virtually untouchable. Such were their feelings of invincibility
that they cockily snubbed an invitation from London gangsters, still
linked to the Kray empire, to combine their operations retorting that
they were burnt out has-beens who belonged to a bygone age. Perhaps
this was the moment they put the final signatures to their own death
warrants.
It is possible their enmity towards O'Mahoney stemmed from the
knowledge that Reggie Kray was a personal friend of his and had asked
O'Mahoney to make sure Tate looked after one of his friends who had
been moved to Whitemoor Prison where Tate was serving his sentence.
What the three thugs didn't realise was that their constant practice
of robbing other criminal gangs of large drug consignments was
building to an inevitable moment of retribution which could only have
one possible outcome. It was just a matter of who got there first!
Certainly, in a lot of people's minds after the Rettendon murders, was
the possibility that Leah Bett's father, an ex-policeman and himself a
crack shot with a gun had been involved in their demise. It was a
mouth watering vigilante scenario which many prayed would become a
reality. It was clear with the passing of time that it was to remain a
romantic notion. There were too many hideous and menacing candidates
forming in a very long queue. The Betts theory gained credence because
the three thugs had been blasted to death a month after Leahs tragic
death and just four days before her funeral.
Relationships between O' Mahoney and the three thugs had been fraught
for a considerable time with threats made by Tucker that he would kill
O' Mahoney but they reached an all-time low when O'Mahoney co-operated
in articles for national newspapers which implicated Tucker and Tate
in the Leah Betts affair.
Before the murders; towards the end of November '95, O'Mahoney had
become so worried about the dangers posed by the three gangsters that
he had moved out of his house and into the Thomas Kemble Hotel in
Rettendon, less than one mile from the murder scene, under a false
name.
Strangely, around this time O'Mahoney claims the trio had invited him
to become involved in a major robbery where they would steal a
consignment of drugs. He claimed that he refused to become involved.
It is not known whether he declined or not nor whether the three men
went through with their plan.
One thing is for sure. O'Mahoney knew they were going to do it and new
the value of the hoist. It would be true to form for the three to
involve O'Mahoney and then not to give him his share. It may well have
been the straw that broke the camel's back in the exacerbation of
their already poisonous relationships.
Leah Bett's death had brought to a climax, the hostility between them
which had been festering for more than a year as the battle to control
the security at Raquels and other clubs in the Essex area had
intensified. It was about this time that Tucker had wrested control of
the door from O'Mahoney and an armed confrontation had taken place
between them at Rachels.
O'Mahoney's Card Is Marked
On the day of the murders O'Mahoney was in the Rettendon area. He
spent two hours at Woodham Ferres police station. What that meeting
was about, nobody but the police and O'Mahoney knows except that he
told colleagues he had, again, been warned that Tucker was out to kill
him, having "Been warned by the police some four days earlier.
In the 'Mirror' two days after the three were murdered a CID source
was quoted as saying. "It was a brilliantly executed assassination.
The victims were lured to the lane to discuss having someone else
'hit' but the tables were turned on them. We had excellent information
that Rolfe and Tate had been trying to hire a killer to "rub out" a
rival drug dealer but it seems the intended victim got his shot in
first. Their intended victim pushed Ecstasy at Raquels night club in
Basildon".
In the Daily Express of the same date similar information had been
received. "The gangster allegedly ordered their assassination after he
was tipped off that they were planning to kill him for being a police
informant. The man, who has links with the Krays, and another gangland
family, was accused of revealing the trios drug dealing activities".
There had been a confrontation just a week before the murders when
Tucker had obtained the machine gun from a Michael Bowman who was
arrested for supplying the weapon. Police learned the weapon was
wanted by Tucker and Tate who needed it to kill "someone".
One hour after leaving the meeting with the police on the 6th December
O'Mahoney called on his partner's mother in Pitsea. An hour and a half
later he was back in Rettendon. It was 6-30 PM.
This was the same time as the police informant Darren Nicholls who
gave evidence against Whomes and Steele said he was twenty minutes
down the road from Rettendon. The two men knew each other well having
first met in prison some years earlier.
Conveniently, Jack Whomes was asked by Nicholls to pick his car up
from a pub car park in Rettendon at the same time. It was an ideal way
of establishing telephone links between them in that area at that
time. It is hard to believe that a man who has just assassinated three
dangerous thugs, or was about to do so, would concern himself with the
role of becoming an automobile rescue service.
After The Extermination
Six days after the murders O'Mahoney returned to Raquels and
threatened the door staff with a knife ordering them to give the
'door' up. They did. By the next day he was re-installed as chief
security man at the club.
The day after the murders O'Mahoney turned up at his solicitors in
London. He says he had phoned home and there had been a message to
ring the police, which he did.They told him about the murders. That
was at 11 oc yet he had made a call to a ladyfriend who says he rang
her that same morning at 10 oc and told her about the shootings.
In his book "So This Is Ecstasy" O'Mahoney recounts a succession of
feuds he has had with thugs who have threatened his power as the head
of security at Raquels. He tells of an occasion when he sought to
ambush a man by the name of Draper who he had heard was out to kill
him. He describes the array of weapons he took with him when he
decided he would kill Draper and the plot he hatched to lure Draper to
his death.
In another part of the book he vividly recalls the occasion he decided
to assassinate a 'grass' who was causing trouble for a good friend of
his, who was on an attempted murder charge. The man, under threat of
having his head blown away retracted his statement and earned a last
minute reprieve as he lay, face down, on a grass bank, having been
taken out of O'Mahoney's car so "the shit and blood wont ruin the
interior".
Panic
Before the Rettendon killings O'Mahoney is keen to make it known to
the police that he has had a meeting with Tucker and Tate at a
Southend night-club where he states he leant against the outside of
their Range Rover pointing out that his prints might be on the vehicle
as a result of that encounter.
After the shootings the police asked local residents to note the
numbers of any cars which visit the scene of the murders. On six
occasions O'Mahoney's car was logged as attending the site.
On February 13 a report appeared in the Sun newspaper written by crime
reporter lan Hepburn stating that police believed the weapons and
ammunition had been hidden at the scene beforehand and picked up by
the assassin, who had travelled with the ill-fated trio and had picked
up the murder weapon after pretending to open a farm gate.
O'Mahoney panicked and contacted Hepburn telling him he had visited
the site where his 'friends' had died and he had found a live
cartridge. He had picked it up and then panicked when he realised he
had put his prints on it before throwing it into a field full of high
grass. He said he was reporting this to the police and would like
Hepburn to accompany him when he met the police.
On Feb 16 O'Mahoney met DC Bob Chappel and DC Dean Sandfbrd, from
Woodham Ferres police station, at the murder scene. Hepburn
accompanied them to the meeting.
When they arrived it was getting dark and the police stated they would
look for it the next day. The cartridge was never found. Why did
O'Mahoney take this action?
Clearly, he believed there was a cartridge unaccounted for which, if
found, might lead the police investigation to him.
No time of death was ever established at the inquest or the trial. It
was another inexplicable case of bungling inefficiency between the
police, the police surgeon and the pathologist. Nobody had asked
anybody else to take responsibility for its establishment.
The general view was that the killings took place between six and
seven in the evening. For Nicholls evidence to be believed it had to
be at that time. This fact was challenged because the windows of the
Range Rover the men were shot in were not frozen up. It had been a
cold and frosty evening with early snow and the rest of the night not
being so cold. Indeed, by the morning the iced puddles had thawed. The
farmers who found the bodies stated that their vehicle's windows were
frozen up when they went to start up in the morning. They had parked
their vehicle at more or less the same time as Nicholls claimed the
Range Rover would have arrived at the scene of the crime.
At this time Michael Steele had an alibi provided by a mother and her
daughter who stated they were at his home with him and his partner
until about 9.30 PM that evening.
Jack Whomes who claimed to have been invited to the area that evening
to collect a car which Nicholls wanted disposing of said he would have
been on his way home.
He had collected the car from The Wheatsheaf public house car park
where it had broken down and had hoisted and secured it on his
trailer. It was a Volkswagen Passatt and the same vehicle as Nicholl
says he drove Whomes to the murder site in.
Nicholls states that when he collected Whomes in the car he pulled off
surgical gloves which were speckled with blood.
Whomes claimed Nicholls had asked him to get rid of the car so he
could claim insurance on it. Instead, Whomes gave the car to a friend
who was involved in Stock-car racing. Whomes told the police where
they could find the car and it was forensically tested. Hardly the
actions of somebody who knew, if Nicholls was to be believed, that his
blood samples would be in the car, which in fact, they were not.
Shots Destroy Nicholl's Story
Nobody heard the volley of shots at the time described by Nicholls and
quite clearly they would have been audible for at least a mile around
the scene of the crime. Simon Rogers, a man who lived in a detached
property nearby which had stables stated that he heard, what he
described as a "fusillade" of shots at around midnight on the night of
the killings.
He had come out of his house to feed a young horse when he heard the
shots, describing them as being in quick succession and within a
duration of six to ten seconds. He had no doubts about what he had
heard and no doubts about the direction from which they had come. He
had reported the shots to the police when he heard gunfire three days
later during the daytime. It was common for people to go shooting
there in daylight as a sporting activity but never after darkness and
certainly not at midnight. He knew both sets of shots had come from
the same place, which was the farm where the men had been killed on
the 6th December.
Strangely, as the result of a witness summons stemming from another
police matter not linked with the Rettendon killings another witness
came forward. He was William Jasper who was being held by London
police on another charge. He had stated when questioned by the police
that he had made a journey on or about the time of the killings, to
Rettendon.
He did not then know it was Rettendon until he accompanied police,
twice on journeys to the area he had visited around the time of the
shootings.
He led the police back to Rettendon, they did not direct his route.
He did not know Steele or Whomes and stated he had never met them in
his life. He had not known he would be required to give evidence at
their trial until the day before he appeared before the court.
Jasper had been arrested on the 15 January 1996 on the other matter
and stated he was the associate of major London criminals who were
involved in very large drug deals and major robberies.
He stated he knew he was in the area of Rettendon when he made the
drive back and he said he missed the Rettendon Turnpike on the journey
and had to turn round. He described how he had looked in a holdall
carried by his passenger on that journey and had seen a pump-action
shotgun. He described the journey back and where he had dropped the
man off. He said he had been paid £5,000 for the job.
Most importantly he described the time he had dropped his passenger
off in Rettendon, as about midnight. Exactly the time that Simon
Rogers, the man feeding his horse, had heard the fusillade of shots
coming from the place where the trio were gunned down.
Jasper had known nothing of this evidence when he had told police of
his involvement and he knew nothing of it when he gave his evidence.
Clearly, the trio's grim landscape of drugs, violence and robbery was
peppered with people who had very good reason to dispose of Tate,
Rolfe and Tucker. They were loathed and despised by so many. Outside
of Essex they had overstepped their perceived power and had offended
and robbed gangs who would regard their emergence as the Godfathers
they thought they were, as little more than the immature flexing of
muscles by a trio of mere upstarts. They would be tolerated, up to a
point.
Their activities towards the end of their lives clearly overstepped
those boundaries. Within their own territory they created enemies who
were quite capable of exacting retribution. Men, perhaps more ruthless
than themselves and certainly, a lot cleverer.
It will never, in all probability, be known who, cold-bloodedly
possessed the blinding hatred that will allow a human being to blow
the brains out of three relatively young men with the squeezing of a
trigger. What is for certain is that the killer would need a very
strong motive be it greed, power or revenge.
The two men serving prison sentences for this crime had none of those
things. The removal of Tate, Tucker and Rolfe from this planet never
changed their lives one iota, except for the worse. Indeed Whomes had
never met Tucker and Rolfe and had never fallen out with Tate and
there was no evidence that Steele's relationship with the trio had
become soured. They now languish in prison for a crime they had no
reason to commit.
