Bonded by Blood
Bernard O'Mahoney with Simon Hills
Out Now

Blood-soaked corpses and the faces of three teenagers poisoned by Ecstasy are the images that flash through Bernard O'Mahoney's mind when he closes his eyes and recalls his past.

O'Mahoney was a key member of the Essex Boys firm - one of the most violent criminal gangs in Britain. In December 1995, the three leaders of the firm were executed as they sat in their Range Rover down a deserted farm track.

For many, this meant that the horror of the gang's brutal reign was over. For Jack Whomes and Michael Steele, the nightmare had just begun.

Convicted of the murders on the word of a supergrass, these two men have spent a decade in prison for crimes they did not commit.

Following the anticipated quashing of their convictions in January 2006, it looks as though the true identity of the killers will never be revealed, and O'Mahoney wants to lay the events of the past to rest. In "Bonded by Blood", O'Mahoney goes back to exorcise his ghosts.

He returns to the scene of the murders and relives the bloody encounters that marked his time as a gang member. Divided by greed, bonded by the blood of their victims, the Essex Boys' rise to the top of the criminal underworld was as dramatic as their final fall.