| Hateland -
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??/06/05 - I became a girl to foil a micropenis nazi
MAXIM MAGAZINE
When David Copeland was convicted of waging a nail bombing campaign across London in 1999, the media made him out to be a far-right extremist intent on inciting race war. But one man's unusual hobby unearthed the bomber's true motive: a medically tiny cock...
WORDS DAVE FOWLER
ON 17 APRIL 1999 a bomb explodes in Brixton, south London, traditionally the heart of Britain's black community. Shoppers are blasted with hundreds of nails. Forty-two people are injured. A four-inch nail embeds itself in the brain of a 23-month-old boy.
Two people lose eyes. Seven days later another bomb rips through Brick Lane in London's East End, an area with a large Asian population, injuring six. A third, even more devastating bomb explodes the following Friday in Soho, the hub of the capital's gay scene.
At the Admiral Duncan pub, two people die instantly, one of them a pregnant woman. A third person dies in hospital. A hundred and thirty-nine are injured; four people lose legs. Ultra right-wing groups Combat 18 and the White Wolves claim responsibility.
The nation is outraged, and the search for the 'Evil Nazi Nail Bomber' is on. David Copeland, a 23-year-old Tube worker from Hampshire, is swiftly arrested. Copeland's political profile offers an instantly plausible motive - he was briefly a member of the BNP before deciding it was 'too democratic' and leaving.
The British media present him as a ruthless ideological Nazi, a lone wolf race warrior. Soon this 'soldier of the Reich' is rotting in Belmarsh, leafing through Mem Kampf while claiming prisoner of war status. Moved to Broadmoor, Copeland claims he's 'mad, not bad'. If he fools the shrinks, he'll be in for an easy ride in a mental hospital, with no one trying to shank him in the showers.
By the time of his trial, most psychologists are fooled. Copeland is arrogantly upbeat: in his own mind, he's too pure to suffer; too clever to be found out...
A COUPLE of months later Copeland began to get letters in prison from a young, sympathetic blonde called 'Patsy' - otherwise known as Bernard O'Mahoney. Forty-five-year-old O'Mahoney is a man with form. Between providing 'security' for a succession of ultraright organisations, he served in Northern Ireland with the British Army, was a part-time Millwall hooligan and worked as seriously heavy muscle in pre-apartheid South Africa before winding up in jail, then fleeing the country.
Next, he ran the door at Raquel's in Basildon (of Leah Betts and 'Range Rover' murders infamy) before turning prosecution witness against criminal employer Tony Tucker - the basis for O'Mahoney's superb book Essex Boys.
Soon after that, he went on to expose the fraudulent nature of celebrity gangsters in the timely Wannabe In My Gang?. And all the while, he was developing a unique sideline in penning pseudonymous love letters to banged-up sex offenders - and getting them to confess their crimes on notepaper.
'BY THE TIME Copeland came along, I'd had quite a bit of success in letter writing to nonces,' starts O'Mahoney, clutching a Jack Daniel's in the Peterborough pub where Maxim meets him. 'It started with Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. I was getting information for the News Of The World by pretending to be a blonde barmaid called 'Belinda Cannon'. He told me everything, from his favourite colour to why he committed mass murder, and would sign his letters back with "big juicy hugs".
The paper couldn't believe it. Then I wrote to another nonce, Richard Blenkey, who had murdered a seven-year-old boy. The letters helped get Blenkey life imprisonment for a crime he initially wouldn't admit to. I wasn't surprised the letter writing worked; I'd done time myself, and letters can be all you have in prison.
These killers aren't celebrities or, pop stars - I knew they'd answer eventually.' The key to O'Mahoney's letter writing success has always been his terrifying ability to get into the mindset of the men receiving them. In the case of Copeland, O'Mahoney drew on his own extreme right-wing past to invent a female character he knew would make a young, wannabe Nazi stiff in his lederhosen.
What Copeland would lust after, reckoned O'Mahoney, would be a masturbatory blonde in stockings, suspenders and Nazi regalia. A young, attractive and particularly vulnerable girl. And so 'Patsy Scanlon' was born - 'patsy', of course, being US slang for 'sucker'. 'Patsy was a naively curious English rose,' laughs O'Mahoney.
'An airhead who'd just been on holiday in Spain - so Copeland could imagine the bikini shots. I made sure he knew she had a physical side. My strategy was to convince him I was his friend, and was so open minded he could tell me anything.
Then I had a brainwave - I imagined a Nazi propaganda film with a blonde girl lying back in a hay cart while Messerschmitts roared overhead. With that image in mind, the letters started to flow. Sometimes, I deliberately left large gaps between writing, so he'd get desperate, then I'd write a batch of letters all at once and pretend the prison authorities must have got hold of them.
You do have fun with them. You do torment them! And slowly, I started getting a drip, drip of information. There's never a confessional... you've got to be patient and hang in there.'
The process wasn't without its lighter moments. In among the racist hate, twisted religion and warped ramblings of Copeland's misspelt and childlike scrawlings are some moments of unintentional humour. 'I've been moved to Broadmore (sic),' writes the nail bomber in one letter.
'This place is fucking mental. There's a bloke in hear for killing sheep then shagging them... I can't wait to get back to belmarsh to do time because im a soldier.' On another occasion Copeland juxtaposes his desire to nuzzle Patsy's breast with listening to the latest Screwdriver (racist hardcore punk band) album.
Copeland also reveals his artistic side in some less-than-original verse: 'Roses are Red, violets are blue. All I do is think of you. Sorry about the poetry, but sometimes its easyer to express how I feel about you.' The defining irony came, though, when Copeland was masturbating in his cell over O'Mahoney's letters and a photo of 'Patsy' that was in reality scissored from a Russian mailorder bride brochure.
'Most British people are just walking Zombies with no mind of there own,' complains Copeland. 'I feel sorry for these people so content with nothing... I have your picture on my wall... I lye on my bed at night and think about things, scenarios, fucking you... I've had to learn how to masterbait' So this self-styled Aryan hero was criticising other people's empty lives while wanking over an imaginary lover.
When Patsy began referring to Copeland as 'my little soldier', his infatuation ballooned. Her letters became increasingly manipulative, and sexually charged. Copeland's replies grew in candour, and Patsy/O'Mahoney could sense a breakthrough was approaching.
O'Mahoney finally hit the jackpot in the 1999 Christmas post when Copeland wrote: 'I was thinking the other day that we could of bean a bonny and Clyde having so much fun... Things in here are no good. I can't believe I have fooled all the doctors.' There it was, in black and white.
Not only had the correspondence generally shown that Copeland was of sound mind, but, by specifically admitting in his own hand to fooling the doctors, Copeland could no longer benefit from an insanity plea and from the diluted charge of manslaughter - not murder -on grounds of diminished responsibility.
Not that Copeland knew at this stage that he'd stitched himself up like a kipper, of course. On 24 February 2000, he entered a preliminary plea of not guilty to murder due to diminished responsibility'. To shouting and sobbing from the victims' relatives, Copeland's barrister told the judge that his client suffered from schizophrenia, delusions and emotional disorders.
Meanwhile, Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist unit, which had been secretly monitoring O'Mahoney's correspondence, came to inform him that the letters were required as evidence. O'Mahoney instantly agreed to appear as a prosecution witness in court. His entire writing campaign had been driven by a desire to seek the truth, and to hit back at people in his own past who would laud Copeland as a National Socialist hero.
THE MOMENT of truth came on the 10th day of the trial: Monday 19 June 2000. The prosecution barrister introduced the 'Patsy Scanlon' letters, told how Copeland had fallen in love with 'her' and how 'Patsy' was in fact a balding ex-bouncer with a criminal record called Bernard.
Now, in the dock, Copeland looked like he might collapse. Up to that point he had shown not a flicker of emotion. But in that moment, all he held dear - his freedom and his 'Patsy' - was ripped from under him. He crumpled as the judge found him guilty of murder and gave him six life sentences.
There were cries from the public gallery of 'Rot in hell!', 'Nazi scum!' and 'You bastard!'. Job done. That was a result. But what is especially interesting about the trial is the way it was reported,' O'Mahoney tells us, as more whiskey hits our table.
'In the press, Copeland was always labelled a ruthless Nazi, which made for a punchy, headline-friendly story - but the reality was more confused. He was a complete people-hating fuck-up with an IQ in the top 10 per cent of the population, but who lived in a bedsit with his pet rat, Whizzer. He might have had a fascination with the Waffen-SS, but ultimately he had no grasp of Nazi ideology.
He didn't bomb London for political reasons, but because he hated people in general. Ninety per cent of people in extreme right-wing groups aren't true Nazis; they're just hooligans.' So what about the 'lone wolf' political crusader?
What about the media descriptions of the 'ice-cold Nazi killer' who styled himself on Nazis like Himmler, Goebbels and Hitler's favourite SS officer, Reinhard Heydrich - the ice man who liquidated ghettos in the morning, then played Bach on his violin in the afternoon? 'Play the violin?!' exclaims O'Mahoney.
"This British so-called Nazi lot couldn't play the fucking spoons. They are totally useless.' There have even been letters in Combat 18's own magazine complaining how Britain's extreme right-wing parties are full of drunks, misfits and alcoholics who are deemed 'unfit to dig the Waffen-SS's latrine pits'.
O'Mahoney says the media love the 'evil Nazi' tag more than the truth because it's more interesting than stories about sad social misfits. 'I'll prove it: during the trial it was discussed that Copeland's problems originated in his undersized penis.' From birth, there had been medical concern about the size of his genitals.
At 15, Copeland's parents sent him to a special clinic for children with growth problems. He had only had one short-term girlfriend, who didn't enjoy sex because of his tiny prick. Lifelong humiliation came to a head when Copeland figured his own family thought he was homosexual; he said they'd mock him by singing the theme tune to The Flintstones ('... we'll have a gay old time?).
Copeland was terrified by the gay label. He even told the police he preferred blacks and Asians to gays. 'But did the penis issue ever get reported?' asks O'Mahoney. 'Never! It was discussed openly in court, but no one ran with it' The truth wasn't allowed to get in the way of a good story.
It didn't suit the media, the anti-racist lobby or the liberal press, who wanted a hate figure they could rally around. In an age of political correctness, the anti-racist lobby was an industry in itself. But it wasn't racism that first attracted Copeland to Nazi ideology - aged 13 he became fascinated with Nazism's ideas of strength and virility precisely because those were qualities he lacked.
He saw himself as tall, blond and powerful; an SS man who'd pick a woman, rape her, then shoot her dead. 'He had psychological problems; politics were totally secondary,' says O'Mahoney, 'but that didn't suit the British establishment'
COPELAND MAY be O'Mahoney's highest-profile scalp to date, but he's unlikely to be the last. 'I wrote to Ian Huntley while he was banged up before the Soham murders trial,' O'Mahoney tells us. 'He was another one who was initially claiming to be mad, not bad.
My letters weren't used in the trial, because he ended up claiming the deaths were an accident - he didn't use the diminished responsibility plea as expected. He wrote to me thinking I was girl and asked me to send him a picture of me wearing a Manchester United shirt; just like Jessica and Holly.
He's a pretty sick fuck who thought the world was against him. He worshipped Maxine Carr, and he thought she was going to give evidence against him. 'I wrote to Roy Whiting, too, the bloke who butchered Sarah Payne. He sees himself as an action man, a real ladies' man, a man who drinks champagne after winning imaginary races.
He's a sick bastard. His lawyer was tipped off about me, and they even put a private detective on me.' You might have thought that the British legal system, and even the press, would salute O'Mahoney's efforts in helping to put Copeland away forever.
You'd be wrong. His efforts have helped secure life sentences for three murderers who'd all at first denied their guilt (none of whom have since appealed), yet even the prosecuting barrister in the Copeland case, who used O'Mahoney's letters as evidence of Copeland's culpability, branded O'Mahoney's methods 'tawdry'.
Newspapers - perhaps acutely aware of O'Mahoney's right-wing past - have characterised Peter Sutcliffe and the other killers as O'Mahoney's 'victims'. He has even spent a year being sued in the High Court under the Human Rights Act by a convicted child rapist who claimed his confidence had been breached when he asked O'Mahoney not to tell anyone about his crimes.
And then there is the far-right contingent itself - O'Mahoney's former pals. They're none too pleased with his expose of the UK's fascist underbelly. A variety of nutcase groups, ranging from the British Ku Klux Klan (which he exposed as a laughable organisation headed by an ex-accountant called Nigel) to Combat 18, regularly phone death threats to him and his family.
But he doesn't hide - he still lists his mobile phone number on his website, and his address isn't hard to find. And his unorthodox search for the truth continues undaunted. 'If they come for me, they come for me,' he explains, 'but they'll have to have the balls to finish me off in one go. I don't think they have. I'll keep writing letters as long as they're needed - and that's probably forever.'
Hateland by Bernard O'Mahohey is out 12 May, £9.99.
To get your copy at a discounted price of £8.99, visit www.mainstreampublishing.com |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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