| Essexboys
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??/??/96
- Hit and Mystery
Simon Hills Reports
GQ
On December 7 last year, at eight o'clock in the morning
bricklayer Ken Jiggins and turkey farmer Lee Theobald
tramped through the snow to feed pheasants kept on a farm
in Rettendon, South Essex. When they reached a padlocked
gate that led to a fishing lake beyond, they were surprised
to find a Range Rover parked in front of it.
In the bleak stillness of the snow-bleached countryside,
they peered through the car's frosted windows. Inside,
they could make out the figures of three men sitting slumped
in their seats. "They looked so peaceful we thought
they were asleep," Theobald later remarked.
"But they were dead." In one of the most astonishing
multiple murders to have taken place in this country,
Tony Tucker (38), Pat Tate (37) and Craig Rolfe (26) had
been shot dead at point-blank range with such precision
that there was virtually no blood and no sign of a struggle.
On the gate was a notice with the message:
COUNTRYSIDE PREMIUM SCHEME. Farming operations must still
take place, so please take special care to avoid injury...
the use of guns or any other activity which disturbs people
or wildlife are not allowed on this land. Enjoy your visit.
The hitman did not pay the sign much heed. He had carried
out the triple execution with chilling accuracy. Rolfe,
the driver, was killed first, with a single shot to the
back of his head. His foot was on the brake pedal and
his hands on the steering wheel, as if he had stopped
at traffic lights.
Then came Tucker, also blasted with a single shot to the
back of the head. He was still holding a mobile phone.
Only Tate, in the back seat, showed any signs that he
had tried to move. He had taken a bullet in the stomach
police believe to immobilise him before he too was shot
in the head.
This was no ordinary murder, but bore the hallmarks of
a carefully planned, cold-blooded assassination that brought
to an end the criminal careers of three notorious underworld
figures. Led by Tucker who ran a security firm their gang
controlled the drugs trade in a large number of clubs
across Essex and south London.
The victims had cut a brutal swathe through the local
scene, building an unenviable reputation and reaping huge
rewards from extortion, murder, drug dealing, intimidation
and plain thuggery. A team of fifteen police officers
have spent months pouring over the evidence, so far to
little avail.
"It is a classic detective case," says Detective
Superintendent Ivan Dibley, the officer who took charge
of the case. "There is no shortage of suspects, because
they are known criminals and are associates of known criminals.
Normally with a murder inquiry, once you've got a suspect
you're home and dry.
With this case, our problem is actually determining who
is the real suspect." The Range Rover was hoisted
away with the dead men still inside and virtually taken
apart by the police. But it was found to contain no substantial
clues: no fingerprints and no solid forensic evidence.
All the pointers are that whoever took them to their deaths
is likely to have been a close and trusted associate.
"They were found with no weapons on them, which is
unbelievable for those three," says Ray (not his
real name), a former associate of Tucker. "There's
no reason on the planet to go down that track.
If they had wanted to have a meet, as the police have
suggested, they would have done it in one of their places
or at a club. All their deals were done by their minions
in garage services. They weren't stupid, they were under
surveillance quite regularly." Dibley confirms that
when police searched the dead men's houses after the murders,
a gun was found secreted in Tate's.
The real mystery isn't that someone hated these notorious
figures enough to have them killed, but that their killer
was able to lead them, unarmed and unsuspecting, down
a country lane, like lambs to the slaughter. Even to begin
to unravel Detective Superintendent Dibley's classic case,
you have to appreciate just how these three men rose to
such criminal prominence.
They can be linked to the ecstasy-related death of Leah
Betts, as well as a host of cases of murder, torture and
extortion. Tucker, Tate and Rolfe lived and acted like
latterday Krays. But their patch, rather than being confined
to the old criminal heartland of the East End, extended
across south Essex.
Essex at first seems an unlikely location for vicious
gangland retribution. Dibley's office is no run-down inner
city nick. The brand new South Woodham Ferrers Police
Station comes complete with surveillance cameras, electronic
entry systems and pristine no-smoking offices.
As you drive through the town's deserted streets on a
sunny morning, it feels as if you're in a real-life version
of Legoland, where neat, modern terraced houses meet the
main drag in perfect crescents and cul-de-sacs. Like Basildon,
South Woodham Ferrers is an overspill town designed to
be a working- class paradise.
But what the social engineers apparently failed to consider
was that as the inhabitants poured out of the slums of
the East End, they would take their criminals with them.
No amount of architectural planning can obliterate the
bleak lowlands that these towns were built on. The desolation
of the crowded East End slums and a life of no prospects
has been replaced by the desolation of row upon row of
modern houses with no pubs, no community and no prospects.
Dance halls, skiffle music and beer have been replaced
by nightclubs, techno and drugs, and the Krays' Essex
descendants have adjusted their operations accordingly.
Although Tony Tucker's firm dabbled in traditional protection
rackets, it was the Nineties' ecstasy boom which suddenly
gave it the potential to earn huge money.
At the tail end of the Eighties, Tucker was building up
a security business which saw him running doors from Raquels
(where the ecstasy that Leah Betts took was obtained from
an unknown dealer) to Club UK in Wandsworth, South London
(where Andreas Bouzis died of heart failure after taking
ecstasy on the premises in January, this year).
At that time, Tucker was still a small-time businessman
with criminal leanings. He lived in a two-bedroomed house,
drove a second-hand Granada and his main vice was taking
a bit of door money on the side. As ecstasy moved out
of underground rave culture and into mainstream clubland,
having control of club security often meant having control
of the drugs that went in and out.
Dealers were prepared to pay substantial tithes for the
exclusive right to carry out their illegal operations
inside the clubs clandestinely and without harassment.
Although he didn't sell drugs himself, Tucker became a
fulcrum for deals between large drug firms. By 1992, he
was considered big-time, buoyed by drug profits, a fearsome
reputation and a high-profile career as boxer Nigel Benn's
minder.
Tucker's personal drug of choice was not the ubiquitous
love drug. He had always been a body builder, and as the
money rolled in he started injecting a cocktail of the
steroid nubane and cocaine. At the same time, along with
Tate and Rolfe, he instigated the regime of intimidation
and violence that would eventually lead to his downfall.
"He believed he was invincible," says Ray. "He
was really just a stockbroker, passing gear on. But he
started getting nasty." Ray tells of one of Tucker's
early rip-offs. In keeping with his image as someone who
had made it, he kept horses stabled near Basildon.
He discovered that the owner was in debt, and made discreet
enquiries to find out exactly to whom he owed money. Armed
with this information, Tucker sent a group of heavies
into the stable owner's riding school bar. His henchmen
smashed the place to pieces with iron rods. While they
were at it, they attacked the barmaid.
The next day, Tucker went to the owner and said that he
had heard there was trouble and knew who was behind it.
He told him that, if he could stable his horses for free,
he would ensure that there was no more violence. Tucker
was starting to live and act as if he were the Essex equivalent
of a Mafia don.
One Sunday morning, the peace of the sleepy village of
Chafford Hundred was disturbed by the thud of high-volume
dance music coming from his house in Diamond Close. Parked
outside was his new, jet black, top-of-the-range Porsche,
bearing the number plate TT9.
Inside, Tucker was holding court with a few friends while
he lay in bed with his common-law wife, Anna. In an ostentatious
display of his new money, he had hired a professional
DJ to set up twin decks at the foot of the bed and spin
tunes solely for his benefit.
The bedroom was liberally decorated with pictures of Tucker
and his celebrity friend Nigel Benn; Tucker wanted everyone
to know that he was the king of his sprawling south Essex
manor. But his flamboyant display of criminal wealth was
destined to be short-lived. A year later, Tucker had accrued
enough money to buy a £250,000 luxury house in the
village of Fobbing.
Two months after he moved in, he was dead. There is a
certain sad inevitability about Craig Rolfe's life of
crime. His father ran market stalls in Basildon, but in
the year of Rolfe's birth his mother, Lorraine, was having
an affair with another man, John Kennedy. On Christmas
Eve, 1968, Kennedy beat Rolfe's father to death with a
3 pound skittle.
Kennedy was arrested and charged with murder and Lorraine
was subsequently charged with making false statements
to cover up for him. She was sentenced to eighteen months.
Craig Rolfe was born in Holloway Prison in 1969. Rolfe's
role in Tucker's firm is generally accepted as minor.
"He was basically a gofer for Tucker," says
Dibley.
"He did a bit of driving, a few errands, whatever.
He had a fairly serious cocaine habit of his own. So it
was in his interest just to tag along with Tucker."
But Rolfe was probably Tucker's most trusted friend, and
he was certainly implicated in some of Tucker's most dubious
scams.
In September 1995, the pair were approached by a part-time
drug dealer who had acquired £18,000-worth of cannabis
to sell. Tucker told the dealer he would sort something
out. The three travelled to Birmingham, where Tucker claimed
to have a contact. While the dealer and Rolfe waited,
Tucker disappeared with the drugs.
He returned saying that the police had busted them before
he got the money. The dealer either had to accept the
excuse or take them on. There is no police record of a
bust in the city at that time. Tucker's other partner
in crime, Pat Tate, was a man who liked to throw his weight
around. "They were all physically big men,"
confirms Dibley.
"But Tate, if he walked in through a door, he would
have filled it. I don't think I've ever met such a huge
man." It was a combination of temper and bravado
that first brought him to Tucker's attention. In 1989,
after a heavy weekend's clubbing, Tate got into an argument
about his bill at Basildon Happy Eater.
He attacked the cashier and took the money from the till.
He was arrested, but while awaiting trial at Billericay
Magistrates Court, he assaulted the police officer left
to guard him, escaped through the window and disappeared
on the back of a motorbike. He holed up for a while in
Spain.
It was only when he made the mistake of crossing the border
to Gibraltar that he was re-arrested and sent back to
receive a prison sentence in Britain. Tucker had a habit,
according to Ray, of befriending likely allies when they
were released from prison. Before his incarceration, Tate
knew Tucker and Rolfe only vaguely.
After his release in 1993, the three were inseparable.
"You'd never see one without one of the other two,"
recalls Ray. Tate quickly graduated from someone who was
"just a thug" to "a real villain".
He had previously been a second-hand car dealer, but with
Tucker, he willingly let himself get involved in activities
that would nearly cost him his life long before he was
shot to death in the Range Rover.
In 1994, a small-time criminal, Steve "Nipper"
Ellis, was said to have crossed the three big men. Tucker
had a sixteen-year-old mistress called Donna, who had
allegedly asked Ellis if he knew where Tucker might be
found. In jest, Ellis replied that Tucker was probably
giving his old woman one up the arse.
The remark was phoned straight through to Tucker by his
teenage girlfriend. Tucker immediately took Tate and Rolfe
down to Ellis' house. Although Nipper wasn't there, his
sister was. The three men threatened to break her fingers
and rape her. An incensed Ellis allegedly went to have
it out with them.
He found only Tucker and Rolfe and, when Ellis pulled
a gun on them, they fled. Still boiling with rage, Ellis
was then said to have gone to Tate's house and thrown
a brick through the bathroom window. As Tate leaned out
to see what was going on, Ellis allegedly unleashed a
volley of gunfire, shooting Tate in the upper arm as he
raised his hands in front of his face.
With Tate hospitalised, Tucker and Rolfe went on the rampage.
They wrecked Ellis's house and took his car and other
possessions. Ellis went on the run. Although he wanted
to negotiate a settlement, Tucker insisted that he had
to pay the price for shooting Tate. The latter was in
Basildon hospital, where Tucker and Rolfe smuggled him
drugs.
Fearing that Ellis might come to the hospital to finish
him off, they also smuggled in a gun which police discovered
after a tip-off. When he recovered, Tate was sent to Whitemore
Prison for possessing the firearm. Ellis was arrested
after the attempted murder, but was only found guilty
of illegally possessing firearms.
He served seven and a half months. On his release, Ellis
fled to the West Country. "When I was in jail, I
had numerous death threats," he claimed to the Sun.
"On one occasion, two men came up to me and told
me a £10,000 contract had been put out on me. As
soon as I got out of prison, I was ordered to leave town.
I was told that if I ignored the warnings, they would
retaliate. "A hit-man went to my dad's door looking
for me. My family were told that Tucker and Tate planned
to snatch my little sister and take off her fingers one
by one. She was only fifteen and she was terrified. The
threats never stopped."
But Tucker and Rolfe were too busy building their own
empire to spend much time tracking down Ellis. In November
1994, with Tate still in hospital, it is claimed by Tate's
mother Marie that they murdered a local drug dealer, Kevin
Whitaker. Whitaker was acting as a courier, taking £60,000
worth of their cannabis to another drugs gang in Romford.
But he didn't bring back the money. No one knows the reason
why, but it is thought he could have been ripped off in
much the same way as Tucker conned the dealer in Birmingham.
He knew that he would have to pay them back, and it's
rumoured that he was willing to go to the police to protect
himself.
According to Marie Tate, on November 17, Tucker and Rolfe
tracked Whitaker down and took him to Dunton, Basildon
a bleak area with a housing estate and ring road opposite
Ford's testing track where they forced him to the ground.
As he pleaded for mercy, they pulled down his trousers
and injected him in the groin with a lethal concoction
of drugs including Special K, the street name for katamine,
a drug used to numb horses before castration.
The coroner also found quantities of lignocaine in Whitaker's
body, an anaesthetic drug used as a cutting agent for
cocaine. After the murder, the pair are said to have boasted
about their accomplishment to Tate. Marie claims her son
blurted out the story from his hospital bed, while on
drugs smuggled in by his friends.
Rolfe was called to give evidence at the inquest, and
it was later discovered that Whitaker had telephoned him
four times on the day of his death. A message asking him
to contact Rolfe was also logged on his radio pager. "Rolfe
was known to be a close associate of Whitaker, a friend
if you like," says Dibley, who was not himself involved
in the case.
"I think he was known to be one of the last persons
to actually see him alive. Well, if Mrs Tate is to believed,
clearly he would have been one of the last people to see
him alive because he would have been instrumental in his
death. As I understand it, Rolfe was not exactly forthcoming
with his total involvement, which is not surprising.
And we've got a sort of sanitised version of why he last
saw Whitaker." But there was no hard evidence with
which to charge Tucker or Rolfe, and the two men continued
to dominate the club and drugs trade in south Essex. In
1995 it was business as usual: Tucker moved into his palatial
new house, Brynmount Lodge, which came complete with electric
gates and stables; Rolfe moved in to Tucker's old house.
In October 1995, the police staged a televised raid on
Club UK in Wandsworth. In order to escape arrest, a dealer
dropped 800 pills on the floor. Tucker and Rolfe showed
precious little sympathy for the dealer's plight. When
he pleaded that he could not pay them their usual cut,
they went round to his house and put a bowie knife to
his throat.
They told him that for every week he owed them money,
they'd put another £500 on top. Just for good measure,
they stole his TV and stereo. When Tate came out of prison
in October, he was keen to re-establish his presence.
The week he was released, he wrote off Tuckers Porsche
after taking a mixture of Special K and cocaine.
Rolfe bought the Range Rover and the trio continued to
intimidate all comers. "They thought they were indestructible,"
recalls Ray. "They got a lust for violence, and they
wanted everyone to know they were back together again."
In November 1995, Leah Betts, the daughter of a policeman,
slipped into a coma after collapsing at home in Latchingdon,
near Basildon, during her eighteenth-birthday party.
Her parents' bedside vigil and her subsequent death led
to national outrage over the easy availability of ecstasy.
Under intense public pressure to get an arrest, the police
were starting to put the heat on Tucker and his firm,
arresting several of his associates. The Essex drug underworld
was rife with paranoia about who was talking, and what
the police were going to do next.
The pressure-cooker atmosphere only served to stoke Tate's
rabid behaviour. Two nights before he died, Tate hospitalised
Roger Ryall, the manager of a Basildon pizza company.
He had asked for toppings which the London Pizza Company
did not offer on its menu. Tate swore down the telephone
at Ryall and arrived in Basildon half an hour later.
He threw a till across the room, punched Ryall in the
face and smashed his head down on a glass plate on the
draining board. Then he warned him not to call the police
or he would return and smash up the shop and the staff.
Ryall opted not to press charges. Detective Superintendent
Dibley has now retired, but he remains convinced that
it was Tate's behaviour which led to the Range Rover deaths.
"There are a number of reasons why that may be the
case," he told me. "He might have got out of
control through drugs and was upsetting the apple-cart
of what was a fairly slick operation. It might be because
he was mouthy and violent that others were afraid that
he would bring attention to himself and themselves because
of his general behaviour.
So they decided to take him out of the scene." But
with Tate either in prison or hospital for much of the
time the firm was on the ascendant, Tucker or Rolfe could
equally have provided countless motives for all three
being killed. Ellis is still in hiding and the Club UK
dealer they threatened has disappeared to Greece.
Either he or his associates would have a motive for the
killing. So too would the rival drugs firm to which Whitaker
was affiliated. An alternative theory involves a huge
consignment of cannabis, with an estimated value of £2
million, that was discovered by a farmer floating in a
lake approximately six miles away from Rettendon, in October
1995.
Police believe it was dropped from a light aircraft and,
but for the farmer's intervention, would have been picked
up by a local gang. It has been suggested that Tucker,
Rolfe and Tate were told of a second drop in another lake,
and that this is what persuaded them to drive down the
lane where they met their deaths.
Another line of enquiry is also being considered. On August
31 last year, a man was taken to St Andrew's Hospital
in Billericay after having had acid thrown in his face.
All he would say was that he had been abducted while making
a phone call and bundled into the boot of a car.
Five weeks after the acid attack, while he was still in
hospital, a man dressed as a clown walked into his ward
with a shotgun hidden in a bunch of flowers and blasted
the patient at point-blank range. He recovered, but still
declined to assist the police. Now, with the promise of
a new identity, he may change his mind.
Police believe it's possible that the gunman could be
the same man who took Tucker, Rolfe and Tate to their
deaths. Dibley believes there is a great deal at stake
here. "The word is going round that associates of
Tucker's are watching with interest to see if the police
make any arrests," he says. "If we fail, then
they will seek their own retribution.
Although the general public won't lose one moment's sleep
because these people were taken away, there are people
close to them who are capable of seeking retribution,
if for no other reason than to avenge the death of a friend.
But also, I suspect, to make sure that they're not next.
Because if the guy who's done this is prepared to shoot
three of his close mates, anyone else who's close to him
must be at risk." With ecstasy being bought for around
£2 a tablet and then sold in clubs for £12
to £15, there are huge profits to be made. And,
as the Range Rover murders have demonstrated, there are
people prepared to go to any lengths to protect these
profits.
Not only that, but there are any number of pretenders
who idolised Tucker and Rolfe and aspire to take their
place. "What you've got to understand is the paranoia
that is everywhere in their world," says Ray. "People
are continually being ripped off and there are constant
death threats.
These firms want to make sure that they're not next. And
you've got these kids coming up who want to make a name
for themselves. They are prepared to shoot someone for
nothing." Through contacts in Whitemore Prison, where
Tate was an inmate, legendary gangster Reggie Kray had
expressed an interest in linking up with Tucker on a vending
machine operation.
"You're joking," was Tucker's dismissive response.
"He's a has-been." In his short, criminal life,
Tucker never achieved the national prominence of the Krays.
But the legacy of his brutal death threatens to be with
us for a long time to come.
As GQ went to press, two men, Jack Whomes and Michael
Steele, were charged with the murders of Tate, Tucker
and Rolfe. They were also charged with conspiracy to import
cannabis. |
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