21/11/06 - Time to lay Rettendon ghosts to rest finally
By GINA MARDEN
Crime reporter

THE brutal slaying of three drug barons on a remote snowcovered farm track nearly 11 years ago has hung like a spectre over the parish of Rettendon. But for Bernard O'Mahoney, former member of the violent Essex Boys Firm and head bouncer at the notorious Raquel's nightclub in Basildon, it is time to lay the ghosts of Tony Tucker, Craig Rolfe and Pat Tate to rest.

Bernard, now a widower after losing his wife Emma nearly two years ago, is hoping his new book - Bonded by Blood: Murder and Intrigue in the Essex Ganglands - will help him close the chapter on the grisly events of December 6, 1995.

The book, unlike O'Mahoney's previous offering Essex Boys, delves into the the characters and lives of the three men who met their deaths in such a horrific way. He tells how Tucker, Tate and Rolfe grew increasingly violent and paranoid in the months leading up to their deaths, turning on their friends, including Bernard, as they began regularly using the drugs that had provided their living.

Since the death of schoolgirl Leah Berts. who died after taking a strong ecstasy tablet supplied by the Essex Boys firm on a night at Raquel's in November 1995, life was never quite the same for Bernard. After turning his back on the drug-dealing firm he had been part of by helping officers investigating Leah's death, Bernard's life began to collapse around him.

Colleagues and friends no longer wanted to know him. And less than a month after Leah's death, three of the Essex Boys firm's biggest players, drug barons - Tucker, Rolfe and Tate - were executed in a hail of bullets on that cold December night. Dubbed the "Range Rover murders" because of the car in which the three men were murdered in as they waited to complete a drugs deal in Workhouse Lane, Rettendon, the murder fascinated as many as it terrified.

Theories abounded about those responsible and finally, off the back of evidence from police supergrass Darren Nicholls, two men, Jack Whomes and Michael Steele, were convicted for the murders in 1998. But though the conviction concluded the case for Essex Police it did little to convince Bernard of Whomes and Steele's guilt.

Bernard remembers: "It wasn't a case of who killed Tucker, Tate and Rolfe, it was a case of who didn't have a motive? "I knew it was coming, the only surprise I had was that it didn't happen earlier. "They were doing so many drugs they started turning on everybody, - they didn't even trust each other. "That is what got them killed - you can't go around telling people you are going to murder them. The most dangerous man in the world is a scared man."

So with their convictions , Bernard's nearly decade-long involvement in the campaign to free Whomes and Steele began. He supported the families of both men becoming their public mouthpiece and he supported them through two appeal hearings, the last one of which in February this year failed to overturn Whomes' and Steele's convictions.

But his involvement in the campaign is one for which Bernard has paid the price. He was attacked by gangland figure John 'Gaffer' Rollinson, stabbed and more recently blackmailed.

Bernard explained: "If you look back over the last ten years I've been attacked by Gaffer and I got arrested for that - fair enough the charges were dropped, but still. "Then last year I got stabbed through the shoulder and a few weeks ago I had some idiot blackmailing me. "What have I done to deserve this? I've had enough of it."

He added: "I tried to help Whomes and Steele, but ten years is enough. "I've just had enough of hearing those names Tate, Tucker and Rolfe, I just want to wipe the slate clean and have done with it. "It has just dominated my life for ten years. "It's very hard giving the campaigning up because I feel like I'm letting Jack down, but now I've got to get on with my own life."

But, before Bernard could finally move on from the deaths of Leah Betts, Tucker, Tate and Rolfe and the grisly legacy of the Essex Boys firm, he had to make one last visit to the quiet farm track where the grisly events that changed his life forever were played out. He recalls in his book: "Walking away from the scene of those grotesque executions, I felt relief tinged with sadness. "Relief because the nightmare is over, sadness because every other step I take on my journey back to the main road brings to mind an incident or face from my dismal past."

Bonded by Blood: Murder and Intrigue in the Essex Ganglands is priced at £9.99.
For more information visit www.mainstream-publishing.com