The Real Essex Boys - True Crime Documentary
Behind upscale streets and tranquil parks, some of Essex's most ruthless gangsters keep police, judges and politicians busy protecting the public. This crime documentary investigates the gangs and smugglers who fought for control of Essex's ports in the 70s, 80s and 90s turning its seaside towns into their violent playground - Gangs like the infamous Essex Boys and the Blundell Brothers.
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TVTranscript
00:00The county of Essex, north-east of London, once the land of open space and opportunity.
00:12By the mid-1990s, it had become a war zone.
00:18Gangsters against gangsters.
00:19That's how this business works.
00:20If you do someone a bad deed, they're going to come back and do you.
00:25Anti-warfare poisoned the dream as organised crimes spilled out of London's East End into
00:30the fields, beaches, streets and nightclubs of Essex.
00:34If you took your guns, knives or whatever you need to win, there was going to be a war.
00:39It's a story that's now hit the big screen, but in this programme, for the first time,
00:44it's told by the men who had their fingers on the triggers.
00:48Just empty the gun into them and it's going to go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
00:51They reveal how sex, drugs and rock and roll fuelled the fight for the new criminal frontier
00:56in the new towns of Essex.
00:59Evolution of drugs, evolution of music was always going to overtake us.
01:05It was just a flood of villainy with violence.
01:09And how four decades of vice and murder culminated in one of the most infamous gangland killings
01:15in underworld history.
01:17They were the worst of the worst, couldn't afford to take chances with them.
01:21They had a gun.
01:33One winter's night in 1995, three gangsters drove down a country lane in the village of
01:38Rettonden. They were the notorious Essex Boys and they were falling into a trap.
01:45Their reign as one of Britain's most ruthless drug gangs was about to end.
01:50Within minutes, all three men were gunned down in a violent ambush.
01:54He shot Rolf behind the ear, he shot Tucker in the side of the face and then he shot Tate
01:59in the liver.
02:02The next morning, Rettonden awoke to a horrific crime scene and the Essex Boys were destined
02:10to go down in underworld legend.
02:12Detectives believe the killings have all the hallmarks of a gangland murder.
02:17As the media feasted on the story, it emerged that areas of Essex were in the grip of a
02:22violent drugs war waged by bloodthirsty gangs.
02:26The dirty business of drugs in Essex overtook most counters.
02:32If you start dealing with drugs in back alleys, in farm tracks, you're probably not going
02:38to drive out of there and that is what Essex became.
02:41The Essex Boys' brutal end epitomised the county's plight as gangster battled gangster
02:47and created a living nightmare for police.
02:52Danny Woollard is a veteran of the Essex underworld.
02:54Since the 60s, he's made a fortune from robberies and now lives on a piece of prime Essex real
02:59estate.
03:00Leave off!
03:01Oi!
03:02He witnessed brutal drug wars transform the county.
03:06The only people I make a living are drug dealers.
03:08I don't like drug dealers.
03:09I wouldn't deal with them.
03:10I don't trust them for one thing.
03:11I wouldn't trust them.
03:12And if not down their apprenticeship, they'd do a couple of drug deals and they're villains.
03:23Woollard is part of the criminal old school whose violence built gangland Essex.
03:28Like many successful criminals, he grew up in London's East End, which in the 1960s was
03:34a hotbed of organised crime.
03:38Woollard had a reputation for violence and in the East End, that was a valuable commodity.
03:43He was employed by gangsters to force businesses to pay protection money.
03:47Amongst those paying for his services were the notorious Kray Twins.
03:54Ken Tappenden joined the regional crime squad covering London and the surrounding counties
03:58and was targeting the Kray's extortion rackets.
04:02If you didn't pay them to look after you, then they actually damaged you.
04:09It's as simple as that.
04:10That's how extortion works.
04:11They were the people to catch.
04:15In 1969, the police crackdown sent shockwaves through the underworld when the Kray's were
04:20jailed for life.
04:23For years they'd seemed untouchable, but their very public murder of two East End gangsters
04:28signalled the end of their empire.
04:32With the police on their trail, criminals were facing extinction.
04:36To survive, they fled the overcrowded and over-policed East End.
04:40They needed a new home and they knew just where to look.
04:44East Enders always looked to Essex as a place to get away to.
04:47It's always where you wanted to go, a weekend away.
04:50So there has always been this thing about getting away, getting away to Essex.
04:56Sixty times the size of the East End, it had everything they could wish for.
05:01Miles of unguarded coastline.
05:04A new generation of criminals emerged in Essex, ruthless in their determination to follow
05:09in the footsteps of the Kray's and become kings of this new underworld.
05:13People like the Blundell family, they actually stepped into their shoes.
05:18And I say that they were more dangerous in the way they thought, the way they operated,
05:25the way they undertook their criminality, than ever the Kray's would have been.
05:32Billy Blundell was one of the most powerful figures in the Essex underworld.
05:37The worst thing you can ever do in a criminal fraternity is be successful.
05:42A policeman's son, Blundell had also grown up in the East End.
05:46With his brother Eddie, he got rich selling ice cream, as the capital's swinging image
05:50attracted unprecedented numbers of tourists.
05:54The Blundells were men of violence, and any competition were literally beaten off.
06:00I've had more fights on the cobbles than I ever did in a boxing ring.
06:07But it was annoying.
06:08We didn't think it was, you know, there'd be loads of tourists about, I'd be a fan for them.
06:14By the 1970s, the Blundell's ruthless approach to business had made them a lot of money.
06:20If Billy Blundell could now afford the Essex life, he couldn't get in the East End.
06:25It was my dream to buy a small holding and build a house there and have a lake and stables,
06:31and that's what I did.
06:33I had my dream come true.
06:36Now that he had a foothold, Blundell was ready to expand his empire.
06:40The bloody battle for the Essex underworld was about to begin, and it started in a remote field.
06:47In the summer of 1971, the county was in a celebratory mood.
06:51150,000 people flocked to the quiet village of Wheely in North Essex for a pop festival
06:57featuring stars like T-Rex and Rod Stewart.
07:00The Blundells were running catering and brought their own security.
07:04Other traders knew they had to pay them a cut or pay the consequences.
07:09But as the event got underway, the brothers realised they weren't the only violent gang in town.
07:14The Fearsome Hells Angels turned up, about 200 of them, on motorbikes and all that,
07:18and just pushing the workers off and just helping themselves to their dogs and their burgers,
07:21and they were powerless to stop them, you know.
07:24The Fearsome Hells Angels were but for business, and Billy knew they had to be dealt with.
07:29At that time, it was like hippies and all that, you know,
07:33and overnight everybody was walking around with these ponchos on, had some ponchos, you know.
07:38So we all did the same, but underneath our ponchos we had pickaxe handles
07:43and bricks and all sorts of things, and what we was doing, we was going in little crews,
07:47coming out of the crowds, setting about, giving it to them,
07:50then moving on till they didn't know where it was coming from, you know.
07:53The hard face of hard rock had met their match,
07:56and eventually police took the Hells Angels away for their own protection.
08:04Billy Blundell was establishing himself in Essex,
08:07but he was fighting battles on many fronts, and this got him noticed.
08:11Later that year, the violence spilled out onto the streets during a feud with a rival gang.
08:18Wilfrid High Road was quite busy, and all hell broke loose, basically,
08:23because I'm firing in the street, people are running for cover, went on and on, you know.
08:29Blundell was arrested and charged with attempted murder.
08:33In court, one detective came under attack from an unlikely member of Blundell's family, his mum.
08:40She said, you bastard, she said, you're always picking on my boys, all the time.
08:45He said, Mrs Blundell, I'm not picking on your boys at all.
08:48Your son shot three people in Wilfrid High Road in front of witnesses.
08:54She said, you bloody liar, she said, my boys are good boys, I don't do them things.
08:59So you can't do no wrong in your mum's eyes, you know.
09:03He did no wrong in the jury's eyes either.
09:05They found he'd acted in self-defence.
09:08It would be another 11 years and 13 trials before the law finally caught up with Billy Blundell.
09:17But while Blundell fought on the streets and fields, on the coast, a new type of crime was emerging.
09:23Essex was a gateway to Europe, and at ports such as Tilbury,
09:27millions of pounds worth of goods were loaded onto lorries every day.
09:32On the open roads, trucks had always been vulnerable to hijackers.
09:36Now, enterprising criminals bought farmland in the countryside
09:41and rented out barns for hijackers to store their stolen goods.
09:44The barns became known as slaughters because of the way the trucks were stripped to the bone.
09:50Lorry loads of whisky, gin, whatever you wanted to say went off the roads,
09:54and that turned out to be the next area of crime.
09:58They run it into a slaughter and you wouldn't find it for months.
10:03Gangland Essex was evolving, and in the quiet fields and farmland,
10:08criminal networks had started to take root.
10:10The pioneers had laid the foundations for a new underworld.
10:15And from the start of the 80s, that meant drugs.
10:20With drugs, what you want is a slice of the market.
10:22You don't have to live in a particular territory in order to get drugs.
10:26You don't have to live in a particular territory in order to dominate it.
10:29So Essex became viable because in Essex, you've got the coast,
10:33you've got fields, you've got barns.
10:36So Essex became an ideal venue for the new market that was typified by drugs.
10:42For the next 20 years, the Essex underworld would tear itself apart
10:46in a bloody battle to control the drug trade.
10:49Profits were huge, and the marketplace full of ruthless criminals.
10:57Billy Blundell now lives in rural Essex.
10:59He's a wealthy man and enjoys pottering around on his farm.
11:05Hello, boy.
11:06In 1983, shortly after appearing in a TV documentary,
11:10Billy Blundell was arrested on his Essex farm
11:13for conspiracy to manufacture amphetamines.
11:16The Crown said the drugs were worth nearly £1 million on the black market.
11:20They said Blundell was the gang's Mr Big.
11:23The judge described him as an evil man.
11:26To this day, Blundell protests his innocence.
11:30I rented them a house that I owned, which they used.
11:34Although I knew what they were doing, I wasn't a part of their conspiracy.
11:37They got raided by the police,
11:39and the police put me up as the Mr Big in the background.
11:42You know, Prince Philip would have got found guilty.
11:45At Chelmsford Crown Court,
11:47Blundell got eight years' jail for conspiring to run an illicit amphetamine factory.
11:52So that was number 13.
11:54I'd had 12 not-guilties on the trot over the previous 20 years.
11:59I was charged with attempted murder on a couple of occasions I got out of.
12:03But all the things I got found guilty of,
12:05some of them were a little bit near the mark,
12:08so although I got eight years for something I didn't do,
12:12I'm not too bitter because it's Sod's Law I'm paying for yesterday.
12:16After the guilty verdict, speculation was rife.
12:20Why had Blundell purchased his Essex farm?
12:22An associate of the man who'd sold the farm had his own theory.
12:26Mr Blundell wanted that house because it had a big garden with a lake in it,
12:32and he wanted that lake for drug smuggling.
12:36In other words, aeroplanes could fly over and drop the drugs.
12:42This claim was never proven and is denied by Blundell,
12:45but one thing was clear, the demand for recreational drugs was booming,
12:50and for criminals, that meant big business.
12:58In the mid-'80s, an underground youth movement became a cultural phenomenon,
13:02and it would change the Essex underworld forever.
13:05The 1980s was quite important, and drug use started to go mainstream,
13:09and ecstasy use really was the trigger for that.
13:14Ecstasy, the so-called love drug, also known as E,
13:19gave users energy, young people wanted to dance till dawn,
13:22and overnight, a new drug epidemic took hold.
13:28You could not dance for 15 hours with a bottle of pop
13:33and still have a happy face unless you scoffed E's.
13:36I'll guarantee it to you.
13:38So we knew something was happening.
13:40A pioneer of the new movement was Andrew Pritchard.
13:48The rave scene came about in my very, very late teens, early 20s.
13:55A new music had emerged on the scene known as Acid House,
13:59and a drug had emerged also called ecstasy.
14:03Pritchard began staging illegal parties,
14:05which attracted thousands of people to warehouses and open spaces in London and Essex.
14:10He didn't pay for the premises, he just turned up, took over and charged admission.
14:16While he didn't provide the ecstasy, Pritchard knew his events depended on the drug.
14:21Without it, there wouldn't have been no parties, and the parties would have been very lame.
14:25As they say, if there wasn't a drug dealer in the venue,
14:28we'd have to go out and find one, otherwise the party would be dead.
14:33People wanted to party, and Pritchard made it happen.
14:36He mobilised legions of revellers to descend upon unsuspecting villages in their thousands.
14:40Under pressure from horrified communities, Thatcher's government needed to appear strong.
14:45The conservative media joined in the fight.
14:47National radio banned Acid House music, and newspapers ran sensational headlines.
14:53The government tasked Ken Tappendon with the tough job of breaking up the party.
14:58The organisers were better than we were.
15:01I only wish I had them as my lieutenants, because they were brilliant.
15:09They could organise thousands of people in two hours to go from one spot to another.
15:15The military can't do that now.
15:18The police definitely couldn't do it.
15:21Broadcasting on pirate radio and using newly available mobile phones,
15:26Pritchard kept one step ahead of Tappendon's pay party unit.
15:30Essex was ideally situated for the raves.
15:33Drugs came in from the coast, and in the open fields and derelict buildings,
15:38Thatcher's generation partied.
15:40Pritchard's illegal events company, Genesis, was going from strength to strength.
15:46The admission would be between £10 and £20 a ticket.
15:49You could probably, out of a good event, maybe take £70 to £100 grand in a large warehouse.
15:55By the age of 22, Andrew Pritchard had made his first million.
16:01It was an MTV pop style lifestyle, it was great.
16:04The cars, you know, the clothes, the jewellery, the women, you know, you had a great life.
16:10And, you know, every 21-year-old wants to do that.
16:15But you couldn't make this kind of profit without the underworld taking notice.
16:20And in the 1980s, armed robbers began to realise there were easier ways of making money
16:25than holding up banks.
16:27They knew that if they carried on armed robberies, they're going to get banged up.
16:32They're going to get shot on the plot.
16:34To avoid police marksmen, robbers looked for a softer target, and raves were easy pickings.
16:41He didn't see a bank robbery all the time we had acid parties, never.
16:45He didn't have to.
16:47If they could go to half a dozen parties on a Friday, Saturday night,
16:51and walk off with a couple of hundred thousand pound, as they did, easy money, isn't it?
16:57Pritchard was taking massive amounts of cash,
16:59Pritchard was taking massive amounts of cash,
17:02kept not in vaults and safes, but bin liners and sports bags.
17:07Back then, we were wide open, basically.
17:09We were vulnerable to all sorts of undesirables.
17:12So the choice we had to make was to get the right people to protect us
17:16and work with those people in order for our parties to succeed.
17:21The raves were illegal.
17:22Pritchard couldn't go to the police or legitimate security firms.
17:26So instead, he looked for people with violent reputations.
17:30They weren't hard to find.
17:36West Ham United was the traditional football club of the East End.
17:40For the displaced Londoners in Essex,
17:42Oakton Park Stadium was a symbol of their old heritage.
17:47It's peaceful nowadays, but in the 1980s, it was under siege.
17:51Every weekend, rival firms of football hooligans orchestrated violence on the terraces.
18:00With long-term hooligan Carlton Leach at its heart,
18:03West Ham's intercity firm, or ICF, were the most notorious.
18:08Football violence was nothing new, but the ICF were different.
18:12Embodying the spirit of the age, they were upwardly mobile and ambitious.
18:16They were once described as Thatcher's Eagles.
18:20You want to be the best, don't you?
18:22We all want to be.
18:23You all want to be the tops in life, whatever it is.
18:26They're incredibly sharp and entrepreneurial.
18:28And they saw this as an opportunity.
18:31Rather than whacking other football fans at the weekend for nothing,
18:34they thought if we're going to use muscle and we're going to use reputation,
18:38we might just as well get paid for it, which is what they did.
18:41The ICF soon evolved from football hooligans to security entrepreneurs, bouncers and doorman.
18:48In the decades that followed,
18:50some of them would help to bring violence and bloodshed to gangland Essex.
18:54But in 1988, rave organiser Andrew Pritchard simply wanted to protect his profits
19:00and Leach was about to get a piece of the action.
19:04There's a rave thing called Genesis.
19:07And did we want to do supply and security for it?
19:11£250 a night.
19:13What?
19:15Leach already had a part-time job as a doorman,
19:17but he'd never seen anything like the raves.
19:19We was used to like 100, 200 people in a club.
19:22You get quite a lot of trouble when it comes down to drink.
19:24And then we were in a warehouse and there's like thousands of people queuing up,
19:28people coming in and it was like just madness.
19:33The architects of the love drug culture were now in bed with men of violence.
19:37As far as Tappendon was concerned, Pritchard and his friends were in too deep.
19:42They weren't half men.
19:44They were men of violence.
19:47They weren't half men.
19:48They were Jack the Lad.
19:50They'd been to Ibiza.
19:52They'd stripped down, not worn a shirt for three months,
19:54liked a bit of money, got with the girls, had a few drugs.
19:58They weren't villains.
20:00But they were mad to carry on with it because when the gangsters got into it,
20:05you knew then that we were in big trouble.
20:08As profits soared, the ICF tried to take over
20:12and began to demand an ever-increasing share of the proceeds.
20:15We started off on wages and then they decided to give us a cut
20:20because it was getting so busy that we got a percentage of the door.
20:23In Leacher's view, this wasn't extortion,
20:25simply an arrangement that worked for both parties.
20:30To bring us on board as a partner was quite a clever move by Andrew and the boys
20:33because that made us part of it.
20:35So you're not going to destroy your own thing,
20:37you're not going to ruin your own thing and you're now part of it.
20:40I think it was like quarter partners or something like that, it worked out,
20:43whatever it was.
20:44But you're not going to mess up your own thing.
20:46There's a very fine line between security and extortion.
20:50It's a difficult line to draw between,
20:55actually, you pay me for stopping trouble in your club
21:00or if you don't pay me, there will be trouble in your club.
21:04We kind of inadvertently had brought back the protection rackets through the parties.
21:10Extortion and actual facts and enforcement became a business again.
21:15Tappenden believed that firms like the ICF
21:17had also muscled in on the drugs trade at the events.
21:21You're never going to argue with 10 real good bouncers who are good villains,
21:27GBH merchants, attempt murder merchants.
21:30You're not going to argue with them
21:31when they've got a Rottweiler dog on the end of a leash.
21:35The rave scene was descending further and further into the underworld.
21:39Tappenden now had Pritchard firmly in his sights.
21:42If he mixed with gangsters, he had to be taken down.
21:45They got the mad notion one day to set riot squads out for us.
21:51Now, when you've got a riot squad of aggressive police
21:54who turn up in SPG vans with helmets and shields,
21:58you can have a big problem in your hands
21:59because not only have you got maybe 12 or 15 strong doormen
22:04who are going to be your first port of entry,
22:06who are going to try to stop you,
22:08you've got 4,000 or 5,000 people behind now
22:10who are also going to be extremely pissed off.
22:14In three violent months, the pay party unit made 265 arrests
22:19and recovered chilling proof that gangsters had infected the rave scene.
22:23To avoid the heat, Pritchard slipped quietly out of the country,
22:26but the Essex underworld had not seen the last of him.
22:31Ken Tappenden retired from the police force in 1993.
22:35The war on drugs had been his last stand.
22:38He always felt it was a losing battle.
22:40You never win.
22:42Why on earth I turned out 600 policemen some nights, I don't know.
22:48Evolution of villainy, evolution of drugs,
22:53evolution of music was always going to overtake us.
22:57All we did for a while was put the sandbags across the door
23:02and when you took that off, it was just a flood of villainy with violence.
23:10In the 1990s, the underground rave scene exploded onto the mainstream stage.
23:15While the government introduced new laws to tackle the warehouse parties,
23:19giving police the upper hand,
23:20new licensing laws meant Essex nightclubs could stay open late.
23:24Keen to cash in on the music's popularity,
23:27clubs began to stage legal rave nights of their own,
23:30but with raves came drugs and with the drugs came a bloody gang war.
23:36The battlefield would be Basildon,
23:39the new town that 50 years earlier had embodied optimism and a bright future.
23:44It was this town that gave birth to a gang
23:47destined to go down in underworld legend as the infamous Essex Boys.
23:52Their leader was Tony Tucker,
23:54a security entrepreneur who, like Carlton Leach and the ICF before him,
23:58controlled the drugs trade as gatekeeper to the ecstasy-fuelled raves.
24:04Tucker supplied security for popular Basildon night spot Raquel's.
24:08His head doorman was violent offender Bernard O'Mahoney.
24:14He knew Tucker's dealers and allowed them into the club.
24:18Obviously at the front here you'd have all the doormen.
24:22They might pretend to search them if the police were here or management were here
24:27and then let them upstairs to sell their wares, basically.
24:31Tucker's approved dealers could operate without interference
24:34and now that drugs, not alcohol, fuelled the party,
24:37violence became a rare occurrence, which meant the authorities stayed away.
24:42The police just left us to it, really.
24:44They used to drive by and wave and,
24:46all right, lads, and there was no trouble at all, you know what I mean?
24:49We just left to our own devices, you know what I mean?
24:51The lunatics took over the asylum, you know what I mean?
24:57The dealers were getting rich
24:58and paid Tony Tucker handsomely for protection within the club.
25:02Tucker had quickly become a powerful player
25:04and believed he could control the new Essex rave scene.
25:08With his newfound wealth and status,
25:10he bought expensive property in rural Essex and rubbed shoulders with celebrities.
25:15He was personal minder to middleweight boxing champion Nigel Benn.
25:20The other two members of the Essex Boys were brutal henchman Craig Rolfe
25:24and ambitious villain Pat Tate.
25:26A giant with a big personality and a huge ambition.
25:30He was awesome, a big man, six foot four, good-looking man.
25:33He had loads of character, charisma.
25:35You know, it's just about everything that anyone wanted, you know what I mean?
25:38But entrepreneur Tate always wanted more.
25:42Tate was this big monster and he was saying to Tucker,
25:46you know, forget selling pills in clubs.
25:49You're only making a couple of grand a week or this.
25:51He said, I can make you big money.
25:54The Essex drugs market was huge.
25:56Ecstasy use was more widespread than ever.
25:59But criminals were turning over fortunes from drugs of every description.
26:02Cocaine, heroin and cannabis were rife.
26:06Drugs started to take over from every other form of making money with villainy.
26:11In a big way.
26:13Tate saw an opportunity for aggressive expansion.
26:17The gang began moving in on other drug businesses.
26:19They wanted a larger share of the market
26:21and were prepared to use force to take it.
26:25On one occasion, the gang tried to take a cut of the profit
26:28from a cannabis growing operation.
26:31What they didn't know was that veteran crook Danny Woollard
26:34already had money invested in it.
26:36Met him over at the country club, me and my mate.
26:39Said, you ain't getting nothing.
26:43They didn't want to know.
26:44Bullies were where they could be, my opinion of it.
26:47When you bully people, you know, whatever's coming, isn't it?
26:52Woollard's associates left Tate with a broken jaw.
26:55He hoped that this would teach the gang a valuable lesson
26:58about upsetting fellow criminals.
27:01If you keep catching people and having them over,
27:04you're going to get shot or done or something, isn't it?
27:07You can't carry on like that.
27:09But the Essex boys didn't learn their lesson.
27:11They were out of control.
27:13They weren't just dealing drugs.
27:14They'd also become heavy users and friends noticed their behaviour changing.
27:18It'd gone beyond the realm of just taking a pill
27:22and going out and dancing or, you know, the rave.
27:24It was going every hardcore drugs, you know what I mean?
27:27And they were different people. They were strangers.
27:31Crazed by drug use and a thirst to expand their business,
27:34the gang were ruthless to their enemies and associates alike.
27:39People messed up.
27:40The way Tony and Pat were, they had to be punished, you know?
27:44When a small-time seller who worked for them lost money on a drug deal,
27:48Tucker and Rolf made him pay with his life.
27:51He was kidnapped and, according to O'Mahoney,
27:53given the gang's signature treatment.
27:56They used to get a syringe and put steroids in it
27:59and other drugs, heroin and things like that.
28:03And they used to call it champagne.
28:07The victim was forcibly injected, the cocktail was lethal
28:10and he died in the hospital.
28:12The cocktail was lethal and he died a horrible death.
28:15The message was clear, the gang were not to be crossed.
28:19And when Rolf went to the back of the car to try and make the car up,
28:23they discovered he was dead.
28:24They just threw him in the ditch like discarded rubbish, you know?
28:32Word of their brutality quickly spread throughout the underworld.
28:35But in Essex at that time, police described a curtain of fear
28:39and no-one was talking to them.
28:41For victims caught up in drugs,
28:42the last place you could turn was the police.
28:46With the authorities unable to act,
28:48it fell to the old criminal establishment
28:50to worry about the underworld's new upstarts.
28:54Now free after serving his time for the amphetamine conviction,
28:58Billy Blundell was not impressed.
29:02Injecting people up and throwing them in ditches to die
29:04and things like that, which they did, you know?
29:07So they were the worst of the worst.
29:10So, you know, you couldn't afford to take chances with them.
29:13They had to come.
29:15The Essex boys were making enemies in high places,
29:18but one victim would fight back.
29:21Pat Tate had begun using heavy drugs
29:23and when his close friend Steve Niporellis confronted him about it,
29:27it provoked a bitter feud.
29:30We had this massive argument and I just remember saying,
29:32Pat, you're nothing but a junkie and nothing more than a junkie
29:35and he's gone, Nip, I control the drugs.
29:37Drugs don't control me.
29:38I mean, you're a junkie.
29:39You're nothing more than a junkie.
29:41But what Niporellis didn't realise was that in their drug-addled state,
29:45Tate and Tucker were looking for any excuse to turn on him.
29:49When they used to come in the club,
29:50I could sort of see that there was ill feeling from Tucker towards Niporellis.
29:58When Ellis made an offhand remark about Tony Tucker's girlfriend,
30:01they had their excuse.
30:03Tucker and his henchman, Craig Rolfe, turned the torture treatment on Ellis.
30:08So I'm doing the hoovering in the hole,
30:09front door's open, in walks Tony.
30:11He's grabbed me by the throat and he's sort of lifting me up.
30:15Pushed me down onto the bed and he sat across me
30:17and he pulled out a meat cleaver and I'm looking at him
30:19and he's going, your hand or your foot?
30:22And I was just thinking, if you cut my foot off,
30:25I won't be able to chase you.
30:27If you cut my hand off, I can still shoot you.
30:29And I'm left-handed, so I held out my right hand
30:31and I just sat there, closed my eyes,
30:34thought I'm going to scream, I'm going to cry,
30:35it's going to hurt, I'm going to kill you.
30:38Tucker allowed Nipper to keep his hand,
30:40but he left the flat with many of his belongings,
30:43while Rolfe wiped excrement over the walls.
30:46High on drugs, the gang had become monsters.
30:52In the days that followed, the gang decided they had let Ellis off lightly.
30:57Tucker and Tate told friends they now planned to torture and kill him.
31:02But when the gang threatened his family, Ellis decided to strike first.
31:08He went to Pat Tate's Basildon home to murder his former friend.
31:13Come up into his back garden, I had the handgun
31:16and I just thought, I'm going to shoot him,
31:18simply as that, I'm going to shoot him.
31:22Picked a rock up, threw the rock through the frosty glass.
31:27Since the glass broke, there was Pat and he's having a shave
31:31and he's looking like that.
31:34What had happened was the gun hadn't fired properly,
31:37it had gone click, click, bang,
31:38and the third bullet that hit him in the arm,
31:41all I could hear was screaming,
31:43and Pat was on the phone going,
31:44please, please, I've been shot, I've been shot.
31:47Ellis escaped and Tate was taken to hospital.
31:52But the Essex boys had been attacked and wouldn't take it lying down.
31:56They drew up a plan to lure Nipper Ellis to the hospital,
31:59promising a truce.
32:00Tate hid a weapon in the bed sheets and waited for Ellis to arrive.
32:05But fortunately for Nipper and unfortunately for Tate,
32:09fortunately for everyone else,
32:10a nurse making up Tate's bed,
32:13found the gun, called the police and he was recalled to prison.
32:17Pat Tate had been on parole for a robbery,
32:19but possessing a firearm breached his conditions
32:22and he was sent back to jail for 18 months.
32:25Tate refused to give evidence against Ellis,
32:27but the gang had threatened his family
32:29and Ellis's war with the Essex boys was only just beginning.
32:33I had to kill them, that was all I knew, I had to live to kill them.
32:39While in jail, Pat Tate was filmed for a news item about the prison gym,
32:44but while playing the model prisoner, he was busy planning his drugs empire.
32:49Tate decided that away from the raves,
32:51the Essex boys could be making much more money with much less risk.
32:56Trouble is with the rave scene, if you have 500 ecstasy pills,
33:01it's no good sitting in the corner of the club with them in a bag
33:04and not telling anyone about it.
33:06You have to approach as many people as possible to sell as many as you can
33:10and the more people you tell, the more chance you are of being grasped up.
33:15So Tate, in his infinite wisdom, thought that was a bad idea.
33:20Tate wanted to move up the underworld ladder and into importing drugs.
33:25With the longest coastline of any county and major ports like Tilbury to exploit,
33:30it was possible to make a lot of money from smuggling drugs in Essex.
33:35Pat Tate set his sights on going global, today Basildon, tomorrow the world.
33:41On Halloween night 1995, he was released from prison.
33:45If you were a rational person and you're dealing with international criminals
33:51and heavy duty criminals, not a problem.
33:54But if you're a homicidal maniac man-mounting,
34:02not a good idea because you're going to upset people.
34:06The gang began importing drugs from the continent.
34:09But on November the 11th, 1995, came the event that would mark the beginning of the end.
34:18A teenager called Leah Betts fell into a coma after taking a single ecstasy pill.
34:22The tablet had been bought at Raquel's,
34:25put in a club firmly under the national media spotlight.
34:30Raquel's was being named as the source of the drugs.
34:33So I just knew this was going to cause murders.
34:37The mainstream drug scene now had a high-profile victim
34:41and the press were demanding answers.
34:43What happened behind the doors of Raquel's
34:45was now a matter of nationwide public interest.
34:49Rang took her and he just went off the edge.
34:52They're going to be trying to import drugs while under the media spotlight.
34:56The party was over.
34:58Police were now all over the club, warning customers about drugs
35:01and determined to discover how an 18-year-old drug addict
35:05and determined to discover how an 18-year-old girl had been supplied with ecstasy.
35:10The stage was set really.
35:12Tait was threatening everyone and everything that moved
35:15because his plans to be an international drug smuggler were falling apart.
35:21Unable to do business,
35:22they pressurised and threatened their underworld partners for money.
35:26Then, as Leah Betts lay dying,
35:28O'Mahoney says the police came to see him.
35:31He was about to have to decide whose side he was on.
35:35They said, we're trying to get one of the pills that she'd taken from that batch
35:39so we can analyse it and he might be able to help.
35:41And I said, I'll get you one.
35:43Took her, went mental.
35:44He went, you can't be dealing with the police.
35:47And I sat at home and I've got kids, you know what I mean?
35:49And I sat there and I thought, well, what's more important, you know,
35:52some drug dealer or an 18-year-old girl?
35:56There was no choice.
35:57I didn't even think about it.
35:58Oh, do you know what I mean?
35:59I just thought, I'll get them one.
36:01To the Essex boys, this was a clear act of betrayal.
36:04Dorman O'Mahoney was now a marked man
36:06and learned from police that the gang were coming after him.
36:10So I got my then partner and two kids
36:12and I put them in a hotel at a place called Rettingdon
36:16and we stayed there the night.
36:19O'Mahoney wasn't the only one under threat.
36:21Raquel's regular drug dealer owed the Essex boys money
36:25but with police all over the club,
36:27he couldn't work and he couldn't pay his debt.
36:30When the Essex boys threatened him and his family,
36:33he turned to the one man in Essex he knew could help him.
36:37I said to him, yeah, it can be sorted out.
36:39I said, I'll make a phone call now and get it sorted out for you.
36:42I made a phone call and a guy turned up
36:46on a motorbike with a crash helmet with a 9mm gun.
36:49Lundell provided the terrified dealer with the gun,
36:52the chaperone and some simple advice.
36:54When they turn up, shoot one of them straight in the cobblers.
36:58You ain't gonna kill them, just shoot them straight in the cobblers
37:00or even both of them.
37:02The dealer declined this helpful offer.
37:04Instead, Lundell called the Essex boys to a meeting.
37:08Only Tate turned up and Lundell took the chance to warn him
37:11that his association with Tooker was dangerous.
37:15He didn't seem to care much and I said to him,
37:18you know, it's all right if you keep blanking and all that
37:21but what happens if someone creeps up behind him
37:23and goes bang in the back of the head?
37:25If you're with him, you're gonna get it as well.
37:28He looked me in the eye and said, well, if it happens, it happens.
37:31Three days later, it happened.
37:34They were found in this Range Rover.
37:36All three men were shot through the head at point-blank range.
37:39Detectives believe the killings have all the hallmarks of a gangland murder.
37:46You have 26 messages.
37:49Tony's cold, can you give us a ring? Cheers, mate.
37:55Tom, can you ring us back if he's dead?
37:57We're worried.
37:58Will you ring us straight back soon as you can?
38:02Hi, it's Annie Mae, can you just give us a ring, please?
38:04Let us know you're all right, because at the moment, I think you're dead.
38:09On the night of December the 6th, 1995,
38:13the gang were lured to this remote country lane
38:15where they were ambushed by two mystery gunmen.
38:18O'Mahoney thinks he knows how it went down.
38:21The front of the car was adjacent to this tree.
38:27The vehicle stopped and there was a five-barreled gunshot.
38:29The vehicle stopped and there was a five-barreled gate there.
38:33And the fourth man in the vehicle said,
38:36Wait here, I've got the key.
38:40As he's kneeling down by the gate, pretending to unlock it,
38:45a fifth man was lying over there in the undergrowth.
38:49He came to the back of the car.
38:55So he shot Rolf behind the ear.
38:57He was killed instantly.
38:58His hands remain on the steering wheel.
39:00His foot's on the brake.
39:03The shot took her in the side of the face.
39:05That exits through his mouth.
39:07It doesn't cause any damage to any vital organs.
39:10So he's still alive and moaning.
39:12And then he shot Tate in the liver.
39:15So they can have words with him before they finally kill him.
39:17Another man goes around the back of the car
39:19and shoots Tate through the nearside window.
39:22After shooting Tate a second time,
39:24the shot took her again behind the ear.
39:27And they're all dead.
39:29The gunman just turn and walk away,
39:32back up the lane to meet the getaway vehicle.
39:37The gunman and the getaway driver escaped.
39:40And for six months, their identities remained a mystery.
39:44People said to me, who do you think killed?
39:45And the police, I said, well,
39:47open the Essex phone book and put your finger in.
39:49Everyone in there has got a reason.
39:51So who shot the Essex boys?
39:54They'd made many enemies.
39:56Danny Willard had crossed swords with the gang in the past.
39:59Was he the retinue and assassin?
40:00I was here that night.
40:01It was nothing to do with me.
40:02I was in the, uh,
40:04Bunk Mill service station with a nick of lorry.
40:07The tiny village was busy that night.
40:10Nipper Ellis was also in town.
40:12He'd tried before to kill them.
40:14Was he there to finish the job?
40:15Me and somebody else, we were trying to leave
40:18a container, a bag of cigarettes,
40:20a container with some stuff in it.
40:24So I was up near Rittenden.
40:25Unfortunately, I didn't hear the shots.
40:28I'd like to say I was there, but
40:32I was, I was up near Rittenden.
40:35By morning,
40:36Ole Mahoney had checked out of the village hotel.
40:39He knew the gang were out to get him.
40:41Had he got to them first?
40:43When I got off the train
40:45at a place called Safeminster,
40:48the platform was just
40:49loads of police officers.
40:52And I thought,
40:52these ain't come to check my ticket, do you know what I mean?
40:55Convinced the police would come for him too,
40:57Billy Blundell decided to take a holiday.
41:00The newspapers were full of it about
41:02Bob Oskin look-alike who drives a red Rolls Royce and
41:05in the papers said,
41:06drives around with men with no necks and all this load of nonsense.
41:12But the police didn't come for Blundell.
41:14In fact, all four men are innocent of the murders.
41:17Someone else killed the Essex boys.
41:21In May 1996,
41:23police were handed a breakthrough
41:24when a suspect in a drugs raid turned informant
41:27and claimed to be the getaway driver.
41:31On his evidence,
41:33Michael Steele and Jack Wombs
41:35were convicted of murdering the Essex boys.
41:38Steele had been a big time drug smuggler,
41:40one of many people the gang had threatened.
41:43Wombs was his accomplice.
41:45The two men are now serving life sentences,
41:48though the underworld believes that the authorities have the wrong men.
41:53They didn't do it.
41:54You know, the guy who put them there
41:57had something to gain by doing that.
42:00So...
42:01It wasn't them.
42:02They were innocent men, right?
42:03They were innocent, believe me.
42:05I know who was there that night
42:07and I know they weren't there.
42:09Veterans of the Essex underworld know to stay silent,
42:13but they also hope that with the gang gone,
42:15Essex could look forward to a brighter future.
42:19It's sad that three people died,
42:20but whoever did it, you know, did the world a favour, really,
42:23because they're intent in killing me and killing other people.
42:29So good riddance to bad rubbish, really.
42:3215 years on from the fall of the Essex boys,
42:35Billy Blundell believes the county is worse than ever.
42:38He's retired from crime and now runs a boxing gym,
42:41hoping to keep kids off the streets.
42:43When he thinks things are bad, you know you're in trouble.
42:48A lot of these young kids running around with guns,
42:51we really shouldn't be,
42:52shouldn't have a bow and arrow in our hands,
42:53let alone anything else, you know.
42:56And as for Essex, the land of opportunity,
42:59it continues to be plagued by drugs.
43:03In 2004, £100 million worth of cocaine
43:08was smuggled through Tilbury docks.
43:10The man the authorities suspected,
43:12the man charged with Britain's biggest ever cocaine bust,
43:15was Andrew Pritchard.
43:17If convicted, Pritchard faced 40 years in prison.
43:21Though he admits to a lucrative career as a smuggler,
43:24he denies he ever smuggled cocaine.
43:26He has always claimed he was set up by customs and excise.
43:30After two trials, he was acquitted of all charges.
43:33Though he spent 18 months on remand,
43:36for an entrepreneur like Pritchard,
43:38everything is an opportunity.
43:40He has written a book,
43:41and a film about his career is underway.
43:44By cashing in on his past criminal career,
43:46Pritchard is not alone.
43:48The retinent shootings have spawned three feature films
43:51and several books in just 15 years.
43:54The old kings of the underworld
43:56are swapping their guns for their pens,
43:58to the despair of police.
44:00I thought the only way I could have my say
44:01is if I put it in my own words,
44:02and that's why I started writing.
44:03And I see no harm in it.
44:05I mean, if the police don't like the books,
44:07the best thing to do is stop reading them, you know what I mean?
44:10The entrepreneurial spirit that built Essex
44:12is building the legend of the Essex underworld.
44:15The Essex boys have entered criminal folklore,
44:18but one man wishes he'd killed the men
44:20before their legend was born.
44:23Yeah, I do wish I'd killed them.
44:25And that is something I'll probably take to my grave,
44:27the fact that I didn't kill them.
44:28And the fact that I can't stand here and say,
44:29yeah, I did kill them,
44:30and I killed them slowly,
44:31and I tortured the pieces of s***.
44:34They got off like what they done to other families.
44:38I hope I meet up with them in hell.
44:40I hope I meet up with them in hell.
44:43From terror threats through to major advances in technology,
44:47a lot happened in the 2000s.
44:49Brand new, the decade we saw it all is tomorrow at 10.