Essex Boys, The New Generation (24 page)

Other ideas dreamt up by Alvin to deflect blame from himself included portraying Boshell as a paedophile who had been murdered by one of his victims’ families, or as a drug dealer murdered by a rival gang.

Alvin wrote:

Dean had a picture of a young girl in his cell when I was locked up with him. He also told lies to people about him having a daughter. Dean seems to latch on to or date girls with young daughters. Is this evidence of grooming?

It’s my belief from the statements gathered by the police and rumours going around that Boshell had for a few months prior to his death been robbing drug dealers. Dean would camouflage these robberies by telling friends when they saw him with drugs that he was looking after or selling drugs for other people. This way if any dealers came to find out about Dean having drugs, he would just repeat the story they were not his and he would be left alone. I believe this was the motive for Dean’s death. This motive may not be known to the police because no dealer is going to report their losses to the authorities. This would explain the anger used in Dean’s murder as beating and shooting someone of this magnitude is personal.

Dean’s robberies obviously caught up with him and he was executed by the persons he had robbed. Dean always spoke like a big player and bigged himself up into something he wasn’t. A couple of months prior to his death, he became more distant and we saw less of each other. This was more Dean’s choice. He seemed to be moving on and into different circles.

The more Alvin read, the more he realised that the police evidence indicated his guilt. Alvin became increasingly desperate to find the scenario, the motive; the ill-fitting pieces of the jigsaw that he needed to portray himself as innocent. Pondering endless conspiracies in his prison cell that he hoped might help set him free, Alvin wrote that in order to explain the phone evidence, which contradicted his police statement, he would tell the police that he had lost his phone during the weekend of the murder.

‘I was most likely chatting to a friend and left my phone in their car,’ Alvin said. ‘That person then probably drove to Southend with my phone.’

But realising this excuse would prompt the police to ask for the names of any friends whose cars Alvin had sat in that particular week, Alvin decided to tweak his story. ‘It is clear my phone was lost on the night of Dean’s death, because no more calls were received or made by me after that. It’s my belief that I left my phone on the roof of my car whilst unlocking it. Then, on exiting the Woodcutters pub, it fell off and would have been in full view of a number of people who were using the shops in the parade adjacent to the pub. Anybody could have found it.

‘Whilst in Walsh’s flat, I realised that I never had my phone with me. I couldn’t recall what I had done with it, so I borrowed Walsh’s phone to call mine. The call was unanswered and I was told to try again by the pre-recorded message, which I did and again there was no answer.’

Unfortunately for Alvin, the police had established that despite ‘losing’ his phone on the day of the murder, he certainly had it in his possession a few days later.

The temptation for Alvin to introduce yet another miraculous happening must have been great, but instead he revisited his notes and all the witness statements to ensure the continuity of his lies before coming up with a synopsis for his defence, which he hoped would clear him of the murder charge.

‘I received and made a number of calls whilst in the pub the night Dean died. I received a call from my girlfriend, Clair, who asked what I would like for dinner. Before she hung up Clair reminded me that I had to switch the tortoise lights on as I had forgotten to do it before leaving home. I breed tortoises and the lamps used to keep the eggs warm need to be turned on each night, but even more so when the weather is cold, which it was that night. The tortoise eggs are quite valuable; I was expecting to sell each egg that hatched for £350. I told Clair that I would do it and asked her to pick me up from Walsh’s flat when she had finished work. Clair agreed that she would.

‘Shortly after this call I told Walsh that I had to return home quickly, but I would be back. Walsh said that because the pub was quiet he was going to take a few beers back to his flat and I was welcome to join him. I said that I would.

‘Whilst I was in the car park, Percival came out of the pub and I mentioned that I was going home. I asked if he was going around to Walsh’s flat later and he said he was. We spoke about getting hold of cocaine for the evening and I said that I could get some. We agreed on getting a gram each. Before parting company Percival asked if I wanted picking up from my house. I said I did because I could then leave my car at home as Clair was picking me up from Walsh’s flat later.

‘I drove to a friend’s flat in Leigh-on-Sea to buy the cocaine, but when I arrived there was no answer, so I drove to a pub in Southend where he usually hangs out. He wasn’t there either. I thought about trying to get it off somebody else but decided to get myself home instead to sort out the tortoises.

‘I arrived home about ten o’clock, did what I had to do and was cleaning up in the kitchen when Percival arrived. I let him in, gave him a dozen or so bottles of beer out of the fridge and he put them in his car. We then drove to Walsh’s flat together. We arrived at about 10.45 p.m. I recall Katie Griffiths came down the stairs to let us in.

‘We sat around drinking for a while, just killing time until Clair had finished work. Percival left around 11.30 p.m. I left about half past midnight, when Clair picked me up.’

When cornered, Alvin has proved himself to be an extremely intelligent and cunning individual. Rather than raise his hands and accept his fate, he requested over one thousand statements and documents from his solicitors whilst in custody. He rehearsed what he was going to say at his trial by cutting out flash cards for himself containing questions and answers about the case. His cell has been described by prison officers as resembling a CID investigation room, with telephone billing, photographs and charts taped to the walls. Nobody can argue that Alvin did not know inside out every shred of available evidence about the case. If anyone wished to fabricate a convincing story about the murder of Dean Boshell, Damon Alvin was undoubtedly the man to do it.

As his confidence grew, Alvin’s belief that he was going to escape justice became evident. Not only did Alvin laugh and tell jokes about Boshell’s demise to inmates and prison officers, but he also boasted about terminating Boshell’s life.

A man named Michael Brown was first introduced to Alvin in 2002 after a friend had recommended him as a reliable cocaine dealer. During one of his regular residences in Her Majesty’s prisons Brown had found himself housed in the same part of the prison as Alvin. As they had known one another prior to their incarceration and had been brought up in the same area, the pair rekindled their friendship. It was while discussing their recent fortunes and mishaps that Brown claims Alvin told him that he had stabbed himself in the leg with a Stanley knife to prove to the Probation Service and the courts that he had been attacked by loan sharks.

‘He said he stabbed his upper thigh,’ Brown said. ‘He didn’t tell me if he had gone to hospital. Damon was making out that he received this injury from a member of the Adams family. The Adams family is a very violent family from North London. Because of him dropping their name, I found the story unbelievable. I could see on his left hand that he had a number of scars on his knuckles and fingers. Damon told me that the Adams gang had bashed him over the hands with something.

‘I have since learned that these scars were the result of a domestic dispute during which Damon punched the glass out of his windows. He also told me that his wife was cutting letters from newspapers and sending threatening letters to herself, saying things would happen to her if Damon did not pay what was owed and if he didn’t keep his mouth shut. He said he and his wife couldn’t stop laughing whilst they were doing all of this.

‘Damon had asked his wife to take these letters to the police station, which she did. Following his instructions, she went to a cashpoint and withdrew a large amount of money. She then told police that the people he owed money to had forced her to withdraw it. I pointed out to Damon that there were flaws in his story because you can’t withdraw that sort of money from a cash machine in one go.

‘I think he told me these stories because a lot of the inmates thought it was suspicious that he had only received a two-and-a-half-year sentence after being caught with a kilo of cocaine. Many of these people thought he was a grass and wanted to sort him out. I thought Damon was telling me all this to reassure me and them that he was a Jack the Lad and had not given information.

‘One day Damon and I were walking around the exercise yard. There were three other people present – one was an Australian we called Ozzie, and I can’t recall the names of the other inmates. I said to Damon, “Have you got any other worries, anything outstanding that could possibly bite you in the arse?” to which he replied, “Only the shooting at the allotment in Southend.”

‘I believe that Damon was referring to the murder of Dean Boshell, which I had read about in the newspapers. I automatically told Damon to shut his mouth. Damon was talking loudly in front of the other inmates. He didn’t mention it again during the exercise period. We discussed Boshell’s murder on a number of occasions after that in our cells. Damon told me that he had actually done it, but I didn’t believe him. I honestly didn’t think that he was capable of murder. I thought he must have just been saying it to boost his reputation.

‘Damon told me that he’d picked Dean up that night. As far as Dean was concerned they were going to pick up some drugs, and so he walked of his own free will into the allotments. Damon was boasting and said he did it execution-style. He didn’t say that anybody else was present. From the comments he made, I got the impression that he thought Boshell was a grass and I think that’s why he shot him.

‘The reason I didn’t tell the police was that it’s none of my business. It had nothing to do with me and I just didn’t want to get involved. Damon is someone to be wary of; he’s not someone you would want to have turn on you.

‘He told me that the gun was in the allotments already plotted up, there and waiting. In a later conversation with Damon, he told me that a man called Greg was his driver that night. He claimed that Greg had been caught driving around with a rope in the back of his car. I found the whole story completely unbelievable and didn’t pay much attention to what he said. Damon also changed this story at a later date and said that Ricky Percival was his driver that night.’

It is impossible to know if Michael Brown was telling the truth. After giving his statement to Percival’s solicitor, he went on the run because he was wanted by Essex police for two offences. Aged 42, Brown had accumulated no fewer than 90 separate offences, ranging from theft and failing to surrender to bail to possession of class-A drugs and numerous motoring offences.

In the eyes of the law that makes him unreliable as a witness, but Alvin, the man he was accusing of being a liar, was hardly credible himself.

Villains informing on villains always leaves a whiff of conspiracy, but Brown’s story was far less damning than one told by one of the prison officers. Aged 54, he is a former soldier and had completed 15 years in the Prison Service when he met Alvin. Throughout those 15 years of service, he had only been disciplined once and that was for hanging his coat on the door of an inmate’s cell, which was in breach of prison procedure.

Recalling the arrival of Percival and Alvin at Chelmsford prison in 2004, he said, ‘Alvin was very outgoing in comparison to Percival. He was loud, whereas Percival was like a church mouse. During association, when inmates are allowed to mix, Alvin frequently got his case papers out and sat with a crowd of other prisoners. On one occasion, I can recall Alvin saying in front of a number of inmates, “I couldn’t have been there, I had to go and turn the tortoise lights on.” The other inmates took the piss out of Alvin when he made this comment and said it would never stand up in court.

‘Alvin frequently went through the case photographs during association time. He would show the other inmates photographs of the murdered man’s post-mortem. I can recall watching Alvin and noticing that whenever he was looking at the photographs he didn’t show any remorse; there was absolutely no change in his emotion. I thought that any human being looking at those photographs would have to display some form of emotion.

‘One weekday afternoon in September 2005 I was working on landing D3. I had just come out of the legal aid office after making a call and an inmate asked me if I would get him a towel from the kit room. I went to get him a towel but found there were none. Towels are normally exchanged at the weekend and so it’s not unusual for the wing to run out by midweek. I left the kit room empty-handed and walked past the showers. The door to the shower room was closed, but I could hear Alvin’s voice. I would say that he sounded extremely agitated. I paused outside and heard Alvin say the following: “Fucking hell, mate, at the end of the day I done him. The only thing that has got me in the clear is that the old bill has got the time of death at 11.30 p.m., but I done him in the early hours of the morning.” I then saw Alvin’s silhouette coming towards me through the frosted glass and so I walked off. I recall thinking, “Fucking hell, he has done it.” At the time I didn’t want to say anything to anyone, as I really didn’t want to get involved. In the course of my job, I do occasionally hear inmates admitting to offences but never anything as serious as this.’