Hitmen (18 page)

1.
Martin Cahill
– aka ‘The General’ – was gunned down by a professional shootist on 19 August 1993 in his Renault 5 in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh. Just to ensure he had succeeded, the hitman fired five shots straight into notorious gangster Cahill with a .357 Magnum. Cahill had
double-crossed
other criminals and the IRA, so it was no surprise there was a bullet with his name on it.

2.
Charlie Wilson
. In 1990, the Great Train Robber was rubbed out by the pool of his £250,000 Marbella hacienda by Danny Roff. The hitman was himself on the run after escaping with associate Billy Edmonds from a British prison while serving 13 years for armed robbery. Wilson had
double-crossed
a big London syndicate during an illicit drugs deal.

3.
Pat Tate
,
Craig Rolfe
and
Tony Tucker
were shot dead in their Range Rover in an Essex field in December 1995. Their
demise marked the end of one of the most notorious drug gangs in Britain, believed to be the one that supplied the ecstasy which killed tragic Essex teenager Leah Betts. Two men were later jailed for life for carrying out the killings.

4.
Pete McNeil
was shot at point-blank range by a motorcyclist outside his red-brick modern detached home in Hampshire on 10 February 1998. Millionaire-
gangster-turned
-police-informant McNeil – alias James Lawton – had been the supergrass in a $70 million cocaine heist that had connections with the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia.

5.
Keith Hedley
was killed by alleged bandits on his yacht
The Karenyann
in Corfu in September 1996. Kent-based Hedley, 56, was a suspected money launderer who was mown down by the so-called pirates when he tried to stop them stealing his dinghy.

6.
Kevin Whitaker
was a drug dealer killed by Pat Tate (see above) in the autumn of 1995, when he was forced to snort large quantities of a substance called Ketamine. Vets use Ketamine to tranquillise horses before castration but it is also used as a narcotic and is known in the underworld as ‘Special K’. Whitaker’s killers went on to pierce his groin with a syringe and pumped a deadly concoction of poison into his blood. They then dumped his body in a ditch near Basildon, Essex.

7.
John Marchall
was found shot dead in his black Range Rover in Sydenham, south London, in May 1996. Marchall,
34, also knew notorious ecstasy dealer Tate. Tattooed Marchall had earlier vanished from his £250,000 home at Little Burstead, Essex, after telling his family he was going to meet ‘business contacts’.

8.
Donald Urquart
was shot in a London street in 1992. Urquart was a well-known London money launderer. It transpired that the gun used to kill him was supplied by a policeman-turned-gun-dealer, who later committed suicide. Urquart had been accused by other criminals of swindling them out of money during a huge, multi-million-pound money laundering scam.

9.
Tommy Roche
was killed in almost identical circumstances to those of the man he often ‘minded’, Donald Urquart. Roche, 42, was shot three times after stopping in a lay-by near Heathrow Airport on 21 June 1993. As a teenager, Roche had even worked for the Krays. He was a suspected police informant.

10.
Nick Whiting
was stabbed nine times and then shot twice with a 9mm pistol in 1990. Surveyors carrying out preliminary work for a new theme park at Rainham Marshes, Essex, stumbled upon Whiting’s body hidden in undergrowth. He’d handled much of the gold stolen from the notorious Brinks-Mat robbery in the mid-Eighties.

11.
Stephen Dalligan
was shot six times in the Old Kent Road in 1990. Dalligan, 27, was the brother-in-law of Brinks-Mat robbery suspect Tony White. Although detectives insist he
refused to help with police investigations, it is widely believed that suspicions about his involvement with the police led to his death.

12.
Daniel Morgan
was found with an axe embedded in his skull in a south London car park in 1987. The one-time police detective had been working as a private eye investigating police corruption when he was murdered. No one was ever arrested for the killing and there have been rumours in the south-east London underworld that a group of crooked policemen clubbed together to pay a hitman to wipe out Morgan.

13.
Daniel ‘Dannyboy’ Valliday
was at first thought to have died in a road accident, but the Ulster drugs baron was actually the victim of a clever assassin who made his death look like a hit-and-run. Valliday was so notorious that the IRA had ordered him to leave Ulster because of his outrageous drug deals. His killer was never found.

1.
Danny Roff
and
Billy Edmunds
were the successful
hitteam
behind the death of Charlie Wilson in Marbella. However, Wilson’s criminal associates finally got their revenge when Roff was himself shot dead outside his home in Wanstead Road, Bromley, Kent, in March 1997. Roff was executed as he arrived home in his Mercedes. Two masked gunmen shot him at least five times in the head and chest before escaping in a stolen van. Meanwhile, Roff’s accomplice
in the Wilson hit in Spain – Edmunds – remains on the run from both criminals and police.

2.
Jeremy Debonnaire
arranged his own murder rather than face a painful, lingering death from cancer. He paid two men £3,000 to make his death appear like a botched burglary at his detached bungalow in Bearstead, Kent, in August 1997. His death must surely be one of the most bizarre contract killings in criminal history.

3.
Pat Tate
was probably Essex’s most notorious E dealer when he decided to save the cost of hiring hitmen to wipe out business rivals by personally killing at least three criminals in an orgy of death that, not suprisingly, ended in his own brutal demise in his Range Rover in December 1995.

4.
Terry Bewdley
was paid to kill Bob Wignall in 1992 by his cheating wife Sandra, who even gave hubby Wignall oral sex in his car in a lay-by in Surrey to ensure that hitman Bewdley could walk up and kill Wignall when he was at his most defenceless. A hefty life insurance policy was at stake.

5.
Bob Bell
shot and killed businessman Terry Daddow on his own doorstep in a sleepy East Sussex village. Bell was hired by Daddow’s wife, Jean, and her drug-dealing son, Roger Blackman. They were angry at Daddow’s meanness and obsessed with getting a share of his life insurance payout.

Leon
(1995): By the mid-Nineties, even hitmen on the big screen had hearts of gold, and this one – played superbly by French actor Jean Renoir – makes you question your own morals.

Grosse Point Blank
(1996): Brilliant low-budget movie, starring John Cusack as a hitman who goes back to his old school’s reunion.

Pulp Fiction
(1995): Tarantino’s homage to the B movies of the Fifties provides audiences with Travolta and Samuel L Jackson as the two most bizarre hitmen you’ll ever meet.

The Killer
(1989): John Woo’s bloodfest that many believe was the best movie he ever made, despite a big-budget Hollywood career in the Nineties.

Fargo
(1996): The Coen Brothers’ finest film, in which two bumbling hitmen make a balls-up of killing the wife of a twitchy used-car salesman.

Red Rock West
(1992): Grossly underrated movie in which Nicholas Cage finds himself mistaken for a hitman, played brilliantly by cowboy Dennis Hopper.

The Hit
(1984): A supergrass hiding in Spain is sought by two London gang executioners. Worth a look just to see Tim Roth in dark, sombre pre-
Reservoir Dogs
mood.

The Killers
(1946): In a small, sleazy town a gangster – Burt Lancaster – waits for two assassins to kill him. This is the original film noir based on an Ernest Hemingway short story and it’s brilliant! It also spawned a brutal remake intended for TV called
The Killers
(1946), starring Lee Marvin as one of the shootists and featuring Ronald Reagan in his last role before hitting the political trail.

Kill Her Gently
(1958): Little-known low-budget B special about a madman who hires two convicts to murder his wife.

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