"THE HOME COUNTIES CONNECTION"

The Old Bailey trial this week of the men who murdered three drug dealers
in Essex gave a rare glimpse into a violent and vengeful underworld on the
edges of the capital - "The Home Counties connection". By Kim Sengupta

In the leafy commuter towns of Essex and Kent, men step out of the front
doors in the Acacia Avenues to go to work. But the briefcases they carry
can contain, instead of office papers and a packed lunch, a pistol and a
stash of cocaine.

The underworld is no longer confined to the urban squalor of the inner
cities. Successful gangsters have gentrified and become upwardly mobile,
leaving their council flats for the Home Counties, and their working-class
lifestyles for the trappings of success - des res, Rolls Royces and Range
Rovers, a boat in the local marina, ponies for the children.

The patterns of the migration have been to counties adjacent to various
parts of London: East End villains moved out to Essex, those south of the
river to Kent, the gangs around Islington to Herts and Bucks, and the ones
from Shepherd Bush and Kilburn to Middlesex. The sons of these villains
carry on the "family business".

South Londoner Kenny Noye, Brinks Mat money launderer and killer of a
policeman, lived in some splendour at his mansion in West Kingsdowne in
Kent until he disappeared following a fatal roadside stabbing; Roy Garner,
police supergrass from the Tottenham area ended up with luxury houses and
stud farms in Hertfordshire before being convicted of cocaine trafficking.
And Charlie Kray had long left behind Vallance Road in east London, where
he grew up with the twins Ronnie and Reggie, when he was arrested last year
for a £39m cocaine trafficking plot. Unusually for one of the East End
criminal aristocracy, he had moved to Sanderstead, Surrey, where he lived
with the daughter of a headmaster.

Criminologists maintain the arrival of such "quality villains" in the Home
Counties brought with it a culture of crime and corruption which embraced
local gangs. At the same time came the explosion in the importation of
drugs and the money that came with it. Essex and Kent, in particular,
became vitally important as routes for narcotics from the Continent to
London and other major cities.

The murder of the three men at Rettendon, in Essex was over drugs. The
victims, Pat Tate, Tony Tucker and Craig Rolfe were dealers who supplied
drugs through nightclubs and pubs in Essex and east London. It is one of
their gang, it is believed, who supplied the ecstasy tablet which led to
the death of policeman's daughter Leah Betts.

The victims had been been in dispute with the men who killed them, Micky
Steele and Jack Whomes, over a cannabis shipment. The court, which passed
three life sentences on the men, with a recommended minimum of 15 years,
had heard that a consignment of cannabis which Steele had supplied to Tate
and his accomplices had been of poor qualtity and Steele agreed to take
back the cannabis and return a deposit of £70,000. The money was paid, but
Tate denied receiving it and failed to return one third of the drugs haul.

Tate, an extremely violent mainline drug user, had threatened to shoot
Steele after making him beg on his knees. His intended victim got to him
and his two companions first.

After the shooting Steele said "they won't fuck with us again". He added he
felt like "the angel of death". As Steele and fellow killer Whomes walked
off after the shooting to be picked up by an accomplice, Darren Nicholls,
they passed a sign saying: "The use of guns or any activity which disturbs
people or wildlife are not allowed on this land. Enjoy your visit".

The violence of the triple execution and its apparent professionalism
appeared shocking, especially in the context of the village setting. But
police say extreme violence had become endemic in parts of the county over
the years. Tucker and Rolfe were themselves suspected of a particularly
brutal murder. Kevin Whitaker, a 28-year-old drug courier died of an
apparent drugs overdose in November l994. But, Tate told his mother,
Whitaker had been murdered by Tucker and Rolfe. They had injected him in
the groin with a paralysing drug, often used on horses, known as Special K,
then, powerless but conscious and pleading for mercy, Whitaker was killed
with an injection of lignocaine.

The night before his death Tate himself had badly beaten up the manager of
a pizza shop over an imaginary slight. He had phoned the shop and demanded
a specially made pizza with four different toppings on each quarter. The
manager, 21-year-old Roger Ryall had said this was not possible. Within
minutes Tate had arrived at the shop, battered Ryall and then smashed his
head into a glass plate on the sink. Like others crossed by Tate and his
friends, Mr Ryall thought it would be wise not to press charges.

Drug dealer Reggie Nunn too has painful memories of the extreme violence of
the Essex underworld. His face was mutilated with a narrow-bladed fencing
sword, an epee, over another drugs dispute, the selling of a thousand tabs
of ecstasy. He owed £7,000 to trafficker Jason Lee Vella and had failed to
pay. Nunn managed to escape from Vella's flat during the attack by throwing
himself out of a window. Vella and his accomplices were convicted at their
trial, and in July l995 Vella was sentenced to 17 years in jail.

Vella, who bought ecstasy from Dutch dealers, was suspected of the torture
of other victims who had been too scared to make complaints. One man had
his head shaved, and the back of his arms burnt by a hot iron, another was
given a "Glasgow smile" on both sides of his face with a Stanley knife, and
another was anally raped with a broom handle. He was also suspected of
being behind the shooting of a man, who spent hours on a life-support
machine and refused to give any information to the police.

In Kent, bootlegging of alcohol and cigarettes has been added to drugs as a
source of underworld violence. In just one month, September last year,
Dover had four shootings, a series of acid and machete attacks, and dozens
of beatings. The reason behind this, say police and customs officials, is
quite simple, organised gangs are fighting for control of a trade which is
now estimated to be worth £1bn a year. Smaller gangs are having to pay
rents to bigger ones for the privilege of smuggling the contraband.

The gangs are not averse to taking on the authorities by force to protect
their merchandise. Towards the end of last year police and customs officers
raided a hotel and discovered £70,000 worth of alcohol and cigarettes. The
smugglers fled, only to come back with accomplices to try and storm the
building and seize back the haul. They were only beaten off when the police
themselves received reinforcement.

One CID officer said: "Crime in Dover and surrounding areas has gone up by
18 per cent, and even this is an underestimate as of course a lot of these
attacks are simply not reported to the police.

"There are also links with drugs, because the heavies muscling in on
bootlegging are also involved in drug trafficking. This is a problem which
is not going to go away, we are facing a situation which was unheard of in
Kent in the past".

His counterparts in Surrey would sympathise. A few years ago a pub
described as the "most dangerous in Britain" was not in Brixton or the
Glasgow Gorbals, but Carshalton. The St Helier Tavern had seen many fights
and a man was shot in the face with a sawn-off shotgun.

A better class of villain has taken up residence further out in expensive
areas like Weybridge where they rub shoulders in the golf club with actors
and stockbrokers. A detective said: "They may think [that] away from the
centre of London they would be away from prying eyes if the law, but we
make sure we keep a watch on them. They may feel they are blending in with
their neighbours, but we know who they are".

Criminologist Robert Emerson believes the expansion of crime into the Home
Counties cannot be reversed. He said: "Social and logistical factors are
such that this is bound to continue. However, it is unlikely the ordinary
Home Counties residents would be directly affected by violence. After all,
the criminals tend to only kill each other."