BRUTAL GANGLORD WHO FELL VICTIM TO HIS OWN DRUGS

Colin Gunn ruled Nottingham by murderous violence and corruption, and
his malign influence may continue from his jail cell. Jamie Doward and
Carl Fellstrom on the downfall of a 'monster'

Police fear that the tentacles of Colin Gunn, the gangster serving 35
years for his part in turning the city of Nottingham into
'Shottingham', may still extend from behind bars, even into the police
force that finally convicted him.

Jailed for an additional nine years last week for corrupting two
constables, Nottinghamshire police were quick to proclaim the verdict
as a vindication of a multi-pronged operation to bring Gunn to
justice. But Chief Constable Steve Green acknowledged that Gunn may
still be exerting an influence. 'We will not just take for granted
that the fact he is now in prison means he cannot link back to his
associates,' he said.

Last week's sentencing shone new light on Gunn's reign of terror, in
which torture and protection rackets were never far away but which
spiralled out of control as the career criminal consumed a lethal
combination of steroids and cocaine, transforming him into a
psychopath. Gunn and his equally violent brother, David, wore
expensive jewellery and drove Porsche 4x4s. His personal registration
plate was POWER, a hubristic nod to his belief that he was beyond the
law.

That Gunn, 40, will now not be freed until he is in his seventies is a
major coup for the police. But doubts linger about whether his network
of police informants has been truly dismantled.

The Observer has learnt that police believe one of the constables who
supplied him with information, PC Charles Fletcher, was recruited by
Gunn personally before he joined the police and was placed into the
force as a 'clean skin'. Fletcher and another officer were jailed for
seven years and 12 months respectively. The paper can reveal that
seven years ago a corrupt police officer, who at the time occupied a
senior role, attempted to register Gunn as a major informant. The
officer was later jailed for possessing and supplying cocaine in an
unrelated case. Now police are wondering how many other corrupt
officers came into contact with Gunn. He was clearly getting
information from somewhere higher up than two lowly PCs.

Even at the height of police efforts to bring down the crime lord who
ruled north Nottingham's Bestwood estate, via a network of loyal
thugs, help appeared from unusual quarters.

In January 2005, just months before Gunn was arrested for organising a
double murder, police intelligence on the secret operations of his
feared Bestwood Cartel went missing from a car and found its way to
Gunn. The intelligence provided details about the investigation into
the cartel, which has been linked to at least six murders and more
than 50 other shootings, and gave the names of senior officers
involved in the operation. Death threats followed and some officers
had to be moved from their homes while security was upgraded.

That Gunn was to become one of the most feared men in Britain would
not have been apparent from the earliest entries on his CV. In the
late Eighties he was arrested for his part in a series of cheque
frauds totalling UKP10,000 and received his first serious jail term of
six months in prison. A former Nottinghamshire officer who interviewed
him at the time said: 'He was just an average run-of-the-mill petty
criminal; there was nothing remarkable about him at all at that time,
and no hint at all of the monster he would grow into.'

But the Gunns soon began to step up their criminality on the Bestwood
estate. Extortion became their primary money-raising activity,
threatening shopkeepers, businesses and pubs and clubs.

A former detective said: 'Their modus operandi was to visit a business
and ask to see the gaffer. Colin would point out to the boss that his
security was not very good and for 100 quid a week he would make sure
they were safe. Often the businessmen would just shrug off the initial
visit and send them packing. The same evening something would happen
to the business - it was either burgled or the windows would be shot
up.'

Most businessmen paid up; those who didn't received a second visit,
and Colin would drive up past the business, call out to the gaffer and
feign a gun pointed at the boss with his hand. It usually achieved the
desired effect.'

The brothers were also supplying drugs in the area. During the
Nineties this was restricted to amphetamines, ecstasy and cannabis,
but by the end of the decade they moved into harder drugs. Colin
became a heavy user of cocaine and mixed this with steroid abuse. The
cocktail left the 6ft 4in Gunn, a terrifying sight, with his bald head
and menacing eyes, increasingly paranoid.

A detective said: 'Gunn was doing so much cocaine it was leaving him
prone to psychopathic violence. One man suspected by Colin of grassing
them up was taken to a remote area, his hand nailed to a wooden bench
and then saturated in petrol while Colin played with a box of matches.
The fear he created always meant it was next to impossible to get
witness statements. Colin began to see himself as a kind of Al Pacino
in Scarface. He began to believe in his own myth.'

Increasingly police officers were called to incidents on the Bestwood
estate where firearms had been discharged into houses as punishment
shootings or individuals had been severely beaten. All the
intelligence they had indicated that Colin Gunn was behind many of the
incidents, but witnesses were rare. A cult of fear had been created
and the estate seemed to have taken a collective vow of omerta. The
police must share some of the blame for allowing the Gunns to create
their own fiefdom, according to former officers. 'The police let the
area down. No one wanted to work up there because of the
intimidation,' said one. 'I remember at one time we were being offered
double time to do patrols up on the estate, but there were no takers.'

Officers who were brave enough to venture on to the estate - where
gangs of baseball bat-wielding thugs could be summoned by the brothers
at a moment's notice - faced a public relations problem. The Gunns
ensured they were perceived as the real police force and community
leaders in Bestwood. Just like the Krays, they ironed out
neighbourhood disputes, returned stolen items of jewellery to their
rightful owners and meted out punishment to those who had committed
unsanctioned crimes. Locals still talk about a huge firework show
David Gunn organised.

'They were Robin Hoods to a degree,' one resident recalled. 'If you
had a problem, they could sort it out, but expected loyalty in return
and you would have to pay them back some time, whether that be by
running drugs or something else.'

Colin would frequently hold mafia-style boardroom meetings at his home
or at the Standard of England or the Sporting Chance, the two pubs -
both now bulldozed - the brothers had a stranglehold over. From there,
Gunn planned robberies and shootings. One such robbery was to end in
tragedy with the murder of jewellery shop owner Marian Bates. Colin
was said to have provided the gun and one of the getaway vehicles used
in the robbery. The gunman, James Brodie, has never been caught.
Police believe he was murdered on Colin Gunn's orders within 48 hours
of the botched robbery to prevent it being traced back to him.

It seems that no one was safe. Four younger members of the Bestwood
Cartel were jailed for a brutal assault on a Rastafarian social
worker, Derrick Senior. After they went down, Senior was shot several
times by another of Colin Gunn's enforcers, John McSally, who also did
Colin's bidding by shooting dead Patrick Marshall, who had carried out
a drugs run without the Bestwood Cartel's approval.

Amid the violence, Nottingham was dubbed 'Shottingham' by the media;
its reputation as Britain's murder centre saw university applications
drop and business leaders warn of a crisis in investment in the city.

But it was Gunn's decision to order the murders of John and Joan
Stirland that took the cartel's violence to a new level. The murders
were in revenge for the death of Jamie Gunn, Colin's 19-year-old
nephew. In August 2003 Michael O'Brien had shot dead a key member of
the cartel, Marvin Bradshaw, as he drove away from the Sporting
Chance. Jamie Gunn, who was in the front seat, had been the intended
victim. Bits of Bradshaw's brain were splattered over Jamie and he
never recovered, spiralling into a fatal vortex of drug abuse. He died
in August 2004, just days after O'Brien was jailed for life for
Bradshaw's murder.

Unable to get at O'Brien behind bars, Gunn hatched a new idea for
revenge: he would kill O'Brien's parents. 'The big man [Colin] has
taken Jamie's death really badly, he's in tears. I don't know what's
going to happen ... maybe next weekend,' one of the Bestwood Cartel
was heard to say in a phone conversation being bugged by the police.

The following weekend the Stirlands were executed in their seaside
bungalow in Trusthorpe, Lincolnshire, having been traced by the cartel
through BT engineers on its payroll. Mobile phone records showed that
Gunn was in the area at the time, and he was jailed for 35 years for
his part in the murder. His brother is in jail for running an
amphetamines empire.

Since the pair were jailed, gun-related violence in Nottingham has
fallen by an estimated 90 per cent. One detective said: 'The Stirland
murders were really Colin's downfall. He had gunmen who were unstable
drug users but were willing to please him by carrying out whatever
sick crime he had planned.

'His judgment had also become impaired by the drugs. Even his brother,
David, wanted to distance himself from him. People on the estate began
to see the violence as unacceptable and support for the Bestwood
Cartel waned.'