Hitmen (3 page)

A coincidence? Or was Decabral put up as a star witness at Noye’s Old Bailey trial to ensure that Noye – who once knifed an undercover police officer to death in his garden and was later acquitted of murder – wouldn’t get away with another killing? If Noye and Decabral did know each other before the Cameron murder was committed, why wasn’t it more openly revealed during Noye’s trial?

And would Noye – as many were quick to claim in the wake of the Decabral shooting – be obsessive (or stupid) enough to commission a hitman to so publicly execute a witness in his trial when he was intending to present himself in an appeal as a victim of some appalling injustice?

Noye knows full well that Decabral’s previously undisclosed criminal connections would have worked much better for him if he was still alive. As ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Nick Biddiss, who led the early stages of the hunt for Noye, said after the Decabral killing, ‘If Noye was responsible, he shot himself in the foot. If he was going to do it he should have done it before the trial. If he was behind it now he could not have timed it worse because of his appeal.’

Some faces in the badlands of south-east London and Kent reckon it’s more likely that one of Noye’s loyal cronies paid for the Decabral hit out of respect for Noye, forgetting about
the importance of his appeal. Others believe Decabral’s killer was paid by Noye’s enemies, determined to make sure Noye would be blamed and his appeal would be left in ruins.

Another story doing the rounds is that Noye ran up so many debts while on the run from police following the Cameron killing that a group of his angry associates commissioned the shooting. ‘Think about it,’ one underworld contact said to me. ‘It makes total sense. And it would explain why the execution was carried out in broad daylight. They was sending a message to Noye.’ It’s certainly true that Decabral had so many enemies of his own that they might have ordered the hit knowing that Noye would get the blame. Another popular theory is that Decabral took a £100,000 bribe to agree to water down his Old Bailey evidence, but then reneged on the deal and gave such a damning account that it guaranteed Noye would be jailed for life. ‘Whatever the truth a lot of people are going to have to watch their backs – and I’m talking about police and villains,’ says one who should know.

It can also be revealed now, for the first time, that Decabral boasted of meeting Noye at a number of gangland parties before the Cameron killing in May 1996. ‘If this is true it totally throws into question his validity as a witness in a murder trial,’ explained one criminal lawyer. Other criminals insist Noye and Big Al were well acquainted.

Kent Police – who masterminded the prosecution of Kenneth Noye – claim they already knew about Decabral’s criminal background but Noye’s lawyers made no attempt to probe it in open court. However, days after Decabral offered his evidence to police, a team of Kent detectives raided
Decabral’s home looking for drugs. They found a stash of guns and took away £150,000 in cash which they later returned untouched. All charges against him were dropped when the officers realised Decabral was an important witness in the upcoming Noye trial. The police who prosecuted Noye have always claimed they knew nothing about that alleged raid on Decabral’s home. As one retired detective told me: ‘How could one group of officers in the Kent Constabulary not know about the raids carried out on Decabral’s house?’

Part of the answer may lie in some of the intriguing developments that occurred in the run-up to Noye’s Old Bailey trial. One ex-Kent detective who followed the proceedings closely explained, ‘I heard there was some wheeler-dealing behind the scenes.’

The result of this ‘wheeler-dealing’ was that Noye’s representatives hammered out an agreement in an effort to ensure Noye would not face a mandatory minimum sentence after being found guilty of the Cameron killing. As one ex-Kent detective explained: ‘It’s like the wild west out there. There are some outlaws in south-east London who are a law unto themselves. If they’ve got a problem with the cozzers [police] there’s always someone they can call to sort things out.’

A spectre has hung over police in Kent and their neighbours in the Met ever since Kenneth Noye first started greasing palms back in the early Seventies. Noye even joined a Freemason’s lodge in west London to get nearer to ‘the enemy’. Noye already boasted of a circle of acquaintances that crossed all social divides and included several Kent magistrates. Noye also cashed in on the policeman’s favourite
philosophy that ‘a good detective is only as good as his informants. And a copper’s informants, by their very nature, are going to be villains or associates of villains.’

The problem with this philosophy is that it leaves detectives wide open to accusations of corruption. Criminals, like Kenny Noye, have happily helped police in an effort to divert attention from their own activities while at the same time obtaining, through the usefulness of the information given, a degree of protection from prosecution.

And Kenny Noye’s activities have also never been inhibited by incarceration in Her Majesty’s Prisons. At one stage in the late Eighties he was purchasing shipments of ecstasy pills in Amsterdam through a fellow inmate inside Swaleside Prison, in Kent. That inmate was bodybuilding drug dealer Pat Tate who later died in the notorious Essex Range Rover killings when three criminals were shot dead in a field in December 1995. Now I can reveal for the first time that another one of Pat Tate’s ‘clients’ was Alan Decabral. Yet more evidence of connections between Noye and the man who was murdered in a car park after he’d given evidence against Noye.

In the mid Eighties, multi-million-pound drug deals took over from security van robberies as the number one source of income. Dozens of upwardly mobile druglords, money launderers and handlers of stolen property turned the Kent countryside into their premier destination and they spent a lot of out-of-pocket expenses on keeping certain members of the local constabulary happy.

Step forward Alan Decabral – once a renowned drug dealer in Acton, west London – now looking for pastures new and a bit of peace and tranquillity in the Kent countryside. He, like
Noye and dozens of others before him, was attracted by the idea that it was ‘much more tricky to shadow a villain down a deserted country lane than a busy London street’.

At the other end of the county, the Channel ports of Dover and Folkestone provided the gateway to Europe and all its highly lucrative drug-trafficking routes. One retired bank robber has made a small fortune running villains such as Noye and Decabral from a tiny port near Dover across to Holland where drug barons head off for ‘company meetings’ in Amsterdam. ‘You can get in and out of Europe without the cozzers knowing anything about your movements,’ explains retired cannabis smuggler Gordon Scott. ‘The fella who runs it has this tasty motor launch complete with bedrooms and a fully stocked bar. He’ll even bring on the dancing girls if you book well in advance.’

Another of Noye’s one-time neighbours who no doubt crossed paths with Decabral was John ‘Little Legs’ Lloyd. He recently returned to his detached home after a five-year stretch in one of Her Majesty’s Prisons. One south-east London source told me: ‘I’ve heard that Decabral used to boast about his connections to Lloyd. There’s no way that Kenny Noye didn’t know all about him.’ There are quite a disturbing number of Kenneth Noye’s associates who’ve met violent ends. Decabral came across many of them at the Kent gangsters’ parties he boasted about regularly attending.

On 1 April 1998, the UK’s first National Crime Squad was set up by the Government to combat the growing menace of organised crime. The unit’s launch was directly linked to the newly installed Labour government’s dissatisfaction with the way that criminals like Kenneth Noye and Alan Decabral had
been able to increase their activities and continue to live openly in luxurious surroundings.

Not surprisingly, many of Kent’s most infamous ‘faces’ were among the top targets. National Crime Squad chief Roy Penrose even insisted at the time: ‘We will be targeting criminals who are the most difficult, the most prolific and the most lucrative. There is no hiding place. We will use every legitimate method to track them down.’

Police in south-east London still believe that other villains in the area were ‘queuing up’ to pull the trigger for their hero, Kenny Noye. ‘The money paid for the job is almost insignificant against the brutal kudos to be gained from being “the man” to blow away the chief prosecution witness against Noye,’ explained one detective. ‘The killer would have respect and forever be owed a favour by Noye. You cannot underestimate Noye’s continuing influence in the underworld because of his access to untold wealth.’

Kenny Noye’s appeal against his conviction was dismissed, but a later appeal against his life sentence was accepted and it was reduced to a minimum 16 years. The mystery of who commissioned the hit on Big Al Decabral remains to this day.

T
he Lincolnshire village of Uffington (population 530) lies just a few miles from the ancient market town of Stamford, the setting for the BBC TV series
Middlemarch
. Most of its houses are occupied by wealthy, middle-class professionals: businessmen, lawyers, accountants and officers from nearby RAF Wittering. Estate agents use words such as ‘idyllic’, ‘picturesque’ and ‘tranquil’ to describe Uffington.

Resident Diane Emerson-Hawley seemed the perfect example of the sort of glamorous blonde that the village welcomed into the fold. Diane and her new husband Colin Harrold moved into their £400,000 home – set in half an acre of grounds and screened from the road by a tree-lined garden and driveway – in the first few weeks of 1999. Mr Harrold had originally trained as an engineer but now ran a printing business and a separate enterprise selling recycled books for use as pet bedding. The couple, both divorcees, had first met
on a blind date and married in 1997. Mr Harrold had two sons aged six and ten by his first wife.

At the back of the property – called Barn House – was an impressive-sized swimming pool where Diane liked to keep fit most mornings before she drove her sports car with personalised number plates to the beauty salon she owned in nearby Stamford. Diane and Colin often went jet-skiing or took Colin’s powerboat out at weekends. Thirty-six-year-old Diane was known as a down-to-earth, warm and generous lady without an enemy in the world. A lot of that attitude came from having started her working life as a low-paid casualty nurse who’d sacrificed her youth to look after her sick mother. Diane had certainly packed a lot into her life.

In the middle of October 1999, Colin Harrold flew to Amsterdam on one of his regular business trips. The following day, when his wife did not answer the phone at their home, he contacted his brother, Neil, who lived locally.

Neil went to the house and found the back door wide open and no sign of a break-in. In the couple’s bedroom a wardrobe had been ripped open and Colin Harrold’s clothes were scattered everywhere. A nearby door that led to the loft was slightly ajar. It appeared that someone had been frantically searching through the house. Neil Harrold then noticed a trail of blood from the kitchen towards the front door. He immediately left the house and ran to the local pub, Ye Olde Bertie Arms, arriving at 7.45pm ‘in a very distressed state’. He asked to use the telephone to contact the police.

Officers arriving at Barn House found Diane Harrold’s
body floating fully clothed, face down in her outdoor swimming pool. The couple’s home was immediately cordoned off by police. It appeared Diane had first been attacked in the kitchen and then dragged outside. A tap in the sink was still running when police arrived at the scene and a bottle of washing-up liquid lay on the floor where it had fallen during some sort of struggle.

Detectives concluded that Diane must have still been alive, though possibly unconscious, when she was hauled outside and thrown into the water. Her killer had left a chilling ‘calling card’: the body of Diane’s beloved pet cat was floating in the pool beside her. Investigators also found that a substantial amount of cash was missing. But with no sign of a forced entry there wasn’t a clear motive for the murder.

Meanwhile husband Colin Harrold flew home from Amsterdam and went to stay with friends. As Diane’s
father-in
-law later told reporters: ‘If I could have picked a daughter from anyone in the world, it would have been her and I know Colin loved her very much.’ Everyone was in an understandable state of shock.

The news of Diane Harrold’s violent murder sparked a series of lurid headlines in newspapers across Britain. There were rumours of a vendetta against her beauty salon. One year earlier she’d bought the Cameo Health and Beauty Salon in Stamford and had been struggling to make it work. Then all the windows were smashed and she was also plagued by a series of strange phone calls, including bogus bookings and cancellations. Lorraine Rose, who ran the nearby Poppies dress shop, later explained: ‘The girls in the salon were scared by all the strange phone calls and cancellations. They knew
something was not right but we never imagined something like this could happen.’

Back in Uffington, residents were understandably stunned by the murder. ‘Diane was a terribly nice person and there has never been a cross word about her in the village. How does someone so nice come to an end like this?’ asked one neighbour.

Police appealed through the media for help in tracing Diane’s movements between 3pm on Tuesday, when she was last seen alive, and Wednesday evening when her body was found. As Detective Superintendent Chris Cook pointed out: ‘It is likely that the offender will be bloodstained and I would appeal to anyone who has any suspicions regarding any relation, friend, neighbour or associate to get in touch.’

Then investigators began unravelling the life of Diane and Colin Harrold. It emerged that they’d met through a lonely hearts advert placed in the
Peterborough Evening Telegraph
newspaper. For Diane, it had been love at first sight and friends admitted she was much more keen to get married than he was. Two years after their wedding – in early 1999 – Colin Harrold told his best friend Darren Lake that Diane was ‘bleeding him dry’ of money. Lake later recalled, ‘He said Diane wanted children, which he did not. He wanted his freedom.’ Lake and Harrold had met many years earlier when they were both apprentices at an engineering firm.

At the point when he got married for the second time, Harrold’s speciality was buying thousands of end-of-line books from publishers for a few pence a title, claiming they were to be shredded. In fact, police discovered he’d then sell them on to shops at home and abroad, making massive
tax-free
profits. He claimed he even bribed officials at book companies to turn a blind eye. ‘People were looked after,’ Harrold later said. ‘It was a win-win situation all the way down the line.’ Many of the deals were in cash and he planned to set up bank accounts in Malta to avoid tax.

Police soon established that Harrold pocketed at least £100,000 of undeclared income each year. A further
import-export
line in hard-core sex magazines – described in court as ‘commodities’ – was his next venture. Colin Harrold’s crafty wheeler-dealings were beginning to make him look like a possible suspect in the murder of his wife.

Detectives retracing Colin Harrold’s footsteps while he was away on his ‘business trip’ in Amsterdam discovered he’d frequented the city’s notorious red-light district after he’d phoned his brother to check up on why Diane had not been answering her phone at home. Was his role as a caring, loving husband all a charade?

Then Harrold’s former wife Annette told police that two weeks before Diane’s death, Harrold told her he was having an affair with another woman and that he was in love with her. Annette later recalled, ‘Knowing how we parted over money I said to him that it would cost him dearly. He said to me, “I’m already working on it.”’

Annette Harrold also told police that after Diane’s death her former husband insisted his new wife had been murdered during a burglary but then made a point of saying she wasn’t to worry about the safety of their children. Up to this point, police had deliberately not yet revealed that they knew there hadn’t been a break-in.

Then it emerged that, the month before Diane was
murdered, Colin Harrold booked into a health farm in Leicestershire with his latest mistress, Tania McCarter. They spent much of the day together in a whirlpool bath and steam room. Harrold later admitted to police that they’d had a ‘touch and feel’ session. But Ms McCarter insisted they did not have full sex and that – shortly before Diane was murdered – she’d finished her relationship with Harrold because he was married.

Then one of Diane’s oldest school friends told police she’d noticed the couple arguing when she stayed with them two months before Diane’s murder. Joanne Hewitt said, ‘It was tetchy. There were arguments. Diane had everything apart from what she really wanted, which was children. She made a lot of overtures about wanting children. But he said he didn’t want children.’

Another woman called Kim Milne met Harrold and his best friend Darren Lake on a night out with friends in a bar in Peterborough. During a conversation she asked Harrold if he was married. Harrold answered, ‘I’ve been married for two years. Two years too bloody long. Money is changing hands as we speak. I am doing something about it.’

Police believed that whoever committed the murder expected detectives to accept that Diane Harrold had slipped and fallen into the pool by accident after trying to find her cat, Cleo. But among the bloodstains in the house was a shopping bag smeared with a handprint which they believed came from the killer. And one of the names that kept coming up during police enquiries was Harrold’s best friend Darren Lake. Harrold’s friends and associates said the two men were very close. Lake eventually agreed to have his fingerprints
taken. Investigators were astounded to find that it was Lake’s handprint on that plastic bag.

On 12 November 1999, Colin Harrold and 30-year-old Darren Lake were arrested in connection with the murder of Diane Harrold. Lake had been best man at Harrold’s marriage to his first wife Annette. Harrold was taken into custody by police at a house in Peterborough and held with Lake at Boston Police Station in Lincolnshire. A white Vauxhall Astra belonging to Lake was also taken away for forensic examination.

Colin Harrold’s ex-wife Annette then told reporters from her home in nearby Yaxley, Lincolnshire: ‘I have been praying this wouldn’t happen for the sake of the children. I am horrified – but not shocked.’ She later told one newspaper how she’d once arrived home early to find Harrold dressed in her clothes. She also claimed he was obsessed with both gay and straight pornography.

Back in the sleepy community of Uffington, Harrold’s arrest for murdering his wife astonished the locals. Retired farmer and neighbour John Conington said, ‘I am flabbergasted by the news of Colin Harrold’s arrest. That anything like this could happen in our village is almost unthinkable.’

Shortly after the arrests, detectives uncovered a letter Darren Lake had written to his father in which he claimed that he himself might be Harrold’s ‘next target’. The letter said, ‘There will be one of three reasons for my death: No 1 – natural or accidental death. No 2 – a man hates me and has it in his head that I have slept with his girlfriend. No 3 – this is
probably the real reason for my death: Colin Harrold has probably either paid for my hit or killed me himself.’

Shortly after the letter emerged, Lake confessed to his part in the murder to police and alleged he’d been paid £20,000 to kill Diane Harrold.

Colin Harrold made his first court appearance following his arrest in a ten-minute hearing. He was on crutches following a sporting accident in the Nottingham prison where he was being held. His best man Darren Lake later wept in court as the charges against him were read out.

In July 2000, Nottingham Crown Court was told that Colin Harrold, who’d already begun an affair with another woman, had decided it would be too expensive to divorce his wife so he’d have her murdered instead. James Hunt QC, prosecuting, told the court: ‘This man, Colin Harrold, had a wife, Diane. She was his second wife. She wanted children. He did not. Moreover, he became tired of her and was playing with another woman. He had a lot of money and lived a lavish lifestyle. It would have been expensive to divorce his second wife and she would know too much of his shady business to be bought off cheaply. He therefore arranged a contract with a friend, named Darren Lake.’ QC Hunt continued, ‘This case is not a whodunnit. We know whodunnit. Darren Lake has admitted it. It is a question of who got him to do it. We say that it is plain. That it was Colin Harrold. Although items in the house were disturbed, it was plain that it was not a burglary.’

Lake initially told the court he’d worked as Harrold’s ‘gofer’ for £30 a day and the businessman had even lent him
£2,000 to buy a car. Then, a month before Diane’s murder, Harrold offered to write off the loan and pay him a further £18,000 to get rid of his wife.

Lake recalled, ‘We were in his office having a coffee and he said, “I have a proposition for you. I’ll give you £20,000 to knock off Diana.” I was shocked. He then put his hand in his pocket and brought out a photograph. It was a picture of me on holiday ten years ago when I was about 20. It was in Tenerife, our first trip abroad.’

Lake said the photo showed him being raped by three men, on the beach at Playa de las Americas. He insisted to the jury that he didn’t know who took it. Lake claimed Harrold then said that unless Lake carried out the killing, copies would be sent to his father, his fiancée and a former girlfriend, the mother of his seven-year-old son. Lake insisted that his ‘whole world caved in’ when he was shown the picture by Harrold, who had kept it for ten years.

Lake told the court: ‘With Colin you don’t say “no”. I never said yes – it was just expected.’ He went on, ‘He said it would be easy – easy, no problem. “Just knock her on the head and put her in the pool and make it look like an accident.”’

Lake even recalled how he set about committing the murder which they both codenamed ‘Cleo’ after Diane Harrold’s cat. When Diane returned home from work that evening, Lake said he sat chatting with her on the sofa before producing a wooden post and hitting her over the head with it. ‘There was blood everywhere inside the house,’ he told the hushed court. Then Lake said he pushed Diane Harrold’s body into the water, returning several times to ensure that she had not climbed out. Lake was then asked by QC James
Hunt, ‘How could you do such a thing?’ Lake looked across at Harrold and said, ‘I was frightened of him.’

One of Colin Harrold’s cellmates even took the witness stand and claimed that the businessman had confessed to the killing while in jail awaiting trial. John Bond, 44, explained: ‘He told me he left the money for the hit in the house, and Lake made it look like a break-in.’