Scotland Yard's Gangbuster

Bert Wickstead's Most Celebrated Cases

Dick Kirby

• Publisher: Pen & Sword True Crime
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781526751737
• eBook ISBN: 9781526731548
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

In the late 1960s the Richardson Torture Gang and the Kray Twins were removed from the London scene by ACC Gerry McArthur and DS Nipper Read respectively.Predictably it was not long before the vacuum this left was being filled. With McArthur retired and Read moved on, who was to sort out the new gangland threat.Step forward Detective Chief Superintendent Bert Wickstead. Having cut his teeth on young desperadoes and neo-Nazis in North London and solved Londons biggest post war bank robbery, Wickstead was well qualified to head up the Yards Serious Crime Squad.First to fall were the Dixon brothers, followed by the Tibbs family. As his fame spread he took on the West End Maltese Syndicate specialising in prostitution and extortion. When he broke up the Norma Levy call ring, two cabinet peers had to resign.Inevitably Wicksteads career was dogged by unproved allegations of malpractice but, as this riveting insider account conclusively proves, he more than earned his sobriquet The Gangbuster.

CHAPTER 1

A Gang Leader Named ‘Killer’

Nicknames tend to reflect the appearance of the person upon whom they’ve been conferred. Therefore, if someone is dubbed ‘The Vicar’ it would be reasonable to assume that his physiognomy exudes a saintly or at the very least a benevolent expression. Similarly, the sobriquet ‘Knuckles’ would suggest that its owner possesses a distinctly pugilistic countenance.

But seventeen-year-old John Brian McElligott was, as Wickstead described him, ‘5 foot 4 inches and weighed seven stones, dripping wet’. It was only after he had acquired a semi-automatic Beretta pistol and ammunition that the epithet ‘Killer’ was bestowed upon him.

McElligott was the dangerous leader of a gang of young thugs and on 30 November 1964, in the Balls Pond Road, he had shot and wounded fourteen-year-old Rodney John Brown. There had been a spate of armed robberies in which fashionable leather coats were stolen from their owners at gunpoint, including one from a Peter Coulthurst in Kingsland Road, Hackney on 1 December 1964. By now Wickstead had formed a squad made up of eight feral aids to CID, taken from the rightly feared 32-strong ‘G’ Division Aids’ Squad based at City Road police station; they knew the perpetrator’s nickname was ‘Killer’ but had no clue as to his real identity. Groups of the then fashionable Mods and Rockers were stopped and questioned, but although several of them admitted to having heard of someone nicknamed ‘Killer’, if any knew his true identity they were not disclosing it. But then the team received a tip-off that one of ‘Killer’s’ gang was working on a building site opposite Dalston police station; the entire workforce was brought into the police station, the worker was identified and he started naming names and providing addresses.

It seemed not a moment too soon, because on 29 December Police Sergeant Michael Rose, in charge of a nondescript ‘Q’-Car, call sign ‘Golf one-one’, responded to a call at a premises in Hilborough Road, Dalston, where two youths had been seen breaking into a house. One of the youngsters ran off, and when Rose gave chase, he produced a pistol, pointed it at Rose from a distance of 15 yards and threatened to shoot him. Undeterred, Rose continued to advance and the youth took aim and fired; fortunately, the bullet went over Rose’s head. The gunman then turned and ran; chased by Rose, he disappeared into a block of flats and vanished. The culprit was McElligott; and although Rose was unaware of it, McElligott was no more than three quarters of a mile from his home address in Baring Street. Later, a .22 cartridge case was found close to where Rose had been shot at.

But by New Year’s Day McElligott was in custody at Dalston, charged with robbery and shooting at Rose with intent to murder; he had also been positively identified by Peter Coulthurst and his companion, Margaret Johnson, as being responsible for the robbery of the leather jacket. That jacket and several others were subsequently recovered.

The next day, McElligott appeared at Old Street Magistrates’ Court and was remanded in custody; but following the court appearance, a group of youths confronted Coulthurst and Miss Johnson in Kingsland High Street, shouting and threatening that they would be ‘cut up and scarred’ if they gave evidence against McElligott. As the couple hurried away, the youths followed them, still uttering threats.

By 9 January 1965 McElligott’s associate, seventeen-year-old John Peter Barratt, appeared in the dock at Old Street Magistrates’ Court charged with shooting at Rodney Brown and with armed robbery; he was remanded until the following day, when he and McElligott were both further remanded in custody. However, their places in the dock were then taken by seven youths aged between fifteen and seventeen who had been charged with conspiracy to defeat justice by uttering threats to Coulthurst and Miss Johnson.

‘This is a prosecution which will be undertaken by the Director of Public Prosecutions because of the whole picture of all the circumstances surrounding the case of McElligott and Barratt’, Wickstead told the magistrate, Harold Sturge.

One of the sixteen-year-olds told the magistrate, ‘Sergeant Wickstead said we know McElligott, but we don’t.’

‘I think the case has been exaggerated a lot’, said a seventeen-year-old trainee draughtsman, and a sixteen-year-old trainee salesman told the bench, ‘In the statements, they say I was with them. I’ve got proof I wasn’t with them. I have statements from other people that I was seen.’

Mr Sturge was unimpressed. ‘The nature of the charge is a very, very grave one indeed’, he said. ‘On the face of the evidence, it seems a proper case for custody.’

The following week, matters were hardly any better. Wickstead repeated that the witnesses had been ‘put in very great fear’, but Mr Henry Charles Pownall acting for one of the sixteen-year-olds put in a spirited attempt at bail, saying that a statement had already been taken from the person who was alleged to have been frightened and from anyone who was with him and that evidence could no longer be tampered with.

‘You may think it an important point that everyone of these boys was at large for a week after this alleged incident when this person was threatened’, he told Mr Sturge. ‘But apparently not a word has been said, not an action done to that person or anyone connected with him during that week.’

However, Mr Pownall – later His Honour Judge Pownall, whose sense of fairness ‘made him popular with juries’ – was out of luck.

‘The mere fact that nothing else has been done or nothing was done may only be evidence of the fact that they thought they had done enough’, said Mr Sturge, adding, ‘The police do fear – and I think rightly fear – that there is the possibility and indeed, the grave possibility if not probability that witnesses who are to appear to give evidence against the accused may feel afraid to tell the truth when they come before this court.’

On 4 February 1965 a further charge was added, alleging that the seven youths ‘by threats attempted to dissuade Peter Coulthurst and Margaret Johnson from giving evidence in the case against John Brian McElligott at Old Street Metropolitan Magistrates’ Court’.

Outlining the facts to the bench, Mr Peter Palmes for the Director of Public Prosecutions stated, ‘They did not touch them but made it obvious that they thought Coulthurst had “grassed” on this man, “Killer”’, and the seven were committed in custody to the Old Bailey to stand their separate trial.

In the meantime, others of McElligott’s gang had been rounded up and stood trial at the Old Bailey. On 2 April 1965 His Honour Judge Carl Aarvold OBE, TD in passing sentence declared:

There seems to have been a poisonous growth affecting the youth of Hoxton, the core being John McElligott. The spread of infection caught on with all whom he came into contact. The influence he wielded depended on his willingness to carry a gun and to use it. One of the symptoms of the disease he spread was the failure of other youths to recognize the craven coward that he actually was. Responsibility for this state of affairs is, of course a social problem which I hope will cause much heart-searching in parents, schools, churches and every decent person in the Hoxton area.

McElligott had been found guilty of wounding Rodney Brown with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, shooting at Police Sergeant Rose with intent to cause grievous bodily harm or resist arrest, unlawful possession of a firearm, robbery of a leather coat and breaking and entering. He was sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment.

Peter Barratt was convicted of possessing an offensive weapon and wounding Rodney Brown with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. He and eighteen-year-old Michael Patrick Sullivan, who pleaded guilty to breaking and entering with intent to steal, were both sentenced to six months in a detention centre.

William John Adams, aged seventeen, pleaded guilty to robbery and possessing an offensive weapon and was sentenced to four months in a detention centre.

George Frederick Roberts aged fifteen and sixteen-year-old Daniel Michael Price were both convicted of possession of an offensive weapon and assault with intent to rob, and they, together with Dennis Raymond Blackhall, aged eighteen, who pleaded guilty to possessing a gun and assault with intent to rob, had their sentences postponed pending the result of probation reports.

Wickstead was one of a number of officers commended by the Trial Judge, the Director of Public Prosecutions and, on 5 October 1965, by the commissioner of police. As an additional bonus, Wickstead was promoted to detective inspector and although retained on ‘G’ Division was moved to fill a vacancy at Stoke Newington police station. Sergeant Rose was highly commended and six weeks later was handed £20 from the Bow Street Metropolitan Magistrates’ Reward Fund; the following April, he was awarded the George Medal.

And that should have been that – except that it wasn’t.

On the night of 15 February 1966, McElligott, together with twenty-year-old Colin Michael Duggan, who was serving a 3-year sentence for larceny, used basketball stands to climb over the wall of Aylesbury gaol and vanished – for a week.

‘He was very elusive to find’, the late Terry Brown told me, but early on the morning of 22 February, he, with other officers plus Detective Inspector ‘Nipper’ Read, acting on a tip-off from a local constable, went to a house in Shoreditch. In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film The Thirty-Nine Steps the hero, Richard Hannay, pursued by foreign spies, makes an escape from his flat by disguising himself in a milkman’s cap and coat. Nipper simply reversed Hannay’s role; borrowing a passing milkman’s cap and coat, rattling a cradle of milk bottles and calling out, ‘Milk-O!’, he persuaded the occupier of the ground-floor premises to open the door. With that, the officers were in and up to the first floor, where a highly surprised pair of gaolbirds were handcuffed and soon on the way back to their natural habitat.

As Terry Brown told me, ‘He was a little kid, pasty-faced, and without his gun he was nothing.’

Stan Clegg was one of the aids who had been commended. ‘We went to an address in Green Lanes in the early hours and nicked one of the suspects,’ he told me. ‘On leaving his address, surprise, surprise, out of the undergrowth sprang a press photographer; needless to say, Bert denied all knowledge that he arranged it!’

It was clear that Wickstead revelled in the limelight. The Evening News described him and his officers as ‘The Magnificent Seven’, rather inaccurately since there were ten of them, but it was still a nice piece of hyperbole.

‘I think that kicked off Bert’s career!’ Clegg told me, and it could well be that he was right.

‘Bert was going to make a name for himself’, said one of Wickstead’s contemporaries to me. ‘He took on anybody and anything. Was he a gangbuster? He was certainly a one-off.’

No, Wickstead was not yet a gangbuster; that sobriquet would take a little longer to arrive. But he had learnt a valuable lesson: the aids to CID that he had used in this investigation had been under the command of Detective Superintendent Ian ‘Jock’ Forbes (later Deputy Assistant Commissioner Forbes QPM) and they clearly worshipped their senior officer, a very tough veteran of the Flying Squad. ‘Nipper’ Read drily told me, ‘Ian gave his aids rather more latitude than was strictly desirable!’

Wickstead wanted that same adulation – and he got it. He never forgot those aids, and in years to come many of them would become members of his Serious Crime Squad.

Wickstead was certainly a headline-grabber as his next case, involving savage attacks on Orthodox Jews by a violent young gang of thugs, would prove.

CHAPTER 2

Anti-Semitism in North London

Once upon a time, in the 1960s, there were two gangs in North London; one was called ‘The Little Highburys’ and the other was known as ‘The Big Highburys’. As far as who ‘The Big Highburys’ were or what they did, I can’t help you; they and their activities don’t feature in this book. However, it is safe to say that the ‘The Little Highburys’, although their average age was fifteen and 75 per cent of them were still at school, ought by virtue of their disgusting, cowardly behaviour to have been elevated to ‘Big’. Thankfully, that category would be cruelly denied to them.

The area of London where the gangs operated was in and around Stoke Newington, the home of approximately 20,000 Orthodox Jews. Jews have, of course, experienced a long history of persecution; the pogroms which followed the demise of the Russian Tsar Alexander II in 1881 resulted in the death of 5 million, and with Hitler’s holocaust, 60 years later, accounting for 6 million more, they were all but wiped out. Little has changed for Orthodox Jews since they lived in nineteenth century Eastern Europe; they are insular, deeply conservative, speak Yiddish and worship in any of the seventy-four synagogues in that area. The men’s appearance is distinctive: they wear high-crown black hats and frock coats, and have long sidelocks of hair. To many Gentiles their garb looks rather strange, but to ‘The Little Highburys’ it provided justification for unparalleled viciousness.

This was demonstrated on the evening of 3 December 1965. The elderly Ralph Lewis Black was returning home from the synagogue along Fairholt Road, Stoke Newington, when he was confronted by five or six youths, one of whom shouted, ‘A fucking Jew!’ and another, ‘Get out of my way, you fucking Jew!’ He was then punched in the ribs and stomach and his hat was knocked off. He told the youths to leave his hat alone and as he bent down to retrieve it, several bottles were thrown at him. Although none of them hit him, Black shouted out after the retreating youths. It was, as he later admitted, ‘A mistake’. Two of them returned and attacked him again. Black fell to the ground and felt what he thought were several punches in the back, but managed to get home, where he found he was bleeding. He then went to hospital, where it was discovered that he had been stabbed six times.

Later the same night, in nearby Green Lanes, seventeen-year-old Joseph Springer and his friend David Lieberman were returning home from Yeshiva – an institute for Torah and Talmudic study. They saw two groups of youths observing them from opposite sides of the road. One called out, ‘Are you two Jews?’ and another shouted, ‘There’s a couple of Jews coming along!’ The two young men turned and ran, but something hit Springer on the back of his head and he fell to the ground, losing consciousness, whereupon some of the group kicked him in the face, damaging his left eye. This assault was witnessed by Lieberman, who was pushed over and then was himself kicked by four or five of the gang. Meanwhile, Springer was being repeatedly stabbed. It was a frenzied attack; there were fourteen cuts to his clothing, and he was stabbed a total of twelve times. The depth of the wounds varied from one-eighth of an inch to two inches, but the additionally horrific aspect of the attack was this: the blade of the knife was just one-eighth of an inch long. It was clear that the whole blade and the handle as well must have been ferociously plunged through three layers of clothing and the skin to make the wounds, the deepest of which was close to his left kidney.

The person responsible for the stabbing of both Black and Springer was Kenneth Leonard Skinner. He was a schoolboy and just fourteen years of age.

*

John Farley (later Detective Superintendent Farley QPM) was then an aid to CID at Stoke Newingto...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Chapter 1 A Gang Leader Named ‘Killer’
• Chapter 2 Anti-Semitism in North London
• Chapter 3 The Synagogue Arsons
• Chapter 4 ‘Britain’s Biggest Post-War Bank Robbery’
• Chapter 5 Birth of the Serious Crime Squad – The Dixons
• Chapter 6 Mayhem in East London – the Tibbs Family
• Chapter 7 Norma Levy – Sex in Government
• Chapter 8 The Porn Squad and the Maltese Syndicate
• Chapter 9 Trials – and Some Dodgy Cops
• Chapter 10 Legal & General
• Epilogue
• Appendix The Citation for Wickstead’s Queen’s Police Medal
• Bibliography
• Plate section