The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Steven Waldorf and The Hunt for David Martin

by Dick Kirby

  But this changed in June 1965 when he appeared at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court. For threatening behaviour and assaulting a police officer outside a club ‘without realising who he was’, as he would later say, he was sentenced to three months in a detention centre.

  Martin was not well educated but he was highly intelligent and he had a natural ability to turn his hand to anything electrical or mechanical; following his release from detention in September 1965, he trained as a motor mechanic. It did not last long; within five months he appeared at Highgate Magistrates’ Court, where for stealing items from his employer, he was placed on probation for two years. And that was the end of any pretence of honest work for a thoroughly dishonest employee; he ignored the counsel of his probation officer and from then on, Martin would channel his expertise into matters purely criminal, especially stealing cars.

  It caught up with him in July 1967 when at the Middlesex Area Sessions, for obtaining property by false pretences, three cases of larceny, two cases of storebreaking and stealing a car – and requesting twenty-one other cases to be taken into consideration – he was sentenced to Borstal Training and disqualified from driving for five years.

  During 1968, 1,425 inmates escaped from Borstal; Martin was one of them. He sprang a lock, scaled the boundary wall and was away. It was some time before he was caught and during his unofficial parole, he had been busy. He had taken a car without the owner’s consent and that, plus dangerous driving, driving while disqualified and stealing items, including a .22 starting pistol which he put to good use by producing it with intent to resist arrest, resulted in him being returned to Borstal Training when he appeared at the Inner London Quarter Sessions in November 1968. He also asked for a further twelve other offences to be taken into consideration from while he was on the run.

  To those unaware of the term, the now redundant Borstal Training was a period of incarceration of between six months to two years awarded to young offenders in the often forlorn hope that they would receive reformative training. Martin was one of that forsaken number; he served the full two years.

  As soon as he was released, Martin plunged once more into criminality. Appearing at West London Magistrates’ Court, he was committed to the Inner London Quarter Sessions for sentence in December 1969 and, for two cases of obtaining goods by means of a forged instrument, handling stolen goods, theft from a vehicle, unauthorised taking of a vehicle and driving while disqualified, he was sentenced to a total of twenty-one months’ imprisonment and disqualified from driving for a further twelve months.

  Released on 27 January 1971, that was the last occasion that Martin would plead guilty to anything; in fact, as will be seen, he wouldn’t plead not guilty either. His ego was going into orbit. His passionate loathing for those in authority, particularly the police, was developing and in addition, a life-long fascination for locks and security devices began to evolve.

  He gathered associates around him and his future criminal enterprises would display enormous cunning and sophistication for a young man, still in his mid-twenties. David Martin was simply going to take on the establishment.

  Eddie Roach had joined the Metropolitan Police in 1955. He had worked at St John’s Wood, Albany Street and Paddington Green and after a stint with the Metropolitan and City Company Fraud Department, he was promoted to detective sergeant and posted to Hampstead police station where he ran a very successful crime squad.

  In September 1972, due to a sudden upsurge in crime in the neighbourhood, the divisional commander of the area covering the wealthy properties in Hampstead, Swiss Cottage and West Hampstead decided to create a crime squad, consisting of ten temporary detective constables (the successors to aids to CID), ten uniform police constables working in plain clothes and a uniform sergeant. Due to Roach’s undisputed success of previously running a crime squad on ‘E’ Division, he was the natural choice to head the squad. The commander gave Roach complete authority in selecting his staff, told Roach to report to him directly and provided an office for the squad at West Hampstead police station, which had just been opened that year at 21 Fortune Green Road, West Hampstead, NW6. Roach would later say, ‘Detective work is fifty per cent common sense, forty percent dedication and ten percent luck.’ The squad commenced its duties on 25 September 1972 and would demonstrate all those investigative attributes in the months which followed.

  About a mile to the south of the police station was Langtry Road, NW8, a cul-de-sac just off the junction with Kilburn High Road and Belsize Road. A few days after the formation of the squad, two officers spotted a red BMW 30 CSI parked outside No. 3 Langtry Road. The model was new; only eight of them had been imported into the United Kingdom from Germany. A check revealed that over a week previously on 18 September, a young man had gone to BMW Concessionaires Ltd in Chiswick High Road and had asked for a test drive. He must have possessed an air of plausibility because the management permitted him to do just that; he was handed a key, drove off and vanished. The credible young man was, of course, David Martin but the officers were not aware of that, nor that he was now residing at 3 Langtry Road. The vehicle, which had been allocated registration number LOY 4K, currently bore false plates.

  In fact, this vehicle had already been the subject of a high-speed chase where police vehicles, headed by an ace area car driver, Police Constable Mike McAndrew, had lost the BMW. Given Class I and II police drivers’ advanced training at Hendon Driving School, this hardly seemed possible but the explanation was provided by one of Roach’s investigating team. ‘He was quite fearless in high-speed motor chases,’ Colin Black told me, ‘and said during interview that if a police car was coming in the opposite direction, he knew they would move out of the way because they didn’t want to get killed; he didn’t have any fear of death.’

  The vehicle was now kept under observation by the police, after they had surreptitiously deflated one of the tyres to prevent the thief from returning and driving off in it. However, the police were unaware that the thief, from the comfort of 3 Langtry Road, was keeping them under observation.

  After twenty-four hours, during which time Martin had prudently not approached the BMW, the police brought a low-loader to Langtry Road and conveyed the car to West Hampstead police station where it was placed in a bay beneath the CID office, booked in and the owners informed. What the police did not know was that Martin had followed the low-loader to its destination.

  The following afternoon, Roach arrived at the police station at two o’clock and saw that the BMW had gone. He was disappointed because he had hoped for a ride in it and also annoyed because he had wanted to ensure the car had been dusted for fingerprints before it was restored to the owners. He therefore checked with the station officer to see if the vehicle had been fingerprinted before he had handed it back; the station officer replied that he had only just come on duty and that he had not had anything to do with the vehicle. The early-turn station officer was contacted; he too had had nothing to do with restoring the car and perusal of the station’s documentation revealed that nobody had signed for it. A deeply embarrassing situation had occurred; the stolen car had been re-stolen and it would take another couple of weeks before this conundrum was solved.

  Roach’s team was split into pairs and they patrolled in and around the area where the BMW had been parked but it was not until 11 October that their patience was rewarded. It was on that date that two officers saw another BMW, white in colour, parked in the same spot that the red BMW had been. This vehicle was older; it had been the property of a certain Hiroshi Kazato and the car had originally displayed QP 270 on the registration plate. However, since David Martin had stolen it exactly five months previously, those plates had long since been replaced with false ones.

  Observation was kept on the car; a little later, two men and a woman emerged from the basement flat at 3 Langtry Road, got into the BMW and drove off. They were Clive Adrian Cyril Green, 19-year-old Janet Marie Norman-Phillips – and David Martin. The car was followed for a short d
istance but one car is not suitable for tailing purposes and the officers were told to break off the observation before the occupants of the BMW realised they were being followed.

  It was a prudent move; surveillance was mounted on the flat at Langtry Road in the belief that since the people responsible for the stolen cars had spent so much time there, it would be that address they would return to. Within an hour, they were proved partially right; Green returned to the flat on foot, let himself in with a key and after half an hour he left, carrying a bag. The officers followed to see if he would meet up with anybody else and when he didn’t, they stopped him. The bag contained a briefcase, which in turn revealed stolen chequebooks, credit cards and passports plus a large amount of correspondence – all in different names. Later, the flat was searched and the officers were confronted with an Aladdin’s cave of property, all stolen or obtained by fraud. While they were there, the flat was visited by Bruce Wood; when his premises were searched, he was found to be in possession of Post Office books and stamps for forgery and he was charged with theft, handling stolen goods and conspiracy. Another man, Hugh Bestic, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to steal mail and obtaining clothing by means of a forged instrument.

  Clearly, Green – who was also found to be in possession of 89 milligrammes of cannabis resin – had some explaining to do and he did. He admitted receiving the stolen property and in addition, admitted attempting to pervert the course of public justice by removing those items from the flat, which would have incriminated Norman-Phillips and Co.

  The following evening, Martin and Norman-Phillips broke into a flat at 2–6 Hampstead High Street, NW6 where they were disturbed by the occupant. Norman-Phillips made good her escape, but the flat’s occupier hit Martin with a table lamp. During the ensuing struggle, the fight spilled out into the street where a passer-by helped restrain Martin. He was taken back into the flat and the police were called. Martin once more tried to escape and was bound with ties and belts until the police arrived.

  Upon being interviewed by Roach, it was established that Martin was the second man who had been seen leaving Langtry Road and he admitted stealing the red BMW, then re-stealing it from the police station.

  Why had Martin re-stolen the BMW? Was it due to his twisted psyche that he felt that it was ‘his’ car and that now he was only getting ‘his’ property back? Possibly. Was it to show off to Norman-Phillips (who had accompanied him), to display his daring and contempt of danger, for her to act as his Boswell, to recount tales of his derring-do to his attentive, albeit small, group of admirers? Again possibly, maybe probably. Or was it to display his absolute contempt for the law? Almost definitely. And why now was he admitting this to Roach? Precisely for that same reason, knowing that otherwise, the police would never have found the car and therefore, he could not be credited with so cleverly re-stealing it. But whatever the motive for carrying out the act, or for confessing it, this is how he did it.

  Having followed the low-loader to see where the BMW was being kept, Martin realised that the biggest problem in retrieving it was the flat tyre. So he retired to a restaurant in Finchley Road, telephoned the AA, told them he had a slow puncture in one of his car’s tyres and asked them to deliver a ‘ReadySpare’. This was an appliance, manufactured in the US state of Illinois which distributed a TPMS (tyre pressure monitoring system) which really should have been used to inflate under-inflated spare tyres; however, for Martin’s purpose, this would be more than adequate. The AA arrived with the appliance and Martin and Norman-Phillips waited near to the police station, which was manned twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week, until it was quiet. At about two o’clock in the morning, it was. Officers who had taken early refreshments at one o’clock had left to resume their patrols; the officers taking late refreshments had just gone into the police station. The two thieves crept in, inflated the tyre and since electronic ignition was in its infancy and the police had been advised not to tamper with it to try to immobilise it, Martin used the key which BMW Concessionaires had thoughtfully provided him with, and drove the car out of the yard.

  In a nearby car park, they changed the registration plates for a further set of false plates, drove the car to Dover, thence on to a ferry bound for Calais and upon arrival at the French port, drove it on to Paris, where the car was dumped at Orly Airport. However, it was thought that this was not an isolated incident; it was believed that Martin had ‘rescued’ other cars which he had stolen and which the police had had the impudence to reclaim.

  So in addition to that admission regarding the BMW, Martin also admitted obtaining goods by means of stolen cheques and credit cards but was careful only to admit to offences that he knew the police could prove. The following day, Martin and Green appeared at Hampstead Magistrates’ Court and were remanded in custody for a week.

  Now, it was paramount to retrieve the stolen car. Martin had said it was at the car park at Orly but the airport possessed 3,959 parking spaces. It could be re-stolen by somebody else or it could form part of an agreement for it to be shipped out to a buyer, eager for a limited edition of a brand new BMW. A request to trace the car was made through Interpol. The International Crime Police Organisation had been formed in 1923 to provide mutual assistance between signed-up member countries and was then based at St Cloud, a suburb of Paris. Its counterpart at Scotland Yard sent a request for the car to be traced but hours passed without a reply. The real Interpol bore no resemblance to the 1959 television series Interpol Calling! in which during each of its thirty-nine, grainy, thirty-minute episodes, grim-faced, granite-jawed detectives raced about to bring about the arrest of top-class swindlers or seedy looking foreign coves who specialised in white slavery or distributed filthy drugs. The London office of Interpol at New Scotland Yard was known both as ‘The White Man’s Grave’ and ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and wherever possible, a posting there was sedulously avoided by working detectives. Thousands of enquiries passed through the office every year; each was docketed and filed. The detectives posted there did not carry out arrests and many were not fuelled with ambition. An example of the slothfulness which pervaded many Interpol offices was when I requested the details of the owner of a Milan-based car: it took four months for Italy to reply.

  It was high time for ‘The Old Pal’s Act’ to be invoked. The chief security officer for British European Airways (BEA), who was a former CID officer, was telephoned. In turn, he passed on all the information available to his opposite number at Orly and within forty minutes, the car was found and the French police informed. However, although the French police were willing to keep an eye on the car, they would not remove it. It was time for round two of ‘The Old Pal’s Act’ to be put into operation.

  The Detective Training School had been opened at Hendon in 1936, and as the years passed, detectives from all over the world attended the courses and some firm friendships were forged. One of Roach’s colleagues who had attended the Advanced Detective Course had become friendly with a senior officer in the French Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) or security police. The CRS was split into different companies, one of which was the motorway police which patrolled urban areas. A phone call was made and by the time Roach and Police Constable Don Arrowsmith, a Class I driver, arrived at the car park, there was a CRS officer, complete with side-arm, automatic rifle, grenades and radio, sitting on the bonnet of the stolen BMW.

  The car was immobilised and the following day the two officers returned it to Calais, so Roach got his wish of having a ride in such a prestigious vehicle when Arrowsmith opened up on the A26-A1 Autoroute and during the 186-mile journey managed to achieve the car’s top speed of 135mph.

  Several bottles of scotch had been acquired to repay the senior CRS officer for his assistance; however, he had gone on leave and therefore, upon their return to West Hampstead police station, the bottles were utilised to commemorate the car’s return. Within a very short space of time though, the officers would have little to celebrate.

  Ro
ach was waiting at Hampstead Magistrates’ Court to obtain a further remand in custody for Martin and Green. He was impatient, because although his squad had been carrying out a great deal of work in his absence, there was still an enormous amount of urgent enquiries to be dealt with and he wanted the case remanded and out of the way. Roach went to the cells where he saw Green, who, looking downcast, asked him, ‘Have you got David, yet?’

  Suddenly, Roach realised there was no sign of Martin. The gaoler was spoken to; he had not checked Martin in. Brixton prison was approached; they confirmed that Martin had been collected by the prison van service. Each prisoner had been locked in an individual cell in the van – so where was he?

  The matter was soon resolved. At that time, it was the practice for remand prisoners to be collected from the various remand prisons and taken to Gerald Road police station in Victoria where the prisoners would be sorted out and placed on to the vans which were to deliver them to the various Magistrates’ Courts. Inside the prison vans were cramped, individual cubicles and Martin had jammed something flexible into the lock of his cell door as it was being slammed shut at Brixton and thus the tongue did not fully drop into the housing. While the staff were in the office at Gerald Road sorting out which prisoners went where, Martin simply pushed open his cell door, opened a securely locked roof light, squeezed his narrow frame through the gap, climbed over the police station’s gate, and vanished.

  He broke into a flat at 13–16 Craven Hill Gardens, W2 on 25 October and stole a passport, correspondence, two Barclaycards, a cheque book, thirty-five pieces of jewellery, a camera, two coats and a shirt – and also a car to take them away in. Three days later, he stole a Citroën and between 1 and 8 November, he broke into a flat at 59 South Edward’s Square, W2 and stole a quantity of photographic and electronic equipment. It was while he was on the run that we had our encounter at Forest Gate; no wonder Martin was keen to avoid my company!