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

by Dick Kirby

  Flying Squad cars were kept well out of the way. Central 959 with Police Constables Neilly and Gould, and Detective Sergeants Wood and Hider (who was armed) was parked just off Hampstead High Street, at Flask Walk at the junction with Back Lane.

  Central 943, driven by Police Constable Sutherland, with Detective Sergeant Newell and Detective Constable Bryant who were both armed, was parked at Holly Mount at the junction with Hollybush Steps, to the north-west of the restaurant.

  Central 949, driven by Police Constable Childs and crewed by Detective Sergeants Miller and Cooke, who were both armed, was parked at the end of Streatley Place Passage in New End; this was to the north-east of the target premises.

  To the north of the restaurant, in Hampstead Square at the junction with Elm Row, were two squad vehicles: Central 951, driven by Police Constable Howells and crewed by Detective Inspector Harvey and an armed officer, Detective Constable Walker. Central 954, driven by Police Constable Freeman, contained me, Detective Sergeant Redgrave (armed) and Detective Constable Holloway. From this position, either or both vehicles could swing south into Heath Street.

  Four more squad vehicles were parked up: Central 942 and Central 809 in Jack Straw’s Castle car park, and Central 801 and Central 944 in Maresfield at the junction with Netherall Gardens.

  At the briefing, all this was explained by a senior officer. It seemed fine to me, except for one thing. I remembered how Martin had got away from me ten years previously, via Upton Park Underground station. ‘Guv’nor,’ I said. ‘There’s no one covering the route to Hampstead Underground station. If he gets through, he can go straight down the unders and we’ll have lost him.’

  The senior officer sighed theatrically, as if to say, ‘There’s always got to be one, hasn’t there?’ Wearily, he replied, ‘Dick, once he’s outside the restaurant, he’s bollocksed. He’s had it. There’s enough of us to eat him. You follow?’

  I shrugged my shoulders and sat down. One or two sycophantic officers rolled their eyes at this bit of self-centred stupidity in an effort to ingratiate themselves and I heard someone mutter, ‘Mr Thicko!’

  So there you had it: thirty-five officers, thirteen of them armed, nine Flying Squad cars plus an unspecified number of C11 personnel and vehicles, secreting themselves in and around a very small area – all for the arrest of one man. A tad excessive? A bit over the top? Don’t you believe it!

  During this tense time, a little light humour evolved, about a mile away. Detective Constable Gordon Harrison and another officer were manning the OP – a flat above the NatWest Bank – opposite Susie Stephens’s flat. This was necessary since Martin could of course pay a visit to the premises at any time. There were two twelve-hour shifts and at 7 p.m. Harrison’s tour of duty had finished and he and his companion were relieved by two other officers.

  Telling the two new officers that they would stay in the area to savour the moment when Martin was arrested, they stated they would adjourn to a nearby pub and return later and, because of the security involved, locked the bank’s door on the two fresh observers.

  However, Harrison then decided that the pub which they intended to visit was too close to Stephens’s flat so he and his companion wandered off to another pub in Hampstead where they enjoyed a little refreshment, became engrossed in their conversation and lost track of time.

  By the time they returned, matters had taken a decisive turn of events. ‘We returned to the OP to find two very irate colleagues who were pretty pissed off,’ Harrison told me. They had had to shout, through the bank door’s letterbox to a passer-by, to request that he enter the pub which they believed Harrison and partner had entered and to see if two men fitting their descriptions were ensconced therein and if that were the case, to ask them to return immediately. ‘I often wonder what that member of the public thought about someone shouting through a letterbox from what they would believe to be inside a bank, at 9 p.m.!’ Harrison wryly told me.

  While Harrison and his partner were indulging in the type of light refreshment that a mile away to the east thirty-five of their fellow Flying Squad contemporaries were dreaming of, matters were rather taut as all of us got into position – and we waited. And then a thought occurred to me. No one had given consideration to Martin intercepting police radio transmissions. Criminals, especially armed robbers, were using monitoring devices, such as the ‘Bearcat’ range, more and more. Among the enormous amount of property stolen from Eurotell Security Specialists the previous March, had that included monitoring equipment? Of course, much – but not all – of that equipment had been retrieved after the raid on the basement flat at Ladbroke Grove almost a week previously but then again might Martin have held on to just one such piece of equipment for just this type of eventuality?

  Well, if he had, it was too late now. And after about an hour, at 7.40 p.m., the radio crackled into life. ‘All units, stand by … all units from OP3, a brown Sierra entering the plot, towards the target premises – Index: Bravo, Yankee, Golf, seven, eight-er, zero, Yankee.’

  ‘That’s the one!’ I whispered excitedly.

  ‘It may not be,’ said Tony Freeman doubtfully.

  ‘It is! That’s the index number that Cam came up with!’ I hissed. ‘That’s Martin!’

  I wonder why we were talking in whispers? Probably because by now we were convinced that Martin possessed some supernatural powers whereby he could overhear whispered conversations a couple of hundred yards away – that’s how this job gripped us!

  Yes, Martin it certainly was; he drove through the plot and parked the car in a small car park, right next to a C11 vehicle. Through his body set, Mick Geraghty could hear the car’s female C11 occupant whispering her information to the team. Martin got out of the Sierra and strolled down Heath Street to the restaurant, where he looked inside. Susie Stephens was not there so he continued walking down the thoroughfare. He was positively identified by Jim Francis, one of the watchers inside the Nag’s Head, who passed this information on to OP2; in fact, he passed so close to Tony Yeoman, who was also in the pub, ‘I could’ve reached out and touched him!’ he told me, ‘but I was awaiting the attack call. Then suddenly Don Brown stepped out of his OP, tried a textbook training school-type arrest, missed, and Martin was off.’ The attack call from the OP came too late, or the radio was defective or it wasn’t given at all, but for whatever reason, Martin darted down the hill. There was nowhere else for him to go; he had passed the two side turnings so dodging the cars Martin dashed straight into Hampstead Underground station, where, of course, nobody was waiting to intercept him. It’s likely that the officers in the OP were the only ones who had heard the vocal attack command; they rushed out into the street and the other officers on the observation saw them. This was no time for me to say ‘I told you so!’ and we emerged from our hiding places and roared down Heath Street after him.

  Hampstead Underground station from the ticket hall down to the platforms is 183 feet, making it the deepest station in London. There are four lifts down to the platforms but Martin disregarded them, as we did. Both Martin and pursuers chose the spiral staircase containing 320 steps.

  To the astonishment of Charles Wehner from Queen’s Park, West London, he saw, ‘at least twelve armed men’ burst into the station’s ticket hall. ‘They were all carrying pistols,’ he said, ‘and they raced down the escalators [sic] to the platforms.’

  ‘We got the buzz from the first OP,’ Alan Branch told me, ‘but the attack wasn’t given. I ran after Martin and I could almost touch him, but I was lumbered by wearing a bullet-proof vest. I was just in front of Don Brown and as we ran down the spiral staircase, I ricked my ankle but I didn’t feel it at the time because of the rush of adrenaline.’

  ‘I never saw anybody run so fast,’ commented Tony Yeoman, no slouch himself.

  ‘As he got to the station, I nearly grabbed him, but he was quicker,’ recalled Mick Geraghty. ‘He leapt the first straight stairs in one leap. I was the first after him. We both ran down the circular steps
but at the bottom, he was about ten yards ahead of me and turned right on to a platform. He ran towards a tunnel and as he entered, a train came in. I shouted at the travellers and told the train driver not to move off. I told him to get the power off on that line.’

  ‘I don’t know how many stairs there are, but there are a lot!’ remembered Gerry Gallagher who ran into the station with Tony Yeoman. ‘I tripped and rolled down the last dozen or so. By the time we got to the platform, a train had pulled in and by now Tony and I were joined by Nicky Benwell and Tom Bradley. There was no sign of Martin and as passengers were getting off the train, we were shouting at them to get back on. There was a bit of screaming and shouting as I was in plain clothes, waving a gun and shouting, in a broad Northern Ireland accent, ‘‘get back on the train, get back on the train!’’ Nicky Benwell told me later that many passengers thought it was the IRA hijacking the train, as they could only hear me roaring like a bull. Nicky walked the length of the train, explaining to everyone what was happening: he even got a round of applause. The train guard was useless and it was a young boy who told us that Martin had gone down the tunnel, squeezing between the end of the train carriage and the tunnel wall.’

  Detective Constable Mark Bryant was another of the officers who, gun drawn, searched the train. ‘A left-wing woman stood up and shouted, ‘‘You can’t do this!”,’ recalled Bryant. ‘A black member of London Transport witnessed the altercation. ‘‘Quiet, woman!’’ he thundered. ‘‘Sit down! I’se working with the po-lice!’”

  Alan Branch had also heard what the boy had said; he and Detective Sergeant ‘Nobby’ Clarke went to enter the tunnel which led southbound, towards Belsize Park Underground station but at that moment a train arrived at the station. Branch could see Martin’s silhouette in the lights of the train. After the train had left, both officers entered the tunnel and discovered there was a connection which led into the northbound tunnel; unbeknown to them Martin had discovered this too.

  Mick Geraghty was seriously out of breath and walked over to the northbound tunnel mouth and sat down. ‘John Redgrave came up to me and gave me his gun, saying the radios didn’t work and there were problems with communicating up top. I stayed getting my breath back when I heard a noise in the tunnel. As I turned, I saw Martin approaching me from the tunnel.’

  Martin had doubled back through the connecting tunnel, doubtlessly hoping to lose himself in the embarking passengers from the train which had already been checked by the squad officers. ‘I pointed the gun at him and shouted ‘‘armed police!’’,’ said Geraghty. ‘He stopped, looked at the gun and turned and ran. I shouted after him, then turned and shouted to the arrest team, ‘‘He’s here!’”

  Martin had ducked back once more through the recess and into the southbound tunnel; he was now running towards Belsize Park Underground station, three-quarters of a mile away. If he could outpace his pursuers; if he was not electrocuted; if he was not run down by a tube train – if, if, if – then it was quite possible that once more, he would have outwitted the police and added another chapter to his ever-expanding escape CV.

  Capture in the Tunnel

  The most senior officer present was Detective Chief Superintendent Don Brown. At the time, he was two months away from his 50th birthday and in his twenty-ninth year of service. This was his third tour with the Flying Squad; during his first, twelve years earlier, he had been commended by the commissioner for performing secret and dangerous work in Northern Ireland and eighteen months later gained another for courage in arresting a gang of robbers.

  The years had not dissipated his bravery; shouting for the current to be switched off, he jumped down into the tunnel and set off, in pursuit of Martin. He was followed by Nicky Benwell, Davy Walker and other officers. Steve Holloway recalls the late Detective Sergeant Graham Newell grabbing a London Transport employee by the throat because he was dithering about contacting his control room to have the power turned off.

  In an emergency situation, as indeed this was, the station staff would contact the the Northern Line Traffic Controller at Euston to shut off the potentially lethal traction current – 600 volts DC – who in turn would contact the station staff at Belsize Park or train crews in the affected area. In fact, it appears that the current was not immediately switched off, because when this is done, the emergency lighting automatically comes on in the tunnel; but none did either at Hampstead or Belsize Park.

  And of course, neither Don Brown nor any of the other intrepid officers were aware that the four-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch-wide track was still ‘live’ as they made their way through the gloom of the twelve-foot diameter tunnel in pursuit of London’s most dangerous criminal towards Belsize Park.

  Meanwhile, Fred Arnold who had witnessed Martin’s arrival – and then his departure – from OP3 was tasked to patrol between the two tube stations. This was because it was feared that Martin might escape through one of the shafts containing ventilator fans to remove hot air from the tunnels, which were covered with manhole covers in the roadways.

  Being part of the tide of officers rushing down that circular staircase was very much like being immersed in a sink where the plug had just been released and now the water was swirling into the waste pipe. By the time I reached the platform, my heart was beating so fast that if it had suddenly popped out of my mouth and rolled around at my feet I shouldn’t have been particularly surprised. If I had been told to follow the officers into the tunnel, of course, I would have had to go; but when I was directed to get down to Belsize Park, to cut off Martin’s escape, I must admit to experiencing a feeling of relief.

  Steve Holloway and Gerry Gallagher were two more of several other officers directed to get back up to Hampstead High Street and go to Belsize Park Underground station, which compared with Hampstead was a mere 119 feet below street level. It would, of course, have been much easier to use the radios to alert the remaining officers who were outside the station of the current situation but because we were so far underground the radios simply could not transmit or receive. It is a situation which, to date, has never been rectified.

  I was still unaware of the existence of the lifts at the station, so I wearily plodded my way, back up those rotten 320 stairs. Alfie Howells was the remaining squad driver left, so together we set off for Belsize Park.

  Meanwhile, Alan Branch and ‘Nobby’ Clarke were in the tunnel, following the other officers. ‘We were checking every recess in the tunnel,’ Branch told me. ‘It was pitch-black down there.’ At some stage, the power was shut off because one of the pursing officers later said, ‘There were dim lights in the tunnel’ and this, of course, was the emergency lighting. It had also brought the southbound train, which had just left Hampstead station, to a halt. Don Brown and the other officers entered the train via the guard’s door; Sarah Thompson, a 27-year-old civil servant recalled, ‘Police ran from carriage to carriage shouting ‘‘Armed police – stay where you are!’’ Later, we had to walk through the tunnel by police and London Transport workers to Hampstead station.’ Michael White, also 27 and a passenger on the stranded train said, ‘The carriage was in semi-darkness. Everybody remained very calm – they all thought the system had broken down again. Then after about twenty minutes, three armed policemen with guns in their hands burst through the carriages. They shouted ‘‘armed police – nobody move!’’ Then other police followed, all in plain clothes.’ Carol Vince of Edgware also recounted the police officers invading the carriages and added, ‘They went through on to the tracks but came back a short time later to announce, ‘‘We’ve got the guy we were looking for.’’’

  By now, police, some with dogs, were arriving outside Belsize Park Underground station, as were large numbers of pedestrians who were told to get to the other side of the road: ‘He may have a gun,’ they were told by the officers.

  Paul Sanderson, a cinema worker, was in the station forecourt when police cars screeched to a halt. ‘Men with guns started to run into the station,’ he said. ‘We stood ba
ck amazed at the confusion and the shouting. It all happened so quickly.’

  Meanwhile, Peter Brod, a 31-year-old BBC radio producer had just arrived at the station and had ascended in the lift to street level, to dine with friends. ‘When I got out of the lift, there were several armed detectives and uniformed men. One plain clothes man had a drawn pistol and was shouting, ‘‘Get out! Get out!’’,’ he recalled, adding, ‘they seemed very tense!’

  Down on the platform, Margaret Owen, a 24-year-old civil servant, was sitting on a bench waiting for the train to take her home. ‘There was only one man on the platform with me,’ she said. ‘Suddenly, this detective came rushing down the steps and told us to get off the platform and out of the station as quickly as possible. Then he hurried along the platform. A few seconds later, I saw him flinging a youngish man in jeans against the wall. The man was pressed up against the wall with his hands above him. He didn’t seem to struggle and I didn’t see any guns. Then I ran as fast as I could.’

  It was quickly ascertained that the young man was not Martin and upon being unpeeled from the wall, was dusted down and allowed to go on his way.

  ‘When I got to Belsize Park, I was joined by a DS called Billy Miller,’ recalled Gerry Gallagher. ‘Billy and I went down to the southbound platform. I recall the brilliantly lit platform area and the overwhelming silence. I was aware that I couldn’t see into the tunnel and equally aware that anyone exiting the tunnel towards the platform could easily see me. Billy stood with his back to the tunnel wall exit and I grabbed a red fire bucket, full of sand and dog-ends, put it on the platform near the edge and got down behind it. I was shitting myself. I had my gun out resting on the lip of the bucket, pointing at the tunnel. After what appeared to be a lifetime, I heard Nicky Benwell’s voice coming from the tunnel. I initially thought they had lost Martin but then I clearly heard him say, ‘‘Detective Sergeant Benwell, coming out with a prisoner’’ and Nicky came out of the tunnel with little Dave Walker, another C8 guy who had a ‘‘seek & search’’ style lamp with him. They’d found Martin in a small recessed area, no more than a couple of feet wide along the length of the tunnel wall.’