Essex Boy

by Steve 'Nipper' Ellis; Bernard O'Mahoney

  Alvin replied, ‘No, just wait, just wait. I am going to do it. I am going to do it.’

  Five minutes later he picked up the shotgun, pulled his balaclava down over his face, ran up and kicked open the front door. The revellers were stunned into silence by the almighty bang as the door frame splintered.

  Raymond Tretton jumped to his feet and shouted, ‘What the fuck was that?’

  Before anybody could answer the lounge door was flung open and balaclava-clad Alvin and Boshell stood before the terrified room full of people, brandishing shotguns. Raymond looked at the gunman nearest to him and, through holes that had been crudely cut in the balaclava, he could see that he was staring straight back at him. The sound of the shotguns’ loading mechanisms struck terror in Raymond’s heart, but the only words that he managed to mutter were, ‘Oh shit.’

  The blast that followed threw Raymond’s body across the room and into a wall. His left hand, which he had raised in an attempt to protect his face, was shredded and he also suffered pellet wounds to his head, chest and arm. Both Alvin and Boshell unleashed a salvo of shots at their screaming victims. As they did so, Raymond ran into the back garden via the patio doors. Once outside he attempted to grip the garden fence in an attempt to climb over it and escape, but as he did so he called out in pain. Looking down at his hand he saw that he had lost the ring and middle fingers and was bleeding profusely. In shock and excruciating pain, Raymond managed to drag himself over the fence and two further fences before coming to rest on the roof of his sister’s garden shed. After catching his breath, he rolled off the roof and lay gasping for air in his sister’s garden, wondering what to do next.

  Stuart Tretton, who had been relaxing in an armchair when the gunmen had burst in, had also leapt to his feet. Initially, he had been tempted to laugh at the men wearing balaclavas because he thought they were friends of his playing some sort of sick joke. But when the barrel of a shotgun was aimed at his face, Stuart realised in an instant that he was in grave danger. As he raised his hands instinctively to shield his face and head, the gunman laughed and slowly squeezed the trigger. The deafening bang caused Stuart to spring from his seat and follow Raymond out of the patio doors and into the garden where he climbed over a fence to reach his mother’s home. Rather than knock at her back door, Stuart began to kick it repeatedly until it eventually burst open. As he staggered up the stairs and into his mother’s bedroom Stuart began to shout, ‘Help me, Mum, help me. I’m going to die.’

  His mother sat up in bed terrified, she could see that her son’s hand was hanging from his arm by a thin, shredded piece of flesh and skin and he was losing a lot of blood. He also had a gaping shotgun wound in his chest, which she later learned had punctured his lung. As his mother raced downstairs to call the emergency services, Stuart called out in pain and begged for help.

  When his mother reached the foot of the stairs, Raymond entered the hallway via the back door and began shouting, ‘Look what they have done to me. Look what they have done.’ Drenched in his own blood, his face totally expressionless, Raymond suddenly fell silent as if in shock, turned and walked away.

  Jenny Dickinson had looked at her fellow revellers in disbelief when she had heard the front door being kicked open by the gunmen. Curled up in the foetal position and screaming at the top of her voice, Jenny had watched in absolute horror as Raymond and then Stuart were blasted. As the wounded men made good their escape, one of the balaclava-clad gunmen had turned and pointed the smoking barrel of his gun at Christine Tretton, who was sitting next to Jenny. In an act of heroism, Jenny grabbed hold of Christine’s shoulder and pulled her towards her. The gunman fired and the shot punched a huge hole in the top of the settee where moments earlier Christine’s head had been. A split second later, there came another deafening explosion. As Jenny leapt to her feet to escape certain death she felt excruciating pain and realised that the some of the lead shot that had been aimed at Christine had struck her. In a blind panic Jenny ran to her nearby home, where her ex-partner was babysitting their children. When she arrived, she saw that part of her left hand was missing and blood was gushing out of the wound. Jenny’s daughter attempted to stem the flow of the blood and calm her while they awaited the arrival of the emergency services.

  Back at the scene of the carnage, Christine had stopped shaking and was sitting zombie-like on the settee. Blood was splashed across all of the walls and lumps of human skin and flesh were scattered around the floor. A spray of shotgun pellets arced across the lounge wall and large chunks of the seats where the victims had been sitting were missing. Getting slowly to her feet, Christine followed the trails of blood out of the patio doors and into the garden. Dazed and confused, Christine’s next clear memory is of running into her sister Lydia’s bedroom and screaming, ‘We have been shot. We have been shot.’ Christine lifted her sweatshirt, which was soaked in blood and saw that she had been hit in the shoulder. Fearing she might die, Christine became hysterical, begging her sister to activate the panic alarm that had been installed in her home following the nuisance calls.

  ‘Calm down. Calm down,’ Lydia kept saying as she tried to reassure those that had been wounded.

  Locksley Close was soon filled with the sound of wailing sirens and blue flashing lights, which intermittently illuminated the horrified faces of neighbours and other local residents. Exercising caution, the police cordoned off the street and refused to allow anybody near the scene of the house where the bloodbath had occurred. When a fleet of ambulances arrived to take the wounded away they, too, were prevented from entering the police cordon and so the injured were forced to walk up the street in order to get medical assistance. When a police officer noticed the severity of the victims’ gunshot wounds, he asked a friend of the Tretton family, who lived nearby, to return to the scene of the incident to search for hands and fingers that had been shot off.

  After leaving the carnage that they had created Alvin and Boshell had run back across the park towards the stolen car. As soon as they were both in, Boshell had started up the vehicle and sped away. Alvin had his shotgun with him in the front seat and was trying to unblock it. He told Boshell that they would need it in case they got pulled over. He didn’t say that he was going to shoot the police if they were stopped, but Boshell was in no doubt that was exactly what he was implying. Boshell pleaded with him to put the weapon down because it was clearly visible and he was trying to drive. Laughing, Alvin had said that he had enjoyed shooting the Tretton brothers.

  ‘I just stood at the lounge door and opened fire; the first person I shot hit the back wall. I then tried to shoot one of them in the chest and they raised their hand to stop me.’

  Alvin had found this particularly amusing. He continued boasting and said that one of the people they had shot on the settee had pulled a girl on top of himself for protection. Alvin told Boshell that he had shot this particular person in the face.

  Fearing things had got out of hand and he was in above his depth, Boshell had said, ‘I thought you were just going to do them in the legs?’

  Alvin looked at Boshell with a smirk and replied, ‘Fuck them.’

  It was clear to Boshell that Alvin was really hyped up, excited almost, so he concentrated on the road ahead and said no more. When they arrived in Shoeburyness, Boshell parked in a road called Burgess Close, near Pamela Walsh’s house.

  As he did so, Alvin said, ‘There’s a drain there. Ditch your gun.’ Boshell got the gun out of the car, walked to the back of the vehicle and dropped the weapon down the drain.

  Unbeknown to Alvin and Boshell, a man was watching them from his bedroom window. Leonard Spencer, a retired gentleman whose home was on the corner of Burgess Close, had been awoken in the early hours of the morning by loud voices and the sound of car doors slamming. Thinking that this disturbance at such an unsociable hour was somewhat suspicious, Leonard had got out of bed and opened his window. Looking to his right he saw a Vauxhall Belmont and two men, who were running from it. After these men had
run a short distance, one of them had stopped and returned to the car. Leonard quite rightly assumed that the vehicle was stolen and that the man had returned to it to retrieve something that he had forgotten. After getting dressed, Leonard made his way downstairs and then out into the street to inspect the vehicle. The doors were not locked and inside Leonard could see that audio tapes and a number of coins had been scattered around the footwell. Returning to his home Leonard had telephoned the police who he recalls ‘didn’t seem interested’. Later that morning, when the police realised the possible significance of the vehicle, they attended Burgess Close and interviewed Leonard about all that he had seen.

  Upon his return from Cyprus, Percival had kept his promise and visited Pamela Walsh at her home in Shoeburyness to check on her well-being. The sight he was greeted with was not pretty; since it was the anniversary of Malcolm’s death Pamela had hit rock bottom. Finding Pamela in a terribly emotional state, Percival agreed to sleep over to help her through what was a very traumatic time. He spent the evening talking to Pamela and her children and, when they retired for the night, he made a bed up on the sofa and went to sleep.

  Alvin and others concede that it was fairly common practice for those in our circle to borrow one another’s cars. Percival worked as a motor mechanic for a local company and as a sideline he would buy second-hand cars, carry out any minor repairs that needed doing and sell them on at a profit. This meant that he often had several vehicles at his disposal; I had often borrowed vehicles from him. Percival has since told me that on the day of the Locksley Close shootings Alvin had asked to borrow a car to do ‘a bit of work’. Percival had told Alvin that he could have a 4x4 Sierra which he had used to drive to Pamela’s house. He was to leave the keys under the foot mat on the driver’s side because he had no idea what time Alvin was going to collect the car, and if it was going to be late, he didn’t want Alvin to disturb Pamela or her children.

  After talking to Alvin, Percival had telephoned his friend Pete Edwards to ask him if he would give him a lift home the following morning because he knew that he would be going his way. In the early hours, Percival was woken by somebody hammering on Pamela’s door. Fearing Pamela and her children would be disturbed, Percival opened the door and saw Alvin standing before him. He realised that he had forgotten to leave the keys to his car under the mat as arranged. Alvin immediately barged his way into Pamela’s house and when Percival looked outside to see what, if anything, was causing him to be in such an apparent agitated state, he saw two men who appeared to be searching his car. He assumed that they were looking for the keys that he had forgotten to leave under the mat.

  Percival asked Alvin what was going on and he replied, ‘If you don’t know, you can’t be accused of any wrongdoing. Keep your mouth shut and you will be all right.’

  Alvin demanded the car keys, which Percival retrieved from inside one of his training shoes and then Alvin left. That morning, as arranged, Pete Edwards picked Percival up from Pamela’s house and dropped him off near his home.

  At 1010 hrs that morning, a number of officers from Essex Police Force Support Unit set up a roadblock to seal off the road in which Percival lived. Satisfied that all exits and entrances were secured, PC Noel O’Hara knocked on Percival’s front door and when he answered it he was formally arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. Only a few hours had elapsed since the blood-letting orgy in Locksley Close, and one would imagine that Percival and his clothing would have been a forensic scientist’s paradise. The shootings were common knowledge by this time as BBC Essex Radio had broadcast details of the incident on its 1000 hrs news bulletin. Despite the shootings only happening a few hours earlier, the report was extremely accurate and detailed.

  The newsreader said that a woman and two men had been shot and seriously injured by two masked gunmen in the early hours of the morning at a house in Locksley Close, Southend. An update in the following news bulletin stated that the masked gunmen were, in fact, wearing balaclavas. After all the talk and all the threats that had been made about avenging Malcolm Walsh’s death, and the fact that the Trettons lived in Locksley Close, Percival didn’t have to be a super sleuth to work out that the shootings he had heard about on the radio involved the Tretton family.

  He made no reply when arrested by PC O’Hara but when he was being handed over to other officers for transportation to Southend police station he had asked, ‘Is this about the Trettons?’ One of the officers informed Percival that he was unable to discuss the reason for his arrest, to which Percival replied, ‘Are they dead?’

  The officer ignored Percival’s comments and placed him in a vehicle. As they made their way to Southend, Sergeant Caldwell, who was sitting alongside Percival, asked, ‘Are you all right? Are those handcuffs a bit tight?’

  Percival replied, ‘I’m all right, mate. I have got nothing to worry about.’

  The sergeant advised Percival to lean forward in his seat so that he would be more comfortable. When Percival had done this, he said to Sergeant Caldwell, ‘What’s this all about?’

  The officer replied, ‘I don’t know, we are just the taxi drivers.’

  Percival then said, ‘I knew that this would happen. How are the Trettons? Trouble is, Malcolm knew so many people. One of your officers had already told me that I would be the first one to be nicked if anything like this happened.’

  Sergeant Caldwell reminded Percival that he had been cautioned and therefore anything he said could be used in evidence against him, but Percival didn’t appear bothered or guarded.

  He asked what the penalty for attempted murder was and when the officer replied, ‘Life’, Percival said, ‘I wouldn’t want to be the bloke who did it then. I feel sorry for the bloke who gets caught.’

  While Percival was in police custody, officers searching the car that had been dumped outside Leonard Spencer’s home in Burgess Close discovered an open bottle of white spirit on the back seat. This information was relayed back to the officers dealing with Percival and they decided that specific forensic tests for traces of white spirit and other materials such as gun residue would be carried out on him. Percival’s outer and under clothing was seized, as were various other items from his home, such as a boiler suit and footwear. These were sent to the Forensic Science Service Laboratory for examination. Despite Percival’s being arrested within hours of the shootings, not a single shred of forensic evidence linking him to the stolen car, the crime scene or the crime itself was found. After three days of intense questioning, and having been subjected to numerous forensic tests, the police released Percival on bail pending further inquiries.

  Percival rang me and told me what had happened to him. We both agreed that it was more than likely that Alvin and Boshell had shot the Trettons, but to us it seemed like justice after Malcolm’s murder, not a crime. The weekend after Percival was released we threw a big party for him. Everybody came, including Alvin.

  When I asked Alvin about the shootings, he just raised his glass, looked up at the ceiling and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘One fucking one, Malcolm, one fucking one!’

  I took it that Alvin was telling us that he had settled an outstanding score. Looking at Alvin with a huge deranged grin on his face, I couldn’t help but wonder how many more scores he would settle before joining the likes of Tate and Tucker in a graveyard or prison cell. As they had found out, somebody somewhere will always step in and stop the insanity.

  CHAPTER NINE

  *

  The blood-letting orgy at Locksley Close had a dramatic effect on Percival and all of us that associated with him. He was catapulted overnight from being an 18-year-old petty criminal in the eyes of a few, to being a psychopathic, gun-toting madman in the eyes of many. Foolishly, very foolishly, Percival didn’t protest his innocence too loudly, if at all, when rumours of his arrest and assumed guilt began to circulate. He chose instead to let the gossipmongers, and the notoriously inaccurate Southend grapevine, promote the view that he was guilty so that his reputation
as a no-nonsense hard man would be enhanced. Percival ended up with a fear factor on the streets of Essex that surpassed Tucker’s and Tate’s.

  While Percival prowled around Southend enjoying his new-found fame, Alvin was worrying himself sick thinking the police were going to unearth evidence that would not only implicate him in the Locksley Close shootings, but his sidekick, gofer and occasional best friend Dean Boshell as well.

  Shortly after Percival had been released on bail, Alvin and Boshell returned to Burgess Close to recover the shotgun that had been dropped down the drain. Alvin had kept the shotgun that he had used because he had paid out a considerable fee for it and was too tight to do the sensible thing and hide it or otherwise dispose of it. Alvin told me that he and Boshell had parked some distance from Burgess Close when they returned, because they feared that the police may already have found the gun and put the area under surveillance. Not wanting to put himself at risk, Alvin sent his faithful gofer to retrieve it. Boshell seemed to be taking his time, so when Alvin was confident that they were not being watched, he walked up the road to join him.

  Boshell told Alvin that he had taken so much time because he was unable to lift the drain cover alone. Together the two men raised and removed the heavy iron cover and then Alvin put his arm in the drain to see if he could feel the gun beneath the water. Still unable to locate the weapon, Alvin told Boshell that the police had probably retrieved it at the same time that they had found the stolen vehicle.

  I don’t know how, but Boshell later found out that the stolen car that he had driven to and from the shootings had been returned to its owner. Boshell told Alvin and together they decided that they were going to burn the vehicle just in case the police decided to fingerprint it at a later date. I personally couldn’t see the point. If the car had been returned to its owner, it would have already been fingerprinted. Regardless, a few days later the car was fire-bombed outside its owner’s house. Alvin advised Boshell that if the police had already lifted his fingerprints from the car and he was arrested, he would have to say that he had attempted to steal the vehicle before the shootings had occurred but failed.