Essex Boy

by Steve 'Nipper' Ellis; Bernard O'Mahoney

  Somebody else facing up to the problems that a lifestyle change brings was Boshell. The police were losing patience with him. The mountain of information that he had given them had not resulted in a single arrest. Boshell knew that he was going to have to come up with something more than idle gossip soon. He needed to be able to tell the police about a serious crime that he knew was going to be, or had already been, committed. Failure would result in him appearing in court with zero bargaining power. A lengthy prison sentence would undoubtedly be imposed and the future he craved with his girlfriend would slip from his grasp.

  A man named Mark Bradford was on police bail in connection with the murder of a 24-year-old heroin addict named Danny Davies. Father-of-one Davies had died ten hours after being stabbed once in the buttock during a fight over a drug deal in Basildon. Mark Bradford was completely innocent of any involvement in this murder and did not face any charges in connection with it. However, Bradford’s bail conditions, while the murder was still being investigated, included signing on at a police station every day to ensure that he did not abscond. Waiting to be attended to at the police station reception desk one day, Bradford saw Boshell walk out of an office accompanied by a man dressed in a suit who he assumed was a detective.

  Bradford said, ‘Boshell and I acknowledged one another before he walked out of the police station. A few days later, I met Alvin to buy some cocaine and I told him about Boshell being with the police. Initially, Alvin didn’t seem too concerned, but a few days later he rang me up asking what day and at what time I had seen Boshell, and was the man with Boshell in uniform or plain clothes? Alvin seemed really concerned about Boshell being at the police station. He told me that he had found out that he was a grass.’

  When Alvin questioned Boshell about what Bradford had seen, Boshell told him that the police had been trying to obtain information from him. Alvin appeared to accept this and told Boshell that he would get in contact with the officer concerned and offer him money to pass on information about police matters that may be of use to him. It is not known if Alvin did actually contact or try to bribe a police officer. Regardless of what Alvin may say today, the seeds of doubt concerning Boshell’s loyalty to him must have been firmly planted by this incident. Seeds grow, so too does animosity, which can fester into feelings of extreme dislike or even hatred. Boshell was living dangerously. He knew what the punishment for being an informant was in the Essex underworld, but to save his dream of starting a family and escaping a lengthy term of imprisonment, he was prepared to take his chances.

  Seven days before Boshell was due to appear in court for sentencing, he contacted the police and told them that he would be willing to become a supergrass and turn Queen’s evidence against those responsible for the Locksley Close shootings and other matters. In return, he wanted the charges he faced to be dropped. Boshell was advised that the charges he faced could not be dropped, but if he was willing to testify against the gunmen ‘things could be done for him’. Undecided which way to fall, because either way, fall he must, Boshell went away to consider his options. Before he could reach a decision, fate struck Boshell a cruel blow. Drunk and behaving in a wholly inappropriate manner, Boshell got involved in an altercation with a police officer. During the struggle that ensued, Boshell damaged a police car and was arrested. Boshell was taken to court the following morning and remanded in custody to HMP Chelmsford.

  When he appeared at Southend Crown Court, he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and, to add insult to injury, his long-suffering girlfriend ended their relationship. Not long after Boshell was sentenced, he was visited in prison by the police, who were hoping that he would continue to provide them with information about his criminal associates. Boshell told them that his ‘best friend’, Alvin, was importing large amounts of cannabis from Amsterdam and another guy named ‘Spanish Frank’ was smuggling an ounce of heroin into the prison every week.

  It’s not known what prompted Boshell to do what he did next. Some say it was guilt, others believe that it was fear. As soon as the police officers had left the visiting room, Boshell rang Alvin and told him that he ought to be extra vigilant because the police had been to the prison and wanted to know all about his business. What Boshell failed to mention was the fact that he had supplied the officers with the information they had requested. Alvin told me that this apparent act of loyalty strengthened his trust in Boshell, because Boshell had warned him about the police making inquiries about him. ‘He’s a good geezer, Nipper, he looks out for his master,’ Alvin joked with me. After asking Boshell the names of the officers who had been to see him, Alvin had immediately telephoned them to ask what it was they wanted to know. He also advised the officers that if they wanted questions answered about his business in the future, they should ask him and not Boshell behind his back. Alvin says that he did not get any sort of satisfactory response from the police and he heard no more about it.

  Because of the amount of cocaine that Alvin was abusing he had become increasingly paranoid. When Alvin had time to reflect upon the incident, he concluded that Boshell may have only told him about the visit because he could have been frightened that a fellow inmate might have seen the officers talking to him. This confirmed Alvin’s suspicion that Boshell was an informant. That particular meeting with the police certainly had an effect on Boshell, because he refused to talk to them ever again. Today, Alvin claims that, if he had known for sure that Boshell was an informant, he would have told his friends to have nothing more to do with him. Although he would have been angry, Alvin says that he considered Boshell to be ‘such a loser’ he wouldn’t have harmed him.

  ‘Boshell was simply not worth it,’ Alvin said. ‘None of what he told the police was true as far as I know. I think he lived in a fantasy world.’

  Nineteen-year-old Kate Griffiths had been the former girlfriend of Daniel Langley, one of Damon Alvin’s closest friends. During their relationship the couple used to go to a local pub, the Woodcutters Arms, to socialise, and it was there that Kate was introduced to Malcolm Walsh’s younger brother Kevin. Following the break-up of her relationship with Langley, Kate began dating Kevin. Romance blossomed between the two and before long Kate was living between her mum’s house and Kevin’s flat in Shannon Close, Leigh-on-Sea.

  Life for the couple revolved around regular mundane visits to the Woodcutters Arms and work. Kate managed a launderette that she and her father owned and Kevin was employed on a casual basis in the construction industry. That was, until Boshell washed up at the Woodcutters one night in the company of Alvin and his partner Clair Sanders. Boshell had just been released from prison and Alvin had somehow convinced Sanders to allow him to live at their home until he was able to secure an address of his own. Boshell had initially hoped that he could make up with his girlfriend but when he came out of prison he soon learned that his criminal behaviour had resulted in all bridges being burned. Homeless and unemployed, he had turned to his friend and mentor Alvin for help. Thinking that Alvin had resolved his accommodation problem, Boshell began to celebrate and it wasn’t long before he was staggering around the pub, drunk out of his mind. Sanders was outraged when she noticed the state that Boshell had got himself into. Pulling Alvin to one side she told him that under no circumstances was Boshell to go near their home.

  Embarrassed, but in agreement, Alvin told Boshell in front of everybody that his invitation to stay had been withdrawn. Despite Kate and Kevin having only been introduced to Boshell earlier that evening, they felt deeply sorry for him.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ Kevin said to Alvin. ‘He’s just got out of jail and has nowhere to go.’

  ‘Fuck the cunt,’ Alvin replied. ‘If you’re so fucking worried about him, you take him home.’

  Rather than leave Boshell roaming the streets Kevin invited him to stay at his flat until he found a place of his own. Once installed in Kevin’s home, Boshell appeared to have been in no hurry to resolve his housing problem. He would hang around the flat all day and p
once drinks from me, Kevin and our friends in the Woodcutters Arms at night.

  It took a month for Boshell to secure his own accommodation, and that was only achieved with the assistance of Alvin. Ever prudent, Alvin had employed jobless Boshell initially as a labourer for the building company that he owned. However, once Boshell had become financially dependent upon Alvin he was easily coaxed back into selling cocaine, Ecstasy and cannabis for him. To avoid any large quantities of these drugs being found at Alvin’s home, he had decided it would be a good idea to provide Boshell with his own flat, from where the drugs could be stored and distributed. Alvin paid the £350 deposit required on a flat in Elmsleigh Drive, Leigh-on-Sea, and Alvin’s entire stock of drugs moved in later the same day. Every weekend Boshell would visit the pubs and clubs that litter Southend seafront, plying Alvin’s illicit substances.

  On Friday and Saturday nights, the town was awash with revellers and so Boshell had no shortage of customers, drinking partners or pretty girls to choose from. He would flit from bar to club to bar feeling something that he had never felt before – important. Everybody, it seemed, wanted to be his friend, not because they liked him but because the drugs he was selling were of good quality and reasonably priced. Having experienced hard times himself, Boshell was not unknown to give drugs to people on credit so long as they promised to pay him the next time they met. The chance of a drug debt being honoured, which was agreed in a nightclub when both parties were pissed, is about as likely as world peace.

  Boshell didn’t help himself or me by acting out his fantasy of being a gangster to impress the steady stream of females he was constantly trying to seduce. He would supply them with free pills, free lines of cocaine or peel off notes from a wad of Alvin’s drug money to buy them drinks. Many of my regular customers flocked to him for freebies or, at worst, discounted drugs. I warned Boshell that he was fucking things up for both of our drug businesses but he refused to listen. Before Boshell knew it, he was accumulating numerous small debts that amounted to him owing Alvin one large one. Tensions between the two men were becoming more intense, not only because of Boshell’s playboy lifestyle, but also because of Alvin’s own excessive cocaine use. He believed that he had become somehow invincible and treated everybody he met with contempt. Alvin’s change in character was of great concern to Boshell because he knew what he was capable of when angry. He did his best to please Alvin but stories of Boshell handing out Alvin’s drugs and cash did not help to reduce the gulf that was growing between the two men. To be honest, I was pleased that Alvin was having a go at Boshell because the distribution of free drugs ceased and I started making money again. I am not naive, and I am definitely not going to say that things returned to normal because I know more than most that ‘normal’ does not exist in Essex. Something, somewhere was just waiting to give.

  After spending an enjoyable evening at the Chameleon nightclub in Southend, two girls named Lisa and Donna started to make their way home. As they passed TOTS nightclub Lisa was grabbed around the waist by a man who laughed and said, ‘Hello, Nicole.’ It wasn’t a case of mistaken identity; people had often remarked upon how much Lisa resembled the Hollywood actress Nicole Kidman. The person who had accosted Lisa was in the company of another man named Sean Buckley and a female, who walked off as soon as she saw what had happened.

  ‘My name is Dean Boshell,’ the man said as he released Lisa’s waist and held out his hand. After talking for half an hour in the bitter cold, Boshell invited Lisa and Donna to join him and Sean for a drink at his home.

  When they arrived at Elmsleigh Drive, they went up to Sean’s flat, which was above Boshell’s in a converted house. Boshell began to play Eminem CDs on the stereo and told the girls it was his favourite music because he loved gangster lyrics.

  In a statement made later to the police Lisa said: ‘After a while Dean said to me, do you want some Charlie? I didn’t really know what he meant by this. He then got up and disappeared down the stairs to his flat. When Dean came back up, he was holding a clear plastic bag, which was about the size of a 2lb bag of sugar. He held it up and said, “That’s Charlie. You know, coke?”

  ‘It was then that I realised that he was holding a bag of cocaine. I wasn’t at all comfortable with this. He then put a line of powder on the table, rolled up a ten-pound note and snorted it up his nose. Sean did the same but Donna and I refused to have any of it. I also noticed that Dean had a big roll of cash, about £600. I don’t know why but he did tell me that this was not his money. Dean asked me if I wanted to go down to his flat. I agreed and left Donna with Sean. There wasn’t a lot in the flat; he had a mattress for a bed, a three-piece suite, a TV and a video. Dean did wear nice clothes though; they were all designer labels and he also wore a thick gold chain and a krugerrand sovereign ring. Dean went to have a shower and I went into the kitchen to make a coffee.

  ‘As I looked around, I saw a further three bags full of white powder on top of the freezer. These were the same size as the bag Dean had brought up to Sean’s flat earlier. I don’t know a lot about drugs, but I do know that the amount of cocaine that Dean had must have been worth a lot of money. When Dean came out of the shower, we both sat on the settee and had a cuddle. Dean was initially stuttering but very soon relaxed as he started to talk normally.

  ‘I asked Dean about the cocaine and he said that while serving a prison sentence for burglary he had been bullied by two men who had forced him to deal drugs for them. He told me that one of these men was called Chris. Dean explained that these people used to smuggle pills into the prison for him hidden in the butts of cigarettes, which he would then have to sell to other inmates.

  ‘Dean said that he wasn’t happy with the situation but he didn’t have much choice, other than to go along with their demands. When he was released from prison, Dean said that the people he had been forced to work for had tracked him down and made him continue to sell their drugs. That is how he came to be in possession of so much cocaine; it belonged to these people. Dean was under extreme pressure. He said that they were blackmailing him and they had threatened to harm his brother. I remained with Dean until Sunday morning and then I went home to have a shower and get changed. I did return to his flat later that evening. At half-seven I put a pizza in the oven. I remember the time because I had to keep my eye on the clock to make sure that I didn’t burn it.

  ‘A moment later there was a knock at the door and two men came in. By this time I had sat down to watch the television. Dean said, “Excuse me for a minute, I’ve got some business.” I got up to go to the toilet and as I did so I noticed one of the men putting a bag of white powder into his pocket. I didn’t mention this to Dean when they had gone but he did tell me that he had to do his business because he was £600 in debt to his landlady.

  ‘Later that night, I went home but Dean and I spoke to one another on the phone every night thereafter. The following weekend, Dean picked me up from my home in a cab. We went to Clouseau’s pub, had a few drinks and then went back to Dean’s flat. When we sat down, Dean really opened up to me. I was quite shocked by how emotional he was. He said that he was stuck in a situation that there was no way out of. He started crying, saying that he was suicidal and that he wanted to get a gun. He kept saying that he had a problem that he desperately needed to sort out and that he was really frightened. “I need to face up to this and get it sorted,” Dean said.

  ‘It really upset me to see just how distressed Dean was. Unfortunately, he refused to go into detail about just what his problem was. The following morning, I went home.

  ‘During the next couple of weeks, Dean would text or telephone me at all sorts of silly hours. He would either be stoned, drunk or both. Sometimes he would be fine with me, but other times he would say that he needed help or that he missed me a lot. He would say things such as, “I am stuck in a situation that I want to get out of,” or “I am going to have to deal with this problem so that I can settle down with you.” The next time that I saw Dean was in the Chameleo
n nightclub. He was really off with me and moody. I wasn’t happy with his attitude at all so I left the club and went home. At about 0300 hrs Dean telephoned me. I told him I was unhappy about the way he had behaved and he apologised. I never saw Dean again. However, he did continue to text and telephone me.

  ‘One text I received said, “Miss you. I am not a liar. You are special. I need to sort business out once and for all. Be in touch.” I did try to phone Dean back but he did not answer his phone.’

  The story that Boshell told Lisa about being forced to sell drugs for a man he had met in prison named Chris was, in part, true. He was selling drugs for a man he had met in prison but his name was Alvin, not Chris. The only Chris that Boshell had encountered while in prison was ex-Essex Boy Firm member Christopher Wheatley. He had been released from his seven-year sentence for drug dealing around the same time as Boshell. On 14 November 2000, two weeks before Boshell met Lisa, Chris had collapsed with heart failure after a particularly strenuous workout at a Southend gym. He was rushed to Basildon hospital but pronounced dead on arrival. The cause of his death was determined as bronchial asthma. Chris was no angel but he was a good friend of mine and highly respected throughout Essex. Percival and I both attended his funeral, which I don’t mind admitting was an extremely emotional event. Boshell had been lying when he told Lisa that he was working for, and being threatened by, Chris, but he was certainly afraid of somebody.

  Not long after Boshell had met Lisa, Alvin kicked his front door down in a cocaine-fuelled rage and beat him up. Boshell was admitted to Southend Hospital suffering from a severely swollen testicle, but he refused to say how he had been injured. Alvin later told the police that he was responsible for inflicting the injury during a bit of horseplay while Boshell was working for him as a labourer on a house extension.