by Gordon Kerr
She was to be represented in court by one of America’s highest-profile attorneys, Roy Black, famous for gaining an acquittal for Kennedy family scion William Kennedy Smith on a rape charge and for representing right-wing radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh. However, to the disappointment of the case detectives, who had hoped that Blanco would receive the death penalty, the trial was postponed in extraordinary circumstances. It emerged that the principal witness for the prosecution, Jorge Ayala, aka Riverito, had been paying for phone sex, from a Witness Protection prison, with some secretaries at Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office. There were understandable fears that the case was irredeemably compromised. Finally, in October 1998, state prosecutors were left with little option but to agree to negotiate a plea with Blanco’s lawyers. She pleaded guilty to the murders of the Lorenzos and the killing of Chucho Castro’s son in return for a sentence of 20 years in prison. She was 56 years old and had already suffered a heart attack while incarcerated awaiting trial and although prosecutors and police were disappointed, they thought that perhaps those 20 years would, indeed, be a life sentence. It was not to be, however. In June 2004, now weighing 196 pounds and no longer the good-looking woman of her youth, she completed her 20-year prison sentence and was deported to Colombia, a chilling prospect as three of her sons had been murdered on their return to their homeland after serving prison sentences and being deported.
There were rumours that Griselda Blanco’s immense wealth had been salted away in structured money-laundering accounts in Panama, but after legal fees and the wreckless spending of her sons, no one knows how much was left when she climbed on board her flight to Colombia in 2004.
What became of her is also a mystery. Did she return to the business of narcotics-trafficking, or was she killed by someone with a long memory? As one website says, Griselda Blanco’s current status is unknown.
Te Rangimaria Ngarimu
The name of Britain’s first hitwoman rolls with some difficulty off the tongue – Te Rangimaria Ngarimu. In 1992, this 24-year-old New Zealander of Maori origin was living in Britain and working in a pub in north London. She was a bright, well-educated girl. A double first in chemistry from a university back home in New Zealand was testament to that. She had played hockey to a high standard, was a decent surfer and could speak fluent Japanese. And her confident, bubbly personality made her popular. Sparky, as they called her, was enjoying life to the full and planned to spend the next five years in the UK. Hopefully, she would save enough money to be able to return to New Zealand and buy her own mobile home.
In the course of her work she made the acquaintance of a couple of the pub’s customers, 34-year-old Paul Tubbs from Enfield in north London and 21-year-old New Zealand-born Keith Bridges who lived in Camden. Sparky needed a place to stay and Bridges rented her a room in his flat where the two became good friends.
Tubbs and Bridges were co-owners of a roofing business with a man called Graeme Woodhatch. Strange things had been happening, however, and they were convinced that Woodhatch was fiddling them, stealing thousands of pounds from the business. When police later investigated Woodhatch and his business dealings, they discovered that he owed almost £1 million to a variety of creditors. You cannot owe that amount of money, still drive a Porsche and enjoy expensive foreign holidays without making a few enemies and Woodhatch had his share of people who would have liked something nasty to happen to him. Bridges and Tubbs got there first, however.
When Sparky told Bridges during a conversation at the flat that she had been a good shot with a gun back in New Zealand, he realised that she could be the answer to their prayers, a way of stopping Woodhatch from wasting all their hard work of the past few years.
When he talked about ‘knocking off’ Woodhatch, she readily agreed to do it for £7,000 – the total fee was £10,000, but Bridges was skimming off a three grand commission – and began to plan the hit.
Armed with a photo provided by Bridges, she followed her victim as he went about his daily business, getting to know what he looked like. When she found out that he did not have children, it made her feel easier about carrying out the hit.
Bridges also provided her with the murder weapon – a .22-calibre pistol. Sparky knew her guns and decided that hollow-tipped bullets would cause maximum damage to the intended victim. A hollow point, also known as a hollow tip, is a bullet that has a pit, or hollowed-out shape, in its tip, which causes the bullet to expand upon entering its target, thus decreasing penetration and disrupting more tissue as it travels through the target. Additionally, hollow-point bullets offer improved accuracy by shifting the centre of gravity towards the rear of the bullet.
So she now knew what the hit looked like and had the weapon with which she would carry it out. Only one question remained: where would be the best place to do it? Bridges gave her the ideal solution. Woodhatch was going into the Royal Free Hospital the following week for an operation for piles. What more anonymous location could there be for a hit than a hospital? People constantly coming and going with no questions being asked, lots of exits, everyone focused on their own problems. It couldn’t be better.
Sparky bought the clothing that would form her disguise – a baseball cap, sunglasses, gloves and tracksuit bottoms. Her face would be hidden and her shape would be covered up. No one need even know she was a woman.
The first time she went to the Royal Free, in Pond Street in north-west London, she had to abandon the hit as she was unable to find the correct ward. When Bridges heard he was none too pleased and reminded Sparky that the only way she was going to get the money for the mobile home quickly was if she killed Woodhatch. She said later: ‘I had always wanted one [a mobile home]. It cost about $30,000 (£10,000) back home. I thought about it all the time. It was the goal of my life.’
She returned to the hospital with this in mind and, on this occasion, asked a nurse for directions to the main male ward where Woodhatch was situated. She got into a lift with a mother and her child and two elderly women and pressed the button for the third floor. The doors slid shut and the lift began to climb. Arriving at her floor, she exited the lift, leaving the others in it, and entered the corridor leading to the ward. All of a sudden she realised she was enjoying a massive stroke of luck. There, in front of her, was the man she had come looking for. Woodhatch was leaning against a wall, speaking quietly into a telephone. As she approached him, he turned his back to her and she strolled past, nonchalantly. She felt in her handbag for the gun, turned and started to walk back in Woodhatch’s direction. But just at that moment she could not go through with it. Her hand still in her handbag as if she was looking for something, she walked back to the lift and pushed the button to descend. Woodhatch was at this point no more than three feet away from her. She felt in her bag and flicked off the safety catch on the .22.
Quickly, in one movement, she pulled the gun from her bag and aimed it at her target. At that exact moment, Woodhatch noticed her but it was too late. As she squeezed the trigger he tried to protect his face with his hands, but the first bullet hit him smack in the middle of his forehead; the second ricocheted off his backbone and the third shattered his nose. A fourth hit him in the shoulder.
Sparky later described how she felt. ‘Something just snapped inside and I did it. There were four shots, but I remember pulling the trigger only once. That first shot hit him in the face – he was facing towards me. I do not remember firing the other shots, although I heard four. I remember seeing him rolling around on the floor screaming. He had his hands on his face.’
Woodhatch did not roll around for long. By the time the fourth bullet entered his body he was well and truly dead.
As a man entered the corridor from the other end, the lift doors slid closed and Sparky was gone. She calmly strode out of the hospital entrance, ensuring she did not look as if she was in a hurry, thus drawing attention to herself. Just minutes after the hit, as people gathered round the body of Graeme Woodhatch on the third floor of the Royal Free, she was seated i
n the back of a taxi, adrenaline pumping through her body, on her way back to the Camden flat. At the flat, she wiped the gun of fingerprints and then removed all her clothes, stuffed them into a plastic bag and barked at Bridges to get rid of them.
There were no witnesses to the killing and .22 bullets are very small. So it took some four hours for the medical staff at the hospital to work out that Graeme Woodhatch had, in actual fact, been shot. They had tried to resuscitate him and his girlfriend had spent four hours with the body before it was taken away to be prepared for the mortuary. At this point they became suspicious about his facial injuries and, examining him closely, spotted the tiny bullet wounds. As was pointed out at the time, medical staff working in British hospitals were not accustomed to dealing with bullet wounds and they can be difficult to identify as they may not even bleed. However, the police did admit that had they known earlier that Woodhatch had been shot, they would have been able to launch their investigation earlier.
And it was going to be a difficult one. Twelve lifts near the scene of the hit, two fire escapes and three different public exits would complicate things for the police. But they did describe the hit as ‘criminally professional’, an opinion confirmed by a firearms expert examining the modus operandi and the type of weapon used – ‘It is easily available, it fits in the palm of your hand, it is no louder than a cap gun and it does the job.’
Sparky’s plan was to get out of the country as soon as she had carried out the hit and within only a few hours of the shooting she was at Gatwick, about to board a flight to New Zealand. Putting her hand in her pocket, as she waited to check in, she realised that she still had in her possession the photograph of Graeme Woodhatch that she had used to identify him. She found the nearest toilet, tore it up and flushed it away down the toilet. Then, panic, fear and paranoia set in. She stripped off all her clothing and changed into a fresh outfit.
Meanwhile, Paul Tubbs arranged for the disposal of the murder weapon, the bullets and the clothes Sparky had worn for the kill. A friend of his chucked it all into a lake. The murder was big news in Britain, the papers covering it on their front pages and the tabloids were having a ball investigating Woodhatch’s shady dealings. Bridges sent the cuttings to Sparky who, by this time, was staying with a friend in New Zealand. He included a money order for £1,500. The cuttings brought her one brief moment of remorse when it was reported that Woodhatch’s girlfriend was in fact pregnant. She must have felt better, however, on reading that Woodhatch had been due to appear in court a couple of days after he was killed, accused of threatening to kill a 22-year-old secretary employed by his company.
Although it was obvious that any number of people had the motive to kill Graeme Woodhatch, police immediately put Paul Tubbs and Keith Bridges at the top of their list of suspects. It was when they realised that the Maori woman with whom Bridges had been sharing a flat had flown back to the southern hemisphere on the day of the hit, that they began to really sit up. The information that she could handle a gun served to prick their interest more.
Metropolitan police officers left for New Zealand to have a word with Sparky.
Of course, she denied everything when they confronted her. She had the nerve to say that it could not possibly have been her who did it because she was a vegetarian and ‘could not even kill a chicken’. They were unable to break her story in three interviews with her and flew home disappointed.
Sparky was a complex woman, however, and as it happens not as cold-hearted as contract killers have to be. In the next few weeks she seems to have ‘found the Lord’, as she announced it to friends, after reading a Bible given to her by her sister.
Back in London, police had arrested Bridges and Tubbs and charged them with the murder of Graeme Woodhatch. For Sparky, it all suddenly became too much. Her guilt, made all the more concrete by her new-found religious feelings, overwhelmed her and she called the police, agreeing to return to Britain to face the music.
She was arrested as she left the plane at Gatwick and charged with the murder of Graeme Woodhatch. There was a tabloid feeding frenzy and she was labelled ‘Britain’s First Female Contract Killer’. She made her first appearance in court at Hampstead Magistrates’ Court in north London and was stricken with remorse as she was remanded in custody. She turned Queen’s Evidence against her co-conspirators, Tubbs and Bridges.
At her trial, her QC made much of her conversion to Christianity and the fact that she attended Bible classes and went to church on Sunday in Holloway Prison where she was being held. He also told the jury that she was teaching autistic children in prison. None of it made much difference, though. She was sentenced to life in prison.
Before Bridges and Tubbs could be brought to trial, Keith Bridges was mysteriously shot in the chest while out on bail. But the trial went ahead in December 1994 and they were found guilty of conspiracy to murder, also receiving life sentences.
Copyright
© 2011 Omnipress Limited
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This 2011 edition published by Canary Press,
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The views expressed in this book are those of the author but they are general views only, and readers are urged to consult a relevant and qualified specialist for individual advice in particular situations. Gordon Kerr, and Omnipress Limited hereby exclude all liability to the extent permitted by law for any errors or omissions in this book or for any loss, damage or expense (whether direct or indirect) suffered by the third party relying on any information contained in this book.
ISBN: 978-1-907795-45-9
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Contents
Introduction
PART ONE: Killers for The Mob
Al Capone
Bugsy Siegel
Vito Genovese
Joe Colombo
Carmine ‘The Snake’ Persico
Anthony ‘The Ant’ Spilotro
Roy DeMeo and the Gemini Crew
Nicodemo Domenico Scarfo
John Gotti, ‘The Dapper Don’
Joey ‘Big Joey’ Massino, The Last Don
PART TWO: Other American Killers
Fung Jing Toy, ‘Little Pete’
George ‘Bugs’ Moran
Vernon C. Miller
Louis ‘Two Guns’ Alterie
James ‘Whitey’ Bulger
James Burke
PART THREE: Sicilian Mafia Killers
Michele and Giuseppe Greco
Salvatore Riina
Bernardo ‘The Tractor’ Provenzano
Benedetto ‘The Hunter’ Santapaola and Family
PART FOUR: Wild West Killers
Jesse James
Billy the Kid
PART FIVE: Greatest Hits
The Collingwood Mansion Massacre
Albert Anastasia
Jimmy Hoffa
Roberto Calvi
PART SIX: Killing All Over The World
Christopher Dale Flannery
Carl Williams and Family
Pablo Escobar
Jacques ‘Jacky le Mat’ Imbert
Charles Sobraj
Adolf Eichmann
Phoolan Devi
Veerappan
Aleksandr Solonik
PART SEVEN: Killer Gangs
Thuggee
Egan’s Rats
The Bonnot Gang
The West End Gang
PART EIGHT: British Killers
Jimmy Moody
The Curse of the Brinks Mat Millions
Desmond Noonan and the Noonan Family
Nicholas van Hoogstraten
The Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate
PART NINE: Women Killers
Belle Gunness
Griselda Blanco, the Black Widow
Te Rangimaria Ngarimu
Copyright
