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The Essex Murders - Who Killed Goldfinger
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Short filmTranscript
00:00SX Radio
00:01You're always believing in your world
00:07You've got the power to know
00:09You're in the struggle
00:11Always believing
00:14You are your friend
00:17You're talking about the struggle
00:20Nothing's got to know
00:23You're in the struggle
00:25Always believing
00:27John Palmer was one of Britain's most notorious criminals
00:32John Palmer first came to prominence
00:35After admitting to melting gold
00:37From the £26 million Brinks-Mat bullion raid
00:57Notorious, elusive and now deceased
01:10Paramedics were called to the 64-year-old's home
01:14Where he was pronounced dead
01:15Reportedly after suffering heart problems
01:18I was called in to examine John Palmer
01:28About five days after he died
01:30I knew nothing about him at all
01:33I turned up thinking
01:36It was going to be
01:37What I would call a routine
01:39Post-mortem
01:40The paperwork said
01:43He had an operation the week before
01:45Effectively keyhole surgery
01:47And that he died following complications
01:50Related to that
01:51John Palmer was on the mortuary trolley
01:57And when you looked at him
01:59You could see there were holes in the front
02:01Which didn't correspond to an operation
02:03And I mean there were classical gunshot wounds
02:06And then there was like a bulge
02:08On his left flank
02:09It was a bullet
02:11I mean you could feel it under the skin surface
02:13It was clear
02:14This was not a routine case
02:16He'd been murdered
02:19One of Britain's most notorious gangsters
02:27Shot at close range
02:29But who ordered John Palmer's murder
02:32And why?
02:33You can run on for a long time
02:37Run on for a long time
02:40Run on for a long time
02:43Sooner or later gotta cut you down
02:46Sooner or later gotta cut you down
02:49I was the chief crime correspondent at the Daily Mirror
03:15And part of my job
03:17I knew all the serious criminals
03:20And they knew me
03:21And one day completely out of the blue
03:23I got a phone call in my office
03:25And it was John Palmer
03:27John Palmer was a huge underworld figure
03:32He wasn't like other criminals
03:35He was more dangerous
03:36He was much richer
03:38And most important of all
03:40He was much smarter
03:41Which made him
03:42In the minds of many people
03:44Really almost untouchable
03:46Palmer asked me if I would be interested
03:52In writing his life story
03:53And to be absolutely frank
03:56His life story was absolutely astonishing
03:59Pull
04:01John Palmer had come from a very humble background
04:08He had nothing when he started
04:10But all of a sudden
04:11He found himself thrust into the centre
04:14Of Britain's greatest crime escapade
04:16The Brinksmatt gold bullion robbery
04:18It was and still is Britain's biggest gold heist
04:2326 million pounds worth of gold
04:26There was so much of it
04:27That any gold jewellery made since the robbery
04:30Probably contains a bit of Brinksmatt gold
04:33Pull!
04:36Palmer made a pile of cash
04:38From the money he laundered
04:39From the Brinksmatt robbery
04:40And he built up a vast criminal empire
04:43He had everything you would associate
04:47With a super criminal
04:48He had a huge estate in Essex
04:52He had a chateau in the south of France
04:54If he flew anywhere
04:56He flew by Learjet
04:57He had a private helicopter
04:59Vintage sports cars
05:01Glamorous women
05:02He had as much money as the Queen
05:05He was criminal royalty
05:08Pull!
05:09For years and years
05:15Palmer got away with it
05:16The press tried to expose him
05:18Mr Palmer
05:19I'd like to talk to you about money laundering
05:21About what?
05:22Money laundering
05:22The cops couldn't get him
05:24His enemies couldn't get near him
05:26But eventually
05:27Somebody did
05:29Shot dead in his own back garden
05:34Nobody knows who's done it
05:39The отдых
05:40That's still being
05:42Dead inside
05:42You know
05:43But eventually
05:47Be bacterial
05:48Ones
05:53Is
05:53It's
05:54It's
05:55It's
05:56It's
05:58It's
05:59It's
06:00It's
06:00The
06:00It's
06:01It's
06:02The
06:02It's
06:02It's
06:04It's
06:05It's
06:06It's
06:07It's
06:08It's
06:09It's
06:09John Palmer's case is one of the biggest unsolved gangster murders.
06:14It's a mystery.
06:16But there's all sorts of issues and problems around it,
06:18and it's one of those cases I think there's an opportunity to solve it.
06:25TMI is a team of former very experienced detectives,
06:29ex-Flying Squad, regional crime squad detectives.
06:33And what we do now is we investigate crime.
06:37It's policing still, but not in the police service.
06:41So we've been working on a number of high-profile murder cases.
06:46The most recent one is the Essex Boys murders.
06:49And the two men that were involved, we don't believe they did it.
06:53And we're at a stage now where we've got it back for a review.
06:57So I'm hoping that in the same way as we had success with the Essex Boys murders,
07:02that we can see the same success with the murder of John Palmer.
07:06All these years later, to progress it and potentially solve it.
07:11So this is the footpath.
07:13And that, the fence there, is John Palmer's fence.
07:18That's the garden where he was murdered.
07:20So this is where the murderer had to have come.
07:27You've got a good view over the top of the fence from here because you've got high ground.
07:30You can see into the whole garden area from here.
07:35So looking around, it's isolated, but it's on a footpath.
07:39Here's a prime example.
07:40We're standing here and you've got dog walkers.
07:42So there would have been people around.
07:44You've got John.
07:45You've got John.
07:46You've got John in the garden.
07:47On his long side.
07:47He's across one town.
07:48He's across four area.
07:49He's across one town area from here.
07:50So looking around, it's isolated, but it's on a footpath.
07:51There's a prime example.
07:52We're standing here and you've got dog walkers.
07:53So there would have been people around.
08:09You've got John in the garden on his lawn tractor, last picked up at 5.18pm over by
08:20the house. There's no CCTV in this area. His son James is at home with his girlfriend and
08:28someone was here. It's about 5.30pm, James' girlfriend comes down, she finds John collapsed, calls
08:42James, James comes out, starts CPR, calls the ambulance and he dies. John dies in his
08:49son's arms in the garden, just over there. It's intriguing. The fact is that Palmer Goldfinger
09:03plays a major part in probably every career detective's life. The money from Brinks Matt
09:10funded the drugs trade, the cocaine trade in the UK. So I think the fact is this investigation
09:17isn't just about John Palmer's murder, it's about organised crime in the UK, and wider
09:24than that. This could take us anywhere. This investigation could take us anywhere.
09:30Let's start first of all down in the south west. What does Sir Clive Sinclair think of
09:35Steve Jobs and the company he's created? Mrs Thatcher smiling broadly, a personal as well
09:40as a political triumph. The armed men were waiting for the van when it drew up. The security
09:51express hall was a massive one. Police are now looking for the rest of the gang described
09:55as ruthless and professional criminals. In the 80s, London was a paradise for armed robbers.
10:02There was cash everywhere, gold everywhere, and it was open to us to nick it. Two security
10:09guards were delivering money to the bank. Two masked men forced them at gunpoint to lie
10:14on the pavement. You weren't missing a band in those days, cash was king. There was money,
10:19there was gold, there were diamonds, and it was floating about in little trucks. That's
10:24my wages, thank you very much. Lay on the floor, you're taking it. This is how you do armed robberies.
10:36You go in there, you're aggressive. Lay on the floor, or I'll blow your brains out. You lay
10:40down. Bang! You bring the shutters down on humanity. You're there, the predator, to take
10:47what you want. We was happy, if we nicked 100 grand, in them days, 100 grand was a lot of dough.
10:53But the biggest score, I mean, in the 80s, was the brim smack. That was the jewel in
10:59the crown. And I wish I'd have been on that.
11:04The brim smack robbery, it was a Mona Lisa crime. It was affection.
11:18In armory, everything is about timing, doing it, right? The mechanics of it. I mean, they
11:29was blessed. They had an inside man. So they knew the layout, they knew the timeframes.
11:34Now, this is a serious bit of work. The biggest massive 6,000 bars of gold. They nicked a lot.
11:46Now, just to put that Heathrow crime into perspective, just the reward offered at £2 million is greater
12:02than the entire sum stolen in the Great Train robbery. The problem the robbers had was they
12:09had a king's ransom in gold. But they needed to turn that gold into cash, into hard currency.
12:16And that's where John Palmer came in.
12:28Brim smack changed our lives dramatically. Before, we were happy. Life was good. Everything, you
12:37know, was just falling in place. And we were enjoying life and living and being together
12:44as a family and everything was good. After it, our whole lives just became totally different.
12:54John Palmer was a small-time wheeler dealer. He was a ducker and diver. He had a business in the Bristol
13:03area called Scadlin that bought in gold, scrap gold, with very few questions asked.
13:09John loved gold. But he also loved silver. And he also loved platinum. And he also loved money.
13:19He was advertising for people's old jewellery and the silver and the gold, the teeth and the
13:28watches and everything. I mean, his eyes used to light up. We used to have it at the house
13:33and sort everything out. He got the smelter. He put it down in an outhouse. And he was melting
13:42in there, sometimes twice a week and making it into bars.
13:47So he was ideally placed to be a man who could convert some of this Brim smack gold into untraceable
13:54profits.
14:01What Palmer did, once he melted down the gold, he was using copper coins or other metals, reducing
14:07the fury of the gold.
14:12Once the gold has been through this process, its origins are all but untraceable.
14:18Then he could sell it on as scrap gold for his legitimate businesses. Brilliant.
14:27John Palmer worked with two men principally. One was his business partner in Scadlin, Garth
14:32Chapel. And together they also did a lot of work with an entrepreneurial businessman from
14:39the West Country called Terry Patch.
14:44Terence Patch was a courier. His job was to go up to London and meet other people who had
14:49bags of gold in the boots of their cars. And he just carried it down to the Scadlin offices.
14:54And has always maintained that he had no idea that the vast quantities of gold that suddenly
15:00started arriving at Scadlin were anything to do with the Brim smack robbery.
15:06Here, look. There's the scales there, look. That's what we used to weigh the gold on in Scadlins.
15:12Oh, this is what you weighed the gold out on? Yeah.
15:15Garth asked me to do him a favour to pick the gold out one day. So we went to London. And it was right
15:26the other end of Vegware Road. He picked some gold up. He went up into a flat. And we were driving
15:33back to Bristol. And he said, I wonder if this is Brim smack gold. And he then said, if it was, he said, I don't
15:42want to do it. I don't want to touch it. That was the only time I really was mentioned.
15:51Were you shocked when you heard that John Palmer had been murdered?
15:57I wasn't surprised. But he must have upset somebody, didn't he?
16:01The police were under a lot of pressure. Very quickly, they were able to arrest two of the robbers,
16:16Brian Robinson and Mickey McAvoy. But they did not have any of the stolen gold back.
16:23Took Scotland Yard about 14 months before they kind of got a handle on what they thought was going on
16:30in terms of distributing and cashing in on the gold.
16:34Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming to Scotland Yard.
16:41It's all very well thinking you know what's happening.
16:44But taking what you think you know to the old bailey doesn't work.
16:47You need evidence. You need people with dirty hands holding a bar of gold.
16:52We found out that Palm was involved in the disposal of the gold bullion purely by surveillance.
17:00He was a new face to us.
17:03We have never known where the gold was stored. Ever.
17:09What we did know was, is that it was being transported in small but heavy amounts from somewhere in Kent.
17:18We followed the first gold shipment that we were aware of into North London, where I saw the gold being transferred from a Green Cavalier to a Mercedes.
17:30We then followed it down to a company dealing in gold bullion in the West Country.
17:36The man who was clearly behind it was John Palmer.
17:43The hunt for gold was on in earnest today as Scotland Yard detectives descended on a house in Lansdowne near Bath, where goldsmith John Palmer lives.
17:52As far as the police were concerned, the big prize was Palmer.
17:57And when they went to his house, they found his smelter, still warm to the touch because it had obviously been in recent use.
18:03And they found some suspicious parcels of gold in the house as well.
18:07But they didn't find him because he wasn't there.
18:10The intensive police raid on John Palmer's home near Bristol happened while he was on holiday in Tenerife.
18:33The whole thing was such a shock. For me, I was frightened. For John, his character was strength. And he just got on with everything.
18:55I'm completely innocent of anything to do with this so-called Matt Brink bullion ride. I know nothing of it.
19:06He hadn't done anything wrong. For as I was concerned, and as far as he was concerned. But I know of.
19:14The jeweller and bullion dealer police, one to question in connection with a £26 million robbery, failed to return to Britain today.
19:21At that particular time, we had no extradition treaty with Spain. So we couldn't get him. We couldn't extradite him. And he knew that.
19:31Today, he was giving his reasons for not going home to face the music.
19:35The first two weeks were ruined by the press. And we just planned to take another couple of weeks now.
19:42As the interviews progressed, we certainly felt that he was sticking two fingers up to the yard.
19:47After three months, I said to him that I just couldn't stay anymore. I just needed to get home. I couldn't take it anymore.
19:56At Heathrow Airport, a sizeable welcoming party awaited the runaway jeweller, wanted for questioning about Britain's biggest robbery.
20:12It was collected from the plane. When he was in the van, he was reasonable, charming.
20:26When we got back to the police station, his true face was shown to me.
20:34That's when he threatened me, my family, my kids, my house. And he came across as a vitriolic, nasty human being.
20:44John Palmer walked out of the Old Bailey this afternoon, cleared of being the middle man in Britain's biggest robbery.
20:51The jury agreed he had simply been doing what he thought was a legitimate job for Scadlins and acquitted him.
20:57There was a cry of delight from John Palmer's wife, Marnie, who was sitting in the public gallery.
21:02Wonderful.
21:04Were you expecting it? Yes, of course.
21:05John Palmer looked at the jury, nodded, said thank you, and then blew them a kiss as he left the dock.
21:12He put his fingers up to the police as he walked past them, which is a silly thing to do, really.
21:19But he was, you know, because he could be quite cocky.
21:25It was extremely upsetting. How could this man be walking away from this?
21:29Juries are fallible. Of course, it's completely unbelievable that he didn't know that it was Brinksmack Gold that he was smutting.
21:38For a start, it was an avalanche of gold that was coming through his business.
21:42But perhaps on the day he just got lucky.
21:45There's no doubt about it. I was melting gold, but innocently.
21:48I don't accept all of it was Brinksmack Gold, but I don't know. I'm still not sure.
21:52Do you think that's melting?
21:54There's a possibility. I just don't know.
21:56You can't behave the way that he did without there being consequences.
22:03And you thought he was untouchable.
22:06But no one is.
22:26So this is what we think happened.
22:35When John Palmer was killed, he was living a quiet life with his partner and son in a secluded house in Essex.
22:45This is the last image of John alive at 5.18pm in his tractor about to go down to the bottom of the garden where he was burning documents.
22:58John's son was inside with his girlfriend. The dogs were also inside.
23:08What John Palmer didn't know is that he was being watched behind this fence.
23:14And according to the police, the killer has a silenced handgun.
23:20The killer went over the fence into the garden area and confronted John.
23:28And he shot John six times.
23:31And these are the bullets that were used to kill John Palmer.
23:41The killer then comes back over the fence and escapes.
23:48There's no CCTV and there's no witnesses.
23:50John Palmer staggered about 15 metres before he collapsed.
23:57And that's where he died.
24:05Police initially said there were no suspicious circumstances.
24:09Then they said it was murder.
24:11I think a lot of people would find it hard to understand how gunshot wounds wouldn't have been noticed straight away.
24:16Absolutely. I think it's a reasonable question.
24:18It's a question that John's family are entitled to ask and the wider public are entitled to ask.
24:22The big question for us is how did John Palmer's murder go unnoticed for six days?
24:34Right, John Palmer, who some people will know.
24:39You've worked on him, surveillance on him, you know him.
24:40So what I want us to do today is review the facts around the day that he was murdered, the day he died.
24:47And what did Essex police miss around the murder?
24:51The problem with this is this is still a live investigation.
24:542015 is murdered. It's not solved.
24:57And when you start looking at the detail that's been put out, there's very little information.
25:01The one thing we have got is the review of the paramedics' attendance at the scene.
25:08So basically, East of England Ambulance Service received an emergency call.
25:13The call was reported as a 60-year-old male in a collapsed state and not breathing.
25:18On arrival at the incident, the paramedic found the patient to be on the ground and there was a man performing CPR.
25:26The man, thought to be the son of the patient, stated the patient had been admitted to the Queen's Hospital the week before for surgery
25:31and informed the paramedic that the patient's operation was to remove his gallbladder via keyhole surgery.
25:39Having already noted the blood on the patient's clothing, the paramedic states that he examined the patient's chest and found some small wounds in various stages of coagulation.
25:52The paramedic asked the son if they were from surgery and the son was unsure.
26:00Due to the fact that the death of the patient was unexpected, the police were called once efforts had been ceased and they attended the scene.
26:08On arrival, the police inspected the body and found another similar wound on the patient's back.
26:16In his statement, one of the paramedics claims that he did not feel that the wounds were consistent with keyhole surgery to the gallbladder due to the location and the fact that they were not covered or stitched.
26:29He states that he raised the matter with the other clinicians on the scene and the police officers, but they were not concerned.
26:40So that's a very short report, but I mean, what's everybody's views on that one?
26:44Did any of the family hear the gunshots been fired at the time?
26:49No. From what they're saying, they're suggesting that it was a silencer, there was a silencer used.
26:54So you haven't got the family screaming when they've been shot. They're talking about surgery, which would have been a keyhole and would have a stick.
27:02So where's your gallbladder?
27:03But where's the gallbladder? It's down here, doesn't it?
27:05Your gallbladder's down here, yet the bullet wounds are up here and at the back.
27:09Because I still can't understand how they haven't found these bullet wounds.
27:12If he's wearing that white t-shirt, shot six times, you're going to have blood.
27:17Yep. So that should have been obvious, really.
27:20We were discussing this earlier from the perspective of how did they miss the gunshot wounds and the blood and everything else.
27:28They didn't. It's in the report.
27:31But the police officers on the scene have accepted it. Why? Why would you do that?
27:37The role of a coroner's pathologist is to identify the cause of death. Simple as that.
27:48Over the course of my career, about some 35 years, I've done somewhere between 3,000 to 5,000 autopsies on homicide cases.
27:55John Palmer must count as the most unusual in terms of a missed murder.
28:04So John Palmer had been shot right elbow, right chest, right abdomen, through and through wounds to the left arm.
28:11He had a wound to the back of the left kidney and then there was a wound to the back of the chest.
28:17Gunshot wounds are not like the Hollywood version of events. They're much neater.
28:24You know, there's often not the sort of huge amounts of blood and spraying everywhere that you see.
28:29Yeah, they can be missed.
28:32I think in John Palmer's case, there's a sort of group mentality has gone on.
28:38It started off with saying he's had an operation the week before and then they just carried on on that same route.
28:47It was just human nature.
28:52It's a complete and utter mess.
28:55I use the expression, it's a cock up. They haven't done the job properly.
28:58It's a cock up on a scale that you've never seen. I don't think I've ever seen a balls up like it.
29:03Yeah. Have you?
29:04It was a bad day at the office for that PC.
29:06So, I suppose, ten years on, what do you think could be done now?
29:11When you look at it, there ain't a lot there, is there?
29:14No.
29:15So, forensically, you've got nothing. There's nothing at the crime scene.
29:18So, to find out how a man died, you've got to find out how he lived.
29:22So, who had the motive to kill them?
29:28Unfortunately, the material from the police investigation is very sparse.
29:38So, the only way to progress this now is to go and meet the people who knew John best
29:45and to establish from them what John's background was all about
29:51and who John was meeting, seeing, and what was going on at the time of his death.
29:56Even though it's been ten years, it's on my mind every single day.
30:18It's like a massive part of my life has been taken away.
30:23I feel like nothing's really happened in these ten years
30:28to go in any way more forward to finding out who did murder my dad.
30:32So, I'm hoping that something might come to light when we finally get some answers.
30:49I'd actually been to visit Dad, because it was Father's Day, a couple of days before he was murdered.
30:56He'd had a keyhole surgery.
30:59I mean, he was laughing with me, saying,
31:02look at my scar, Ella, and it was like a tiny, tiny little scar.
31:06It was like, he was fine.
31:08And I stayed for about three days, and then came back home that day.
31:19I'd actually spoke to him a couple of hours before.
31:23He'd called me, and I said, oh, I'm sorry, Dad, I'm at my friends at the moment.
31:29And he's like, no problem, love, that's fine.
31:32He said, I'll give you a call back later.
31:35And then he didn't.
31:41I was told that he had passed away due to the operation.
31:46So it was one thing, trying to process that he's dead,
31:51Dad, and then another, trying to process that he'd actually...
31:55Somebody had done this to him.
32:00Hello, Ella. Hello.
32:01David. Hello, nice to meet you. Hello.
32:04From our perspective, the big thing for us is
32:08it all starts on the day at the scene.
32:11What were you told by the police of what happened to Dad?
32:14As far as I'm aware,
32:16they were saying that it was due to the operation.
32:19Yeah.
32:20Then I was told that he had been murdered.
32:25How did they miss it?
32:27Yeah.
32:28Does that impact a lot?
32:29Is there a lot of things that could have been missed from them?
32:32The reality is that, you know, we call it the golden hour.
32:35That golden hour is when you get your best forensic opportunities.
32:39DNA, fingerprints, firearms residue,
32:43there may be footprints, tool marks, all sorts of things.
32:46So that's the stuff that's been missed.
32:48Yeah.
32:49So this gut feeling of everybody is that this crime scene was incompetence.
32:54The reality is this failure has potentially resulted in this murder being unsolved.
33:02It's really hard to hear.
33:06Yeah.
33:11Okay.
33:12Well, you've got my assurance that we will do our very best to find out what's going on.
33:18Yeah.
33:19Yeah.
33:24Ella only knows John as her dad.
33:28He kept his criminality hidden from her.
33:33To understand his murder, we have to confront his past head on.
33:37It really all started with the Brinks-Mat robbery.
33:40So that's where I need to start.
33:54So this is the Brinks-Mat chart, effectively.
33:58The robbers of six robbers, two convicted, Mickey McAvoy being the primary one here.
34:06And my own personal experience of McAvoy is that he's an extremely dangerous individual.
34:12And then you've got all of the people involved in laundering the gold, including John Palmer.
34:19So when you've got this number of people involved, the more chance there is of cheating, betrayal, you get people ripping each other off.
34:29George Francis was shot four times in the head and chest as he sat in his car.
34:34His murder bears the hallmarks of a contract killing.
34:37Charles Wilson died after an assassin called at his villa in Marbella.
34:41Police investigating the murder suspect it was a professional killing.
34:44John Palmer, or Goldfinger as he was known, is the eighth person with links to the 1983 gold bullion raid at Heathrow Airport to have been shot dead.
34:54So who would want John Palmer dead?
34:57Well, it might be linked to what they call the curse of the Brinks-Mat robbery.
35:02So there are eight unsolved murders, one of which is the murder of John Palmer.
35:06And of these unsolved murders, the one that I had most involvement in is the murder of Nick White.
35:13Whose body I found on rain and marshes.
35:20These desolate marshlands were probably the last thing Nick White saw.
35:28He disappeared on June the 7th after a break in at his garage in Bruton Heath.
35:33It was here on Monday that his body was found by conservationists making a survey.
35:38Back then, I was a trainee detective. I was just about to go on my detective's training course at Hendon.
35:46I was here with a much more experienced detective.
35:49We found horrific sight. He'd been stabbed nine times, he'd been shot twice, his hands were tied with ratchets behind his back.
35:57He'd clearly been tortured. An absolutely appalling way to die.
36:04Having investigated it, Nick White was alleged to have laundered money on behalf of some of those involved in Brinks-Mat.
36:11And that potentially was the motive for his murder.
36:14John Palmer's murder, like Nick White's murder, was pre-planned and it's got all the hallmarks of a gangland execution.
36:25So the thing we've got to establish now is, is there anyone in Brinks-Mat who is capable of that level of violence used in Palmer's death?
36:37In Palmer's death. There's only one.
36:47Michael McEvoy was known to the yard as Mad Mickey McEvoy.
36:52He led the gang into the warehouse at Heathrow.
36:56He led the threats against the guards.
36:58He led them taking out 6,000 gold bars.
37:01The bullion thieves forced their way into the top security depot armed with revolvers and automatic pistols.
37:08His reputation went before him, Mickey McEvoy.
37:12He was a professional arm robber.
37:15Very good at his job. Not a man to be messed about with.
37:18I mean, he could look after himself, but he wasn't a mug.
37:20Why was he called Mad Mickey McEvoy?
37:31Because he was prepared to use extreme violence.
37:34I mean, tipping petrol over people ain't exactly going out for a drink, is it?
37:39But I'm not going to put him down, because every one of us have terrorised people.
37:44Like the petrol film, they thought no one had done that other than Buddhist monks.
37:49So they thought to themselves, well, hold up a minute, that's a bit strong.
37:53But it worked well, and stand out of 10 for it for that.
37:58McEvoy was caught because basically an inside man who'd helped the gang grassed him up.
38:04He was convicted and given a very long sentence, indeed 25 years in prison.
38:09You pay an high price for being armed robber, and he paid the highest.
38:15I saw McEvoy in Leicester prison.
38:18He was in the maximum security unit in a section of the prison reserved for terrorists.
38:24He hated being there, and he was prepared to do pretty well anything to get out.
38:29The deal that McEvoy wants to do is to hand back his share of the stolen gold
38:36in order for a significant reduction on his prison time.
38:41We were talking about the return of half the gold that was stolen.
38:46McEvoy arranged for us to see a man called Brian Perry.
38:50Brian Perry was also a known associate to us.
38:53He came to see us at Scotland Yard.
38:56I asked him, what's happened to the gold? Can you deliver it back?
39:00And he said, it's gone. He said, Mickey thinks he's in control of it, but he's not.
39:07He ain't in control of it anymore.
39:09Brian Perry was in cahoots with John Palmer, and he'd taken McEvoy's gold,
39:17and he'd handed it to Palmer so that Palmer could melt it down, disguise its origins, and sell it for cash.
39:23We realised that not only had it been laundered, but McEvoy didn't know that,
39:31that McEvoy was not part of that transaction.
39:34So McEvoy was being screwed by people on the outside.
39:37McEvoy thought that he still had the say in what happens to that gold.
39:53But he didn't understand.
39:56When you go into custody, you become a liability.
40:01It doesn't matter if your name is Alphonse Capone, right?
40:08You forfeit control.
40:10The gold had been worked from day one.
40:13It was, you know, smelted, converted into cash.
40:17That cash was taken out to Switzerland, and then it was invested back into property in the UK.
40:24And that's where you came in?
40:26Yes.
40:27Perry invested 7.5 million in a property operation that I was involved with.
40:36It turned out to be based on the proceeds of the Brinks-Mac gold robbery.
40:41Without a doubt, that included McEvoy's share, as well as his own share,
40:46because Perry was one of the robbers.
40:49So Perry had control of all that, and we were in a position to maximise it.
40:54Two veteran Thames tugs lie moored beneath the metal and the glass of the new Docklands.
41:00Just six years ago, all this was a no-go area.
41:03In the 70s, the Docks was a wasteland.
41:08Corrugated iron, everything locked up.
41:10And then the London Dockland Development Corporation, which was started by Thatcher and Hesseltine.
41:18That came in, overrode all local council planning decisions.
41:22Things really started to move.
41:24The biggest single development in Europe will happen here at Canary Wharf.
41:28Before you knew it, we owned four wharves.
41:32We had more net profit coming out of one project than was taken in the Brinks-Mac robbery.
41:37That's a fact.
41:39But McEvoy didn't know that.
41:43We told McEvoy exactly the words that Perry had said to me, that it had been dealt for.
41:48The look on his face was barely controlled anger.
41:54He had been betrayed. There's no doubt about that whatsoever.
41:57And he recognised it.
42:01McEvoy wrote a letter out to the people concerned.
42:05Hello, mate. I don't know what's going on here.
42:09It's my share we're talking about.
42:10What I want is for you to make sure that we are not fucked and the game is played.
42:16I won't have anyone else keeping my share for their own needs.
42:20They'll be signing their own death warrant if they go through with it.
42:23And if he believes that we are too long away to worry about it, well, it will be done for me.
42:31I have no intention to be fucked for my money and still do this sentence.
42:35Give my love to your family, McEvoy.
42:37McEvoy.
42:39So that's obviously to somebody, it doesn't say who, but it refers, I would think, to Perry.
42:46That's never going to end well.
42:48You kind of know that there's going to be blood.
42:50I knew Mickey McEvoy.
43:07I'd worked in South East London for the majority of my career and he was held in high esteem.
43:13He'd planned and executed the largest robbery in the world.
43:22When Mickey McEvoy was released from prison, within weeks of his release, he turned up unannounced on a Sunday at Brian Perry's home address.
43:29Quite clearly, Brian Perry wasn't expecting him.
43:34And they spent about an hour together.
43:38The conversation, by all accounts, was civil.
43:41There was no raised voices or threats made and Mickey McEvoy left.
43:48And it's evident that the only reason McEvoy had visited him on that Sunday morning was to try and get his share of the gold or the value of the gold back.
43:58In Brian Perry's minicab office, on a large poster in italic writing, he had, remember the golden rule.
44:08Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
44:12He had the gold, but the golden rule in that life is to stay alive.
44:19Brian Perry ran a taxi business but had well-known links to the criminal underworld.
44:27The 63-year-old businessman was gunned down in broad daylight on Friday afternoon.
44:33He was shot, probably with a handgun, three times in the head and body.
44:38Brian Perry was shot dead in the street outside his minicab office.
44:42At the time Brian Perry was murdered, Mickey McEvoy was out of the country.
44:47So clearly, Mickey McEvoy didn't pull the trigger.
44:50But if we look back at that letter that Mickey McEvoy wrote, it said, someone will do it for me.
45:03As soon as I heard that John Parva had been shot dead,
45:07I kind of flipped back my memory to the conversations that we'd had with McEvoy
45:14and the part that Parma had played in laundering that gold.
45:18And the inevitable link is there.
45:21There's McEvoy, whose gold it was.
45:24There's Perry, who's saying, you've lost control of it.
45:28And there's John Parma, who's helped Perry get rid of it.
45:32So to me, when you're looking for the motive for somebody to kill John Parma,
45:40you cannot rule out Michael McEvoy.
45:50In early 2000, McEvoy came out of prison and went straight back to business.
45:56And he worked for an organised criminal group out in Spain.
45:59It wasn't until about 2006, when I was working on one of the biggest crime families in the UK,
46:08that McEvoy's name again popped up.
46:11Officers led by Detective Chief Inspector David McKelvey uncover an Aladdin's cave of property,
46:17which they link to one of the UK's biggest organised crime groups.
46:20A good result for the police, but one which had consequences.
46:23We received information from four separate sources that McEvoy had met with an assassin in Spain,
46:30where they had planned the murder of three policemen.
46:32One of them was me.
46:33There was a contract killer with a machine gun, sat outside Stratford Police Station,
46:41which is where we operated from.
46:43And their intention was to follow off our team and shoot us dead at a set of traffic lights.
46:51From that point on, we were living in fear.
46:53We didn't know if someone was going to come through our door in the middle of the night
46:55and kill you, your family, your kids. It's just overwhelming.
47:01And I ended up on the verge of committing suicide.
47:04I ended up with a breakdown over it all.
47:07Destroyed my career.
47:10Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous man with the capability of organising
47:17not just the murder of criminals, but the murder of police officers.
47:20So, so far, Mickey McEvoy is a prime suspect for the murder of John Palmer.
47:29Unfortunately, he took his life in 2023, so we can't now speak to him.
47:37But we know he was violent and he may have had a motive to kill John Palmer.
47:41So he's a good suspect for the murder.
47:44But there's so many more leads around this case.
47:47The fact is that Brink's map was just the beginning of John Palmer's criminal career.
47:54In the years after his acquittal, Palmer became one of the richest men in Britain,
47:59running a vast criminal network out of Tenerife
48:02and making dangerous enemies wherever he went.
48:08So who else wanted John Palmer dead?
48:10Palmer made so much money that he was at risk himself.
48:24He was richer than the Queen, worth over 300 million.
48:28It's crazy. It's just nuts.
48:30Everyone knew him. Everyone feared him.
48:33He was doing business with the Communists, including the Russian Mafia.
48:37Now Palmer is at a different level.
48:41He's in debt to the tune of a million pounds a week.
48:44Wow.
48:45I hope he loves you.
48:50I hope he bess is too much.
48:55I hope he promotes me.
48:58God of all the JOHNs are seeking the classic angels for the next decade and a half.
49:00I hope heWHAT ain't even greater.
49:03Meanwhile, comparability in the German for the next decade,
49:04the East Coast will always shout their way.
49:06How he feels.
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