Guy Hadleigh - British Killers: Nine Horrific True Crime Stories From The UK...And How They Were Solved

BRITISH KILLERS

Nine horrific true crime stories from the UK

and how they were solved

Volume 1

by GUY HADLEIGH

CONTENTS

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THE HITMAN

George Brett was a hard man, a well-known East End haulage contractor who was fond of a fight. On Saturday 4 January 1975 he walked into a church hall in Goodmayes in Essex, accompanied by his 10-year-old son Terry. Neither was to come out alive.

The old church hall had long been converted for light industrial use. One half was a soft toy business, while an engineering company specializing in diving equipment occupied the other.

Brett had been lured to the site by a man he knew as Mr Jennings. There was the possibility of some business for his haulage firm, and his son had come along for the ride. The floor of the hall was completely covered in children's teddy bears, and racks around the wall contained diving equipment. The only other occupant of the building to be seen was a very big man, bent over a workbench.

'Jennings' sat Brett down on the only chair and gave the boy a teddy bear to hold. Before any more could be said, the man at the bench raised a silenced Sten sub-machine gun and shot Brett through the head. Brett fell, and the big man came closer to make certain of his kill with a second shot to the head.

Then he turned to the 10-year-old, who was still clutching the teddy bear. 'Jennings' grabbed the boy and held him tight while the gunman moved round and coldly fired a single shot into the side of Terry's head. He died instantly.

George Brett and his son had fallen foul of a pair of hitmen who had been paid 1800 to commit murder.

Contract killing

To most people, the term 'hitman' conjures up images of American gangsters and the Mafia; they are considered a very un-British kind of criminal. But in the 1970s, Harry McKenny and his partner John Childs set themselves up as contract killers. Childs had posed as 'Mr Jennings' in order to lure George Brett to his death. Harry McKenny had pulled the trigger. Childs and McKenny went about their work with cold savagery, and disposed of the bodies of their victims with shockingly callous ingenuity.

Henry Jeremiah McKenny, also known as 'Harry the Bandit', 'Big Harry' or simply 'Big H, was a big man indeed. Standing 1.95 meters tall and weighing an athletic 108kg, he was both respected and feared by his fellow villains. Respected for his ice-cool nerve on armed robberies, and feared because with his sledgehammer fists and easy attitude to violence, he was a man not to be crossed.

McKenny was not just a dumb thug. A qualified pilot, he had also trained and worked as a salvage diver. He had invented and patented a revolutionary new air pump, a design now used by professional frogmen worldwide. But Big Harry knew he could make better money from crime. What is more, he liked the life.

Through the 1960s and 1970s McKenny had been involved in scores of robberies, lorry hijacks and warehouse break-ins. He was well known to Scotland Yard as a hard and dangerous villain, and had served several jail terms. How the police finally brought Big Harry to justice for perhaps the last time is a fascinating example of how the cracking of one relatively routine case can suddenly lead detectives on to the trail of a far more serious crime.

Armed robbery

In June 1979, a team of highly-organized gunmen pounced as a Security Express van was collecting money from a bank in the center of the market town of Hertford. One robber grabbed a guard as he walked to his armored Transit van. Pressing a gun to his back, he forced the other guard to let the villains on board. Then they coolly told the security men to continue on their round to Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield, threatening them with a swift death if they either raised the alarm or tried to escape.

Eventually, with more than half a million pounds on board, the robbers told the guards to stop. The guards were then tied up, gagged and bundled into a cubicle of a public lavatory while the crooks sped off with sacks full of money.

The robbers had, however, made one small but vital mistake. They had left the boiler suits they had worn for the robbery in the same lavatory as the guards. In one of the pockets, detectives found the numbered key to a BMW 320 car. Contacting BMW in Germany via Interpol, the Hertfordshire police were told that the car which that particular key fitted had been supplied to a garage in Essex. Further enquiries revealed that the BMW had been bought by Philip Cohen, a wealthy East London greengrocer.

Cohen was quickly arrested by the Hertfordshire CID and interrogated. He soon admitted his involvement in the Security Express robbery and, looking for a lenient sentence, informed on the rest of the gang. Three of the other four members of the gang were swiftly rounded up in a series of dawn raids. Among them was a small-time petty crook called John Childs. The only man they missed was 'Big Harry' McKenny.

Since most of the gang members were London-based villains, the Metropolitan Police were called in. Flying Squad Chief Inspector Tony Lundy, already the scourge of Londons armed robbers, immediately sent a team of senior detectives up to Hertford. They interviewed all the prisoners, hoping that at least one would 'roll over' and help clear up one or two of their unsolved robberies.

The detectives got more than they bargained for. Philip Cohen was so desperate to avoid a 20-year sentence that he told the Flying Squad officers: I can go better than armed robberies. Big Harry, Johnny Childs and Terry Pinfold have been doing murders for years'

Terry Pinfold, in prison at the time of the Security Express robbery, had been McKenny's partner in a company making diving equipment. They had been based at an old church hall in Essex. Childs had been in prison with Pinfold in the early 1970s, and had got to know McKenny after his release.

A mystery solved

Cohen claimed that they had killed at least four people, and other members of the robbery gang added to the tale with two more possible killings. The only names the investigating officer was familiar with were those of haulage contractor George Brett and his son Terry. Their disappearance in 1975 had been a major mystery. Brett had gone out to a business meeting and had taken Terry with him. His Mercedes had been found abandoned, but there was no trace of Brett or his boy.

Detectives had always believed that they had been murdered. The underworld had buzzed with rumors and every policeman on the beat had his own theory about who had done it. Now Lundy and his men were being told that the Bretts had been lured to a warehouse and killed with a sub-machine gun.

Was this all just so much talk or was McKenny really a ruthless contract killer? But what had at first seemed like total fiction took an ominous turn towards fact when the Yard began to check out the list of supposed victims.

Terence Eve, known as Teddy Bear Eve because of his soft-toy business, had not been seen since October 1974. He had allegedly been ruthlessly rubbed out because McKenny had wanted to take over the money-spinning company that he ran from the former church hall in Essex that he shared with McKenny.

Robert Brown, a former professional wrestler, was on the run from Chelmsford Prison. He had been working for Pinfold and McKenny, but had disappeared in January 1975. Apparently he had come across the killers cleaning up after the murder of Eve. Although Brown had kept his mouth shut for three months, he had been murdered to ensure that he could not give the killers away in the future.

Never seen again

Freddie Sherwood was a 48-year-old Bermondsey man who disappeared in July 1978 from the Herne Bay nursing home he ran. Sherwood was trying to sell his Rover car and had gone to meet a buyer. He was never seen again. Childs and McKenny had reputedly been paid 4000 to kill Sherwood, and had lured him to his death at McKenny's bungalow next to the church hall in Goodmayes.