AFTER 27 grim years languishing behind bars, the last man doing time for the Essex Boys murders seemed about to taste freedom.
Now an elderly man, Michael Steele has never wavered from his assertion he is innocent.
Michael Steele is still in prison, with the Justice Secretary blocking his release[/caption]
Patrick Tate, Anthony Tucker and Craig Rolfe were murdered in 1995[/caption]
A simple admission that he killed Tony Tucker, Pat Tate and Craig Rolfe would likely have seen Steele at home with his loved ones long ago.
But like his co-accused Jack Whomes, he vehemently denies carrying out the most infamous gangland hit in British criminal history, in 1995.
Last month the Parole Board finally cleared Steele, 82, for release after deeming him no threat to the public.
But then this week came a fresh twist in the Essex Boys saga, one that has never been short of intrigue.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood blocked Steele’s release, asking the board to “reconsider” its decision on the grounds it was “legally irrational”.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Public protection is our first priority.
“Our thoughts remain with the families of Tony Tucker, Pat Tate and Craig Rolfe.”
The dramatic ruling has left former senior detective David McKelvey “absolutely stunned”.
The 62-year-old, a retired Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector, has spent the last five years examining the triple murder in painstaking detail.
Of the Justice Secretary’s “bizarre” decree, he told me: “Steele is 82, he poses absolutely no risk.”
There is also another reason McKelvey believes he should have walked — now a private investigator, he insists Steele and Whomes are innocent of the murders.
Last September McKelvey presented a dossier of evidence to the Criminal Cases Review Commission which, he believes, “categorically proves” Steele and Whomes are innocent.
And, he says, he and his team have “identified evidence of those who did kill” Tucker, Tate and Rolfe.
So, could the judicial system have caged the wrong men, in a case that so captured the public imagination it has led to 12 feature films?
Filming a documentary about the murders, for The Sun, I visited the murder scene in Rettendon, Essex with McKelvey as he made his case for a miscarriage of justice.
The murders of three underworld figures in secluded Workhouse Lane came during a decade when cocaine was becoming a drug for the masses.
Their metallic-blue Range Rover found in the dull morning light of December 7, 1995, became iconic in news photos as well as 2000 film Essex Boys, starring Sean Bean.
McKelvey was joined in our 2021 recreation by retired Detective Chief Superintendent Albert Patrick.
The 76-year-old spent “31 years nicking villains” before he became a civilian homicide review officer for the Met.
The two hardboiled old detectives, who have seen the worst of humanity over the decades, began replaying the grisly murders.
In 2021 Steele’s co-accused Jack Whomes was released after 23 years in jail[/caption]
Using a borrowed SUV, Patrick put himself in the footsteps of the killers.
Pacing around the motor, he pointed to the driver’s seat where violent cocaine addict Craig Rolfe, 26, was found slumped at the wheel.
In the passenger seat was former soldier Tony Tucker, 38, the body-building head of a security firm that controlled the drugs trade in Essex nightclubs.
Tucker was ultimately responsible for supplying the ecstasy pill that led to the death of Leah Betts, 18, in November 1995, a tragedy that traumatised Britain.
In the back seat was Tucker’s enforcer, 18st man-mountain Pat Tate, 36, who had heroin, cocaine, cannabis and steroids in his bloodstream when he died.
All three men inside the motor had been blasted in the face with a pump-action shotgun.
Ex-detective Patrick told me: “Without a a doubt this was retribution, this was punishment, this was a professional hit.
“The guy was very, very good at what he was doing and he’s done it before.”
McKelvey believes the three had been lured to the quiet lane to sell cocaine.
McKelvey, a former National Crime Squad officer who specialised in busting gang networks, revealed: “They weren’t major villains.
‘CORRUPT RELATIONSHIP’
“We dealt with major criminals, and we’d never heard of them.”
But whoever killed the three men left no DNA or fingerprints — and under pressure to crack such a high-profile case, Essex Police’s investigation seemed for months to be going nowhere fast.
Then they got a break with the arrest of petty crook and registered police informant Darren Nicholls in May 1996.
Held after 10kg of cannabis was found in his Transit van, former BT engineer Nicholls, then 30, knew the three dead men and Steele and Whomes.
When cops accused Nicholls of being a member of the Essex Boys murder gang, he turned supergrass.
Appeal Court judges would later say Nicholls had a “corrupt” relationship with his Essex police handler.
But his testimony was that his friend Steele had lured the murdered trio to Rettendon as a passenger in the Range Rover.
He insisted Whomes then jumped out of bushes, handed Steele a shotgun and they blasted the trio to death.
The motive, he said, was a cannabis deal that had gone wrong.
Nicholls, who said he was the getaway driver, claimed that Steele had boasted: “They won’t f*** with us again.”
In January 1998, Steele, of Great Bentley, Essex, and Whomes, then from Brockford, were convicted of the murders after a 19-week murder trial and sentenced to life.
Trial judge Mr Justice Hidden had told the jury of Nicholls in his summing up: “You must bear in mind it was in his own interest to become a prosecution witness — he hopes to get less time to serve.”
David McKelvey has spent the last five years examining the triple murder in painstaking detail[/caption]
Nicholls pleaded guilty to drug- running and was given a lenient sentence, gifted a new identity and rehoused at a secret location.
At Steele and Whomes’ failed 2006 appeal, judges found that Nicholls may have received up to £15,000 in a book deal relating to the case, signed before the pair’s trial.
The supergrass also agreed to take part in a TV documentary — again, before Whomes and Steele were tried.
Jurors at the 1998 trial were not told of the lucrative media deals but when the evidence was put before Appeal Court judges eight years later they ruled the convictions should stand.
After sifting through the evidence, ex-cop Patrick — who reviewed the murders of Damilola Taylor and Rachel Nickell for the Met — told me: “There’s been a total miscarriage of justice.
“If you’re going to trust the word of a supergrass then you need corroboration.
In 2021, Jack Whomes, now 63, was released after 23 years in jail.
His brother, retired builder John, told me then: “There’s nothing to celebrate. Jack is home but we’ve still got to clear his name.”
So what’s in McKelvey and Patrick’s dossier of evidence now with the Criminal Cases Review Commission?
They claim Nicholls’ testimony that he met Steele and Whomes at Marks Tey, near Colchester, at 5pm on the day of the murders does not stack up.
‘BLOWS A HOLE IN THE TIMELINE’
McKelvey insists: “The most important thing we discovered that everybody missed is that at 5.12pm on the day of the murders, Wolmes makes a phone call that goes through the cell mast at Sudbury in Suffolk.
“That’s 12 minutes after he is alleged to have met Steele and Nicholls 26 miles away in Marks Tey.
“It’s impossible unless he’s a time-traveller. It blows a hole in the timeline.”
The former detectives’ report also says: “Evidence suggests that some Essex police detectives were i nvolved in ‘coaching’ Nicholls.”
McKelvey and Patrick believe that they now have evidence relating to who they reckon could be behind the murders.
On January 14, 1996, the Metropolitan Police arrested a “mid-tier” East End villain called “Billy” for armed robbery.
The crook made the astonishing claim that he had been paid £5,000 to be the getaway driver in the Essex Boys hit.
Billy said the order for the hit was placed by a major South London criminal — who had fallen out with Tucker over a drugs debt — and organised by an East London firm.
Later Billy testified at Whomes’ and Steele’s trial that he had been an unwitting getaway driver.
Essex Police say there was “an exhaustive police investigation” into the Essex Boys murders that led to the conviction of Steele and Whomes.
They added: “Since then, this case has been back before the Court of Appeal twice, in 1999 and 2006.
These appeals have included focus upon key evidential aspects of the case.
“Both appeals were rejected and in 2006 Lord Justice Kay com-mented that there was no ‘element of unsafety’ relating to the original convictions of both defendants.
“This case has also been reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission who, as recently as January 2023, took the decision not to refer this case back to the Court of Appeal.
“This case has been exhaustively examined over the last 27 years.
“We will of course always work with the CCRC and keep any new information under review.”
So what are the prospects now, for Michael Steele?
The Parole Board say it usually decides within a month whether or not to grant a reconsideration application.
And the CCRC — conducting its third examination of the case — told me “a thorough review is currently underway.”
Meanwhile Steele is languishing in HMP Whitemoor — a Category A jail in Cambridgeshire housing around 500 of Britain’s most dangerous prisoners.
Ex-cop McKelvey added: “Albert said to me last night, ‘Michael will die in prison’.
“We think that’s what they want, because he’s still robustly defending his innocence.”
Unlock even more award-winning articles as The Sun launches brand new membership programme – Sun Club.
