Friday 5 April 2013

The Murder of Tommy Marks

The murder of Tommy "Ginger" Marks is no longer one of the London Underworld mysteries as his killers are now publicly known.  Freddie Foreman & Alf Gerrard.  Underworld legend has it that Marks was shot in mistake for Jimmy Evans, a safe blower who was involved in a deadly conflict with Foreman.  They went on trial ten years after the event but were cleared, and in the late nineties, Foreman admitted that he and Gerrard WERE the killers.  He had already been cleared so obviously it was safe to own up to it. 

    Evans, in his memoirs, rubbishes the Foreman version of events, and actually gives very reasonable and logical arguments over the shooting.  Evans states that Marks was called over to a car with four occupants.  Two opened fire, killing Marks.  Shots were then fired towards him but he escaped.  The story goes that Marks misheard the call and thought it was him that was beckoned.  Foreman claims this and that Evans hid behind Marks and used his body as a shield.  Evans was then supposed to have hidden under a vehicle.  Evans rubbishes this by stating that Foreman & Gerard opened fire from six feet away, and not in a position to mistake Marks for him, even in the dark.  Marks was six foot four and around fifteen stone, whilst he was five foot eight and eleven stone.  A bit difficult to mistake a big man for a man much smaller.  And how did he manage to support the dead weight of a big man?  Also Foreman claimed a bullet went through Marks and hit the wall behind, but Evans, very reasonably argues just how could a bullet go through Marks, and then him, as he was behind him, but not mark, injure or cause him to bleed?  As for hiding under a vehicle, again he asks what stopped the pair of them crouching down and finishing him off, as he would have been a sitting target?

    Evans says that the reason Marks was targetted was because he had been told by "Duke" Osborne that Foreman was in cahoots with Butler & Williams, the heads of the Flying Squad.  Marks told Evans what Osborne had said to hm and was telling anybody who would listen.  Evans` arguement over the shooting was that Marks became the immediate target for Foreman, despite the war between them, and that they could easily have killed them both.  Of course, some people hated Evans for his claims about Foreman, but I have not heard anybody rebut Evans`version of events.  Hero of the prison system, Bronson or Petersen as his name is, just went ugg, glug, gurgle, snarl about Evans, how Foreman is one of the top men, blah blah blah.  Despite the change to the Double Jeopardy law, a change to an eight hundred year old law, Foreman has never been charged, not even for perjury, for Marks or Mitchell, despite admitting that the evidence of Albert Donoghue was the truth.  Evans claims that Foreman has had high level protection, including for murder.  What do you think?

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