The Murder of Jimmy Millen

The murder on October 26th 2001, of the former boxer from Liverpool, remains unsolved to this day.  He was shot by two hitmen on a motorcycle, who then made a speedy escape.  Police have not been unable to charge anybody with his murder, to this day.  Mr Millen, a former boxer who had moved from the very rough Merseyside suburb of Kirkby to the Hastings area of the south coast with his wife and three children, worked as a doorman.  He was working on his car, when a motorcycle drove slowly past, and the pillion passenger fired four shots into Mr Millens` back.  He crawled away but died in hospital thirty minutes later.  The killers escaped through a nearby industrial estate and not seen again.  A Police investigation as launched, headed by DCI John Levett, but it was said that they ran into a wall of silence.  Mr Millens` family were placed in protective custody but returned to their home some time later.  Mrs Millen spoke of prolonged intimidation, threats to kill & vandalism that they had to endure.

     What was the motive?  Being a doorman can bring you into contact with criminals, and if you are a doorman whom is handy with the fists, you can easily make very dangerous enemies.  There are numerous theories that can be speculated on.  Police said they were concentrating on possible underworld links in the area around Hastings and the south coast.  But later, the Millen family revealed that Jimmy Millen was involved in the murder and disappearance of Jason Martin-Smith, a 28 years old man from Camberley in Surrey.  He was aleged to have told his family that Jason had been held hostage by four others and when he arrived, Jason was strangled, then shot and dismembered.  One of the gang then allegedly dumped the body parts around Hastings.  The family said Jimmy was sickened by what happened and that he was now involved.  Jason has never been found.  This happened a couple of weeks before the fatal shooting on Tile Barn Road. 

    Speculating again, this would have been seen as a weak link and that Jimmy was in a position of being able to send four men away for a very long time, so he had to go.  Then again, he might have hammered somebody on the doors and they brought in help for revenge.  Then again, it could have been related to his doorman work, by preventing drug pushers from operating in places he minded.  In 2012, a lake was searched for the murder weapon that allegedly killed Jason Martin-Smith but no weapon was found.  Two killers are still walking free.