Further to my last post, I would like to make a point about cutting deals with the authorities. Erik Jensen received LWP because a friend cut a deal for a reduced charge and found his role in the crime beefed up. I wonder if he thought it up or the cops did? Over this side of the pond, this sort of deal is now known as a supergrass deal, and in the last seven years or so, the Police have cut over 175 supergrass deals. It does not matter if the person knows the details or not, in cases that can be remedied in time for the trial.
A case that happened here a few years back, a particularly brutal murder, in which all the participants were caught and convicted, four receiving more than thirty years. However, one of the arrested decided to roll over and become a prosecution witness. Panorama, a BBC home affairs programme, showed a part of an interview with supergrass Sonny Stewart, whom it seemed just could not get his facts straight, and one of the jailed - he received the heaviest sentence - is fighting his conviction, saying Stewart put him in it just to get his deal. Stewart would have received 18 years but received only 7. 18 months in protective custody meant he could be out in 18 months time. Such a sweet deal!
Another notorious case of a supergrass deal involved Darren Nichols and the Range Rover Murders. Three drug dealers and thugs, Tony Tucker, Pat Tate & Craig Rolfe were found shotgunned to death in a Range Rover in Essex. Eventually, Police arrested a man called Darren Nichols, who was already an active Police informer. Tracing cell phone calls, put him in the vicinity of the murders at the time it was thought they were committed. They charged him with murder. Nichols decided to "tell all" but gave numerous different reasons for the murders before settling on one. Also, his claims of what was supposed to have happened, allegedly did not match some of the evidence at the crime scene. Another disturbing episode is the vast amounts of time a detective spent talking to Nichols off tape, in his cell. These visits were logged as "welfare checks" yet one "welfare check" took 7 hours 43 minutes to complete. Everybody has come to their own conclusions on this episode! The only evidence that convicted Mick Steele & Jack Whomes was the word of Darren Nichols. Barrister Helena Kennedy stated that the jury did not hear that Nichols had a book, documentary and film deal arranged before the trial began! The book, written by Tony Thompson for Nichols, has Nichols portraying himself as a criminal bigshot and others are just wankers. Thompson has supposedly admitted to embellishing parts to make it more interesting. However, the two convicted men, their appeals have been thrown out, as Nichols must be a man of truth and honesty. An interesting point made by their barrister was that Nichols claimed he lived in fear of Steele & Whomes but just could not stay away from them. He also, as an active informer, had around eight months to grass up the men he was "in fear of". Will the truth ever out?
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