Massacre of Braybrook Street
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The Massacre of Braybrook Street was, excepting terrorist attacks, the worst mass murder of police officers in the history of the United Kingdom. The incident is also known as the Shepherd's Bush Murders.
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[edit] Murders
On 12 August 1966, the crew of unmarked Metropolitan Police Triumph 2000 Q-car Foxtrot One One was patrolling East Acton (although the incident was always reported by the media as occurring in Shepherd's Bush) in West London. Detective Sergeant Christopher Tippett Head, 30, and Temporary Detective Constable David Bertram Wombwell, 25, were both members of F Division Criminal Investigation Department (CID) based at Shepherd's Bush police station. Their driver was Police Constable Geoffrey Fox, 41, a beat constable who had served for many years in F Division (which covered the Metropolitan Borough of Hammersmith) and frequently acted as a Q-car driver due to his vast local knowledge. All three officers were in plain clothes.
At about 3:15 p.m. the car turned into Braybrook Street, a residential road bordering Wormwood Scrubs and Wormwood Scrubs Prison. The officers spotted a battered blue Standard Vanguard estate van parked in the street with three men sitting inside it. Since escapes were sometimes attempted from the prison with the assistance of getaway vehicles driven by accomplices, the officers decided to question the occupants. It is possible that PC Fox recognised the van's driver, Jack Witney, as a known criminal. The vehicle also had no tax disc, which is a legal requirement for driving in Britain.
DS Head and DC Wombwell got out of their car and walked over to the van, where they questioned Witney about the lack of a tax disc. He replied that he had not yet obtained his MOT certificate, which is required before a tax disc can be issued. DS Head asked for his driving licence and insurance certificate; noticing that the latter had expired at midday, he told DC Wombwell to write down Witney's details and walked around to the other side of the van. Witney protested that he had been caught for the same offence two weeks before and pleaded to be given a break. However, as he did so his front seat passenger, Harry Roberts, produced a Luger pistol and shot DC Wombwell through the left eye, killing him instantly. DS Head ran back towards the police car, but Roberts ran after him and, after missing him with the next shot, shot him in the head. John Duddy, the back seat passenger, also got out, grabbing a .38 Colt from the bag next to him (which also contained a third gun). He ran over to the Q-car and shot PC Fox three times through the window as he tried to reverse towards him and Roberts, who also fired several shots. As he died, Fox's foot jerked down on the accelerator and the car lurched forward over the prone body of DS Head, who was already dying of his wounds.
[edit] Perpetrators
Roberts, Witney and Duddy were actually looking for a car to steal and use in a robbery.
Harry Maurice Roberts (born 1936) was a career criminal with convictions for attempted store-breaking, larceny and robbery with violence. He was a former soldier who had served in Malaya. He almost certainly opened fire because he thought that the policemen were about to search the van and believed he would get fifteen years if he was caught with a firearm.
John Edward 'Jack' Witney (born 1930) was a known petty criminal with ten convictions for theft. He lived with his wife in a basement flat in Fernhead Road, Paddington.
John Duddy (born 1929), originally from Glasgow in Scotland, was a long-distance lorry driver. He had been in trouble for theft several times when he was younger, but had been going straight since 1948. Recently he had started to drink heavily and had met Roberts and Witney in a club.
[edit] Investigation
Duddy and Roberts got back into the van and Witney reversed rapidly down a side street and pulled out onto Wulfstan Street before driving away at speed. However, a passerby, suspicious of a car driving so fast near the prison, had written down the registration number, PGT 726. Witney, the van's owner, was arrested at his home six hours after the killings. Following a tip-off, the van was discovered the next day in a lock-up garage rented by Witney under a railway arch in Vauxhall. It contained some spent .38 cartridges and equipment for stealing cars. Initially Witney pretended that he had sold the van for £15 to an unknown man in a pub earlier in the day, but cracked on 14 August, admitted what had happened, and named his accomplices.
Duddy had fled to his native Glasgow, but was arrested on 16 August using information obtained from his brother. Roberts, however, using his military experience, hid out in Nathan's Wood, near Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire. A £1,000 reward was offered for information leading to his arrest, causing some indignation among the police because it was substantially less than the reward money offered in many jewellery and fur theft cases. Roberts, who had become Britain's most wanted man, was finally apprehended while he was sleeping in a barn on 15 November after ninety days on the run and one of the largest police manhunts ever seen in Britain.
[edit] Trial
The trial of Witney and Duddy began at the Old Bailey on 14 November, but was almost immediately adjourned after Roberts's capture so the three men could be tried together. Roberts pleaded guilty to the murders of DS Head and DC Wombwell (but not that of PC Fox), but the other two denied all charges. Only Witney testified in his defence, and he said that he and Duddy were terrified of Roberts. On 12 December 1966, after a trial lasting only six days, the three men were convicted of murder and possession of firearms and sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge, Mr Justice Glyn-Jones, recommended that they serve at least thirty years before becoming eligible for parole. He commented that the killings were "the most heinous crime to have been committed in this country for a generation or more".
[edit] Aftermath
The killings caused outrage in Britain, where murder was comparatively rare and murder of police officers much rarer still. There were calls for the recently abolished death penalty to be reintroduced and increasing numbers of police officers, usually unarmed in Britain, were trained to use firearms. The Metropolitan Police Firearms Wing, now CO19, was established later the same year.
Six hundred officers lined the route of the three victims' funeral procession in Shepherd's Bush and a memorial service in Westminster Abbey was attended by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Leader of the Opposition Edward Heath and many other dignitaries, as well as thousands of police officers from all over the country. More than one thousand members of the public stood in mourning outside the Abbey.
Holiday camp owner Billy Butlin donated £250,000 to a new Police Dependants' Trust, and it had soon raised more than £1 million.
John Duddy died in Parkhurst Prison in February 1981. Witney was released in 1991, causing some controversy as he had not served the full thirty years recommended by the judge. He was later murdered.
Roberts is still in prison. In 1999, Home Secretary Jack Straw accepted a Parole Board recommendation to move him to an open prison in preparation for his release and he was transferred to Sudbury Prison in Derbyshire. He was allowed to work unsupervised at an animal sanctuary some thirty miles from the prison, but sometimes failed to turn up. He was reported to have travelled to London on these occasions and was spotted by two off-duty police officers in the company of known criminals. Given five days' home leave for his 65th birthday, he celebrated at a bar in Sheffield with Kate Kray, widow of gangster Ronnie Kray. In October 2001 he was moved back to a closed prison, accused of smuggling drugs and contraband into prison. He has also admitted to at least 22 escape attempts since 1966.
Though his name has never appeared on the frequently published lists of prisoners on a "whole life tariff", it is expected that he will die in jail. He is currently being held in the medium-security Channings Wood Prison, Devon.
In 2004, lawyers acting for Roberts lodged an appeal in the House of Lords over a ruling which was intent on keeping Roberts incarcerated until his death. Their complaint was that the evidence in the ruling had been kept secret from them and that it was designed to combat terrorism only, but had embroiled Roberts in its regulations. Roberts lost the appeal.
Roberts's infamy has been used by football crowds to taunt police, mainly when police enter a stand to arrest unruly supporters or when police are in particular close proximity to groups of supporters in pubs or on public transport:
- Harry Roberts - He's our man;
he shoots policemen, bang, bang, bang.
- Harry Roberts is our friend, is our friend, is our friend,
- Harry Roberts is our friend, he kills coppers
- Let him out to kill some more, kill some more, kill some more
- Let him out to kill some more, Harry Roberts
(Sung to the tune of "London Bridge is falling down")
(Also sung to the tune of 'London Bridge': "Harry Roberts is our mate, is our mate...")
Harry Roberts was the inspiration for the character Billy Porter, a petty thief who served in Malaya and murdered three police officers, in Jake Arnott's novel He Kills Coppers.
[edit] References and Further Reading
- History by the Yard: Shepherd's Bush
- Braddon, Russell; The Shepherd's Bush Murders (from book Great Cases of Scotland Yard)
- Fido, Martin, Keith Skinner (1999). The Official Encyclopedia of Scotland Yard. London: Virgin Books. ISBN 0-7535-0515-0.
- Slipper, Jack; Slipper of the Yard
[edit] External links
- The Police Dependants Trust
- Picture of the crime scene by Arthur Steel.
