Free Gangs by Tony Thompson Page B

crimes that had gone before, the great Dome robbery ended in failure and stiff prison sentences. Little wonder that for the latest generation of would-be blaggers growing up in the traditional breeding-grounds of the Bermondsey Triangle, armed robbery has lost its appeal.
    Those who manage to avoid being shot by the police or grassed up by the people they thought were their friends still face the prospect of at least fifteen years in prison, even if they were unarmed. And, under the three-strikes-and-you’re-out system, a third conviction means an automatic life sentence.
    Under a new clampdown even little-league robbers acting out of desperation face stiff sentences. Take the case of nineteen-year-old Teresa Hall from West Bromwich, who had been a model student before falling in with a bad crowd. Within the space of a few months she had fallen in love with an older man with a heroin addiction. When she could no longer subsidise his habit she helped him raid their local Total petrol garage, the boyfriend brandishing a handgun while Teresa filled a bag from the till. The pair escaped with just £311. A week later a second raid at a One Stop shop went wrong when the owners were alerted by a panic alarm. Hall sprayed CS gas at them. Arrested and charged, she said in mitigation that she had only gone along with the raids to help her boyfriend. Despite this she was jailed for nine years.
    ‘It’s just not worth it,’ says Jimmy Tippett Jnr. ‘When you do a robbery and stick a gun under the nose of some bank clerk, half the fucking world goes out looking for you. There’s the bank, the insurance company, the cops, Crimewatch, Most Wanted – the lot of them. But if you fly over to Amsterdam and bring back an ounce of charlie in your underpants, it’s almost as if no one gives a fuck. These days, if you’re talking about crime, you’re basically talking about drugs. It’s all about money, isn’t it? And until someone finds a quicker or better way of making money than through drugs, that’s the one people are gonna be sticking with.’

COCAINE

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    At first it seemed like little more than the tragic suicide of a successful racehorse owner who, in a moment of madness, had simply gone too far.
    When the body of forty-nine-year-old Eugene Carter was found hanging from the rafters of his plush Kent home in February 2001, most of his friends in the equestrian world believed it was because he couldn’t live with the shame of a brutal road-rage attack the previous year. Although he had not yet been charged or even arrested, the police were closing in fast and Carter knew only too well that he risked losing everything he had worked so hard for.
    ‘His behaviour was becoming increasingly unpredictable,’ said a former colleague. ‘He was withdrawing into himself more and more, shutting off from the outside world. I wasn’t that surprised when I heard – it was obvious that he was under an incredible amount of stress.’
    The trouble had started when Carter, who owned at least a dozen prime racehorses, went inexplicably berserk after finding a bicycle parked in an alleyway off Chislehurst high street that he wanted to drive down. Visibly shaking with fury he climbed out of his sleek black Mercedes, picked up the bike and, swearing to himself over and over again, threw it over a nearby wall.
    The cyclist, a thirty-one-year-old Iranian, came out of a nearby barber’s, saw what had happened to his bike and confronted Carter. It turned out to be a terrible mistake. Carter launched into a vicious attack, kicking and punching the man to the ground, then repeatedly smashing him in the head with a house brick, all the while spitting out a stream of racist gibes. Leaving his victim bloody and unconscious in the gutter, Carter then walked back calmly to his car and drove away.
    The incident had been seen by dozens of eyewitnesses and, though none was able to recall the registration number of the vehicle that had been