Jury hears of John Sayers’ history with police and court system over 30 years
Reporter THE Tup Tup shooting trial marked the latest chapter in the troubled 30-year history of Northumbria Police and John Henry Sayers.
Over two months, jurors at the Old Bailey heard evidence about Sayers’ three decades spent in and out of custody – while only ever having two convictions. The 54-year-old told the court that “about five or six years” of his life had been spent locked up for crimes of which he was never convicted.
His defence barrister highlighted his “6-2 ratio of acquittals to convictions”, while Sayers himself accused Northumbria Police of “fitting him up” on numerous occasions.
The prosecution, however, said that Sayers had acquired a reputation in the North East as a “gangster” and a “man to be feared”. It was a reputation, prosecutor Simon Denison QC said, “that he would have you believe is all in the past”.
But he said witnesses in the case who worked in Newcastle’s nighttime economy had “seen his reputation and the effects of it”.
Here’s what jurors heard about Sayers’ history with police: Sayers’ first conviction was in 1990, when he was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for masterminding a violent £350,000 wages robbery at Pritchard’s security firm in Gateshead.
During the Tup Tup shooting trial, prosecutor Simon Denison QC said it “established [Sayers’] reputation as an armed robber prepared to play for high stakes using weapons to threaten innocent people”.
But Sayers told the court that he still maintained his innocence and claimed he was convicted on “perjured evidence”. “Northumbria Police employed an informer to say he had spoken to me and we had arranged it. He got a two-year sentence and I got 10.”
After being released from prison in 1999 with a “reputation as an exrobber”, he says he went into an “informal debt collecting business”.
Sayers said his reputation was helpful because “people were impressed by the fact I had been in prison for so long”.