TALES... LIKE HOW A FATHER AND MILLIONAIRE BUSINESSMAN WAS LURED BY THE BUZZ
FASCINATING TRUE CRIME
ANTHONY Spencer is a man wellknown in criminal circles, nicknamed ‘the Old Man’.
Once a Coventry businessman, he was later considered to be Public Enemy No. 1 by the National Crime Squad, heading up a smuggling ring operating between the UK, Holland, Morocco and Spain.
When a shoot-out in Amsterdam goes wrong, leaving the Old Man’s life hanging in the balance, his son Jason arrives at his bedside.
While he prays for a miraculous recovery, he ponders who his father really is and why he has been drawn to a life of crime…
A meeting fraught with danger
The Old Man had arranged to meet the ‘Soldier’ at Hoffmans – the deli without cameras.
At ten o’clock it was raining hard. He stood beneath Hoffmans’ narrow green canopy as customers without coats or umbrellas waited for the rain to pass. The Soldier was likely driving, and so the Old Man stood to the rear of a thickening crowd, backlit against the store windows, patiently observing the people coming and going, watching the traffic on the roundabout, looking for a British number plate, for a car changing its speed – any sign of an inquisitive driver.
Then he saw it.
A car dropped its speed. The driver’s head turned. It gazed at the store.
That was him!
The car’s tail-lights turned a corner. The Old Man made a call, “He’s passed me. I’ll be in touch.”
He returned the mobile to his jacket pocket and felt the reassuring weight of a gun he had concealed. He hoped it would not be needed but as he told me later, the signs were all there.
They’d been planning this meet for more than three weeks. The Soldier had £190,000 to return – a large amount he was reluctant to part with. However, just a few days before, he’d been oddly keen to hand it back.
The car’s headlights reappeared in the distance. The meet was on.
Into loud rain, the Old Man stepped out onto the kerb as the car pulled over. Its driver lowered the window, leant across, yelled over in a thick northern accent:
“Are you Spencer?”
“That’s me. You the Soldier?”
For a moment they held one another’s gaze.
“Right,” the Soldier said with a frown. “Hop in.”
He climbed in. They pulled out.
Something doesn’t feel right
“The paperwork on you?”
“It’s a few minutes away,” the Soldier said. “My worker just got it together. It’s all there, minus the thirty we agreed upon.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’ll drive around a little first,” the Soldier offered, “check no-one’s with us.”
He drove speedily, south towards the docks. One quick acceleration and they skipped through a final red light, checked for the beam of a tailing car, and turned down a series of side streets. Circling the block, he slowed some more, wound his window down, scrutinised the passing road signs, muttered quietly to himself.
“You know where you are?” The Old Man said.
“Yeah, no worries. Just looking for the turn.”
“Where’s your Man?”
“Parked up – a minute or so away.”
Still and silent, they waited. A minute passed.
“Not long now,” the Soldier remarked.
They waited some more. No-one appeared.
“I’d best call him,” the Soldier said. “See where he’s got to.”
The Old Man nodded and subtly rolled his shoulder a little to feel the weight of the revolver against his ribs. Meets in dark backstreets were not unusual in his line of work, but this one didn’t feel right.
The Soldier dialled and cursed, “For f **** sake. He told me he was actually here… It’s ringing now.” He smiled broadly, raised his brows. “Okay. Two minutes it is.”
The Old Man smiled and played along. More seconds passed. Suddenly, a noise from the right. The door flew open. A masked man stood clenching a gun between both hands. “GET OUT OF THE CAR OR YOU’RE F ****** DEAD.”
The Old Man didn’t move. He studied the gunman, considered his options, looked the shooter in the eyes, noted the inexperience, the nervousness. “OUT OF THE CAR I SAID.”
He still didn’t move. The gunman stepped forward, aimed the gun to his head. A second masked figure appeared waving an automatic. “Come on d ******* . Get moving.”
The Old Man frowned hard. He had little choice.
He lowered his eyes, considered his options and in an instant decided he had just one. Reluctantly he swung each foot, right then left, out of the car. Grabbing the top of the door with his left hand, he looked up.
The gun still aimed at his face. Pulling himself up, he rotated his body slowly, blocking his right side, allowing his right hand unseen to slide up for the gun. He gazed at the gunman, sensed his unease, nodded softly to hold his attention. But then, for no reason, the gunman glanced down, saw something and panicked. A round exploded.
The Old Man looked down, waited ‘til the Soldier moved no more and was still. It was only then he lowered his gun.
The Old Man’s chest snapped back with the blast. The gunman retreated a few steps, shocked maybe, waiting for the Old Man to fall, except… he stumbled forward, grabbed the door to steady himself. And then without warning, raised his head, swung out a gun, and fired.
The first gunman went down. The second sprinted into darkness.
On the driver’s side, the Soldier was slow. Scrambling from the car he found the Old Man barring his way. The two men’s eyes locked.
The Old Man raised the gun, frowned hard, and pulled the trigger. It was a direct hit to the chest.
The Soldier jolted back, staggered to the side, fell to one knee, paused, and collapsed silently to the ground... Then a violent jerk and he rolled onto his chest, gasping for air. The Old Man watched on. The seconds ticked away.
Crawling and twisting, choking for air, the Soldier fought to breathe until his strength drained away and there was nothing. Finally, he slumped onto his back and stared silently up at the night sky. The Old Man looked down, waited ‘til the Soldier moved no more and was still. It was only then he lowered his gun.
He stood still for a moment, breathed deeply, staggered to the side, and leant on the car’s bonnet. After several deep breaths, he looked up and scanned the darkness for an idea of where he was and what to do next.
A man of contradictions
By nightfall, we breezed into Amsterdam. It had been 12 hours and 500 miles since the call (telling me the Old Man had been shot). I’d told my wife something had occurred and I might be gone a few days.
As per usual, I parked up in the city centre. We then walked some, checked for tails, caught a ferry, walked some more, entered the Ijplein estate, checked for tails one last time, and arrived at the apartment. This was the Old Man’s main base – his ‘safehouse’ – and few people knew of its location.
I sat contemplating the situation... Thirty years back, the Old Man had been a successful businessman, wealthy and celebrated, until a bank robbery ended it all. Since then, he had evolved into a criminal, internationally connected but strikingly different from most criminals. An anomaly. He dealt only in softer drugs, despised violence, made millions, spent it all.
He resembled more a businessman than a criminal, a bootlegger more than a drug dealer. I often recalled events of old and recent years, trying to make sense of it all.
Why would such a smart man become a criminal?
CLASH Of The Clans by awardwinning investigative crime journalist Nicola Tallant is a story that traces the emergence of the Kinahan mafia from the streets of Dublin to the highest echelons of international organised crime, even extending their influence into the heart of boxing through the nowdefunct MTK Global promotions company.
In April, the US Treasury took the major step of imposing sanctions on the mafia group leader Daniel Kinahan. The move came a month after one of his main right-hand men in the UK, Tamworth-based Thomas “Bomber” Kavanagh was brought to justice...
Living the high life
One of the most feared gangsters in modern criminal history, Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh had been on the garda radar for decades and was known as a ruthless drug boss who studied the science of fear.
His wife Joanne had married Bomber when he was just starting out in the drugs game back in Ireland. They relocated to Bimingham – where they set up a car business – after he became one of the first targets of the Criminal
Assets Bureau when it was formed in 1996 following the murder of journalist
Veronica Guerin by a crime gang.
There, he teamed up with two drug-dealing cousins, James Mulvey in Solihull and Gerard ‘Hatchet’ Kavanagh, back in Dublin. Together, they became key suppliers of product into Ireland and the UK, with Kinahan drugs and weapons.
Bomber’s home was a mansion fit for a Premiership footballer and it stood large and elegant in its own grounds, fronted with landscaped gardens and a sweeping driveway behind electric gates.
Holidays were spent in Mexico,
Dubai and in their summer home in Majorca, where the couple partied every August with associates from the criminal underworld. Joanne had spent her 40th birthday in Las Vegas with a huge group of girl pals, all expenses paid courtesy of her adoring husband.
Sources said Bomber was running millions of euros of Kinahan
drugs and weapons into Ireland and laundering money through his motor firm, and that he was the most significant figure in organised crime next to Daniel Kinahan.
Coaching his fear philosophy
For Bomber, the business of understanding fear was as important as knowing the cost of a kilo of cocaine and he studied the psychology of it with gusto.
He liked to pass his knowledge down the line, so his underlings could hold their own and, during his coaching sessions, he would describe the “states of fear” of a human being and how to reach the levels. A thin line existed, he explained, between controlling someone and making them so frightened they became paralysed and useless.
Bomber was later arrested by officers from the National Crime Agency as he stepped off a flight from Majorca after a family holiday.
During a search, a pink stun-gun had been found at his home in Tamworth, and a stint in custody gave the wider probe into his drug and money laundering network a bit of breathing space.
In one picture taken during a raid on his home, between his bedside locker and the bed, 30 weapons including baseball bats, an extendable baton, a cosh, knives, a hatchet, an axe and swords were laid out. The pictures showed the bedroom itself furnished with ornate cream and gold dressing tables, lockers and a bed in Louis XII style.
A stiff sentence
Bomber had received a sentence in relation to the stun-gun, but in prison he had been taken from his cell and informed that he was also to be charged with major weapons and drug dealing offences.
Bomber had taken so ill during the arrest that he had to be rushed to hospital – such was the shock and gravity of his situation.
At Ipswich Crown Court, Justice Martyn Levett told Kavanagh the fact that a business had been used as cover, machinery had been transformed to carry drugs and cash undetected by customs’ X-rays, the very substantial gains, high purity of the cocaine seized and the significant effort that went in to avoiding detection all went against him and his criminal lieutenants.
The judge sentenced him to 21 years in prison.
In one picture taken during a raid on his home, between his bedside locker and the bed, 30 weapons including baseball bats... a hatchet, an axe and swords were laid out.