‘Goldfinger’, the six bullet holes, and the medic’s warning police ignored

Officers recorded infamous criminal’s death as natural causes despite obvious wounds, review finds

POLICE failed to spot that a dead gang boss had been shot six times, even though paramedics called to the body had alerted them to suspicious chest wounds, an internal inquiry has found.

John “Goldfinger” Palmer was said to have died from natural causes after gall bladder surgery when he was discovered in the garden of his secluded home in 2015. But a post-mortem examination found the notorious criminal was shot with a silenced pistol.

An ambulance service case review has now disclosed that a paramedic told police he doubted the wounds were from recent keyhole surgery, but police officers were “not concerned”.

Police said two officers had been dis- ciplined “for failing to fully comply with Essex Police policy” but that did not amount to gross misconduct.

An inquest found that Mr Palmer, once nicknamed Britain’s richest criminal, was probably shot outside his home in South Weald, near Brentwood, by a professional assassin using an 8mm .32 calibre pistol with a silencer.

The first paramedic at the scene found him “with large amounts of blood around the top of his shirt” and his son trying to save his life, the case review said. They found a number of “small wounds in various stages of coagulation” on the chest and abdomen and his son said he was “unsure” if they were related to the surgery.

One unnamed paramedic said the wounds were consistent with keyhole surgery to the gall bladder due to their location and the fact they were not covered or stitched, and the report adds: “He states that he raised the matter with other clinicians on scene and the police officers but they were not concerned.”

The report also states that one of the paramedics even speculated with a colleague that the wounds could be from gunshots, though this was later described as “an off-the-cuff remark”.

The ambulance service concluded it was “reasonable” that the paramedics “accepted the explanation of the injuries they were presented with”.

Essex Police said its officers were told Mr Palmer had had surgery and this could account for his injuries. “However, they did not carry out a full examination of the body, which would likely have raised suspicions about his injuries,” a police statement said.

“They also did not call an inspector to the scene to confirm their assessment, or check Mr Palmer’s antecedents on the police national computer.”

An inquest heard Mr Palmer had been moving around his grounds on a garden buggy when his assassin struck from behind a six-foot garden fence where a spy hole had been drilled.

Last December, detectives said that they were “not even close” to identifying Mr Palmer’s killer.