Conspiracy theory over killing of career criminal

ANTHONY Grainger’s day job was driving recovery vehicles for a breaker’s firm – but he had been connected to serious crime for at least 15 years.

In 2011 Mr Grainger, from Bolton, was arrested over the theft of a memory stick containing the names of 1,000 informants from the home of a drug squad officer, but no action was taken against him.

Following his killing, campaigners backed by his partner Gail, suggested his death was ‘somehow linked’ to the disappearance of the memory stick. But Judge Teague yesterday concluded the two events were ‘wholly unrelated’. However, it did sow the seeds for the catastrophic operation which resulted in his death the following year.

His brother Stuart – jailed in 2001 for a gangland murder – was charged with an armed robbery in Prestwich in 1996 but the case against him was ordered to lie on file. When officers were investigating the memory stick theft, a ‘profile’ of Anthony Grainger was produced which wrongly linked the armed robbery to him instead. This profile was adopted when Mr Grainger became a focus of Operation Shire – meaning armed officers were wrongly briefed he had been suspected of involvement in firearms.

Passenger David Totton is a feared ‘hardman’ who in 2010 survived a gangland assassination attempt at a pub in Salford.

The two would-be assassins were disarmed and then shot with their own guns. No one has been charged with the killings, but it meant Mr Totton did have a firearms ‘marker’ on the police computer system and was regarded as dangerous.

In 1997 Mr Grainger had been behind the wheel of a stolen BMW which rammed a pursuing police car. He received an 18-month sentence for affray and theft.

In 2008 he was cleared of plotting to supply heroin and amphetamine following a series of retrials but three years later was jailed for 20 months for conspiracy to handle stolen goods. He had no convictions for violent offences.