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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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2. The killer(s) carefully selected the ambush spot, much in the same way as a hunter would say choose a river crossing, they chose the precise location.
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The Killer(s) knew the location. The Killer (s) knew that shots heard in this location, were less likely to arouse suspicion as it was a farmhouse and a place where shooting happened. As the farm attracted poachers, even night time shots, would not be as suspitious as they would in most locations.
THe Killer(s) must have been confident marksmen, they practiced.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The location was not suitable, for a plane landing, therefore any ruse that they were going to this area, to meet up for a drug deal, is improbable.
The idea of Michael (the pilot) Steele flying in drugs, was an invention based on Nicholls knowing Stelles previous offending history. It was not a practical possibility for this location.
It was if the Channel 4 documentary, is to be beleived, one of the first leads that the police pursued, something that they sought to confirm with evidence.
My spider sense is that the trio were were arranging to collect guns (they had upset a lot of people) not drugs.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | 2. The killer(s) carefully selected the ambush spot, much in the same way as a hunter would say choose a river crossing, they chose the precise location.
The Killer(s) knew the location. The Killer (s) knew that shots heard in this location, were less likely to arouse suspicion as it was a farmhouse and a place where shooting happened. As the farm attracted poachers, even night time shots, would not be as suspitious as they would in most locations. |
Good, solid points.
| THe Killer(s) must have been confident marksmen, they practiced. |
I can't see the relevance of this. Unless, maybe, they used local pheasant-shoots to keep their eye in.
| The location was not suitable, for a plane landing, therefore any ruse that they were going to this area, to meet up for a drug deal, is improbable. |
An interesting point. We don't know why the three men went there, they are all dead. We are therefore, I assume, reliant on Nicholls, the supergrass/ driver's word for it. So either
* He was telling the truth and the killer(s) were trusting that Theobald's farm would pass muster as a landing ground (reasonable enough, the three wouldn't know one way or the other) or
* The police provided the reason even though they would surely know the farm didn't pass muster.
| The idea of Michael (the pilot) Steele flying in drugs, was an invention based on Nicholls knowing Stelles previous offending history. It was not a practical possibility for this location. |
OK
| It was if the Channel 4 documentary, is to be beleived, one of the first leads that the police pursued, something that they sought to confirm with evidence. |
This is, I agree, a bit weird since they would know from Day One the farm couldn't be used for this purpose. Though I have to say, in everyone's defence, that judging farms on their suitability for STOLs is not something given to many people. Any fair-sized field can be used at a push. Or with a push, if French Resistance movies are anything to go by.
| My spider sense is that the trio were were arranging to collect guns (they had upset a lot of people) not drugs. |
OK
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| CNN streamers wrote: | Tom Selleck, a proud Reaganite, on Trump: "Certainly a mixed bag."
TV icon, Tom Selleck on state of the country: It's in 'flux'. |
Many of us welcome advice from Tom on moustaches and playing private eyes, but I wonder if politics is really his forte. Unless we give him his due for being a dissident from the usual Hollywood panty-waists like Susan Sontag with whom he often guest-starred on Friends.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Essex Boys Murders.......
Nov 1995. Death of Leah Betts
December 1995. Essex Boys Murders
The county of Essex borders four London boroughs and connects via major routes like the M25 and M11, its under an hours drive between Rettendon whee the murders took place and Canary Wharf.
February 1996. London Docklands Bombing.
On 9 February 1996, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a powerful truck bomb in South Quay, outside Canary Wharf, in London Docklands. The blast killed two people and devastated a wide area, causing an estimated £150 million worth of damage. The IRA had sent warnings 90 minutes beforehand, but the area was not fully evacuated. As well as the two people who were killed, more than 100 were injured, some permanently.
The attack marked an end to the IRA's seventeen-month ceasefire, and came just over an hour after its declaration to Irish broadcaster RTÉ |
The Essex police now had 2 major investigations Leah Betts, Essex Boys and were co-operating with the Met and the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the London Docklands blast.
They surely tried to link the dots......
| Operation Century was the code name for a sting operation by Essex Police for investigating the Rettendon murders of three violent drug dealers that happened at Rettendon, Essex, England, in December 1995.[1] It was assisted by RUC Special Branch officers. The purpose of the operation was to pressure people whom the police suspected of having knowledge about the triple murder, in order to incriminate the suspects in question and/or others. |
Details concerning this undercover police operation came to light, when persons were brought to trial towards the end of 1997 in connection with the Rettendon killings. Dated–timed tape recordings of the threatening police phone calls, recorded by one of the Operation Century "suspects" were produced in evidence by defence counsel and were played in court. They showed that the undercover police calls were increasingly threatening as Operation Century unravelled, because the suspects did not believe that Belfast Republicans had ever funded Essex criminal enterprises and so did not conform as the undercover officers had hoped.
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| A senior Essex officer (Detective Superintendent Ivan Dibley) subsequently boasted in a media interview that he had had no intention of approaching certain Century suspects in the normal way and claimed that those Century suspects had been Rettendon murder suspects from the start of their Rettendon investigations.[3] It was similarly stated to journalists by Det. Supt. Dibley that in deploying Century tactics he was "breaking new ground" and hoping that they'd get away with it at court if evidence had been obtained. |
Wileys view is that Essex police probably changed their approach (and standards) not from the start, but after their contact with the RUC, ie after the Feb 1996 bombing, they then adopted (not a new approach) but the approach the RUC were already using to the "The Troubles".
The police maintain that they had asked the RUC to assist them from the start of the investigation....
This needs more digging.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'm not clear how the Essex murders got associated with Ulster bombings in the first place.
There is no obvious geographical link between the London Docklands and central Essex, and in any case the IRA chose Canary Wharf for its acreage of glass and being outside the more heavily policed areas of the City and West End, not its geographical position.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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It does require more digging, but we do know RUC officers, as part of Operation Century, were posing in Feb 1996, as fake IRA members, to threaton Steele, to progress the Essex Boys investigation. (Steele recorded them)
Steeles defence team, were originally going to try and show, at his trial, that the IRA might have been responsible, for killing the Essex boys.
The problem with line of defence, was that these murderous IRA members were in fact undercover RUC officers, actually working with Essex police....
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I agree the Irish Connection is worth digging but I need to know where it starts so I can start. Either you know or they said how the link came about. It must have emerged at some stage. But failing all that, any reason you can think of that makes sense. So far it seems to be...
| Essex Police [were] investigating the Rettendon murders of three violent drug dealers... It was assisted by RUC Special Branch officers. |
Which you'd have to admit is passing strange.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Name & Shame
CNN was running a streamer announcing that the Republican Senate Committee was referring to the newly selected senatorial candidate for Michigan by his full name: Abdulrahman Mohammed El-Sayed. Bastards.
The piece that was on screen above this streamer concerned some heavily-armed fruitcake who had been arrested at a Trump golf course the Prez will be visiting in a few days. For ten long minutes I waited for them to tell us who he was. He sure as hell looked Muslim from his mugshot. But CNN could not bring themselves to give us his name, full or otherwise. Typical.
I thought to myself, that's a nice juxtaposition I can use for an AEL quickie, so I looked up the dude's name on the internet. Jeanine John Taele. Damn and blast.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Channel 4 News (ITN to Channel 4)
It was highly diverting watching Matt Frei trying to get the message out re the Jason Arday business. They had run a reasonably fair summation, i.e. moderately biased towards the Jason side, of what it was all about. Then it was time for the de rigueur studio discussion between a pro- and an anti-Jason partisan, Matt presiding as anchor.
The problem was the Arday side was in the hands of a doddery black academic, dug up from God knows where. (I suspect the usual suspects were keeping well away on this one.) The forces of evil were fronted by a sharp-as-a-tack pillar of scholastic rectitude, fresh from the polemic mills of social platforming.
Matt did his best to show whose side we were all on by his tone of voice and the wording of questions to each man but in the end he had to cut proceedings short with some alacrity.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | I agree the Irish Connection is worth digging but I need to know where it starts so I can start. Either you know or they said how the link came about. It must have emerged at some stage. But failing all that, any reason you can think of that makes sense. So far it seems to be...
| Essex Police [were] investigating the Rettendon murders of three violent drug dealers... It was assisted by RUC Special Branch officers. |
Which you'd have to admit is passing strange. |
I still dont know. The Essex Police imply it was from the start. I think it was likely from Feb 1996. It is important for timelines.
Some random thoughts:
The whole plan to Wiley, seems somewhat bizarre....
The Essex Police, it appears were creating fake personas to extract information.
It can be compared with Operation Edzell.
The idea for that operation was that of a "honeytrap" designed to extract a confession from Colin Stagg, a suspect in the 1992 Wimbledon Common murder of Rachel Nickell.
Operation Edzell: a female undercover officer, going under the name "Lizzie James," engaged in a 5-month long correspondence to trap Stagg, into disclosing violent sexual fantasies. However Stagg never confessed any such thoughts. At trial in 1994, the judge dismissed the covertly obtained evidence as "deceptive conduct of the grossest kind" and threw the case out. Stagg was acquitted.
The killer, of Rachel Nickell, Robert Napper, was eventually convicted of her murder in 2008 on the basis of DNA evidence.
Operation Century, appears to be a (less) refined variant, of Edsell. In this case Essex police set up, with the help of the RUC officers some fake IRA personas, to phone from Ireland, (presumably these officers had broad Irish accents).
They were using the "stick" rather than "honey".
Here is what wiki has to say....
The operation produced no arrests or evidence leading to a criminal prosecution. A prosecution that was eventually brought in connection with the Rettendon murders, was wholly based on police operations subsequent to the abandonment and closure of Operation Century. The tactics deployed by Essex and Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch while Operation Century was under way, increasingly led to police voicing serious threats against the suspects in question. The operation was carefully timed to coincide with the 1996 Docklands bombing of Canary Wharf on the evening of 9 February, which marked the ending of the previous mainland Republican bombing campaign ceasefire. Any persons involved as witnesses during the triple killings, entered into a relocation and witness protection programme. One of the Essex suspects received a call from Belfast within minutes of the Canary Wharf explosion. The Rettendon Triple Murders had no Irish connection in themselves or with the bombing. Irish affairs were introduced solely by police as part of the underlying leverage for their undercover operation.
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| Transcripts of these phone calls became available (see later and "sources" footnote) and police eventually had to acknowledge that they were made by Belfast-based Special Branch officers. These calls were repeatedly made to the Essex suspects from Ireland, by RUC Special Branch posing as Republican drug runners (Irish Billy and Irish John), making it clear that they could rely upon organisational back up and additionally claiming that they had funded the criminal activities of one of the Rettendon murder victims, who they were still demanding repayment from. This ruse failed to manipulate the suspects into agreeing to meet. |
There was a problem in trying to accurately portray what levels of threat and abuse Essex Police/Special Branch descended to during the course of this operation – the language was extremely foul-mouthed and threatening (and could have been taken by the suspects as amounting to death threats – see "documents" sources link below). It is clear from the Sun newspaper and (Essex Basildon Echo) reports referred to below, that grave exception was taken to this aspect of the police operation.
In a call on 26 February 1996, undercover Special Branch threatened: "I've got (expletive deleted) A levels ... A levels in (expletive deleted) whacking (expletive deleted) people ... "it's time you did (expletive deleted) take these calls seriously ... as far as you're concerned you're (expletive deleted) cease fire's going ... I'll be in touch with you very (expletive deleted) soon ..... I've got a way, see what I (expletive deleted) do ... you watch your (expletive deleted) car". | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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After an arduous day at the typeface I like to unwind by watching YouTubes of railway journeys as seen from the driver's cab via a fixed camera pointing forward. You get thirty minutes of the railway line between, say, Bricklayers Arms goods yard and Selhurst depot. It may sound a touch dull but it is enlivened by a voice-over occasionally informing you the St John's cut-off can be seen on the left and suchlike.
But sometimes one gathers incidental information of wider interest. For instance, I have been watching 'Hastings to Charing Cross', a relative marathon lasting an hour and a half and best viewed in stages. I had chosen it, inter alia, because towards the end of the journey it would pass the house I grew up in.
As it happens, the 'Hastings Diesel' was a particular favourite of my youth because it was the only train that was not (a) a steam-powered express or (b) a Southern Region electric four/eight-coach set. We never knew why Hastings required this unique diesel service.
Yesterday, I found out and intend to pass on this very significant piece of information (I promise) when we've all composed ourselves sufficiently to appreciate it.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Wiley wrote: | "It was assisted by RUC Special Branch officers"
which you'd have to admit is passing strange.
I still dont know. The Essex Police imply it was from the start. I think it was likely from Feb 1996. It is important for timelines. |
Keep digging!
| The whole plan to Wiley, seems somewhat bizarre.... |
I don't think 'bizarre' quite captures it, but do go on.
| The Essex Police, it appears were creating fake personas to extract information. |
Fair enough. But this has come under scrutiny following various police calamities, notably the bloke initially done for the Jill Dando murder.
| It can be compared with Operation Edzell. |
And this one!
| Operation Century, appears to be a (less) refined variant, of Edsell. In this case Essex police set up, with the help of the RUC officers some fake IRA personas, to phone from Ireland, (presumably these officers had broad Irish accents). They were using the "stick" rather than "honey". |
Is this before, during or after Rettendon? You spoke of timelines.
Here is what wiki has to say....
The operation produced no arrests or evidence leading to a criminal prosecution. A prosecution that was eventually brought in connection with the Rettendon murders, was wholly based on police operations subsequent to the abandonment and closure of Operation Century. |
OK
Wiki isn't making it clear either.
The tactics deployed by Essex and Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch while Operation Century was under way, increasingly led... |
That makes two of you! Great wodges of Wiki without comment from you has made my head reel quite off.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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In 1852 the Charing X to Tunbridge Wells line was to be extended to Hastings. This required a lot of tunnels to get through The Weald. Since the line itself wasn't exactly major, the promoters used cheap tunnel builders. Cheap because they used only two rows of bricks to arch the tunnels. An infinitesimal saving overall but useful to a shyster builder.
The tunnels soon started to crack under the weight. Putting in the correct number of bricks didn't cost much but it lowered tunnel heights sufficiently that trains could now only get through in the dead centre, not the up- and down-lines they had been used to. It wasn't worth re-engineering all the tunnels so the Hastings line was now essentially a single track railway, the only one among the busy commuter lines into London.
When electrification came in it wasn't worth electrifying this relatively moribund line, so until 1987 Hastings was served by the only diesels on the whole Southern Region. Minor celebrities to buffs (like me with a grandstand view) but a major expense for the Southern Region aka the taxpayer aka mum and dad.
There's an AE point to all this of course. Pennies saved by crooks and cheeseparing toffs has cost millions over the years. But what you do about it is not something I've cracked.
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