Admission or denial?

David Norris, one the five name over the Stephen Lawrence murder, is currently serving three months for driving while disqualified. He was in fact stopped once, then drove off again in front of the officers who had just arrested him! Norris is one flash geyser. He would be with a father like Clifford Norris who is a south London gangster heavily involved in guns and drugs and currently serving 6 years.

Norris senior, though, is in despair over his son. When junior arrived at Belmarsh Prison to start his "carpet" he asked to be put on protection. He had been warned that quite a lot of black prisoners were "foaming at the mouth" to give him a bit of what he and his four mates gave Stephen Lawrence. Even Jonathon Aitken knew that you don't ask for protection unless you are an informer or a sex case. Norris senior was furious at his son's cowardice. 

But it got worse. In Belmarsh, Norse junior has palled up with Richard Baker, the rapist DJ, who in June was sentenced to mutiple life sentences for rape and other sexual offence. They walk around together on the exercise yard, often jeering back at the ordinary prisoners from the overlooking wings who taunt them for being nonces. Thus Clifford's son is not merely gutless but also "having it with nonces". Clifford is said to be mortified and ruefully wondering if his son is going to go the whole hog and become a grass.

Yet, it was Clifford who almost certainly saved the Eltham five from a prosecution based on evidence that might have secured their convictions. Despite their bungled inquiry the police did eventually plant a video-audio bug in one of their homes, Gary Dobson's. They collected hundreds of hours of footage where the youths ranted and raged at "niggers" and made mock stabbing attacks on each other. They clearly did not know the bug was there as in every sense except in regard to admitting the Lawrence murder their behaviour was damming. Yet, paradoxically, one aspect of these video tapes is also damming in regard to this murder.

They hardly mention the Lawrence case at all, despite the fact that the murder inquiry and the accompanying press publicity had been dogging their lives for over 18 months Indeed, the only real mention is when one them says that they did not stab Lawrence in a cagey, almost ironic voice. Even if they were innnocent of Lawrence's murder, they would have talked about it, even celebrated it, if they had not been coached not to let on to any outsiders or to talk openly among themselves about it in premises that could be bugged. 

The person who did the coaching was, of course, Clifford Norris. On a number of occasions, because of his activities in smuggling and guns, Norris senior has been targeted by sophisticated surveillance teams from both customs and police. He knows the game inside out and he hammered home to all of them: Never speak openly about the Lawrence murder.

The intrepid Martin Bashir, who also delivered us the grilling of Princess Diana, made much of these video tapes when he interviewed the five this April. Hwever, he completely missed the significance of how the lack of references to Lawrence and the staged remark about them being innnocent is a form of admisssion on denial. 

In fact, Neil Acourt in one of his answers to Bashir virtually shopped the business during his attempt to pass off their neo-Nazi antics as laddishness. He said they knew they were being bugged. They didn't - but the idea that they might be had been planted by Clifford Norris who made them understand that this was the only method the police could use to convict them. This wasn't a case of the dog that didn't bark as one that didn't bark enough.

Rape & DNA

As DNA testing becomes more sensitive, so more criminals are being convicted on this kind of evidence. It helped convict the DJ raper, Richard Baker, for example. Of course, rapists are unique among offenders as the goal of their crime - ejaculating inside their victim - is also all the evidence the police need to convict them. 

There are a few qualifications to this point. First, most rapists are known to the victim and , at trial, consent is usually the issue. Moreover, some stranger rapes are committed by rapists who have no prevous convictions and whose DNA profile is consequently not known. Nonetheless, DNA testing raises a massive ante on stranger rapists being detected and, if caught, delivers evidence that goes well beyond the criminal stadnard of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt.

Naturally, this has changed the modus operandi of rapists especially those stranger rapists whose DNA is on file. There are a trickle of reports now of rapists using condoms! You would have thought that the whole kick of rape would disappear if after terrorising or beating your victim into submission you had to stop to put on a condom.

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The Cocaine Accelorator

There is a massive world-wide market in cocaine. America's Drug Enforcement Agency, which is only one the American investigative bodies to take a long look at the acitivities of Tory Party treasuer, Michael Ashcroft, reckons the overall global trade in narcotics to be of the order of $600 billion per year. Cocaine is probably about 40% of that. The main staging posts for both the exportation and money laundering of the drug are located in the caribbean or central America. 

Many of these tiny countries with few national resources are influenced politically through drug muscle to ignore smugglers or to allow loose banking controls. Cocaine is an integral part of world trade and, apart from tourism, is often the only big business in the areas where Michael Ashcroft operates.

Given that Ashworth is now suing The Times - the newspaper responsible to publicising the allegations against Ashcroft - it is likely that we will find out whether or not the main bankroller of the the Tory Party in the '90s and the funder of Crimestoppers is a kingpin in the drug trade. After all legal process confers on the defendant much great powers of investigation, as Jonathon Aitken found to his cost, than those enjoyed by investigative journalists. Thus the trial should give us a definitive answer to whether or not there is any fire behind the Ashcroft smoke.

Such is the porfitability of the drug trade, it must leave markers like unexplained wealth being made in a drug-ridden part of the world or devastated local communities where drugs like crack and heroin gain a big market hold. Another marker is the weird pockets of astonishing prosperity and luxury that one sees small towns in parts of South America and the Caribbean. Thus obscure Columbian cities will sport outposts of Ferrari concessionairs and exclusive fashion houses. 

On a much smaller scale one can see the same thing in Islinton's Angel where over the last ten years there has been such a spectacular growth of shops, clubs, bars and restaurants that in comparison with the surrounding areas it looks like Las Vegas in the desert. One of the main reasons for this is the enormous profits enjoyed by local crime family, the Adams, who like Ashcroft are both sharp business men and are also very generous with their overflowing coffers.

The publcity spotlight on the Adams family has dimmed of late but LWT's "Gun Law" to be shown in September will turn it up again. The last burst of interest in their activities was towards the end of last year. Tommy Adams, one of the triad of older brothers who run the show, went down for seven and half years for his part in a multi-million pound cannbis racket. Then, in December, a Hatton Garden diamond dealer, Solly Nahone, was gunned down on his doorstep in Hendon. Solly was a close assocciate of the family and an important manager of their financial investments. He was also a close friend of another member of the firm, Gilbert Wynter, who also dealt in diamonds and who disappeared in March 1998.

Wynter, 37, was of Jamaican extraction but grew up in Islington and was close to one of the other younger Adams brothers, Danny. He also became inseperable from Terry, the oldest brother. At the time of his murder, all the commentators - including myself - predicted that the family would take revenge for Wynter's death. However, it is now emerging that Wynter was probably killed by the family as also was Solly for "doubling" on them over a complex finanacial deal involving drug money and diamonds.

This is the picture that emerges from the information that Punch has gleaned from having access to an interview with one of Wynter's many girlfriends and information supplied by a underground Trinidadian journalist who wishes to remain annonymous. The picture aslo features obeah, high living, Columbian traffickers being esconsesd at the family's expenses in the Grovenor Hotel, business interests in Miami... 

Gilbert "Gill" Wynter was an enforcer and hitman for the family but he also freelanced in running the lucrative doorman trade in London.'s clubland. His ex-girdfriend, Dee, 26, a beautiful coffee-cloured model, talks about Gilly: "He could be really loud certain times and then he'd be really reserved like you know, in just a matter of seconds. He could just switch, just like that. But he was a nice guy. Nice, he was, always liked to party. Was always guaranteed a good time out, you know, when we went out with him. He was cool."

Wynter was a dandy dresser and carried a sword-stick to help with a limp that he retained after being hit by a police car when he was arrested with an armed Terry Adams in 1992. Dee claims that she did not know "he was this big time gangster. I mean I knew he was into charlie and all that. when we drove around he's always stop off and get little presents like bags andshoes and stuff and he never, ever paid for them. He'd always drink champagne, champagne was like water to him. " 

She said that Wynter spoke "a lot about the Bible. he believes in god you know". However, he also used African oils to protect him from harm. "good day oils and good luck oils."

When I was introduced to one of Wynter's former close associates, a black clubowner, he confirmed Wynter's bizarre spirituality: "Gilly's mother is some kind of obeah priestess, that where all that came from. That is how he came close to Terry. They went to African together to be blessed by some big obeah voodoo man, beasts being sacrficed, dancing and blood stuff, 'tings like that. It is supposed to protect you from evil.

"But it was Gily that turned evil. He wanted it all for himself and nobody can have it all. It doesn't matter if you be a gangster or a priest, you have to be fair otherwise it come back to you. If it wasn't the family, it would have been someone else. People were lining up to tap Gilly's cranium."

When I asked if he knew it was the family, he replied: "No I don't know that, nobody knows that. But he was using their name to move on people. He was getting out of control. And it was someone he knew, he went with them." His look emphasised the significance of Wynter going quietly.

A Jewish diamond dealer who knew Solly also confirmed the jewellers close connection with Wynter. "Solly's trouble was he wanted to be a gangster not a businessman. He was always talking about the family: when the Columbians were holed up in the Grovenor being minded by Wynter's mate Terry Dunstan, some boxing champion of the world, or their investments in Miami. He liked it with Wynter; they were as thick as two thieves. 

"They were gambling and womanising and doing charlie but Solly was running into money problems. After Wynter was killed, he was very frightened for a while but he thought he was OK. Then it happened."

He shrugged: "They came off a bike. No more needs to be said. but who knows." The Adams trademark is the motorbike hit, but given the way it is now being pirated by other killers that is hardly conclusive.

Nonetheless, Punch sources confirm the story that Wynter and Nahone were killed "in house" over double-crossing the family, which means that these murders will never be solved.
 
 

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