Gangland UK: The Inside Story of Britain's Most Evil Gangsters Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Stirlands so quickly? A former Nottingham neighbour explained that the couple’s rented address had become local knowledge in the city after a family friend, who lived on the same estate, accidentally met the Stirlands in Mablethorpe, just four miles from the bungalow.
    Another rumour was that the couple’s daughter had been followed when she visited her parents the day before they were killed. Or was it because, just two weeks before they were murdered, the couple took the risk to returning to Nottingham to attend the wedding of Mr Stirland’s son, Lee, and his fiancée Adele?
    More revelations were to follow. According to Nottingham residents, Mrs Stirland, a children’s carenurse at the Queen’s Medical Centre, had previously been heard in a Nottingham pub praising her convicted son. She told fellow drinkers that O’Brien had vowed to take revenge on the people who put him away, which would have done nothing to endear her, her husband and her mindless son to Mr Colin Gunn.
    However, now the true facts can be revealed. In an effort to track down the Stirlands, Colin had contacted a former BT worker, Stephen Poundall, in a bid to find the couple’s address. In turn, Poundall spoke with past colleagues, Anthony Kelly and Andrew Pickering, who ran a computer search. They found the address and passed it on to Poundall, although they had no idea why he wanted it. Kelly and Pickering later admitted computer misuse and were sacked by BT, as well as being handed down suspended jail sentences.
    Aged just 19, Jamie Gunn never recovered from the shock of seeing his friend die and, a year later, on 2 August, just three weeks after O’Brien’s conviction, he was found dead in his mother’s bed by a younger brother and sister. Jamie had died of pneumonia. He had stopped eating and begun drinking heavily and his immune system was weakened. Jamie had died as surely as if O’Brien had killed him, too.
    The Gunns decided to give Jamie a proper send off, and the funeral was as lavish as that of any Mafia family member. On Friday, 13 August 2004, 1,000 mourners descended on the hilltop surrounding the Arnold parish church of St Mary in Bulwell; 700 of them crammed into the 17th-century church, while another 300 stood in the drizzle outside. A horse-drawn, glass-sided hearse waited at the gate below, alongside two motor hearses bearingflowers, including huge wreaths saying ‘Jamie’, ‘Brother’ and ‘Jim Bob’.
    As crime writer James Cathcart reported for the Nottingham Evening Post , ‘There were three of the most stretched kind of stretch limousines, plus three big funeral Daimlers, a convoy of bulky, dark 4x4s and a conspicuous black Mercedes two-seater… Hard-looking men with stubble for hair stood smoking and chatting quietly in the churchyard, their jackets straining across their shoulders. The style, as well as the scale of the funeral, would have suited a Kray brother, rather than a teenage bouncer unknown to the world outside Nottingham before his death… just a mile away, on Hucknell Road, a demolition team was tearing down the last recognisable traces of The Sporting Chance.’
    Colin Gunn is now serving life for conspiracy to murder the Stirlands. His fellow plotters, Michael McNee and John Russell, will serve 95 years before they are considered for parole. After being sentenced on Friday, 30 June 2006, the verdict went down very badly among Gunn’s supporters on the Bestwood Estate. That weekend, around 30 people started a mini-riot, setting fire to cars and causing £ 10,000 worth of damage.
    Colin Gunn was also arrested in connection with the murder of Marian Bates, a 64-year-old Arnold parish jeweller, who was shot dead at point-blank range while shielding her daughter Xanthe from two crash-helmeted robbers at 1.30pm on Tuesday, 30 September 2003. Her bespectacled 67-year-old husband, Victor, picked up a fencing foil to try to protect his wife but was attacked with a crowbar. Wearing washing-up gloves,