But Regan’s life of fast cars and Monte Carlo holidays came to a sudden end in June 1998, when armed police pounced during a massive heroin smuggling deal in North London. He tried to escape in his car, knocking over and injuring a policewoman in the process. Detectives found 25kg of the drug in the boot of his Mercedes and he was charged with heroin smuggling and assaulting the officer. Faced with 20 years in jail, the unscrupulous crook turned supergrass to secure a lighter sentence.
In the following few months he was interviewed 15 times by detectives from the National Criminal Investigation Squad and gave information about a £100 million cocaine smuggling ring, which led to the conviction of a dozen top-level criminals and the confiscation of millions of pounds of drugs money. Regan knew about the ring because he was the one who sold the dodgy passports. Investigators estimate that between 1996 and 1998, the gang smuggled cocaine into Britain with an estimated street value of £2 billion. The information provided by Regan led to a total of 15 convictions in a case involving five separate trials.
His co-defendants in the heroin-smuggling case for which he was busted pleaded not guilty when it came to trial. But thanks to Regan’s evidence, they all received lengthy prison sentences. The judge told him: ‘As a result of your co-operation you will never again be trusted by your former colleagues, so you can’t go back and the enmity of those will make your future life precarious… Those who turn against former associates should receive a very great reduction in their sentence.’ Regan was given eight years, but he was a free man three years later, in 2002.
With contracts on his life and very few remaining friends in the criminal world, Regan was desperate to be rich again. He had been stripped of all his cash and assets when he was jailed for heroin smuggling and he longed for the trappings afforded by organised crime, so he devised a plan that would leave a shipping tycoon, his wife, her mother and their two infant children murdered in the course of what was later described as ‘a crime utterly beyond the comprehension of decent society.’
Amarjit Chohan ran CIBA Freight, a fruit import and export business near Heathrow airport. The multi-millionaire, who started out selling fruit and veg from a shed, was known to be something of a chancer with a fast-and-loose attitude to business. He served a prison sentence for tax evasion and his business, though lucrative, was run chaotically, with staff wages often paid in a combination of cash and cheques. Later, he was referred to in court as ‘a charming, but rather feckless boss’.
Kenneth Regan had experience working in the freight industry and was introduced to Mr Chohan – known as Anil – through a friend who worked at CIBA. Towards the end of 2002, Regan began frequenting Mr Chohan’s offices, at all times quietly plotting to steal the company and use it to import hard drugs.
Mr Chohan made no secret of wanting to sell his business and one day Regan came to the CIBA offices with the news that he had found a Dutch company who would buy it for £3 million. Following this, Mr Chohan was lured to a meeting near Stonehenge, Salisbury, on 13 February 2003, to discuss a deal. At the meeting, Mr Chohan and Regan were joined by two others: Regan’s former passport dealing partner William Horncy and their underworld acquaintance Peter Rees, who posed as the potential purchaser. Amarjit Chohan, 45, was never seen alive again.
After the meeting, Mr Chohan was kidnapped and taken to Regan’s home in Salisbury, which he shared with his senile father. Once there, he was tied up, gagged and tortured until he signed over his firm. He was also made to sign several sheets of blank paper on which his captors later typed fake letters from him, informing his staff that Regan was their new boss.
Regan’s plan was to kill Mr Chohan, after making it look like he was fleeing England. But Regan and Horncy knew the businessman’s disappearance would not have seemed credible if it looked like he had left behind the family he adored. So his wife Nancy, 25, their sons Devinder, aged 18 months, and Ravinder, eight weeks, plus his wife’s 52-year-old mother, Charanjit Kaur – who was visiting from India – would all have to be killed too.
The following day, 14 February, Nancy rang her brother, Onkar Verma, in a frantic state after hearing from CIBA staff that her husband had flown to Holland on business. She knew something was wrong because his passport was at the Home Office for a residency application. She also had a phone message from her husband, in which he spoke in English rather than Punjabi (the couple always spoke Punjabi on the phone). His mobile, which he always diligently answered, was switched off.
On Saturday, 15 February, while Rees guarded Mr Chohan, Regan and Horncy drove to their captive’s family home in Hounslow, West London, where they tricked Mrs Chohan into letting them in. Once inside, they killed her, her sons and her mother before driving the bodies to Regan’s Salisbury home. That night, Mr Chohan was forced to leave several phone messages saying he was leaving England. He was then murdered.
Two days later, Kenneth Regan arrived at CIBA Freight, with a handwritten letter from Mr Chohan and a signed document giving him Power of Attorney to take over the running of the company. Employees recalled the letter, which later disappeared, as saying something like: ‘Greed has got the better of me. As you are aware, I’ve been doing some exports to the USA described as magazines, but in fact this was khat [a drug], which is illegal in the USA. I’ve got myself in serious trouble. Some people are after me and I have to escape. I fear for the safety of my family.’ CIBA staff believed the story and Regan assumed his new role as boss. Everything was going to plan for the man willing to do anything to restore his once-lavish lifestyle.
On 19 February, the five bodies were loaded into a hired van and driven to a farm near Tiverton, Devon, owned by Belinda Brewin, an innocent friend of Regan’s, who was away. When Ms Brewin returned unexpectedly to her 50-acre estate and saw a trench and men with a digger, she ‘went ballistic’. Regan – who had for years been trying to romantically woo Ms Brewin – said he was fixing a long-standing drainage problem as a ‘gift’ to her. In fact, they were making a thorough job of burying the Chohan family. Two days later, Regan took Mr Chohan’s car to a criminal friend in Southampton, who disposed of it.
Nancy Chohan was very close to her brother, who lived in New Zealand, and they spoke over the phone almost every day. So when Regan claimed that she, Amarjit and the rest of the family had fled without letting him know, he simply did not believe the tale. He spent weeks pestering the Metropolitan Police by phone and email and on 5 March, he flew over to England to find out what was being done to find his family.
At Onkar Verma’s insistence, police searched the Chohan home in Hounslow. It was like the Mary Celeste. The washing machine was full of wet clothes and food was half-eaten on plates. Police found Mrs Kaur’s out-of-date return ticket to India and her prayer book, which she was known never to be without, was on the bedside table in the spare room. Furthermore, the family’s bank accounts had not been touched for more than three weeks. Thanks to Mr Verma’s tenacity, the case was handed over to Scotland Yard’s Serious Crime Group.
Regan and the rest of the staff at CIBA were interviewed and police became suspicious of the letters signed by Mr Chohan. Alarmed by the police investigation, Regan returned to the farm, accompanied by Horncy and Rees, to dig up the bodies. The following day, Easter Sunday, they bought a boat for cash and dumped the bodies in the sea off Dorset.
Two days later, a father and son canoeing off Bournemouth Pier found a body. A week later, it was identified as Mr Chohan.
Realising the game was up, Regan and Horncy fled by ferry to France. Rees also went on the run, hiding out with a friend in Gloucestershire.
Meanwhile, detectives were building their case. Regan had given Ms Brewin, whose land was used to bury the bodies, a £72,000-a-year job, working just two days a week. Police say he was ‘utterly bewitched’ by her looks and class. When she heard about the discovery of Mr Chohan’s body, she told police about the diggers at her farm. The following day the field was excavated.
On 15 July, Nancy Chohan’s body was caught up in fishermen’s nets off Poole, Dorset. Her mother’s badly decomposed body was washed up on a beach on the Isle of Wight on 7 September. The two boys have never been found.
By September,