So, in some tales, Robin is the champion of the people, fighting against corrupt officials and the oppressive order that protects them, while, in others, he is an arrogant and headstrong rebel, who delighted in bloodshed, cruelly slaughtering and beheading his victims.
Today, Nottingham has another so-called Robin Hood with his own band of Merry Men – a vicious outfit who will never be offered star billing as ‘principal characters’ on Nottingham’s official website. The faces that stare out at us, courtesy of a police charge room camera, are hooded-eyed Colin Gunn, and his brother, David, a ruthless crew who brought terror and mayhem to Nottingham by performing their civic duty carrying out murder, robberies, burglaries and beatings – on men and women – as well as torture, extortion, racial abuse, prostitution, drug distribution and the corruption of police officers. Single-handedly, they turned Bestwood into a place where no decent person dared to live.
The Sheriff of Nottingham in this case is replaced by a disconsolate Chief Constable, Steve Green, whose officers – Charles Fletcher and Philip Parr – had been lured knee-deep into corruption and conspiracy to the degree that that they received 7 years and 12 months in prison respectively. At his wits’ end, Mr Green eventually set up a band of ‘Untouchables’ to snare the gang that held the local populace in their iron grip of fear.
In their early years, the Gunn brothers might have modelled themselves on Robin Hood. Maybe they identified themselves with the Kray brothers. But, in reality, what we do find are two completely nasty pieces of work who were prepared to make nightmares come true.
‘There are a lot of bodies – dead and alive – that have the hallmark of Colin Gunn…they shoot someone just to get respect.’
A SENIOR NOTTINGHAMSHIRE POLICE OFFICER
The Gunn brothers grew up in Bestwood, one of the many sprawling, low-rise estates in Nottingham. Built in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it once was one of the city’s nicest areas. With its modern, three-bedroomed houses and inside toilets, you were considered lucky if you moved there.
Not any more. Even though the Gunns are now behind bars, Bestwood residents still live in fear of the two men, and many on the estate refuse even to mention their name.
In their youth, the brothers were model kids, even featuring in a church magazine for chasing and catching a purse-snatcher. Then things changed. Their teenage years were littered with criminal convictions, including violence, burglary and handling offences. In their early twenties, their ‘bling-bling’ jewellery and expensive cars were a magnet for every disaffected youth in the area as they bragged about the millions they had stashed away. Colin Gunn drove a car with the number plate ‘POWER’.
Gun crime had arrived in Nottingham in early 2000, some time before the Gunns arrived on the scene and, in keeping with many other cities, it was predominantly a phenomenon of the African-Caribbean community. But by the end of 2002 and into 2003, it was becoming increasingly clear to police fighting on that front that there was another dynamic in the city, one that was causing more insidious problems –gun crime was emerging in the white community, and the Gunns were at the heart of it.
Chief Constable Green said, ‘We increasingly formed the view that in the centre of all that was Colin Gunn. I think that led us to conclude that we would never resolve the gun crime until we confronted the Colin Gunn problem.’ And what a problem it was turning out to be.
The Gunns had soon caused Nottingham to be nominated fourth place in the country’s gun crime league and, if we are to give the brothers any credit, the statistics are impressive and speak for themselves. In 2002, at the height of their notoriety, 54 guns were fired, causing 36 injuries. After the Gunns’ arrest in 2005, the figure plummeted to 11 guns fired and just 5 injuries.
In 2002, there were 21 murders involving firearms in Nottingham; that equates to 24 per cent, compared with 8 per cent nationally. After their arrest, the tally dropped to 14 homicides, of which 0 per cent were gun related, compared with 7 per cent nationally.
During the police operation to capture the men, £10.1 million in assets were seized, along with a staggering £73.5 million in drugs. Police carried out more than 80 operations and arrested more than 100 people to get to Colin Gunn, who was by now serving 35 years after being convicted, in June 2006, of the murder of an elderly couple whose son had killed a friend of the Gunn family.
41-year-old Gunn, a shaven-headed bodybuilder, was charged with conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office. Police officers Charles Fletcher and Philip Parr were also found guilty of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Gunn and his gang (including his brother, David, who also has an extensive history of serious crime, and is now serving 8.5 years for conspiracy to supply amphetamines) based their operations on the Bestwood Estate. They ruled by fear and intimidation. They were involved in selling drugs and guns, torturing and murdering those who crossed them.
The Gunns even threatened senior police officers with death, and they paraded their wealth, boasting of their millions to unemployed teenagers. But police found it impossible to implicate Colin Gunn as the mastermind as he rarely got his hands dirty by ordering his henchmen to carry out beatings and murders. Detectives also suspect that Colin had been involved in many murders and punishment beatings on both men and women.
Police also believe that Colin Gunn ordered the shooting of a social worker who dared to give evidence against his gang, but the cops have no evidence to prove those allegations. On Monday, 17 May 2004, 50-year-old Derrick Senior was shot after he helped to convict a gang that had racially abused and beaten him in the Lord Nelson pub in Bulwell, including tearing out one of his dreadlocks. Senior, who should have sought police protection, but didn’t, claimed that he would not give in to criminals. He was shot several times as he reversed out of his drive on the Heathfield Estate three days after his abusers had been convicted.
Senior had been having a drink with a female friend when a group of drunken men started picking on her. When he went to her defence, they turned on him, dragging him into a corner of the pub by his dreadlocks. He suffered a fractured eye socket and a broken rib during the attack. He was racially abused and the drunks paraded the dreadlock around as a ‘trophy’. Robert Watson, 25, Joseph Graham, 23, Lee Marshall, 24, and John McNee, 24, were jailed for racially-aggravated assault.
On the day of the attempted murder of Mr Senior, John McSally, 50, a gangland ‘enforcer’ for Colin Gunn, rode up on his motorbike and opened fire, yelling, ‘You grassing bastard.’ Senior was hit in the chest, stomach and legs, but survived after playing dead, slumping over the steering wheel of his car.
On Friday, 1 June 2007, McSally, of Plaza Gardens, Basford, was jailed for life for shooting Senior. Gunn had offered Senior a ‘substantial amount of money’ to withdraw his testimony against the four drunks, but he refused. Sentencing McSally, Mr Justice Pitchers said, ‘You are an incredibly dangerous man – ready, for money, to kill without a second thought.’ Ordering McSally to serve at least 35 years, the judge added, ‘Even by the warped standards of those who enforce their will by violence, these were evil offences.’
McSally, allegedly acting on Gunn’s orders, had also shot gang associate 46-year-old Patrick Marshall outside the Park Tavern pub in Basford on 8 February 2004. Marshall was Colin Gunn’s odd-job man, but he had got on the wrong side of him after going on a £100,000 cocaine run to Lincolnshire without his boss’s permission. Then word spread around that Marshall was trying to get a gun to shoot associate ‘Scotch Al’ after a feud. Marshall contacted McSally, who found a gun and went to meet him. But instead of handing him the weapon, McSally blasted him in the head in the pub car park. The getaway car was recovered by police and had Colin Gunn’s overdue phone bill inside it and three photographs of his brother,