Similarly, in February 1992, John McFayden, who was two years into a life sentence for murder, in addition to forty-seven years for drug offences, was being taken by taxi from Full Sutton, near York, down to Wormwood Scrubs in London, apparently to see relatives, when he pulled a blade on the two-man escort and ordered the female taxi driver to drive him to Euston. Though he was caught before the year was out, it still seems remarkable that pre-travel body searches can be so sloppily carried out, particularly for such a vulnerable transportation system which, as the Home Office pointed out, was used dozens of times each day.
In the course of his reminiscences, the late Reggie Kray mentions the escapes of a few men he met inside. One can’t fail to notice the role that ‘pulling a blade’ plays in these actions. He notes how Steve McFadden escaped in transit from one prison to another, producing a knife and injuring one of his four escorts in his bid for freedom. Another friend of his, Micky Fenlon, pulled one of these prison-crafted knives on his way to Exeter Prison, hijacking the coach with all its occupants, convicts and officers. The vehicle was driven someway towards London before he parted company and made his own way.
A nightmare situation presents itself in the case of Billy Hughes, who was to all appearances a petty criminal who had served five sentences for housebreaking, before being charged with rape and grievous bodily harm. He was held on remand in Leicester Prison, where it appears that his criminal record was slow in catching up with him. In fact, it was at the prison but not delivered to the appropriate department until the day after he escaped. The man the warders thought was a pleasant character had a history of violence against the police that included killing two police dogs with his bare hands. He was not really the ideal person to place in the prison kitchen, where he spirited away a seven-inch boning knife six weeks before using it. (No search was made by the authorities despite the knife going missing.)
And if they had been more competent, they might have thought better of taking him to Chesterfield Magistrates’ Court for his weekly remand appearances by taxi, accompanied by two not particularly tough officers. Or indeed, they might have searched him thoroughly and not casually frisked him. Hughes managed to prolong the court procedures for ten trips by giving contradictory instructions to his solicitors, requiring further days out. All the time he was preparing for his escape.
Hughes struck on 12 January 1977, as the hire car turned off the M1 at Junction 29. There he leaned forward and dealt the warder in the front-passenger seat a blow to his head. Then he turned to the officer he was handcuffed to in the backseat, produced the boning knife and slashed him across the neck, causing a deep five-inch wound. As the warder in front recovered and turned, Hughes lunged at him with the knife, making two vicious strokes, one slashing his hand, the other exposing his jawbone.
Hughes ordered the car to go straight through Chesterfield and out onto the moors. At Stonedge he stopped the car, had his handcuffs unlocked and pushed everyone out to the side of the road, cuffed them together and collected whatever money they had between them. Then he jumped back in the car and fled. It was a cold, snowy January and the roads were bleak. He lost control on the ice within two miles and crashed into a wall at Beeley, near Chatsworth, home of the Duke of Devonshire. Once the alarm was raised by the warders, warnings were issued quickly to all within the area and roadblocks were set up.
An extensive search of farmhouses and local properties was made. Police guards were placed on his most recent lover in Chesterfield, as she had told him they were finished whilst he was on remand. Police also expected he might return to Blackpool, where his estranged wife had earlier received death threats from him.
For some reason, Billy Hughes was missed by all those searching for him. He had gone to ground less than a mile from the place where he was last sighted, not long after he hijacked the taxi – Pottery Cottage in the hamlet of Eastmoor, close to the headquarters set up by the police at the local pub, the Highwayman.
Pottery Cottage was to become a scene of carnage. On his arrival Hughes had taken hostage an elderly couple he found there, Arthur and Amy Minton. Later, as other members of the family arrived home, Gill and Richard Moran, and their ten-year-old daughter Sarah, were also taken and locked in separate rooms. Though he killed Sarah and her grandfather, Arthur, immediately, he still kept the survivors separate and maintained the pretence that each was alive by taking food into their rooms at mealtimes.
The next day council workers came to clean the septic tank, as Sarah’s mother drove alone to fetch a newspaper and cigarettes for Hughes. No outsider had any inkling that something was wrong and she gave no sign that Hughes was in her home. Later that day, Hughes went out with Gill on errands. Each time nothing untoward occurred. The following day, Richard and Gill went shopping and filled the car with petrol. A while later, Hughes and the husband went to the plastics company where Moran worked and stole £200 from the safe.
That evening the grandmother, Amy, tried to escape through a window. Hughes caught her, slit her throat, and left her in the garden covered in snow. It was time for him to depart. The only two members of the family still alive were the husband and wife, though they remained in the dark as to the fate of their loved ones.
Hughes decided to take only Gill with him, and tied up her husband back at the house. However, the tyres of the family’s Chrysler car would not grip in the snow, so they knocked on a neighbour’s door and asked to be towed out. Ready to depart, Hughes returned to the house and stabbed the husband to death.
What he did not know was that Gill had whispered to the neighbour about her predicament, and the police were about to join their trail. Soon in attendance at the cottage, they would realise the gravity of the situation.
Having chosen such bad weather for his escape, any form of car chase was doomed to end in a further crash. When this happened Hughes kept Gill Moran as his hostage, his knife at her throat. Switching to one of the police cars, a fresh chase got underway that led into Cheshire and a further crash into a bus that was used as a roadblock. With the woman as his hostage, he demanded another car.
In the meantime, police marksmen had arrived. When an outside light at a nearby house came on suddenly, it triggered a dramatic mêlée as Hughes started swinging an axe he had brought along, both at his hostage and the police, who were trying to get into the car. One marksman shot him in the head from twelve feet through the windscreen, with a Smith & Wesson .38. Another shot forced Hughes to try to clamber from the car, at which point he was shot in the chest. In the first such incident in modern times, the British police had shot dead a prison escapee.
Some people leave it right to the last minute until their bid to escape is put into operation. The escape of Clifford Hobbs and Noel Cunningham took place in June 2003. As the Securicor van taking ten remand prisoners from Brixton Prison to the Inner London Crown Court turned into Avonmouth Street, just along from the Elephant and Castle, it halted outside the gate to the court’s yard and waited to be admitted. It was just after 9am. Two men who had been seen loitering earlier in the nearby park stepped in front of the van. One was dressed as a postman and carried a Royal Mail bag. Both were armed with handguns.
The ‘postman’ demanded that the driver open the hatches. The driver wasn’t successful so he was told to open the side door. He was then shot in the knee. The second gunman ordered the emergency hatches (used in the event of a serious accident) to be released. Then the two men entered the van, and the prison escort was made to unlock the door to the separate cells after being pistol-whipped. The rear doors were then opened for the prisoners to escape, none of whom were handcuffed. All ten were given the opportunity to run, but only three escaped – though one, Tony Peters, surrendered later that same day.
The breakout had been organised for Hobbs and Cunningham. They were due in court to face charges of conspiracy to steal £1.25 million from a Securicor van in Effra Road, Brixton, a robbery that failed when they were ambushed by the Flying Squad. Once out of the van, they and their liberators ran across the nearby park, Newington Gardens, before going their separate ways, one in a getaway car from Bath Terrace, the other on the back of a motorbike from Brockham Street.
Four years later in court, Hobbs denied that the breakout