The Shepherd S Bush Murders

The crime, the criminals, the victims and their families. And the biggest manhunt by British police... The establishment, press and public reaction, the trial, and the aftermath are all set out in compelling narrative detail. Jack Witney served twenty-five years in prison although he shot no one and was released on appeal, only to be murdered in his Bristol flat a few years later. John Duddy died in Parkhurst after fifteen years. But Harry Roberts, by his own admission the instigator of the crime and the most notorious, was released from prison after forty-eight years in 2015 making national front page news. What could possess an apparently rational and sane man, albeit an habitual criminal, to commit such a callous and ruthless act? What kind of a man is he? How can an ordinary person understand what he did? Should he be forgiven? 50 years later, the full story for the first time.

The events that occurred in the summer of 1966 in the heart of London shocked the nation. Three police officers were brutally murdered while on duty in Braybrook Street. The perpetrators fled the scene and everyone were on their toes. A routine car check ended up in a bloody murder and the suspects were on the run. It was the beginning of the largest manhunt in England's history.

In August 1966, two weeks after England won the World Cup, and four miles from Wembley Stadium, Harry Roberts and his associates gunned down three unarmed police detectives in front of dozens of primary school children. The nation was outraged and struggled to understand what had happened. Roberts had served in the special forces during the conflict in Malaya and claimed he was assigned to kill selected targets. He returned to the UK keen to continue such work in civilian life, but he was rejected by the two gangs that dominated the London Criminal Underworld in the 1960s, the Krays and the Richardsons. Prophetically, they considered him to be too violent. Following the Shepherd’s Bush Massacre, Roberts’ accomplices, John Witney and John Duddy, were quickly arrested, but Roberts went to ground, using the survival and camouflage skills that he had learned in the British Army. Harry Roberts and Foxtrot One-One covers every detail of the investigation and manhunt that followed, from arrest, trial and imprisonment to Roberts’ eventual (and controversial) release. One of the most notorious crimes of the 20th century. The case that led to the police firearms training arrangements seen today. Looks at the tragic impact on the victims’ families. By a former senior Metropolitan Police armed officer.

Author David Smith's childhood near London, England, helped pave the way for the young boy to plough his own furrow in life. In Only Fraud and Horses, Smith narrates his story which includes pieces of history, police, and horsemanship. In this memoir, Smith offers a humorous and poetic account of his skills, training, and professional positions from cadet to London policeman and to Scotland Yard detective and specialist. Only Fraud and Horses also shares representative sports details, contrasts Smith's Scots ancestry, and links developing European history, the long dependence upon the horse, and his inherited skills as a competitive, natural horseman. With photographs and historical notes included, Smith reviews a lifetime collection of family records and shares his discoveries-starting from England with surnames of Smith and Brown and going back to the 1700s in the Highlands of Scotland before Mediterranean origins.

This book is about the murders of police officers in the United Kingdom since the end of the Second World War till the modern day. You will see that all the murders are horrific and and without any justification against the people will ask to police our streets. You will see that most of the officers are unarmed and all our brave. The murderer does not distinguish between the ranks of the police officers as you will see in this book, it appears that he kills with malice with no thought for anyone apart from himself. I hope the book gives you a little insight into the world of a policeman and what they have to face each and every day.

This illuminating broad-based political and cultural study presents the definitive account of the campaign to abolish capital punishment in the period 1955-69. It comprises a work of contemporary history exploring the theme from a number of angles, both pro and contra, which have not been covered so extensively before. From the sphere of governmental and parliamentary politics, to the relevant pressure groups, to the role of the mass media, to the significance of the different churches, and the influence of professional bodies, such as those representing the police and prison officers, the book skilfully identifies their interaction with one another. It examines the effect on the campaign of fluctuations in public opinion, and of controversial murder cases such as those of Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley, Ruth Ellis and James Hanratty, which in turn often informed the state of public opinion The work sets the campaign in the context of the social and cultural ferment of the era (the advent of the permissive society), and contrasts the fortunes of the movement with those of other "conscience issues," such as the legalisation of abortion, homosexual law reform, divorce liberalisation and the abolition of theatre censorship. It seeks to account for the success of the campaign within a relatively short time span in the face of intense public antipathy and a concerted effort by various elements of the establishment to thwart its fulfilment. It asks why the campaign succeeded when so many others facing lesser institutional obstacles failed, and it asks why it succeeded when it did and in the way it did, and considers whether the success of the campaign can be accounted for by the Zeitgeist. On one level it is a study of the politics of social reform, but at a deeper level it is a study of the way in which social trends feed through into political action at the parliamentary level, and illustrates the process of policy formation in the area of private members legislation and free votes where "party" has voluntarily taken a back seat.

David Ralph Martin was a cross-dressing criminal who carried out a string of sophisticated offences in the 1970s and '80s. A prolific burglar, car thief, fraudster and gunman, he possessed a deep loathing of anyone in authority. In addition, he was a master of disguise and a veritable Houdini when it came to escaping from prison. After shooting a policeman during a botched burglary, he escaped from court on Christmas Eve, 1982. When police believed him to be in a yellow Mini in the Earls Court area with his girlfriend, they opened fire, only to discover they had shot an entirely innocent man – a 26-year-old film editor named Steven Waldorf. The investigation became a cause célèbre at the time, and was subsequently taken over by Scotland Yard's Flying Squad, of which the author was a member. One of the biggest manhunts in the history of the Metropolitan Police ensued, before Martin was finally arrested after dramatically fleeing down the tracks between two Underground stations. Author Dick Kirby reveals for the first time the inside story of the hunt for 'the most dangerous man in London', whose eventual arrest brought to an end one of the most contentious investigations in Met history.

On 7 July 2005, just before 9 am, explosive devices detonated on London Underground trains at Liverpool Street, Edgware Road and Kings Cross stations and on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. Fifty-six people were killed and over 700 injured. Suicide bombing had come to Britain. Two weeks later, the capital's commuters narrowly missed disaster when four more devices failed to explode. Security in London was increased to unprecedented levels as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair said his force faced 'its largest operational challenge since the war'. Heavily armed police officers patrolling the streets became a regular feature of television news programmes, leaving an enduring impression that unarmed policing in Britain had gone forever and with it the kindly image of the archetypal British bobby. Controversy rages over the increased use of firearms because in the public mind, the hallmark of British security has always been unarmed policing. Now, for the first time, former Head of the Metropolitan Police Firearms Unit, Mike Waldren, gives his insider account of the changes in Britain's policing, spanning over half a century and including many examples of extraordinary heroism, tragedy, controversy, comedy, intrigue and occasional farce.