A new investigation into every aspect of the “blinkered” murder case took a team of ex-Scotland Yard detectives four years to complete.
Drug dealers Pat Tate, 37, Tony Tucker, 38, and Craig Rolfe, 26, were found shot dead in a Range Rover on a farm track in Rettendon, Essex, on the morning of December 7, 1995.
In 1998, Michael Steele, now 77, and Jack Whomes, 58, were found guilty of the murders but both protest their innocence.
The prosecution case relied heavily on supergrass Darren Nicholls’ claim to have been their get-away driver.
Now, for the first time, a 132-page dossier sent to the Criminal Case Review Commission has highlighted a key statement made by a senior Essex Police detective.
He revealed that he was informed of the murders by a drug squad officer at 6.30am on December 7 – 90 minutes before the 999 call by farmers.
Declaring the case has a “stench of corruption” about it, former Met Police DCI Dave McKelvey said: “We know Tate and Tucker were under surveillance by Essex Police yet remarkably this anomaly [the statement] was never investigated further.” Other claims in the report include that an undercover officer was drunk during a phone call on a failed sting operation.
Fellow officers “destroyed” or “stole” recordings of that phone call, plus others made by Steele, it claims.
Mr McKelvey said: “We had access to the defence case files but also interviewed about 30 former and serving officers with knowledge of the case and corruption investigations, and about 30 other non-police witnesses.
“I’m convinced of a major miscarriage of justice. The investigation was blinkered from the outset and failed to properly investigate an earlier, credible motive for the murders from a man who claimed to be the getaway driver for a named assassin, four months before Nicholls did.”
The defence asked Mr McKelvey’s private investigation firm TM Eye to independently review the case in 2019 but it was not commissioned or paid.
The murders featured in the 2000 film Essex Boys, starring Sean Bean.
Whomes was released from prison in 2021 and Steele’s parole hearing is about to resume. Essex Police said: “This case has been back before the Court of Appeal twice, in 1999 and 2006. Both appeals were rejected.”
