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So I'm a flamboyant gay man and I'll knock on his door. And then I said, you know, you've got some really good LSD. And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he went to his cupboard, pulled out sheet upon sheet of him and said, how many do you want? I said all of them because you're nicked. Conversely, there are other occasions, one most notably when I was being held hostage and the guy was threatening me that the only way I would have got out of this shop that I was locked into, which was a knife shop, believe it or not, was with, as he pointed to the wall, he said, the only way you're getting out of here if you don't bring the money in here is with six of those in your back and on the wall is like swords and machetes and ugly looking daggers and all that. And I'd been negotiating for hours and clearly, clearly he meant what he said. So, you know, by about 11 o'clock in the morning, I've already been three different people and this went on day in, day out. I was having the time of my life. You know, I was bringing down career criminals. Ben, we're on. Today's guest, we've got former police detective Peter Blakeslay. How are you, Peter? Very well. Thank you. How are you? Yeah, really good. First of all, thanks for coming on the show. You've been very high profile like catching fugitives and used to work for the police. You're also an author now. You've wrote the book Manhunt. Yeah. So, this book is for Kevin Paarl. Paarl, Paarl, Kevin Paarl, yeah. So, this is Huntington Britain's most wanted madra, double madra. Well, he's not been tried and convicted of those crimes, right? So, at the moment, he's wanted for them. And part of my whole reasons for trying to find him is that he needs to stand in a court and answer the allegations that are made against him. So, he's not convicted yet, but been on the run for 16 years, needs to be found. It's a long time. A very long time. A very long time. And in that regard, I have to begrudgingly give him some credit. I started hunting him 18 months ago. It's been a remarkable journey to be quite frank with you. I guess I was a bit naive. I didn't really know where the journey was going to take me, which you would think an old sweat like me, former detective, would anticipate some of the pitfalls. But it's been remarkable. May I start at the beginning of the hunt for Kevin Paarl? Yeah, well, I'll always go back to the start. We'll touch on that. I'll always go back to the start with my guest, cleaned up a bit about yourself, where you grew up and how it began. Okay, well, I was born in a place called Bexie Heath. Which is an outermost London borough. So I always say it's one of those kind of schizophrenic places. It's a London borough, but it's got a Kent postcode. So I can't say I came from the tough side of the street. You know what I mean? I didn't. It was kind of like leafy and it was pleasant and still is. And I'm still living Bexie. But born there into an unhappy marriage, my dad was drinking way beyond control and was abusive and all that sort of stuff. So he left when I was about 10 or 11 years old. And quite frankly, it was, you know, good riddance to be a brotherish at the time. But that left my mum in a house she couldn't afford with me and my elder sister. So the house got sold. My sister, who was older than me, went off to nursing when she was 16. So at the age of about 12, it's me and my mum in a flat now, the pair of us. And mum's going out to work every day to put food on the table and clothes on my back, bless her. And I've still got her. She's 92 and like remarkable. So I'm very, very lucky to have her. And yeah, with no male role models to speak of, you can probably guess the rest. You know, I went a bit off the rails, didn't go to school anywhere. Near as often as I should have done. Got involved in petty crime, the shoplifting, the criminal damage, the graffiti, you know, that kind of nonsense. None of which I'm remotely proud of. Left school at 16, got a job as a warehouse man in Woolworth's, beloved Woolworth's, long gone. And yeah, I was sort of jogging along with that until I came home one night. And to my horror, there was an enormous uniformed police officer sitting in the lounge at a flat. And my first thought was like, what am I going to get nicked for? But it turns out my mum, very wisely, cleverly, had got the local community cop to come round our flat and have a chat with me, kind of, you know, saying, well, what are you doing with your life? And why don't you consider joining the old bill? And literally, as he got up to sort of leave, he pulled out the application form for the police cadets, because I was only 16 at the time. And he stood over me while I filled it out there and then. And a few short weeks later, that was it, got my haircut, went and, and I was a police cadet, you know, shining me boots and ironing me shirts and running around the parade square. That's how it started. And that was it. But when I got there, you see, I got the, I kind of had respect for the people that were the instructors, you know, like the PT, the physical training instructors. Most of them were former Royal Marines, right, who had gone into the old bill and then were PT instructors. And so, unlike the teachers that I disrespected, you know, shamefully at school, when these blokes said, oh yeah, Blexley, down for 10 press-ups, you know, because you've done something wrong, you know, you'd land on a wall or, you know, your plimps holes weren't sparkly white, you know, down for 10 press-ups or what wasn't an option, because if you'd said or what, they'd have turned you into a crowd in a blink of an eye, you know what I mean. And so, so I just strived on that kind of discipline, got incredibly fit. Did that in the cadets? Was there a certain weight? Was there a certain height weight? Yeah, there was. There was, but when I was interviewed, I wasn't tall enough, but they'd obviously took a look at me, you know, and I'm 16 and they're thinking, well, this kid's going to grow in the next couple of years. So I got in and I did grow and, you know, ended up being, you know, six foot and a bit like I am today. So that was all fine and I got incredibly fit and, you know, joined the boxing team, racewalk and all that sort of stuff, couldn't get enough sport. And when I was 18 and a half, went up to the other end of the estate in Peckham, you know, the police had an enormous great estate then with driving schools and detective schools and all that stuff. Did my training and got posted to Peckham in South East London, which was a lot tougher than leafy Bexley Heath where I'd grown up. So this little, you know, yeah, suddenly I was up against some properly, properly kind of, you know, hard nose. What was that like, a fozni on the beat? Yeah, well, in those days you couldn't go out on the beat until you were 19 years old. And so I got to Peckham and I had about a month before my 19th birthday. And so they had to keep you in a station. So you'd work in the control room or we called it the reserve room in those days with the very unsophisticated radio things. Well, I drove everybody mad because I just wanted to get out there on the streets. I was chomping at the bit. I'd been on the streets as a police cadet, right, when I was 17. So to me it was all nonsense that I couldn't go out on the streets as a police constable until I was 19. And I drove the sergeants and the inspector absolutely round the twist, you know, any opportunity, a leap over to front counter of the station, you know, run up the ice street and get involved in something, you know. And they're going, you shouldn't be doing this. Eventually they caved in and before my 19th birthday just to shut me up. You know, they let me go out on the streets of Peckham. And there was a lot of crime. I didn't have to look too hard to find people that were up to no good. But it was very different, you know, very different. And it had a large Afro-Caribbean population there as well. You know, and these are pretty dark days. You know, some of the policing that went on was shameful. And it's a matter that I speak about honestly. And sometimes upset a lot of ex-old bill about it because I talk about the racism that there was in the police. And I talk about the fact that if you were young and you were black and you were on the streets of Peckham or Brixton, for example, and your face didn't fit, you didn't stand a chance because you'd get fitted up and you'd probably get beaten up as well. Yeah. Do you think the racism still here, if not, is getting worse? Cos I know you did that, you'd stuck up for someone and the body from the police kind of turned against you, took your Facebook groups and shit like that. Oh yeah, they went garotty. What happened? I did an article in a newspaper and I gave an honest appraisal of what I saw and what I experienced in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. That fact that if your face didn't fit, you know. Cos policing wasn't by consent for the black population of Peckham. It was imposed upon them and they were seen as like a threat. And people like me and the other, some of the, if not many of the other cops that I worked with, we came from that sort of lower middle class sort of background, do you know what I mean? Where everything was white. Every face you ever saw was white. There were some Asian boys in my school, but certainly nobody from the Caribbean background. We got to Peckham and you could tell that some cops were just clearly quite terrified because of the colour of people's skin and they were deeply prejudiced against them. And I shamefully fell into that trap. But of course I had my redemption moment a few years later when I realised what utter nonsense it is to judge somebody on the face that they follow or the colour of their skin or what they wear or the colour of their hair and all that kind of nonsense. Just what complete and utter bollocks that was. So, a couple of months ago, gave an interview to a newspaper telling the truth as I had seen it and as I had experienced it and they went friggin' mental. Kicked me out of every police Facebook group that I was a member of. There's an organisation called the Metropolitan Police Ex-Detectives Association and the chair of that association actually had the balls to ring me up and tell me that I was being kicked out because I'd bought the association into disrepute. For what? For telling the truth. For saying that there was a bunch of vile racist thugs in the old bill in the 70s and the 80s and here we are 40 years later and you take exception at me telling the truth. Good. I'm glad to be rid of it. I wouldn't want to be a part of any group like that. So, that's fine. There's a lot of racism then, did you see a lot of it? It was abominable. There was one office in the nick and they'd been a punch-up with a Rastafarian guy when he'd been nicked and dreadlocks that had been pulled off him during the punch-up were pinned to the notice board like a trophy. I have no qualms about telling the truth because you learn from your mistakes and I've made so many mistakes in my life and will continue to do so but you know what, in the morning when I have a shave and look myself in a mirror I'm not afraid to call myself a twat if I've been a twat. That's the only way that you learn, isn't it? Accept your mistakes, learn from them, grow, move on. Did people get fatied up at anything? Dreadfully. In those days there was the Suss Laws which is short for being a suspected person which was a part of the Vagrancy Act of 1824 I think it was and now the Suss Laws caused an awful lot of aggravation an animosity between young black men and the police because they get fitted up. I'll give you a description and I'll try and keep it as brief as I can to what Suss was. For a person to be arrested and charged under the Suss Laws they had to be seen to commit two overt acts that's kind of like the legal requirement so I'll break that down into the practicalities. There's a young black man at a bus stop who may or may not have a previous conviction who's waiting for a bus and who a particular police officer might take a dislike into because of his colour because he might have a conviction or not or whatever it is the evidence would read something like this said young black man as a bus approached the bus stop and people converged towards the bus that young black man was seen to approach a lady who had a handbag draped over her shoulder and his hand went towards her handbag went in towards her handbag and then perhaps the evidence might say so the lady tugged on her handbag he quickly withdrew his hand and there was nothing in it so the inference obviously being that he's trying to dip in at the handbag and steal something, a purse invariably so that's one overt act now let's remember late 70s early 80s no CCTV nobody with a phone with a camera so there is nothing to refute the evidence to contradict the evidence of the cop so that bus goes that lady might get on it according to the evidence inverted commas so then another bus comes along similar scenario young black man with his hand towards a handbag all that kind of stuff and then he gets nicked the arresting officer takes him back to the police station tells the station sergeant that's the evidence two overt acts and he's charged with sus now there were variations on it so there's sus handbags there were sus car door handles so same scenario the evidence says that young black man walking down a street was seen to try two or three car door handles with the inference being he's hoping to come across an unlocked car so he can steal something from it or try and steal the car now you try refuting that evidence you get charged and go to court and you're a young black kid and the evidence against you is being given by two police officers who invariably would be believed you are completely an utterly and there was sus letter boxes same scenario young person walking down again they're seen to look inside two letter boxes the obvious inference being there looking to see if there's anybody in there and if there isn't so it caused so much aggravation so how was that for you seeing all that to do good then you'd really try to clean up crime and get the bad people off the streets and you're seeing this, can that affect your job I didn't have to nick people for sus because forgive me if I sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet but there are some ex cops that will bear this out I was very good at nicking people who were actually committing crime I'm talking about the people who are making shit up to get sentences how was that for you then I'm 18, 19, 20 I'm doing a job that I love there was no such thing as the expression whistle blowing there was nowhere to go you would finish your career your life would be in tatters if you stepped forward and said I heard two police officers you know, in a room writing their notes up and fabricating their evidence you'd be shafted because unless you'd actually been there you know and you'd been perhaps like the third officer and you could say none of this happened but even then if you stepped forward and said that in those days you'd be finished your career would be over you wouldn't be believed, you'd be hounded you'd be hassled you'd be finished a lot of people are scared to come forward and speak out because of the consequences and the backlash it's funny that people who say there is the majority listen there's a lot of people in prison who's in there for the right reasons I've had a lot of people on the show as well who've been fitted up and done 20 years, 25 years because of back in the day it was two verbals I think it was enough to charge you but again with as bad there's always good as well do you know what I mean there's always good people who make the right choices and do the right things so what was your idea for going out to the police what was your main objective for joining because my mum had decided it would be a good idea I'd never given it a moment's thought until I got home and there was this enormous cop sitting in my lounge he sold the idea so you're still alive? I have no idea but I have a lot to thank him for so it was as simple as that there was no history of policing in my family or anything like that all down to that fella so Peckham I'm in uniform it's 1981 so I've been in uniform for about three years I'm in what was called a divisional support unit I'm attached to them basically they cobble together a dozen of us cops put us in a people carrier like a long wheel based transit with windows and all that sort of stuff and we would go to any hotspot of crime on their patch and just cover it with loads of officers stop and search everything and all that kind of stuff pretty clumsy policing but sometimes very successful and it's a Friday afternoon and Friday is poet's day piss off early tomorrow's Saturday and we've had a busy week we've worked very long hours so we've dropped quite a few of the members of our unit off to get in their car and have a fly on Friday afternoon get home early enjoy the weekend all of that and there's only about three or four of us left in the van and suddenly a shout goes up to Routon Road in Brixton Routon Road was known as the front line and it was kind of like an area that the Afro-Caribbean population of Brixton had made their own there was Spillers in there there was illegal drinkers there there was little gambling dens traded on there as well so back in the day this is seen as like an area that absolutely must be stepped upon crush the rebellion all that kind of nonsense anyway shout goes up urgent assistance required in Routon Road you bet we're going to have a lump of that and Brixton's on our neighbouring our neighbouring patch so we tear up there and we're one of the first units on scene it's already very tense there's little scuffles going on and it's a bit like that it's getting a bit standoffish a few things got slung what essentially had happened was a young black man had been stabbed and a police officer was very quickly on scene and he'd been stabbed in the back and in order to try and quell the bleeding to stem the bleeding the police officer had put his knee over the wound to try and stop the blood spurting out of it that got misconstrued as this stabbing victim getting brutalised and arrested and all that kind of stuff and that's why the room was spread very quickly the atmosphere became toxic very very quickly and to kind of cut this long story short lots of units came from all over south London as things began to escalate and then a sort of night fell on that Friday we all got called off the streets and called back to Brixton and we were sitting in our vans and trying to grab a sandwich all that kind of stuff and somebody on hire some senior officer came up with one of the most numb skull frigging decisions that I've ever come across in my time in policing and he said right everybody's to get in their vehicles and patrol endlessly in a circle on this Friday night going up round and road down at Tullsdale back down Brixton and round and round don't stop anybody and search them don't get out of your vehicles just patrol so trying to be a presence complete nonsense cos all it did was antagonise them and when I say them I mean the residents of Brixton particularly you know the black Afro-Caribbean proportion of it not exclusively but primarily and we just became a very red rag to a very angry bull it just cranks the tension up you know we would see people walking across in front of us with a crate full of empty milk bottles and disappear down into a basement well we knew what was going on you didn't have to be Sherlock bloody Holmes to figure out that they were going to make petrol bombs and yet we couldn't get out of the van and stop people you can imagine there's all the hand gestures and you know unpleasant words being mouthed at people and all that kind of stuff so that carries on you know all night we disappear off get a bit of kip come back on a Saturday and it just kicked off also I mean absolute Brixton burn and it was frightening it was terrifying you know everywhere got looted places got burnt to the ground hundreds of cops got injured miraculously no cop died because I was up against people that day who really wanted to kill me because of the cloth that I wore because of the symbol of oppression that I was and I can understand it because what had led up to that Friday was Operation Swamp and that was when they'd put every plain clothes officer they could find into Brixton and what were they doing? you've got it fitting people up and stopping and searching everybody there any kind of justification so the whole backdrop to that weekend had been Operation Swamp and it kicked off you can only mistreat people and have people oppressed for so long before they rise up and bite you back do you think the news and stuff has a big part to play in all this because the majority of crimes in London, UK, is it white people his majority of starbons and shootings is that correct? this time as well but you tend to see on the news as a black boy starved a black boy a shot do you think the news and media can play a massive part on people believing on the mind that the crime is majority of black people and in reality is majority coming from the white people? I've never seen the breakdown of figures about who commits crime I've never seen those figures and I wouldn't want to give some kind of clumsy guest answer but back in the day young black men were disproportionately getting fitted up and beaten up and that is why there was such an uprising that weekend in Brixton and it was a seminal moment for me because when I finally got home I went I'm getting out of this uniform I'm just getting out of it Did I take the cowards way out there? I was going to become a detective because people from the CID approached me and tried to convince me that I should go down the detective route because I was a good thief taker I nicked a load of people for burglary and robbery and drug dealing and all that kind of stuff and so I went down that route and got out of uniform as quickly as I possibly could and went down the detective route again could I have stood up and highlighted things and all of that quite frankly if I had done I'd have been drummed out of it sacked I'm afraid to say it just wasn't the done thing in those days there was no mechanism for being a whistleblower How tough was it then back then no star proof vest never had that mess or any of that stuff Would you just have the baton? I had a wooden truncheon If you'd have asked I'd have brought it with me today That was it A wooden truncheon I've still got it Is it more dangerous then back then I think policing is a far more difficult and dangerous job now than ever Unquestionably You've only got to look at the amount of police officers that are getting assaulted these days I've got assaulted that does happen and you have to accept that if you go into policing number one you won't get rich and number two you won't be universally popular and you will come up against violence on the front line that I'm afraid is inevitable Do you think the whole back in the 70s and 80s or even before then people were more scared of the police because people used to get the shit kicked out of them nowadays there's cameras and people watching Do you think that plays a big part? That's definitely an element There were some police stations that had a reputation like don't get taken there because everybody goes down the stairs and Carter Street in particular had a reputation just don't if you were getting nicked you did not want to go to Carter Street I ended up working at Carter Street briefly some years later at a tower in reputation has been a tough place to be taken if you were a prisoner So what's the transition like from being on the beat to then going a detective? You kind of do your apprenticeship so you work for I only did about six months on your t-shirt and that kind of stuff then I went on selection board managed to pass that and then got transferred to Kensington in Chelsea the Royal Barra of Kensington and Chelsea if you don't mind where those who are extremely wealthy and have titles and all that sort of stuff live as well as having an area south of the Cromwell Road to add some social deprivation but very different I never came across any of the wealth that I was suddenly experiencing in Kensington and different types of crime Kensington and High Street in those days was a go-to place for shopping so you'd get all the fraud and that kind of stuff and I came across more and more frequently cocaine because now we're talking about early to mid 80s the whole explosion of cocaine on the streets of the UK hadn't happened it was in its very very early days so and I got a lot more experience there and really kind of just broadened my experience and had a cracking time really enjoyed it that good old work hard play hard so many times me and my mate would walk into Marks and Spencer's in the morning by a new shirt a new tie a new pair of pants and a new pair of socks right because invariably we didn't get home a lot What was it like going undercover? Yeah, well so I finished at Kensington and of course the next step I wanted to make was to become a Scotland Yard detective and I could see that that whole drugs explosion particularly with cocaine was about to happen and I thought which is the squad at the yard that's going to get the resources, the attention and will be the place to be it had to be the central drug squad at Scotland Yard and I managed to get seconded to that squad went up there so I bolt through the revolving doors a new Scotland Yard I'm 25, I'm fearless I love my job and we had a great time fighting the war on drugs because Ronald and it's a war that cannot and will not be won but we'll be here for days spout off about the nonsense of the war on drugs and it truly is a nonsense but at the time back in the mid eighties we thought we were on the side of the angels they're throwing money at us as a squad our squad sizes are growing all the time we're getting more resources more support, more overtime and we were being successful little did we know that we were completely and utterly wasting our time revolving door wasting our time I personally think they should legalise drugs but again a lot of people might not agree but if they do that I believe crime rate would really come down legalise and regulate all of them why do you think that would make a big difference because it is a multi multi billion dollar pound, euro, yen call it what you will million dollar global industry and it is driven by demand the demand for drugs quite simply will not go away so people will always supply that demand it's a business and yet we leave it in the hands of criminals what a nonsense would we let criminals run the NHS would we let criminals run the railways some people made it safe some of those franchises are a bit dodgy you know what I mean but you get my drift and there is a massive opportunity now so let's just boil it down to that criminal that is serving people up in the gloomy pub car park tonight just close to here close to everywhere in the country they want you to take more we don't know what is in those drugs when you buy them and when you consume them you know it's dangerous this is about public health as well I don't want people buying drugs offer criminals I want people buying their drugs offer licensed regulated outlet where you know where they've been manufactured what's gone into them and what the process is and you are advised as to how you should take them right people will ignore that advice of course but you know at least that leaflet is going to be in that packet in that box Scotland's 30% rise in drug related deaths I've took many drugs in the past if I'm honest Peter changed my life but I prefer people never took drugs but it would be safer if it was done in a more constructive way because a lot of people are dying through street valium even cocaine it's crazy the numbers are only seeming to me getting worse and more people are dying and apparently what I'm told is for people who work with drug related deaths and families and stuff it is going to get worse and then coming months and years I don't know if the lockdown plays a part people depressed and how it's trying to self-medicate the scary times and it's in the hands of criminals this industry is in the hands of villains who don't consider your health who want you to consume more and they want you to consume more of the really addictive stuff because then you'll be back tomorrow the day after and the day after that it's a nonsense that we leave this in the hands of criminals I want drug users to be safe I want them to know what gear they're taking and I'm not naive and by the way I'm no stranger at drugs myself either OK OK and I know people are always going to take them I also happen to know because I've been there somebody who is snot in line after line of cocaine and thinks they are the most interesting person in the room is invariably as boring as you can possibly imagine I've been there thinking I'm interesting where I'm the exact opposite and then you're having a joint and suddenly you understand modern jazz and you want to consume the contents of the fridge and that kind of stuff I would say if people think they're hip and they're cool when they're taking drugs and I'm not a puritan I know people will but I want them to take safe regulated drugs that we collectively can earn taxes from to reduce prison population educate people give problematic drug users the right treatment that they need we'll be able to afford all that and we'll be making billions and billions and billions from selling the stuff the state will on our behalf or those that they franchise it to and it will be manufactured and it will all be regulated and we won't have stories about people dying through dangerous batches of heroin when you get that contaminated batch and then all of a sudden it will come up on the news won't it that a city somewhere in the UK has had 3, 5, 7 deaths of contaminated batch ecstasy when you get dangerous batches of ecstasy and young people who are determined just to enjoy themselves tragically lose their lives weakened like really really put a stop to so much of this if the political will was there I'm a big fan and follower of the drug law reform movement I know some absolutely brilliant people who are at the very heart of it and we are getting there but painfully slowly I mean if we had any kind of political leadership with any kind of brain that appreciated the war can't be won and won't be won now of all times would be the perfect time to hurriedly get the legislation through the House of Commons right and get it on the statute book because what's going to be happening six months time millions of people unemployed right but what we can actually do pass the legislation now start building the manufacturing plants where these drugs are going to be manufactured start employing people to manufacture the drugs start getting the retail outlets ready that are going to sell the drugs and if we be organized crime on price, purity and availability the criminals have got nowhere to go nowhere to go allright they'll end up trying to sell bootleg stuff like to sell bootleg backie but if it's more expensive and the quality's worse and you can only get it when the dealer's available why on earth are you going to go down that route when you can go to the high street to what I will clumsily call the drugstore and buy a better gear, cheaper gear and get it 24x7 it's a no brainer there's other people think other polis do they agree with you are they kind against that I agree with it I think it's bought on we'll save lives I think crime will come down I think addiction issues even suicide numbers will drop because people aren't self medicating my drugs and there's so many benefits from it and the education that we'll do because there will be so much money raised through tax revenue you can treat it like cigarettes now I know people still smoke and always will smoke same as people will always take drugs but my kids or my two youngest they had smoking educated out of them at school even though both their parents smoked they had a wonderful wonderful education with regards to smoking and we can do that with kids with regards to drugs because there will be so much money you can afford to get it on the curriculum and employ people to go out and deliver those engaging lessons that kids will latch on to so we're not suddenly going to have high streets full of frigging zombies off their nut walking down a street that simply isn't going to happen will there be a little spike perhaps in usage once they're legalised maybe that soon is going to plateau if not not what it wears off doesn't it so getting through all that then with thinking that the stuff should be legalised and more protection and stuff like that when did you start thinking in those kind of terms when you realised the war on drugs was a myth it was never going to change after I left the cops when I got medically retired in 1999 it was then that I kind of reflected back on my career because I worked undercover for over a decade posing as a drug dealer an arms dealer a dealer in counterfeit currency high value stolen or counterfeit goods I plotted to murder people because I was the gun for hire the assassin and all of that medically retired after 21 years so early and I began to reflect and look back on what I'd done and it kind of dawned on me that so much of my career unfortunately was a complete and out of waste of time that's crazy to that not that you've worked for trying to get changes and realising no matter if you get the biggest bust in the world there's just somebody ready to step in that minute all you do is create a job vacancy so doing that doing undercover stuff for 10 years when you were saying you were trying to get guns for hire and planned murders how did you get in so deep how were you so trusted typical coparanna that was my job professional liar what was your first job actually my first job that I did I did unofficially when I was at Kensington before I went up to Scotland Yard it was off our patch but somebody go in touch with me and said there's a guy supplying LSD in significant numbers lives just off your patch he's a very flamboyant gay man and I didn't know about undercover police I was just making this kind of tactic up I thought I was being fresh and original you know what I mean so what we did got a couple of mates together I said right we'll get a warrant for his house I said but if we can't get in or he gets tipped the wink or this that and the other you know destroyed and all that sort of stuff we had a problem with the evidence and whatever so I'm boxing for the police at the time so I was rather slimmer than I am today shall we say I was as fit as a butcher's dog and slim so I just working at Kensington with Earl's Court we had some fantastic gay pubs down in Earl's Court where we would go and have a drink and mix with people and so you know some of my liberal thinking was beginning to formulate and I said well if this guy is flamboyant and he's gay I'm going to dress up as though I'm a flamboyant gay man and I'll knock on his door right I squeezed into a if you're eating your dinner right now right I'm sorry because this is going to put you off but I squeezed into a very tight peregrines a string vest ffyrdiwch i'r meddwl i'r steel okay yeah and slicked my hair back and and we uh yeah and it was fine and he let me in and we had a chat and I won his confidence and then I said you know I hear you've got some really good LSD and he said yeah yeah yeah and he went to his cupboard on a sheet of him and said how many do you want I said all of them because you're nicks and then he fell apart blessing but anyway um so that was like my first dabble into being under cover but then when I got to scotland yard I realised how they were doing it you know like authorised you got a buzz from that and the first team yeah well I'd seen I'd been on a couple of operations not being under cover but as part of the arrest team you know and so I'd seen how they were doing it and one particular job was in the car park a regents park zoo in London and there was 300 cover cobs two male and one female and they drove into the car park where they were going to do a trade I think for four kilos of heroin or something and they had £70,000 of the commissioners money and the boot of the car but what happened in the run up to that was that the bad guys had asked the female officer to strip because they wanted to check that she wasn't wearing a wire and they felt that if she was a criminal yeah she'd have no qualms about you know getting her kit off right this female officer declined to do that so the bad guys thought actually perhaps this lot are just a bunch of numpties you know and we'll think we'll rob them so when they turned up with the £70,000 in the boot and the bad guy knocked on the window and the cop the undercover cop wound the window down squirted with ammonia you know in the face and all that sort of stuff and grabbed the car keys and all that and they grabbed the holder with the £70,000 and legged it so I was lying on the top deck of a double decker bus on the floor so nobody could see us you know as part of the attack team, the arrest team and when the scream up happened you know we all came belting out of the bus I ain't enough chasing some bloke off into the the trees and what have you and eventually caught him but the £70,000 was missing and it was missing for quite some time and so the detective inspector who was in charge of that operation could see his career you know rapidly disappearing to cut a long story short again we eventually found the £70,000 it had been put in a skip in the zoo so the bad guy who'd nicked it had jumped over the fence, got in the zoo saw a skip with a tarp over it pulled the tarp up stuck the bag in it, pulled the tarp down carried on legging it, obviously with the intention of coming back to retrieve the money later on but a member of the public said yeah we saw somebody fiddling about with that skip over there blah blah blah so the money got back you know most of the people who robbed the undercover cops got nicked and charged and I went do you know what I think I can do it a bit better than that they're ever gonna rob me I'll give it a go I also saw some undercover cops operating and they were they would kind of drape themselves in jewellery that they'd borrowed from a friendly jeweler in Hatten Garden the jewellery centre of London they'd wear a suit and they'd lounge around in some swanky hotel bar you know draped over it big expensive watch and all that kind of stuff but some of the criminals these people are not daft they're serving up gear for a living and they talk to one another and after so many people have got nicked in certain hotel rooms and the undercover cops wouldn't leave the hotel bar to go and negotiate somewhere we were having phone taps and listening to people going if a bloke's in a hotel bar he's draped in gold jewellery and he won't leave there is an undercover cop you know we knew these conversations were going on and I felt there was a need to modernise it you know if I'm having negotiations with this bad guy and that's all it is negotiations you know I haven't got me 50 underground 2 underground on the plot we're just talking business then I was going under my governess and going why can't I go with him to his territory to his flat to his house to his favourite bar or restaurant or hotel why do I always have to be calling the shots let them call the shots that'll make them feel more comfortable with me you know and unfortunately some very brave senior cops went alright then and they trusted me so we kind of rewrote the unwritten rule book to a large extent and were really successful and did it for years and years hundreds of people getting nicked who were then sentenced to thousands of years inside but referring to what I said earlier what was the point? it was all a complete and utter bloody waste of time was your life ever in danger did you ever have a point where you think I'm fucked here yeah yeah I'll count this times where's the cut off point for you to go right take a bit of gear then if you take that what if somebody threatens you right let the girl take off your clothes she doesn't codename codeword with the people waiting outside for you to shout out sometimes yeah sometimes not sometimes I'd have a surveillance team watching me you know and trust me surveillance ain't how they show it in the movies donnie brasko two cops was that farfetched no no no it was alright it was based on it was out of our era but you'll so often see cops in a movie or in a TV show there'll be two of them in a car one I'll have a cup of coffee and a donut and miraculously they'll be able to follow this car for hours and hours and hours across hundreds and hundreds of miles it ain't like that in the slightest surveillance is a mighty fine art and I take my hat off to all those people that did it in the day for me and saved my bacon on a number of occasions and all those people that continue to do it today whether they're security services, police whatever background they're from it's a real art and it's a great job if you can do it well so yeah they would protect me a lot of the time sometimes I would give a particular signal which would say I'm fine stand down go away cos I didn't want them cos I knew the bad guys would be taking me somewhere and doing so much counter surveillance stuff that they might spot our surveillance people so I would just give a particular signal which the surveillance team knew meant stand down leave Blex alone he's fine he wants to do this on his own conversely there were other occasions one most notably when I was being held hostage and the guy was threatening me that the only way I would have got out of this shop that I was locked into which was a knife shop believe it or not was with as he pointed to the wall he said the only way you're getting out of here if you don't bring the money in here is with six of those in your back and on the wall it's like swords and machetes and ugly looking daggers and all that and I've been negotiating for hours and clearly clearly he meant what he said so I rang my mate who's my driver my minder who's undercover who's outside and I said oh mate you alright yeah yeah yeah fine I said right do me a favour mate when you're ready bring the money in yeah now he's at the other end of the phone game as Blex lost his marbles here right you know I'm going to take this money into this persons you know the bad guy that I'm you know negotiating with so my mate was thinking Blex has lost it here you know so I said yeah yeah you sure yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah bring the money in how long are you going to be he said well I'll be about 10-15 minutes I said alright lovely 10-15 minutes mate oh and by the way before you go I said yeah I said remember it's Jackie's birthday tomorrow so don't forget to get her a birthday card he's going oh yeah right okay mate right lovely cheers bye the code word Jackie's birthday Jackie's birthday means fucking rescue me my life is in extreme danger now and I need rescuing and so I've stood there I'm chatting to the guy you know we're just killing a bit of time waiting for that and about 10 minutes later the front of this shop just freaking disappeared just freaking disappeared as my colleagues just like smashed it at the smithereens and a great friend of mine who sadly no longer with us Chris Ardie was first through the door like he invariably was because he had balls of steel and he just wrapped his arms around me and just dragged me out you know and that was it they rescued me after a few hours see when you do that and go through something like that where there's potentially you could die does that make you go fuck this I'm going I'm taking a step back or does it make you more excited to go and do it again no I was as daft as a box of frogs when I was at it the following day do you ever feel used you're getting used to a sound degree no I was just having a time in my life you know I was bringing down career criminals people that have been born into criminal circles that were raised as fledgling and then apprentice criminals were career criminals you know I'd get in a car with one notable occasion not very far from here funnily enough and I'm in this car with two guys I'm in the back they're in the front and they're driving me to I don't know where but I've got like the best surveillance team following me like the best and one of them turns around and he says he's like he said that old bill he said they've put undercover police into me twice before he said twice he said but I can smell an undercover old bill at 100 yards he said he said but I know you and your sound and this is going to be a great business relationship he said so I'm really delighted we're doing this five minutes later handcuffed staring down the barrel of a very long jail term did you sir come on tomorrow follow day let's do it again I had a talent for it what's the longest you went undercover in one job about six months and that was when I was running a warehouse I had a transport warehouse and this firm were importing furniture basically but of course the furniture was all full of gear all full of gear and the power but yeah so I ran it for months so their trucks would turn up unload and disappear so the international truck would turn up we'd unload it I'd sort all the paperwork out I pretty quickly made myself a bit of an expert on the haulage industry and then their guys would turn up with their other vehicles to collect part of it and part of it and part of it but of course what would happen in the meantime was the minute the international truck had turned up I had guys hidden upstairs right who were experts on the tools so the minute they had gone our guys would come downstairs obviously we had a like a cordon and an outer cordon so we could tell if any of the other bad guys were on their way to us and our guys would flip the sofa over yeah take it apart take the drugs out photograph all the drugs gather in all the evidence put it all back in again put the sofa back together sofa's tables chairs you name it take all the gear out so over those months built up an awful lot of evidence and eventually when the bosses decided the time was right they all got scooped up so seeing your surveillance in someone and you know they've got gear on them they've got money do you just let them go that time because you're trying to gather more evidence it depended and it was always a tricky one particularly if we were dealing with what was then Her Majesty's Customs and Excise we used to clash with him terribly because we wanted gear to run because our attitude was we'd rather capture a big gangster with a smaller amount rather than a small runner with a large amount but the customs were completely the opposite you see they would think that a big seizure was a result well to us if you've got a big seizure and all you've got is the patsy that was driving a van or a person that had strapped it to their body say six kilos of coke and they've walked through Ethrow Airport if that's the only person you've arrested with it when we know the network that lies behind it and we want the gear to run we want that body packed courier to go to an address with us keeping them under surveillance so when they take the gear off and somebody higher up the chain comes to collect the gear that's a better job and that's more evidence you're making a bit more of a dent in it so we thought Did you go undercover in your era that you're working or that you have to go out? I've been at work in London obviously all the time but I'd sometimes get invited for tea and a cucumber sandwich with the commissioner to get a commendation or something and it was quite astonishing because some of these bosses would say Peter you've been doing this for years you've had numerous successful operations how is it that you're able to keep doing it for years and years I said well you've just got to understand the scale of the industry that we're up against now I can take out one lot and then go and work with another lot and they won't be connected in any way shape or form I'd always do a bit of background research as well to make sure that that team wasn't connected in any way What was your biggest post? I mean they look like poultry numbers now really poultry numbers but this is the mid 80s to the mid 90s we took out tonnes of cannabis frequently but in terms of powder we took out 35 kilos of cocaine we took out 15 kilos of heroin which at the time was the biggest landside seizure of heroin at the time but let's just put it in a context last week at Dover the national crime agency and the border force seized a ton of cocaine I think one of the guys was from Glasgow but not charged so they had to get out so I'm glad we're discussing this so the national crime agency are splashing it all over their social media and I get that it's a ton of Charlie it's a lot of gear I mean you imagine if that metric ton those 1000 kilos of cocaine 1000 kilos and I'm talking about season 35 back in the 80s it kind of just gives you all the evidence you need to know that this is such a pointless war that 1000 kilos at what I will call the jungle gate in Colombia for example if it's being manufactured in Colombia when it leaves that manufacturing process that kilo of cocaine one kilo of cocaine will be about 1500 quid 1500 pounds cheap as chips compared to what what's charged over here there's 1000 tonnes at 1500 pounds per kilo 1000 kilos 1500 pounds per kilo that's one and a half million and that's factory gate prices you know what I mean that's before it's been transported so somebody is either oing somebody in South America an awful lot of money or they're going to have to serve up an awful lot more drugs and they will you know they will it's kind of it's just a nonsense but the encrypted phones just now which have all been busted everybody's fucked it's in the UK not everybody was on encroachat oh no no no no some very smart people have other ways for anybody that was on that though was fucking dumb man because there's always a way of cracking any code and they actually made those phones for that to happen to gather up enough information and then boom they've took down fucking the filler of UK man yeah but there's no in summing and there's proven it which are two completely different things so let's go back to that ton of cocaine seized at Dover last week one guy arrested from London and one guy arrested from Glasgow they've both been released under investigation they're not even on bail so they've been released under investigation they couldn't have been there then they couldn't have the evidence they clearly didn't have the evidence to charge them at that point so you know what's the point of seizing a ton and not charging anybody at the moment yes they've just caught a container of drugs but not really anything behind that but who says that container's not being caught and then another 10's been allowed through exactly a conservative well an optimistic estimate I think the border force and the national crime agency think they seize 10% don't they but I don't know if that's accurate or not but we all know that it's absolute cobblers that this war on drugs is allowed to perpetuate but part of the big problem is that mrs miggins who lives in a cotswold cottage and reads the daily mail every day is convinced about the evilness of drugs and that the war on drugs was still before right and she would go absolutely apoplectic if her MP voted for the legalization of drugs and it's that kind of mindset you've got to change but mrs miggins let me tell you no matter what town village, hamlet or city you live in your grandchildren are surrounded by drugs courtesy of county lines and I'll come to your house mrs miggins if you invite me and I'm house trained and I'm quite polite and all of that you know and we'll have a cup of tea and a biscuit I'll bring the biscuits and I guarantee you within half hour I could get served up gear and bring it to your house everywhere so don't think for a moment mrs miggins please that this war is being won how did you get medical discharge what happened right so I got involved in a job which is very complex me and a guy from the customs went undercover as a team and there was a lot of different agencies involved in this there was the DEA, the drug enforcement agency from America the FBI, the Garda Shaqana police from Ireland customs obviously police in the UK and others very complex lots of infighting amongst different agencies but anyway on the ground actually doing the job was me and my colleague from the customs I ended up being in a hotel in Gatwick at Gatwick airport and one of the bad guys delivered 15 kilos of heroin to me right and at the time as I think I said earlier was the largest landside seizure of heroin in the UK believe it or not it took me three or four hours to weigh and test it because they were in half kilo packages so I had to weigh and test every half kilo package you know and why did I do that to each and every one well number one because they thought we were going to be doing a future business so let's be professional you're going to weigh everyone aren't you you're paying a freaking lot of money for this gear right a lot of money so I'm weighing and testing it all I'm testing it in a pretty unscientific way by burning it on a piece of foil and seeing the residue that was left and actually it was quite there was a lot of kind of thinking behind my method if there was a lot of residue left then you were burning a lot of sugars and you weren't burning a lot of heroin if there was very light residue left on the foil then you knew it was banging gear and of course I was so familiar with gear because I've been buying it for years I could tell by the smell and by the look at it no matter what the gear was whether it was you know good gear even so so I've done those 30 parcels and then I've had to seal it back up and weigh them all and all that kind of stuff and it bought a lot of time because there's money being held in safety deposit boxes elsewhere that is then going to be exchanged so you know around a country other people are being kept under surveillance with a view to gathering evidence and arresting them right so me and this guy leave the hotel room downstairs have a celebratory drink cheers to the start of a very long and profitable business relationship that's the plan we get as far as the lifts of course you know press the door and then all of a sudden people that have been dressed as chamber maids and waiters and all that kind of stuff in the full hotel get out right actually aren't they put their friggin checkered caps on put their guns out and forced me and him to the floor and handcuffers very kind of unceremoniously you know just on that note right the bloody arms police used to irritate the shit out of me because I would go to briefings right and I'd get wheeled on towards the end of the briefing because the DI or the DCI given the briefing would say and now it's time for you to meet our undercover operative right and so I walk on they can see what I'm wearing see what I look like and I would say please I know you will want to make this look authentic but please remember that I am one of you guys and girls we're on the same side so if you do have to arrest me and put the handcuffs on could you please just remember that I'm not a bad guy they never did slam me into the ground stick me out of me back put the cuffs on ouch all you bastards right and I don't know maybe they just felt I don't know anyway that happened a few times so me and a guy slammed on the ground handcuffed he's kept in custody as are other people who've been arrested around that case at the different locations and then they all end up in court a couple of days later and they're in the dock and all of a sudden they're going well where's that cockney south London or with the pony tail because I'm not in the dock with them and they've had plenty of time to figure out and I go ah undercover cop so they thought kill me kill the evidence and to an extent they were right so you had that poor nithil half way down me back so anyway being threatened and all that kind of stuff wasn't necessarily too much of an issue it went with the territory that was part and parcel of the job and his policing per se I shouldn't think there's many police officers who have not been threatened if any so that in itself wasn't too much of an issue because they weren't going to be able to find out my real name and my address or anything like that or any unusual name I had a number of false identities that were created by me and supported by the unit of Scotland so it wasn't a major problem however because the case had been so complex and there had been so much infighting between different agencies and there was a load of aggravation going on which was largely hidden from me because I didn't need to know about it I'm just working undercover drinking and eating and spending time with the bad guys because it was a real deal a report was compiled by one of the officers in the case because the deputy commissioner was going to go in a battle with customs and the FBI and the DEA and all that sort of stuff so the man who compiled this report didn't put my number my code number which is allocated to me by the undercover unit at the yard he didn't put that code number in there he was mentioning me detective constable Peter Blexley and there's not many Blexleys around I think there's only 14 of them in the country and I've fathered most of them and only three of them and my name I've got the document still six pages long and my name repeatedly crops up my full name so that's the first, Rickett the second is that that report is printed off and taken out of the police building rickett number two rickett number three he puts it in a suitcase puts it in an unmarked car and drives off out of the police building era number three number four he decides to go shopping on his way home from work what has been done shopping you've got it and that report is nicked so now the threat to kill me which by the way was detected by the FBI on a phone tap in Boston, Massachusetts so now there's a threat to kill me and there's the stolen report with my name in it should those two things get married together I am in very very real danger you know this is what do you mean that I spent two years in witness protection driving myself quite simply mentally ill over that thinking about it, right, I did and drinking too much and all that so one night I get a phone call don't go home from the bosses at the yard why not, we'll tell you in the morning get to the yard nine o'clock tomorrow morning book into a hotel, use one of your false identities, get your girlfriend to go at your flat, get your overnight bag and be here nine o'clock tomorrow morning well I got to the yard at eight o'clock the following morning despite the fact that I smashed the granny out of the minibar in the hotel because I'm sitting there thinking what's going on with my life you know why can't I go home right get to the yard eight o'clock my mate says have you seen this and he's got the report, I said no he said right you keep this right you keep that copy and he locks me in a little side office where like nobody ever went he said and read that my name all over it detailing everything I've done in the operation the fact that the bad guys wanted payment by guns if we weren't going to pay them in money the links to terrorism the FBI phone tap and all of that and I'm going jeez by the close of play that day the powers that be at the yard that decided that I had to move in the witness protection program immediately and so began the two darkest most miserable years of my life I still had to work I mean on any given day I'd be three different people so I get up in the morning so this is a hide out this is not home this is a hide out and I hated it because I'm a neighborly sort of chatty kind of bloke so I get up in the morning and there sitting on my door mat is the post in the name that I'm living in in witness protection obviously so that's the first reminder of that name and where I'm living and all of that then I'd leave the front door and go to the car to drive to work having checked under it first to make sure that no bastard hadn't put a bomb under it which was a very real threat what the neighbors must have thought of me anyway then I drive to work so for that hour driving to work my favourite hour of the day turn the radio on listen to whatever station I want to all that kind of thing because I'm myself for an hour I'm free I'm myself for an hour and then I get to work and the governor goes blicks never under cover job coming I want you to do it and I go oh yeah okay about 11 o'clock in the morning I've already been three different people and this went on day in day out and of course when I got home I drank too much because I'm thinking like you've said well Alcadish report in my name now how could it be printed off how could it be stolen driving myself bonkers over that drinking too much smoking too much and had a catastrophic mental breakdown too many coincidences for that to happen and then it go missing I had a man called Neil Woods on a podcast I've fallen under cover a real good guy struggles with PTSD he says a lot of the police officers have drinking problems because of the stuff that they see murder, crime, kids getting abused do you think there's enough stuff for police to help them talk about the problems that they see at the time for me there was very little they hurriedly cobbled some stuff together and got me in front of a psychiatrist who I could not stand in a private job and all that stuff NHS was miles better by the way and they were the people that fixed me not the private bloke and the private hospital and all that stuff and by the way Neil Woods is one of my heroes a wonderful man a real campaigner for drug law reform I fear that there isn't the process is in place that there should be some but I had an under cover cop ring me three or four months ago and he went through circumstances quite similar to mine and he was having his issues and I tried to help him of course and he didn't feel that there had been enough psychological support for him I think there should do I think mental health is extremely important for us all and we're being really challenged these days aren't we by lockdown and all of that and I've had some friends who I've helped out with their mental health issues and I would like to think that anybody that's in my life knows they can pick up the phone and talk to me talking is key getting the right help is key speak to your GP as a first portal call hopefully get referred to the services that you need if you are prescribed a medication please take it and some people resist that but I'm still on medication all these years later respirodone it's kind of like an antipsychotic episode of drug and I take a tiny dose I take one milligram a day and it's come down over the years and my GP would like to see me off it completely but it works for me my mental health is incredibly robust I'm well I enjoy life so why would I take the risk because in the past when I've been on other medication bearing in mind I first got mentally ill towards the end of 94-95 when I was first hospitalised and I had another episode in the mid-naughties where I was hospitalised again and I've been I've had just about every diagnosis you can imagine none of which I think are particularly accurate at one point I was diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia clearly I didn't have chronic schizophrenia there was something massively wrong at the end of the scale I've been diagnosed as suffering from anxiety and depression I'm clearly somewhere in between those two stalls on the two occasions that I've been ill psychosis yes I think so but now I take that tiny maintenance dose I'm well I'm acutely aware that I've got to be on red alert with regards to my mental health because it would be dreadfully unfair on those who have supported me so well in my family over the years to do anything reckless to put it at risk again how does it paranoia and stuff after when you stop paranoia and threats to your life and grint of witness protection how does that affect you because obviously if you're going through all that then there's got to be a touch of psychosis where to go undercover known that you can die at any minute to be a different character all the time that must eventually shut the nervous system down and constantly be on edge so it's obviously going to take effects years, 10, 20 years it's not self harming that sense of abusing yourself having to be different characters all the time not knowing what's right and wrong in life and being it's like split personality because your brain doesn't know what's real if it's fake so if you're going into character three different characters a day one just you Peter the next the undercover caught and then the one that's having witness protection no wonder you're fucking kind of fucked up it's not a great surprise isn't it? and when you throw into the mix throw into the mix the fact that the bloke who ran the off licence saw an awful lot of me you can imagine it was a melt-in pot that was just bound so how hard do you know then because you came a celebrity you've kind of wrote your books you've been on TV numerous occasions so how do you feel now that people behind bars for thousands of years have you ever met anybody you've put behind bars after that come out I got contacted via social media just a couple of weeks ago what did they say? you're your bastard we're meeting for a drink that's mad what did they say? you and I spent some time together in the back in the day in the night is and I served you up some stuff and all that kind of stuff and we're going to go and have a meet and a chat and in fact I hope you won't take any offence but he asked to be put in contact with somebody from the media world and I facilitated that for him and I'm only too happy to do that I believe in second chances I completely believe in second chances there might be some people whose actions are clearly beyond the pale and don't the majority of us all deserve a second chance I think in life we get more than second chances it's thousands of chances we get because we fuck up every day we make mistakes every day it's just how far you want to learn from them to become a better person it's life, it's a rollercoaster as you clearly see no matter what side of the fence you're on it's a rollercoaster so you're going through all that then through the witness protection and coming out when did you come away from the police completely? I was medically retired in 1999 so I'm coming up to 40 years of age flunked me education haven't got many exams to fall back on no trade nothing like that all I knew was policing and I'm on the scrap heap alive and I've still got my mental health battles to deal with but then I thought I've got a story to tell I was a bit irritated by the way the cops had dealt with me so I wanted to tell it from my perspective and I decided well I hoped I was going to write a book my autobiography so I went out for a drink with a former colleague who I'd been very close to and he threatened me he said you won't write this book you will not write a book I'm not in the police anymore you can't tell me what to do you can't tell me that I'm not going to write a book and so that meeting was cut pretty short but then I did got the publishing deal had some help to write the book and it did all right it's still out there now re-released in 2017 and a few people buy it every year what's the book called? and it's still out there on Amazon and people still enjoy it it's a real boy's own tale of daring do and all the stuff I did with the honesty of my breakdown in there cos mental health and being honest about your mental health is really important I think so yeah got the contract for that book that came out did okay and then my wife and I had a couple of kids so I spent some years being the full time house husband as a result of the gangbuster I got engaged as a story consultant to a BBC television drama which was called Murphy's Law where Jimmy Nesbit played an undercover cop called Tommy Murphy they'd done two series of the show but it was a bit of a cartoon caricature of how the undercover world was one week you'd be a brain surgeon and the next week you'd be a nun you know what I mean I'm being a bit flippant but when I came on board with series 3 we completely reinvented the show gave it up an anchor in reality as much as we could we were making a drama not a documentary and it did really well got nominated for the best BAFTA and we had three series of that before after five series decommissioned it but that was good doing a lot of commentary on crime and policing and that kind of stuff in the news et cetera et cetera got other consultancy gigs started wanting to do writing my own plays and stuff I've written three plays for Radio 4 got the hunted gig that show on Channel 4 which really raised my profile did six series of that four in a main show two of the celebrity version why did you stop that? because in series 4 which was my last series of the main show we caught them all classic piano note yeah there were so many people who were upset and uptight about it but it was, I kid you not it was one of the greatest days of our lives when we caught the lot there have been a lot of really brilliant investigative work that led us to that point and it was I liked being the party pooper in chief you know what I mean so they didn't get to enjoy the money none of them got their grubby little hands on that 100 grand loving we spoke the party and I loved it and yeah and I just looked at it it was swallowing up my summers and all of that and I just went I was never going to be able to top that we caught them all you know you just cannot beat that and I thought yeah so how now though that after being retired and doing what you're doing you're still active of being Thratacatch fugitives and we'll touch on this now the Peter there the guy a Thratacatch who is wanted for a double murder was a Phil Lotherpool so what's that story how did this become about yeah okay I have an energy and enthusiasm for work that I had when I was half my age I love working so when I left hunted you know I was thinking about what my next major project would be my publisher said yeah you can do another book yeah if you get the right subject for it and I thought right yes I've written Blaise Radio 4 and three previous books and all of that but I'm best known for catching pretend fugitives in a bloody entertainment show so think of all those things put them together in the mix and instead of writing about unsolved murders which is what my previous two books have been I thought yeah let's go and hunt a real fugitive you know it makes the most of my skill set what I'm known for my contacts my experience let's hunt a real fugitive and believe you me they do not come any more wanted than six foot six Liverpoolian broadly built and still with an athletic build by the way so he's keeping himself fit Kevin Pearl I know lots of stuff and obviously there are certain stuff that I can't say how I know so 29th of April I had a press conference in London because you know I'm a zedlist celebrity so some people popped along to it it was great there was big hitters there like Danny Shaw from the BBC was there and you know the press agency were there and national newspaper and all that stuff great because this bloke Kevin Pearl is wanted not for a double murder he is wanted for two separate murders and the fact that he is not a household name is something that I would like to change he's not been convicted as I said way back at the beginning right but he's very much wanted for both of these crimes and he should stand in a court and answer the allegations they are both ghastly ghastly crimes the first one June 2004 the murder of Liam Kelly a 16 year old boy right now nobody has described him to me as a model student I get that in fact some people have spoken about him quite disparagingly to me but he was 16 I was a pain in the arts when I was 16 Liam was denied the opportunity to mature to grow to enter manhood to find a partner to have a family that he could provide for through lawful means he was denied all of that because he was gunned down in the street and a court has been told that Kevin Powell pulled the trigger three people have been convicted in connection with Liam's crime but Powell was the man the court was told pulled the trigger and so he has to be found to answer that allegation the second crime sorry I'll just show you the victims there's Liam and there's Lucy August 2005 Lucy Hargreaves a 22 year old mother of three young children blasted to death with a shotgun as she lay on the sofa in her own home which is then set on fire people have told me that Lucy is as beautiful it was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside ugly, loved and adored the allegation is that three men went through the front door of Lucy's home intending to shoot her partner a man called Gary Campbell but they were so incompetent they were so friggin useless that they took away the life of an entirely innocent beautiful young woman who had three young children and her whole life to look forward to I've been at Liverpool numerous times of course since I started my hunt for Kevin Powell and the revulsion that is so widely held by people at Lucy's murder runs very deep and there are many many people that would like to see Kevin Powell arrested because that is a crime that he is wanted for So how does that now that you're in the public eye and speaking openly about it and doing everything you can to create awareness and publicity does that not give the person on the runway knowing that you're coming for them instead of moving in silence Kevin Thomas Powell has all the advantages all the advantages he doesn't have to obey the law I do so I'm not going to hack people's computer for example I'm not going to illegally access information for example because there is absolutely no point of Kevin Powell being in one cell and me being in the cell next to him and I am not universally popular there are many people that have Kevin Powell's best interests at heart that want to see me fail and they have threatened me and they have abused me and they have posted photographs of my home address on social media on one occasion with an accurate description of the bedroom that I sleep in there are people on his side but through our BBC podcast and I was very fortunate that the BBC supported my hunt for him and that podcast which is manhunt Finding Kevin Powell has had over two and a half million downloads people love it there's 12 episodes out there and it will be coming back but my investigation is at a rather sensitive stage at the moment and obviously I can't put information in the public domain that's going to benefit Kevin Powell and tip him the wink go on to BBC sounds and have a listen to the podcast and once again I will plug my recently published book manhunt because these are two different things and if you read the reviews say for example on Amazon you will see there are people who loved the podcast and still thoroughly enjoyed the book because that is not a carbon copy of that the books on Amazon it's online if you google it waterstones have got it cold books have got it you'll find it and if you go to by the way and this would be remiss of me not to mention it if you go to theworks.co.uk it's for quid and people are saying the most remarkable things about it I'm deeply deeply flattered and humbled and reading it would appear to be loving it and I'm glad people are enjoying my writing plans for the future then and that is your main objective find Kevin Powell and since this book has come out it's achieving what I wanted it to achieve in other words it's prompting people to come forward and speak to me I am so easily I'm Peter Blexley on Instagram Twitter Facebook, LinkedIn easy, unusual spelling by name of course BLEKSLEY I've got a mobile phone number set up specifically to receive information about Kevin Powell 07908 617694 you know my email address is out there if you just google me I've got a website you can message me through the website and it will be more contactable and let me tell you this if I may Kevin Powell will be found I don't care how old your information is because past information is often an indicator as to future behaviour and I had some great stuff that's been coming in the last couple of weeks since the book has been out about now get this now I don't know whether it's true or not Kevin Powell does not come from Toxteth Norris Green Croxteth or any of those other parts of Liverpool it came from the south of the city I won't give the name where his parents live they'll be in the family if they don't live there anymore nice street, semi-detached extended semi-detached people take great pride in the street he did not come from the tough part of the city he went to a private school he had a degree but he was a wannabe he wanted to be one of the big guys in the early days I mean he is big, he's six foot six in the early days I've had people contact me and said he was a clown he was like the designated driver for the urchins who were a Liverpool football club firm because he was mad for cars loved driving he tried to prove himself when they're driving to watch Leicester away and impress the kids because the kids were all that the real tough nuts of that wonderful city would let him deal with you run the kids he tries to impress them by stealing a pizza crime at a century takes it outside the motorway services and gets stopped by security and he goes oh sorry goes back in a page for it we're not talking about Premier League gangster here he was a wannabe who wanted to prove himself and that perhaps I say only perhaps but think about it may lie behind Liam's murder for which he's not yet been convicted let me just how old was it when Liam was 16 24 when that's happened 24 and you put them in a context they might be right he was a charmer legendary when it came to chatting up women and charming them in a bed absolutely legendary a number of people have told me about that he had one particular chat upline which was we should do breakfast sometime but anyway it seemed to apparently work for him so are these things true? yes there come from very credible sources since the books come out more stuff about the past he hung about with a guy called Chubby Allen that was his nickname I don't know who Allen is yet Allen contact me because I will find out who you are somebody is going to say oh yeah Chubby Allen there was another boy who was extremely good looking apparently and he had the nickname Soft Boy well I'm going to find out who Soft Boy is and I know it's from many years ago but you never know whether there is any ongoing connection or what they might be able to tell me about him then is useful now your city the wonderful city of Glasgow another city I'm deeply fond of and have been to many times pal used to go to Glasgow used to go to the Corinthian you know the Corinthian used to like it in there would book in the Glasgow hotels and put a briefcase over the counter and ask for that to go in the hotel safe so what did it contain I'm guessing here drugs money weapons I don't know please wonderful people of Glasgow if you worked in that hotel or you were part of the people that he was getting up to criminality within Glasgow please tell me because I will find out you know I've just got this stuff I've been at it for 18 months on my own do you think you have a retire no right this is my life's work now is to find Kevin pal it is my life's mission as long as I am drawing breath can put one foot in front of the other and can bash a keyboard I am hunting Kevin pal and the world is shrinking for him every book that gets sold every download of the podcast every flyer I hand out the world shrinks for him bit by bit and let me if I may can I carry on yes take your stage Kevin pal quite obviously because it's the only it's the only conclusion one can come to right because he's been on the ramp for 16 years he's a bright fella by the way he's a very bright fella so many people told me intelligent and smart trust me I know he's alive right if you listen to that podcast and you read that book all the evidence is in there forgive me I'm not but I know he's alive right I know he's alive don't believe the urban myth about him being chopped up and slung over a boat in the Mediterranean and all that it's not true and anybody who wants to perpetuate that myth fine prove it please contact me prove it I've had people before trying to prove it and they talk about he went to such and such a place and met so and so and this happened and that happened and I sit down map it all out look at the chronology and it's manifestly untrue coupled with the fact that I've got witnessed testimony to say that he is very much alive okay so Kevin pal is being harbored by people involved in serious criminality harbored and funded by people involved in criminality it's obvious it can be the only conclusion that anybody can come to right because he's not living in a mansion and he's not living a life a luxury right I can tell you that he's not okay harbored and funded by people involved in serious criminality of that I am sure it seems to be the the proper theory to work on right now holding that thought just imagine just imagine if I knew who was harboring him the criminality that they were getting up to who their network was how this was transported there and that was transported to another place right and connection and connection and connection imagine if I knew all that information so it's not just one charge it gives a few just imagine if I knew all that information right I deliberately set my parameters very narrow right in so much as that I just want to see Kevin pal in front of a court of law I'm not interested in who's serving up who I'm not remotely interested in who arranged for that ton of cocaine to arrive in Dover last week right I'm not interested in what gangster killed what gangster and I've been told loads about all those crimes right I'm not rushing off to the police to tell them right that's for them to investigate right I'm an investigative writer and I want to find Kevin pal for Liam and for Lucy I'm not going about pal I'm only about Peter it's about Liam and Lucy so picture the scene right let's hypothesize for a moment right that I discovered everything about those harboring him funding him what they're doing who they're doing it with and how they're doing it right I'd offer them a deal and I'd say you deliver Kevin to him over you ensure that he is captured and I solemnly promise that the secrets I know about you and your very lucrative criminality will forever remain just that secrets but I'm not threatening anybody please don't think I'm threatening anybody I don't have any guns this is me my pen my notebook and my mobile phone right so I'm not threatening anybody because I'm not in a position to threaten anybody but I could if I knew all those things offer that deal hand him over and I won't say a word to anybody I'll delete all the files yeah I'll destroy I've got cyber experts that can make any information that I might have about their networks and all that sort of stuff disappear so that even GCHQ can find it a deal is a deal that is the deal I would offer hand him over and those secrets will forever remain secret choose not to accept this deal and do whatever you want to do to try and put me off throw me off the scent move him around hide him more harbour him more all that kind of stuff then it may get to the situation mightn't it whereby all those secrets that I know about the people harbouring him funding him their criminality their associates and how they do what they do I might then be forced into a corner might not where I have to go to the national crime agency and say here you go here is a very comprehensive and thorough intelligence package about people involved in serious and organised criminality of the most serious nature because is that why you're getting threats address put online because you're digging and you're starting to unravel more stuff that's the connection to it all courageous wonderful people are coming forward and speaking to me have you spoke to the parents of Liam and Lucy right from the off when my great friend and podcast editor Mark and I went to Merseyside Police we said we would like to speak to Liam and Lucy's families and the police have been a firewall between us and the families that's fine they said actually that the families don't want to talk to us at this stage and that's fine I have to respect their position of course it's all about the loved ones they lost it's all about Liam and Lucy but none of them have expressed any objection to what I'm doing probably too scared to come forward as well I can't come in that way so through all this Peter a very interesting life good guy, bad guy, good cop, bad cop you've seen a lot of stuff people are going to be watching thinking fuck me man but you're going to get a lot of support as well for what you do obviously people sitting on the other side of the fence you're a thorn on their side so it's understandable but for what you're doing and I take my hat off to you for trying to do what you're going to do it takes courage especially the shit you've been through as well the trauma, the pain about PTSD depression is to still being here I think this is what probably keeps you alive if I'm honest this is a bit of excitement that you can't ever give up it's like a boxer trying to retire they tend to know retire they tend to go an extra 10 years than they should I'm fighting George Foreman next week is there anything you'd like to finish up on Peter? he'd kill me by the way you never know I was very average with my boxing in fact I had a nickname in my boxing days and it was horizontal short for horizontal not the kind of nickname you want when you're a boxer on that note and thank you kindly for your very kind words many courageous people from the world of crime and criminality have come forward and spoken to me their identities will never be disclosed to any living soul on earth and I can guarantee that because unless you double cross me your identity will forever remain a secret I've been threatened with being banged up in court before now for not declaring people's identity and getting held in contempt of court and all that sort of stuff so I'm not afraid about saying no to the police or the judiciary right your secrets our secrets will remain just that Kevin Powell will be caught because I'm not going to stop I'm simply not going to stop so whilst all the advantages with him and those who harbour him and fund him I've only got to get lucky once you know that's all I need but it won't be through luck it won't be through luck that he's captured it'll be through bloody hard work and I shall continue to do that because as you know I love work and I'm going to find him thank you very much indeed for having me here please everybody this is not about profit this is about pile if you buy this book and I say read the reviews what it does is it increases the likelihood of my publisher saying you can write man on part 2 and what will that mean that will mean I get a few quid and where will that few quid go on my hunt for pile I've put in there how much money I've earned out of it and I have not put one carat on my family's dining room table throughout this hunt for pile it's about pile not profit so please if that encourages my publisher say Peter write part 2 that would be fabulous because it's an expensive business I've spent weeks and weeks and weeks on the road so there's all those hotel bills I've been on planes, trains and automobiles you know thousands of miles and all that stuff Peter it's been a pleasure I wish you all best for the future thank you