Inside blood-soaked ganglands behind TV hit Sherwood where flash ‘Kray-style’ brothers bit rivals’ lips and eyelids off
WITH bitter turf wars and the murder of a gangland kingpin’s son, the new series of Sherwood has viewers gripped.
But far from being total fiction, the drama has its roots in real-life gang warfare in the early 2000s which earned the city of Nottingham the macabre nickname “Shottingham”.
Sherwood writer James Graham says the new series is inspired by a dark period in history when the East Midlands city was ravaged by high levels of crime, drugs, violence and brutal gang activity.
At the heart of such problems were the notorious Gunn brothers, Colin and David, who ran the Bestwood Cartel – which was involved in cheque fraud, extortion, drug dealing and violence – ruling some of the city’s suburbs with an iron fist.
But far from viewing themselves as criminals, the brothers – who drove around in flash cars and were dripping in expensive jewellery – saw themselves as protectors of their manor, a modern-day mix of Robin Hood and the Kray twins.
Alongside them were the Dawes brothers, Robert and John. The former lived in Spain overseeing an empire of money laundering, trafficking and murder, with John running the family drugs dynasty back in Nottinghamshire.
Police launched Project Starburst to dismantle the drugs gangs from the bottom up as gun crime in Nottingham started to spiral.
First came a series of brutal punishment shootings between rival gun gangs.
This was followed by the high-profile, senseless murders of 14-year-old schoolgirl Danielle Beccan, who was shot walking home from a fair, and jeweller Marian Bates, 64, who was gunned down when her shop was robbed.
Journalist and author Carl Fellstrom, whose book ‘Hoods’ gives an in-depth history of the city’s crime gangs, says: “It was around then that you started seeing the headlines of ‘gun capital of Britain’ and ‘Shottingham’, which seemed to stick.
“Nottingham probably unfairly took those headlines and it really did impact on the city in a social and economic way.
“You started having parents saying they didn’t want to send their kids to the University of Nottingham, so applications fell.
“There was a general sense that things were out of control. It wasn’t that the gun crime figures were higher than say Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham or London, it was that we hadn’t experienced that before in that kind of acute way.
“A couple of years before there had hardly been any gun crime at all and then it exploded into this sort of situation that the police felt it really difficult to control.”
Gun wars explode
Things came to a head in August 2003. The Gunn brothers’ 19-year-old nephew Jamie Gunn was a bouncer at the Sporting Chance pub, a meeting point for their crew.
Convicted criminal Michael O’Brien, who had been slashed in the face while in prison in 2001 in a case of postcode gang wars, was refused entry to the Sporting Chance.
He later returned with criminal associate Gary Salmon and a single-barrelled shotgun.
Jamie’s friend, Marvin Bradshaw, had arrived to drive him home. As they set off O’Brien and Salmon strolled towards the car and one fired a shot. But it missed Jamie and instead killed his innocent friend.
After O’Brien was arrested, bullets were fired into windows of the house of his mum, Joan Stirland, and her husband, John. They fled to Lincolnshire but refused witness protection.
Over the next 12 months, Jamie Gunn, bereft at the death of his close friend, pressed the self-destruct button – hardly eating, drinking and taking drugs. He died from pneumonia but his family claimed he had died from a broken heart.
‘Truly horrific’ revenge
Jamie had been like a son to Colin Gunn and it is claimed he swore revenge on O’Brien, who was later jailed for 18 years for Marvyn’s murder.
“The meaning of the word revenge, to them it absolutely had to be done. They couldn’t allow Jamie to die the way he did and not do something about it. But what they did was truly horrific,” says Carl.
“James’s drama is very pertinent because it shows you that point at which if they can’t get to the person who has committed the actual thing, they will go after the relatives.”
The true story behind Sherwood season one
NEARLY six million viewers turned into crime drama Sherwood last year – but some may be unaware that the first series was based on a true story.
It’s focused on two murders that took place within weeks of each other back in July 2004.
Ex-miner Keith Frogson, known as ‘Froggy’, was killed by Robert Boyer who shot him with a crossbow on his doorstep.
Later, he was hacked to death with a sword and his home was set alight.
Weeks later, Terry Rodgers killed his daughter Chanel, shooting her four times – twice in the head and the body.
The dad was living with his child in Huthwaite at the time and she had just got married weeks earlier.
While the murders were not connected, both killers fled into woodland near Annesley Woodhouse, in Notts, and remained at large for weeks while police desperately tried to hunt them down.
On August 15, Boyer was found, tasered and arrested.
The next day Rodgers, who had eluded police for close to three weeks, was discovered and gave up without hesitation. He had been living inside a makeshift shelter for 17 days.
Rodgers, 55, denied murdering newly-wed Chanel but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibilty.
Prosecutors refused to accept his please and set a trial date for March 2006.
Rodgers, who never disclosed his motive for killing Chanel, went on hunger strike and died.
Meanwhile Boyer, 42, was given an indefinite hospital order after pleading guilty to manslaughter in Nottingham Crown Court.
It was revealed he had experienced delusions and believed his victim, Frogson, playyed to destroy his home.
Six days after Jamie’s death, Colin and his associates tracked down Joan and John to their hideaway on the coast.
The gunmen, who have not been identified, parked their getaway car, a Volkswagen Passat, on the kerb near the Stirlands’ and walked across the lawn into the house.
Mr Stirland, in shorts and no top, was on the settee when he was shot. His wife was in a bedroom when she was killed.
On the day they died, they made two phone calls to Notts police complaining about a prowler outside their bungalow in the seaside resort of Trusthorpe.
This was passed to Lincolnshire cops but as they did not have any intelligence about the threat the Stirlands faced, it was not treated as priority.
By the time officers arrived at the bungalow at 9.30pm, the couple were already dead.
Nobody has ever been charged with the couple’s murder, but Colin Gunn was sentenced to 35 years for conspiring to murder the Stirlands.
John Russell of Bulwell, and Michael McNee, with no fixed abode, were also handed sentences of 30 and 25 years for the same offence.
It later emerged that the Gunn family had moles inside Nottingham Police who were feeding them information.
‘Bit rival’s lips off’
Colin’s elder brother, David, who now claims he is crime-free, was also charged in relation with the Stirlands’ murders but was cleared of any involvement.
The grandfather-of-12 has served a total of 23 years in prison for crimes including drug offences and killing a man with one punch in the street, but says he has now turned his back on crime and advises others to do the same.
David, who once bit off a man’s lips and eyelids in a pub row, told a true crime podcast: ”My advice to any f***er doing crime is don’t do it. Get a job, get a job, make your parents proud.”
He says he once had “more money than a train could pull”, but it was confiscated by the authorities due to his criminal activities.
He added: “I’ve done about 23 years behind the door since ’82. I got a borstal in ’82, and I had two Christmases in the 80s.
“It’s embarrassing, I’m not boasting about it because it’s f***ing embarrassing. If there are children watching don’t do it, you are wasting your life.”
And despite his brother’s conviction and 35-year sentence, David still insists they were “fitted up”.
He said: “You get people who say ‘they are guilty as f***, they deserve to die in prison’, but they don’t know the ins and outs of it. But it will come out.”
Both the Dawes brothers have also been jailed. Robert is currently serving a 22-year sentence in a French jail for helping to import 1.3 tonnes of cocaine into France on a flight from Venezuela in 2013.
He is currently awaiting trial for the murder of a man in the Netherlands over a relative’s alleged unpaid drug debt.
John received a 24-year term for drug dealing and money laundering back in 2005, but is now a free man.
The communities got tired of that atmosphere which was cancerous, and they wanted change
Carl Fellstrom
And Nottingham’s gun crime reputation had even made it all the way to Buckingham Palace.
Carl explains: “I only found this out a few weeks ago, but one of the Nottinghamshire detectives had gone to London to collect his Queen’s Police Medal, particularly for his efforts on Operation Starburst.
“And it was the then Prince Charles who gave him his medal. They had a little chat and Charles asked him where he was from.
“The officer said I was CID at Notts Police, and Charles said to him ‘Ah Shottingham’. So the myth had made it all the way to Buckingham Palace.”
‘Cancerous’ gangs
Figures show that between 2002 and 2007 there was an average of 16.6 murders a year in Nottinghamshire, with a high of 21 between 2004 and 2005.
The most recent statistics released this week show that this had almost halved to 11 last year.
Carl believes this is down to a combination of factors – the main protagonists being behind bars, the police being successful with Operation Starburst and re-engaging with the local communities, and local residents getting tired of the gangs ruling the roost.
“I will say that the likes of Colin Gunn and Robert Dawes still have huge support in their local patches,” he explains.
“But the police got their act together and it took a lot to get that secret operation going. They had lost some of the estates and I think that does go back as far as the miners’ strike in some respects. There was a lot of resentment towards the police.
“The communities were severely impacted by the closing of the pits but because so many parts of life were connected to them, the community places, clubs, they didn’t survive it either and there was no plan B as to what was going to replace everything so a lot of these guys became street dealers.
“And the disconnect between the police and the communities meant people weren’t willing to come forward and report what was going on.
“But the communities got tired of that atmosphere which was cancerous, and they wanted change.
“The mirage was replaced by reality in that they realised these guys are only in it for themselves, they are not community leaders.”