Slain crime lord John "Goldfinger" Palmer was shot dead on his bodyguard's only day off in 10 years, police were told. Just a handful of people knew the trusted minder would be away from the Brink's-Mat gang member's cottage in South Weald, Essex, on June 24, 2015.
At around 5.30pm, an assassin leapt over a fence where he had drilled a spy hole and shot Palmer, 64, with a silenced .32 calibre revolver, hitting him in the right elbow, chest and stomach. He staggered 60ft before collapsing, and was then shot in the left arm, and twice in the back. The hit was out of range of Palmer's CCTV and no forensic clues were found by police who took more than a week to realise it was murder.
Bodyguard's account
It can be revealed that Palmer's minder has told how he had been away at his aunt's funeral that day. Speaking to Peter McKelvey for the ex-Met detective's new podcast, the insider, who asked not to be named, said of his late boss: "We were together seven days a week. Everywhere he was, I was. When he got shot, that was the only day I had off in ten years."
The man said he told Essex Police detectives after the murder of his absence on the day. He said they had asked: "'Who knew you weren't about?' That was a big question."
Concerns raised over investigation
Mr McKelvey told the Sunday Mirror: "The interview with the insider is deeply concerning. It is clear that someone with inside knowledge knew he would not be with John that afternoon and clearly passed on that information leading to John's assassination.
"There are significant lines of enquiry that have not been followed up or investigated. The question is why? At no stage, despite the fact we have made contact with Essex Police with our new information, now one from the force has made contact despite us offering to pass on this new evidence."
Paramedic's concerns dismissed
Palmer, who had previously been jailed for timeshare fraud and lived with partner Christina Ketley, was found dead in his garden by their son James' girlfriend. But when the first paramedics and police arrived, they believed he had died of natural causes due to complications from recent gallbladder surgery. It was not until the post-mortem more than a week later that they discovered he had been shot six times.
But the minder said that one of the paramedics, a former soldier, returned to the family home shortly after the murder to tell Ms Ketley that he had been murdered. He said: "He [the paramedic] was in the army. He came back after a couple of days and said, 'I'm just letting you know that I told them he's been shot.'" This appears to be corroborated by a redacted internal report by the East of England ambulance service.
It reveals that a senior paramedic, who arrived 20 minutes after the first ambulance attended, immediately raised concerns about Palmer's injuries. According to the report he "did not feel that the wounds were consistent with keyhole surgery to the gallbladder due to the location and the fact that they were not covered or stitched." But his colleagues "were not concerned" after he raised the matter with them, he told investigators.
Paramedics had found "large amounts of blood" around the top of Palmer's shirt and the senior medic observed that the injuries were a "bit unusual and could have been gunshots". His colleagues, who dismissed this as an "off-the-cuff remark" and the death was recorded as "non-suspicious", the report states.
The document also reveals that Ms Ketley arrived at the house after the shooting and told medics she did not know if the wounds were from the surgery "as her and the patient did not live together". The minder also said Palmer always had two of his four Rottweiler dogs patrolling the premises but they were nowhere to be seen when he was killed.
He said: "I wasn't there that day. Me and John used to have a glass of wine and I used to change the dogs over. I used to say, 'I'm going to put the little ones away' and then in the evening I'd change them back. But obviously John didn't have time to change them back before we got done."
Background and aftermath
Palmer earned his nickname after being cleared of helping to dispose of gold from the £26million Brink's-Mat robbery at Heathrow Airport in 1983. He was jailed for eight years for timeshare fraud in Tenerife at the Old Bailey in 2001.
When he was killed he was facing trial in Spain for fraud, firearms possession and money laundering and may have faced 15 years. Ms Ketley, who was charged with him, was later acquitted on a technicality.
Instead of being tipped off, the killer may have had the house under surveillance and spotted the bodyguard was not there. Palmer's right-hand man Richard Cashman was among eight defendants who eventually stood trial in Madrid. Cashman was given a two-year sentence in 2019 after being convicted of timeshare fraud and money laundering in Tenerife, where he worked for Palmer.
A source confirmed that Essex Police spoke to the minder after the murder. An Essex Police spokesperson said: "Numerous individuals have been spoken to and numerous lines of inquiry followed by our detectives over the course of this investigation. As always no unsolved case is ever closed."
