From a masked ambush on a rush-hour street to a hospital dash staged with a fake illness, Merseyside criminals have repeatedly tried to slip the grasp of the justice system. Their stories range from contract killers sprung from a prison van to a gangster who broke out of an open prison only to be caught buying a sandwich.
Blood brothers sprung from prison van
Kirk Bradley and Tony Downes, known as "blood brothers" and described as "thick as thieves", were involved in a wave of shootings and grenade attacks across Merseyside before their escape. The pair specialised in contract violence and were paid by the Huyton Firm, a criminal gang led by Vincent Coggins, to carry out a terror campaign. Bradley, nicknamed "The Turk", and Downes, who went by "Fat Cat", presided over a guns-for-hire gang that executed contract violence for cash. Rivals were kidnapped, kneecapped and family homes blown up with hand grenades.
In one shocking incident, the gang threw grenades into a room where a grandmother was babysitting a seven-year-old boy. Other victims suffered life-changing injuries after being shot. The gang's spree, which saw at least 20 separate attacks over two years, was only stopped by a covert operation by Merseyside Police's Matrix unit, with help from the authorities in Holland, who recorded damning phone calls between the conspirators.
Downes and Bradley escaped from a G4S security van bound for Liverpool Crown Court in 2011, leading to the collapse of a high-profile trial. Just after 8.30am on July 18, a gang of masked men armed with a sledgehammer and a gun ambushed the van in Trinity Way, Manchester. The raid took place during rush-hour traffic in front of passing motorists. One of the guards was beaten in the street while a gang member shouted at the driver: "Get the f***ing keys out or I will blow your f***ing head off." The gang fled in a Saab, found abandoned about a mile away in Barrow Street, Salford. The ECHO understands elite Manchester criminals carried out the high-risk operation.
Downes organised the escape plot from his cell at HMP Manchester with a mobile phone which had been sequestered in his body. Prison bosses knew Downes had the phone, despite the fact he was suspected of using a phone to organise a city gang war from his Walton jail cell. The pair fled to Holland but were later tracked down and brought back to the UK. Downes was arrested in a car near the Belgium border, and Bradley was apprehended a couple of months later in an executive apartment. Bradley, 26 at the time of his capture, was sitting in his shorts and flip-flops watching TV and smoking a joint in the 2,500 Euro-a-month penthouse in Bijlmer when an armed SWAT team burst through the front door in April 2012.
Fake illness engineered hospital escape
Shaun Walmsley escaped custody on February 21, 2017, and became one of the UK's most wanted men. He spent 18 months on the run before his capture in Leeds, when he smugly told officers: "Good job, boys." Walmsley was initially locked up in June 2015 after being found guilty of conspiring to murder Antony Duffy, 33, in Aintree in May 2014.
He began hatching an escape plot after an appeal against his sentence was rejected in December 2016. The prisoner deliberately lost weight and started complaining of fake bowel problems. His feigned illness was part of a plot to engineer unnecessary hospital visits, during which Walmsley complained repeatedly of rectal bleeding and said his father died from bowel cancer. Prison examinations could not find anything wrong with Walmsley, but his repeated complaints, combined with his weight loss, led the convicted murderer to be taken to Aintree Hospital from HMP Liverpool. It was later confirmed he had no condition of any kind.
But it was during this trip that his henchmen, armed with a Uzi-type submachine gun, ambushed the prison officers. Walmsley was in a private hire taxi handcuffed to one of three prison guards, and they were ready to go back to prison when a car pulled up and they were approached by two men. One had a very visible Uzi-style submachine gun. Another had a knife and canister. The knifeman demanded the officer with the key unlock the handcuffs, telling him he would cut him. Another threatened to shoot the manacled officer in the leg. The officer uncuffed Walmsley, who appeared calm. He escaped and was not seen by any authority figure for the next 546 days.
Walmsley was arrested on a street in Leeds in August, having grown a long beard and shoulder-length hair. He was moved to a Category A prison and held under far more stringent conditions. The earliest date he can apply for parole is January 2051, when he will be 63.
Gangster caught while buying a butty
Liverpool gangster Daniel Gee turned his own estate into a 24-hour drug trading zone before being caged. Gee was originally jailed on an indeterminate sentence for the public's protection in 2010 following his conviction for gun offences. Gee had plotted to arm himself to take revenge against a teenager. The courts heard he hatched the plot after making death threats to 16-year-old Jamie Starkey, who shot Gee at point blank range on New Year's Day 2008. Gee was seriously injured in the incident outside an Anfield pub in the early hours of the morning. One of the bullets pierced his stomach and lung before emerging from his back. In a trial in October 2009, Gee was found guilty of two counts of making threats to kill and another two of blackmail.
Jurors were unable to agree on the two more serious charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to possess firearms and ammunition. As his second trial was about to start, Gee, formerly of Maryport Close, Everton, admitted the second charge. Prosecutor Ian Unsworth KC said Gee's desire for revenge "knew no bounds".
Gee absconded from a category D open prison, Kirklevington Grange prison in North Yorkshire, on May 27. Police released CCTV footage of Gee, showing the 44-year-old boarding a train from Darlington to Liverpool Lime Street after he absconded. In June 2024 armed police stormed a local off licence on Albion Drive in the Kirklees area of Wigan in Greater Manchester. The former gangster was buying a sandwich but moments later he was staring down the barrel of a gun as he was ordered to get down in the small shop.
Given Gee was in a category D open prison before he absconded, it was likely he would have soon been released from his indeterminate sentence. However, a spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police confirmed to the ECHO that Gee was sentenced to four months concurrent to his Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence. The IPP sentence – a prison term introduced in 2005 for serious crimes but abolished in 2012 after public pressure – was introduced for offenders considered particularly dangerous. The new sentence will mean Gee's likelihood of parole from his indeterminate sentence will be set back.
Absconder found hiding near bakery
Rhys Allen, from Walton, formed part of a three-man team who armed themselves with a shotgun and a knife and ransacked a Cheshire home in front of the terrified family who lived there. The gang forced their way into the address in Frodsham late at night in March 2017, then threatened a mum and dad and their two young kids, demanding that the parents hand over the keys to a car parked outside. They then fled the scene and sped off in a getaway vehicle which was waiting nearby. Allen was jailed for eight years in 2018 for aggravated burglary and possession of a firearm after new evidence linked him to the crime.
He had been granted day release privileges from HMP Sudbury, an open prison in Derbyshire, at the time of his escape, but was "pulled up for covering the window in his room" by a guard earlier in the week. Officers noticed that the glass had been covered up again at around 5.30am on the day in question. They received no response after knocking on his door and discovered that Allen was not present upon entering the cell. CCTV footage subsequently revealed that he had absconded from the category D jail roughly an hour earlier by climbing over a fence.
Then, 16 days later on the afternoon of November 5, police on patrol on West Derby Road pulled over a Ford Fiesta in which the fugitive was being carried as a passenger. Allen, however, fled from the vehicle, leading to a foot chase with officers. But he was arrested after members of the public "pointed out where he was hiding, near to Townsend bakery" in Anfield. Allen admitted escaping from lawful custody. Appearing via video link to HMP Liverpool, he was locked up for a further 28 days.
