Crime
Why the police began taping
Norman Fenton
Sometimes the coincidences never seem to cease. I spent a happy adolescence in my parents’ ‘new house’ in Pollok, travelling to school in Govan and then Glasgow University. Only when working at Granada Television did I discover that Ian Brady, of Moors Murders infamy, had been a neighbour of ours in Pollok. And then, more recently, finding that Tommy Sheridan would also have been a neighbour, though decades later.
But much more recently, I felt growing concern for the future of broadcast journalism, when I realised that BBC Scotland intended to show extracts of the official police interviews with the Sheridans, that the BBC had somehow or other ‘obtained’. Especially since I had professional experience about why the taping of police interviews had become a necessary practice; and had been told by a former controller of BBC1 that I had made the first police corruption television programme in the UK.
Until taping started, the versions of what had actually been said in the interview room could and did vary enormously, depending on which side of the table you were sitting. The phrase ‘to be verballed’ had been in the English language since at least the early 20th century, and used by both sides of the table.
Which brings me to another coincidence, when another Glaswegian entered my professional life. Tommy ‘Scarface’ Smithson – ‘Scarface’ since his occupation as an enforcer in the world of Soho’s vice had left his face with razor slashes requiring a total of 253 stitches. He carried two razors in his top pocket, and if required, he would volunteer to give one of them to any unfortunate who wished to actively resist ‘enforcement’.
But his luck eventually ran out. Smithson was shot and the Kray twins attended his funeral.
Soho vice was at that time effectively ‘administered’ by two competitive sets of villains. One was Maltese, and the other home-grown. No quarter was asked or given. But Smithson was a freelance operator, and his death was caused by something more redolent of our present day: ie not showing sufficient ‘respect’.
The actual shooter, Phillip Ellul, accompanied at the crime scene by Victor Spampinato, both Maltese, gave themselves up to the police three days later, having little choice as the police were putting enormous pressure on the Maltese side of Soho to give them the killers. Ellul was given a life sentence, of which he served 12 years, but Spampinato was acquitted of a murder charge. And that, one might imagine, was the end of the story of who killed ‘Scarface’ Smithson. But not so.
Seventeen years after Ellul’s conviction at the Old Bailey, the so-called ‘Old Grey Fox’, the late Commander Albert Wickstead of the Met’s serious crime squad arrested Bernie Silver, a figure considered by the police to be a major partner in the syndicate that controlled Soho’s vice. Silver was to be charged with the Smithson murder, even although Ellul had already been convicted for it and had even been released on parole five years before Silver’s arrest for the same crime.
At Thames Television’s ‘This Week’ programme we started to hear some quite extraordinary stories surrounding Silver’s arrest. In one of these, coming from the police themselves, Commander Wickstead himself had secretly met two men whose names were known only to him, who gave him information leading him to believe that the Smithson murder was actually a paid gangland killing, leaving Bernie Silver as one of two men controlling Soho vice. But then we heard an even more extraordinary story. But this one required a trip to Malta.
There, Victor Spampinato told how he and Philip Ellul had been intended to have been the two major witnesses at Silver’s trial. He also told how in exchange for giving a deposition to a magistrates’ court, he had been given £20,000 by another Soho operator who wanted Silver out of the frame, and promised a further £15,000 if he was an actual witness at the Old Bailey. Spampinato told how he had invented for his deposition two incidents implicating Silver, one having Silver personally commissioning the killing.
But Spampinato was not enough for the ‘Old Grey Fox’. Ellul’s father was actually American, and Ellul himself had been born there, although being a Maltese citizen. After serving 12 years of his life sentence he jumped parole, and disappeared back to the States.
Commander Wickstead himself went to the US, and appeared on television, introduced by the American on-air presenter as ‘super-sleuth, the Old Grey Fox of Scotland Yard’. He asked for the American public’s help in finding Ellul, as he would be able to provide ‘vital evidence’ in a forthcoming murder trial. Ellul was actually located by the FBI, and agreed to return to the UK to give evidence against Silver, having been given immunity from arrest for having skipped his parole.
In the UK, Ellul changed his mind and although he had given the police a 33-page statement, he refused to swear on it in a magistrates’ court. He also persuaded Spampinato to withdraw from the action against Silver and refuse to be a witness at the trial. As Ellul and Spampinato both later stated on camera, neither of them had even met Bernie Silver at the time, never mind conspired with him in Smithson’s murder. Not only that but, as Ellul later told us, he wrote, after his return to the US, to Silver’s lawyers, twice to the UK home secretary and once to Lord Hailsham, stressing that he knew nothing about Silver being involved in any way with the murder. But Wickstead did not give up – two police officers were sent to San Francisco to attempt to persuade Ellul to testify against Silver. The same occurred in Malta with Spampinato.
These were the days of what was known as ‘noble cause corruption’.
If some of the police believed that they could clearly identify certain characters as villains, then they would put them away with any sort of dubious evidence, having pursued that dubious evidence with some vigour, without any interference from their superiors.
So another two new witnesses were conveniently found for the murder trial, and Silver was sentenced to life. The two witnesses produced in court were fairly low-level Maltese crooks, and in one case the evidence was based on recollections of conversations overheard 19 years previously.
So at Thames we now wanted to go ahead to eventually make a programme, with Ellul and Spampinato both prepared to go on the record on camera. But that yet-to-be-shot programme would still have to be cleared for actual broadcasting. In order to go down that road we would have to persuade Thames’s legal teams that the programme could be defended in any possible legal actions. This was not helped by the fact that the essential defence witnesses in any action that might be brought against Thames, ie Ellul and Spampinato, had made it explicitly clear to us that they would now not enter the UK on any account.
Evidence obtained by the polygraph or lie detector is not recognised within the British legal system, but we decided to use the polygraph to attempt to persuade our legal team of the viability of our programme’s research. So we enrolled the help of Professor Raskin of Utah University, the expert, who in a famous case, was asked to help Patty Hearst’s US defence team in the action against her which could have produced an sentence of 35 years in prison. She actually only served 22 months and later received a total pardon from President Clinton.
We polygraphed Spampinato in Toronto, as the US authorities would not permit him to enter the US, and Ellul in San Francisco. We then interviewed Professor Raskin on camera, particularly about his polygraphing of Ellul, the self-confessed murderer. He told us that (verbatim) ‘he seemed extremely credible and very straightforward in what he was saying’ and ‘he denied ever having known Bernie Silver until he actually got out of prison’. Ellul had left prison 12 years after the murder.
Professor Raskin’s work cleared us in London with our own legal team, so we carried on making the programme, and it was later successfully broadcast on the ITV network over two weeks.
During the research for the film, I met personally with Commander Wickstead who initially staggered me by telling me that he hoped I would persevere and go ahead to actually make the programme. Then he told me that he had found a house he really liked in Spain, and looked forward to having Thames pay for it after the libel action. But that was not to be.
Silver’s conviction for murder was quashed by the court of appeal, who said: ‘A conviction based solely on such a slender foundation, in our judgement cannot be regarded as safe’.
A senior police officer described Silver’s acquittal as being an exercise in law not in justice. Which is what we called the programme: ‘An Exercise in Law’.
Having written this has further reinforced my original disquiet over the use of the police interviews of the Sheridans in BBC Scotland’s programme. This is certainly not what the taping of police interviews was intended for, and equally certainly, in the case of Mrs Sheridan, the end effect has resulted in the further smearing of an innocent person.