Stephen McColl

Last updated

Stephen McColl was a criminal recruited by the Greater Manchester Police to act as an informer. He carried out a series of crimes for two years before being convicted of two murders in 2006, which saw him sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should never be released. The following year, the High Court ruled that he should serve a minimum of 35 years before being considered for parole, which is set to keep him in prison until at least 2041. [1] [2] According to the Manchester Evening News :

"Despite warnings by another police force that he was a dangerous man who should not be used, GMP officers paid hundreds of pounds to Stephen McColl." [1]

McColl killed 22-year-old Michael Doran two months prior to beginning work as an informant. [1] He had set a trap that led him to discover that Doran was working as an informant and feeding the police information about him. [3] Working as an armed robber, McColl continued to plan and execute violent crimes over the next two years of his employment with the police. This crime spree reached its peak with the informer torturing and killing 30-year-old underworld rival Philip Noakes. [1] Both murders were motivated by removing "a liability", [4] and both men vanished while on "trips to Scotland" with McColl. [5]

McColl was enabled to achieve his double life as police informer and armed robber/murderer by using knowledge gained from his previous job as a funeral director's assistant [6] [7] to pick out a suitable area to bury the bodies. [1] [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Val McDermid</span> Scottish author

Valarie McDermid, is a Scottish crime writer, best known for a series of novels featuring clinical psychologist Dr. Tony Hill, in a grim sub-genre known as Tartan Noir.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tommy Sheridan</span> Scottish politician

Thomas Sheridan is a Scottish politician who served as convenor of Solidarity from 2019 to 2021. He previously served as convenor of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) from 1998 to 2004 and as co-convenor of Solidarity from 2006 to 2016. He was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Glasgow region from 1999 to 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Lloyd</span> British Labour politician (born 1950)

Sir Anthony Joseph Lloyd is a British Labour Party politician who has discontinuously served as a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1983, currently as the MP for Rochdale since 2017. He was MP for Stretford from 1983 to 1997 and Manchester Central from 1997 to 2012. He then became Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner between 2012 and 2017, and interim Mayor of Greater Manchester between 2015 and 2017. Lloyd served as Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland between 2018 and 2020, resigning to recover from his illness of COVID-19. He was also Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland between 2019 and 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Rankin</span> Scottish writer

Sir Ian James Rankin is a Scottish crime writer and philanthropist, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels.

Jean McConville was a woman from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who was kidnapped and murdered by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and secretly buried in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland in 1972 after being accused by the IRA of passing information to British forces.

Freddie Scappaticci was a Northern Irish volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), and a leading member of its Internal Security Unit. In 2003, it was reported that Scappaticci had been working for British intelligence, their highest-ranking agent in the IRA, and was known by the codename "Stakeknife". Scappaticci always denied any involvement with British intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Informant</span> Person who provides information

An informant is a person who provides privileged information, or information intended to be intimate, concealed, or secret, about a person or organization to an agency, often a government or law enforcement agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informants are officially known as confidential human sources (CHS), or criminal informants (CI). It can also refer pejoratively to someone who supplies information without the consent of the involved parties. The term is commonly used in politics, industry, entertainment, and academia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Compston</span> Scottish actor

Martin Compston is a Scottish actor and former professional footballer. He played Anti-Corruption Unit Detective Inspector Steve Arnott in the BBC drama Line of Duty, Liam in Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen, Paul Ferris in The Wee Man, Ewan Brodie in Monarch of the Glen and Dan Docherty in The Nest.

Gang-related organised crime in the United Kingdom is concentrated around the cities of London, Manchester and Liverpool and regionally across the West Midlands region, south coast and northern England, according to the Serious Organised Crime Agency. With regard to street gangs the cities identified as having the most serious gang problems, which also accounted for 65% of firearm homicides in England and Wales, were London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. Glasgow in Scotland also has a historical gang culture with the city having as many teenage gangs as London, which had six times the population, in 2008.

Delroy Samuel Denton is a Jamaican gangster, convicted murderer and suspected serial killer. After illegally immigrating to the United Kingdom, Denton was an informant for Scotland Yard, until he was arrested for the rape and murder of 24-year-old trainee beautician Marcia Lawes in 1995. After his conviction, the fact that he was a police informant at the time of the crime, despite having been denied asylum in Britain, and his status as a fugitive in Jamaica in connection with the murders of seven women, led to a change in the way such informants were handled.

Derek Creighton "Bertie" Smalls was considered by many as Britain's first supergrass. Although there have been informers throughout history – the Kray twins were partly convicted two years before Smalls on evidence given by Leslie Payne – the Smalls case was significant for three reasons: the first informer to give the police volume names of his associates and provide the evidence that would send dozens of them to prison to serve long sentences; the first criminal informer to strike a written deal with the Director of Public Prosecutions; the only criminal informer to serve no time for his crime in return for providing Queen's evidence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Ferris (Scottish writer)</span> Scottish author and organised crime figure

Paul John Ferris is a Scottish author and organised crime figure. Ferris was an enforcer for Glasgow 'Godfather' Arthur Thompson in the early 1980s. Known for his ruthlessness and extreme violence, he rose to a prominent position in the city's criminal underworld.

The Linwood bank robbery was a bank robbery that occurred in Linwood, near Glasgow, in 1969. Three police officers were shot in the aftermath and two officers were later awarded George Medals. The lead robber, Howard Wilson, served 32 years in prison for the robbery, the murder of two officers and the attempted murder of a third; he was paroled in 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Tobin</span> Scottish serial killer (1946–2022)

Peter Britton Tobin was a Scottish convicted serial killer and sex offender who served a whole life order at HM Prison Edinburgh for three murders committed between 1991 and 2006. Police also investigated Tobin over the deaths and disappearances of other young women and girls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Suzanne Capper</span> 1992 murder in Manchester, England

The murder of Suzanne Capper was committed in Greater Manchester, England in December 1992. Sixteen-year-old Suzanne Jane Capper died in Withington Hospital on 18 December 1992, from multiple organ failure arising from 80% burns after being deliberately lit on fire on 14 December. Before her death, Capper relayed that she had been kidnapped and kept prisoner for seven days at a house in Moston, Manchester, where she was beaten and tortured. Suzanne was taken from the house by car, driven into the countryside, and forced out of the car into a wood at Werneth Low where petrol was poured over her and she was set alight. The torture and murder arose from the "avenging [of] trivial grievances: a sexual insult, infection with pubic lice and the loss of a pink duffel coat."

<i>HM Advocate v Sheridan and Sheridan</i>

Her Majesty's Advocate v Thomas Sheridan and Gail Sheridan was the 2010 criminal prosecution of Tommy Sheridan, a former Member of the Scottish Parliament and his wife Gail Sheridan for perjury in relation to an earlier civil case called Sheridan v News Group Newspapers. Tommy Sheridan was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison, whereas Gail was acquitted.

In 2004 the murders of Terence and Christine Hodson caused the Victorian government to establish the Office of Police Integrity to investigate probable Victoria Police involvement in the murders and to investigate the leaking of sensitive police information to the Melbourne underworld.

This is a list of sex workers who were murdered in the United Kingdom.

Robert Brown is a Scottish man who spent 25 years in jail for a crime he did not commit. In January 1977, Annie Walsh was beaten to death in her home in Manchester, Brown signed a confession and was found guilty at trial. He maintained his innocence throughout his prison sentence even going so far as denying himself parole by not admitting to the crime. He was released on appeal in 2002

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Nicola Dowling and Neal Keeling (30 August 2006). "The police informer who turned killer | Manchester Evening News - menmedia.co.uk". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
  2. ↑ Rozenberg, Joshua (22 December 2006). "35 prisoners are told life means life". Telegraph. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
  3. ↑ "Failings that blighted police use of informers | Manchester Evening News". menmedia.co.uk. 31 August 2006. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
  4. ↑ "Informer Vanished 'Off Face Of Earth'". The Daily Record. 14 June 2006. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
  5. ↑ "Noakes' killer was informant | Salford Advertiser". menmedia.co.uk. 31 August 2006. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
  6. ↑ "Murder trial claim - Scotsman.com News". News.scotsman.com. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
  7. ↑ "Survivor: 'I could have been next' | Manchester Evening News". menmedia.co.uk. 31 August 2006. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
  8. ↑ "Murderer's victims left at site he found as undertaker - Herald Scotland | Sport | SPL | Aberdeen". Herald Scotland. 31 August 2006. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.