Pat Tate
Pat Tate was an underworld legend long before he teamed up with the Essex security boss Tony Tucker. He stood over six foot, and at thirty years of age he carried around seventeen stone of pure muscle. He was a force to be reckoned with. Tate was not a killer, but the men who crossed him took brutal beatings. Friends speak of a stand up, good man before he got mixed up in the short, drug-fuelled and deadly period with Tucker and Craig Rolfe.
The escape
In December 1988 Tate was up in court after a week on remand, on charges that came out of a meal at a Happy Eater restaurant in Essex. After a heavy weekend's clubbing he got into an argument over the bill, attacked the cashier in a rage and took money from the till.
He did not wait for the verdict. Tate burst out of the court, flinging security guards and police aside, and jumped on a waiting motorbike. Underworld contacts smuggled him out to Spain. The court break made him infamous across the London underworld.
A big police inquiry tracked him down in Spain, but before the paperwork was in order Tate smelled a rat and did a bunk to Gibraltar, where police caught him in October 1989. A former friend has told me stories of his time on the run. One ended with a drunk Tate put on his backside by a doorman. He came back the following night and got his revenge, in typical Pat Tate style.
Inside
Prison made the legend bigger. Tate stacked the weights and built himself up to more than eighteen stone of solid muscle. Former friends who were inside with him speak of him in glowing terms. He was respected and feared for his strength and his dominating personality, and several prisoners who crossed him were dealt with swiftly. One was beaten unconscious for stealing from other prisoners' cells.
A man who served time with him remembers Tate trying to tax a prisoner of his drugs and being rocked by a huge punch from the smaller man. Tate lost consciousness for a moment. With help he recovered, and his size did the rest.
He left prison with his reputation as a certified hardman secured, and he wasted no time getting back into crime on the outside.
Tony Tucker
Tony Tucker was a security boss with interests in Basildon and Southend, and for a time he ran security in London and Essex. He arrived on the Basildon scene in the same era as Bernard O'Mahoney and Michael Kelly, after the years when two local operators, Paul Smith and Dave Venables, held the main doors. Tucker, Kelly and Lee Chapman were the men who controlled the main Essex nightspots.
Tucker was a friend of Carlton Leach, the West Ham hooligan turned doorman, whose own security firm was based more in London than in Essex. He had also worked alongside Mick Kelly, who went on to run doors across Essex and North London. Pat Tate, out of prison and back in crime, joined Tucker and his firm.
Pat Tate's link up with Tony Tucker was brief, destructive, and ultimately brought about his death.
Rettendon
On 7 December 1995 the bodies of Tony Tucker, Pat Tate and Craig Rolfe were found inside a Range Rover on a remote farm track at Rettendon in Essex. All three had been shot at close range in what looked like a professional execution. The three men were well known in the Essex underworld, with ties to drug trafficking and violent crime, and the killings sent shockwaves through the public and the criminal world alike.
With no witnesses and little physical evidence, the police faced a hard case. The breakthrough came in May 1996, when a man arrested on unrelated charges told detectives he had been the driver on the night. He went into witness protection and gave his evidence in court under the codename Bloggs 19. The trial began in 1997, and his testimony was the cornerstone of the prosecution. Two men were convicted of the murders and sentenced to life, with a recommendation that they serve at least 25 years.
The case never closed in the court of public opinion. No forensic evidence tied the convicted men to the scene, and the star witness had been granted immunity from prosecution. Supporters of the two men maintain their innocence, and the killings have filled books, documentaries and films ever since.
For the three men in the Range Rover, the story ended on that farm track. The murders also changed the Essex door world they had come out of. In the years after, Basildon went through a hard time, and security bosses like Mick Kelly were brought in to clean up its pubs and clubs. Tate's friends still speak of the good man he was before those last few years with Tucker.