Gangs (47 page)

‘They pushed us inside and bolted the door. Eleanor didn’t understand anything so I put on a smiling face for her. I don’t know how I did it but I decided if it was going to be our last few hours together, we were going to enjoy ourselves. Eleanor was just a little baby and didn’t know what was going on, except that she was with her mother. So her mummy had to be normal.’

Meanwhile Clive was kept at his home until eleven a.m. the following morning, then driven to the Sainsbury’s branch where he worked. On the way Skinner produced a revolver and told him, ‘If the police turn up I’ll fire shots all over the place. I’m not going to do life.’

On arrival Clive was told to empty money from the three cash machines inside the branch. At first he refused but then Skinner asked him, ‘Who do you love more, your wife and child or Sainsbury’s?’ As Clive collected the money he told the bemused staff what was happening but begged them not to call the police, fearing the kidnappers would kill his family. The machines had been freshly stocked that morning and Clive soon removed £326,000.

The gang, who had given him a mobile phone, instructed him to deliver the cash – £326,000 in all – to a local pub where another member of the gang was waiting. ‘At this stage I felt so frightened, not knowing what the outcome would be. I didn’t know if I would see my wife and daughter again. I thought I was going to be killed because I had now fulfilled my part of the operation.’

Clive was then told to go to a second pub and to wait for the gang to contact him again. After waiting anxiously for more than an hour, he received a call at the bar telling him, ‘Thank you, Clive, for your co-operation.’ He was told where to find his wife and daughter, and immediately rang the police.

Twelve hours after she had been abducted armed officers found the farmhouse at Bardney. Huddled in the darkness, Suzanne thought the footsteps she could hear were those of her captors returning to kill her. ‘There was banging on the door and it was eventually opened by a policeman who told me that Clive was still alive. The sense of relief I felt was overwhelming. It was a wonderful feeling.’

Despite the gang’s careful planning it took only four weeks for the police to track them down. All four men had criminal records so all four were on the forensic databases. They found one man’s fingerprints on a bucket at the farmhouse in Bardney and another’s saliva on a bottle at the Hobbs home. They also matched mud from the farmhouse to the mud on Skinner’s car.

Police raided Skinner’s home and found £80,000 stuffed under his bed and a further £30,000 hidden in his sofa. At the home of Donald Pleasants they found more than £8000 buried in the garden.

Once the sole domain of Mafia gangs, Colombian cartels and hoodlums in Chechnya, kidnapping has now become one of Britain’s fastest-growing crimes with incidents rising by more than 2000 per cent in the past decade. Home Office figures show that the number of kidnap cases in England and Wales has risen from 403 in 1988 to more than 2700 in 2003.

Tighter security, video surveillance and the increasing move towards a cashless society has made traditional robbery harder and less rewarding than ever before. For this reason the gangs are now targeting the weakest links in the security chain: the employees themselves.

But although they are increasingly common, such incidents form only a small proportion of the total. Although the crime has but one name, kidnap comes in many different forms. Incidents like those involving the Hobbs are known as ‘tiger kidnaps’. These are distinguished by the fact that they are as much a form of extortion as they are kidnap. The victim is seized in order to force another person to do something.

By contrast the express kidnap is like an extended robbery or mugging. The gang involved lays a trap and the victim is whoever happens to come along first. A typical express kidnap will involve a victim being briefly held against their will, threatened and then taken to a cashpoint machine or bank to pay the ransom to secure their own release.

Then there are the so-called barricade kidnaps, which tend to be largely domestic, when someone holds a former partner hostage, or, less commonly, bank robbers seizing hostages when a raid has gone wrong. They are distinguished by lack of planning and usually take place in the heat of the moment. Rather than money, those who carry out such crimes usually want to convince a former loved one to return or secure themselves safe passage.

Traditional kidnappings can generate hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds. These require a great deal more sophistication and planning, particularly in the early stages when the gang watch their victim to build up a picture of their day-to-day movements. Typical victims include celebrities, entrepreneurs or their relatives.

In April 2002 businessman Arap Mytak was kidnapped by two Albanian teenagers and spent three days tied to a tree in Epping Forest without food or water. He was kicked and punched and his family were forced to listen to his cries of pain as the gangsters phoned demands for a £50,000 ransom. Despite warnings that Mytak, who owned a successful car business in Romford, Essex, would be decapitated if they told police, his relatives felt they had no choice but to raise the alarm. Detectives tracked his captors to the forest and arrested them when they went to collect the ransom. Mytak was found bound and blindfolded in the boot of a nearby car.

The father of four – unaware that a massive hunt had been launched for him – repeatedly tried to escape his tormentors. During one attempt he snatched a screwdriver and stabbed one in the hand, only to be quickly overpowered and severely beaten. After a second attempt, when he tried wriggling free from the tree to which he was tied, he was warned he would be shot if there was further trouble.

In August 2003 the body of wealthy mother of two Yuk Ying Phuah was found near a layby in Sidcup, Kent. She was found partly clothed and wrapped in a sleeping-bag. A post-mortem showed she had been suffocated.

Phuah, originally from Vietnam, had moved to Britain twenty years earlier and she and her husband, Boon, owned several restaurants and food-delivery businesses in Middlesex and Wiltshire. The forty-three-year-old had gone missing from her Wembley home the previous day. Her daughter came home late at night to find the house had been ransacked, her mother’s possessions were all over the place, but her purse and mobile phone were still there and a vacuum-cleaner had been left switched on. Little attempt had been made to hide the body, suggesting it had been dumped in a hurry. Detectives believe she was the victim of a kidnap attempt that had gone wrong before the gang were able to send a ransom demand to her husband.

The police response to kidnapping is becoming increasingly sophisticated and the vast majority of cases end with arrests. Where possible, undercover officers carry out the exchange of money – their main opportunity to catch those responsible. The cash is fitted with a tracking device and often leads the police right to the kidnappers’ hideout. ‘You can’t do anything to alarm the kidnappers, especially as you know many of them are armed,’ says one officer. ‘When the victim’s family contact you, you can’t just send a squad car round in case the place is being watched. You have to sneak someone in around the back or do everything on the phone.’

Kidnappers, too, are becoming more sophisticated. When George Fraghistas, a wealthy Greek shipping agent, was kidnapped at gunpoint, he was drugged and locked in a cupboard for nine days. His captors used voice distorters during phone calls and had their mobile phones registered in France to prevent them being traced. They were caught when police traced a car that had been used in the snatch. Despite regular successes and a high clear-up rate, police fear the majority of such kidnap cases go unreported, with the families choosing to pay the ransom rather than go to the police.

Traditional kidnaps are rising fastest among certain ethnic communities – 80 per cent of all British kidnaps involve a foreign national, with Albanians and Chinese being the most likely victims. The latest twist to the crime is that those targeted are often illegal immigrants who have just arrived in the UK courtesy of Snakehead gangs or people-traffickers.

These incidents are often characterised by their extreme violence and indifference to life. One case involved the abduction of five Chinese nationals, who were successfully freed following days of negotiations. Later it emerged that, during the stand-off, the kidnappers had realised they stood no chance of getting money for one of the victims so had drawn lots to decide who would kill him.

Another of their victims was forced to act as their slave, cooking and cleaning for his kidnappers while yet another had his fingers sliced to the bone for refusing to rape a fellow captive.

Chef Xiao Ming Cao, twenty-five, was kidnapped in north London, as he walked home from work, and forced to telephone his family in China, telling them that if they wanted to see him alive they must pay £40,000. Over the course of twelve days – one of the longest kidnaps in British legal history – Cao was kept handcuffed to a radiator and only allowed to move to go the lavatory. He was given a cup of boiled rice once every two days and humiliated by being made to crawl around the floor and bark like a dog while his tormentors kicked him.

Another typical case was that of Chen Cun Laing, who left China after a freak typhoon destroyed his fishing-boat and left him penniless. Convinced the only way he could earn enough money to support his family would be by finding his way to the UK, Laing approached a local Snakehead gang and agreed to pay more than sixteen thousand pounds to be smuggled into England.

The journey took several months and, after arriving in London and applying for asylum, Laing eventually found work at a restaurant in Wigan. After only a few weeks he was suddenly kidnapped by members of a Triad gang, linked to the Snakeheads, who had travelled up from London to track him down. The gang explained that he still owed more than seven thousand pounds, then took him to a secluded house in Manchester and began systematically to torture him. He was repeatedly beaten and cut with a machete and on several occasions telephone calls were made to his family in China so that they could hear his screams.

He was released only after signing a Triad ‘debt of honour’ certificate, which is considered as good as currency. By signing, the victim agrees that he or she will be executed if they do not pay. Alerted by Laing’s family in China, police tracked down the five-strong gang of kidnappers who were jailed for a total of forty-two years.

The problem is particularly acute in Dublin where, instead of illegal immigrants or asylum seekers, the Triad kidnap gangs are targeting the student population, which has exploded in the city in recent years. In February 2002 four self-confessed members of the Wo Shing Wo Triad gang were deported from Dublin for kidnapping, assaulting and extorting money from Chinese students.

Between 2000 and 2002 the number of Chinese living in Dublin more than doubled, thanks to the growth in student numbers, and in 2003 the Irish government issued a record nine thousand study visas to Chinese students. It is a popular destination because, unlike most other student visas, the ones issued to Chinese allow them to work as well as study. The move came about after intense pressure from Ireland’s Chinese community who were finding it difficult to fill unskilled jobs. Many believe the situation has since got out of control with more students than there is work. This, along with the fact that arriving students have to bring at least three thousand euros in cash to show they are capable of supporting themselves, has made them extremely vulnerable to express kidnaps.

The viciousness surrounding this type of kidnap became apparent when police were called to one incident. By the time they arrived and kicked open the door, the screams could be heard across the street. The scene in the flat in the Rathmines district of Dublin was horrific: two battered students were tied up in a corner while a group of men were viciously kicking and punching a third on the floor in front of them.

As the officers stepped forward the attackers turned on them, lashing out with meat cleavers. One blow almost severed a policeman’s arm.

So lucrative is the market that the Triad gangs are now fighting among themselves to take control of the kidnap racket. This first came to the fore in the summer of 2001 when twenty-two-year-old Hong Xiang Qui was murdered during a fight involving up to fifty Chinese men in central Dublin armed with a variety of knives and cleavers with ten-inch blades. A similar brawl had taken place that April, leaving two men injured. Since then there have been at least four more murders as the gangs continue to clash.

Some Triad members are so eager to come to Dublin that the language schools are being offered bribes of up to five thousand euros to falsify letters of enrolment. On arrival, the Triads use their contacts within the community to identify likely targets.

There was a time when every kidnap case produced at least two innocent victims: the person who had been kidnapped and the partner or family member left behind. This is no longer the case.

One of the largest rises in the field has been attributed to a relatively new phenomenon – the retribution kidnap. Described as ‘bad on bad’, these involve criminals who imprison one another either for revenge, to cover an unpaid drugs debt, or to make some quick money. The trend is most noticeable in London where retribution kidnaps occur at the rate of two or three each month.

In one case, an Asian man told police that his son had been kidnapped. He had been played a recording down the phone of his son being tortured and had been asked to pay a ransom of £40,000 within five days. Police inquiries quickly revealed that the father was a major heroin dealer and the ransom was equal to a payment the man had failed to make for his latest shipment. A gang working for his suppliers had kidnapped his son to secure payment.

Liverpool-based restaurateur Charles Seiga was kidnapped a month after he was cleared of murdering a thirty-six-year-old nightclub bouncer. He was abducted by armed men and had boiling water poured over his face and body in a thirty-six-hour ordeal. He telephoned his brother to say that the price of his release would be £100,000. He was eventually released after £17,000 raised from friends and family had been handed over.