AN ex crime boss has warned more innocents will be killed in drug wars after the gangster who shot dead nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel was finally brought to justice.
Darren Gee, once one of the most feared men on Merseyside, predicts that more families will be caught in the crossfire of gangs battling to dominate the firearms and drugs trade.
He said: “The addictions the (dealers) are placing on families, the absolute destruction that they are doing to our city. If we don’t stand screaming, united as one big voice, we’re going to see more murders of more young Olivia’s coming in the future.”
Last week ruthless Thomas Cashman became – in the words of his own barrister – the most hated man in Britain after being convicted of murdering Olivia when he burst into her home chasing a local criminal.
The callous criminal was convicted thanks to the bravery of an ex-partner whose home he went to after the shooting.
In a BBC Panorama interview, to be aired tonight, experts warn how a new generation of teenage gangs with an "extraordinary propensity for violence" are replacing the 'old mafia' – with the increasing availability of firearms making them deadlier than ever.
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Drug gang terror
Like Cashman, 34, Gee is responsible for the death of an innocent – but he did not pull the trigger.
Gee, 44, and his gang flooded Everton's Grizedale estate with cannabis, cocaine and heroin in the early 2000s until a 19-year-old was shot after being mistaken for the dealer.
Teenager Craig Barker’s only ‘crime’ was to agree to go to McDonald's with Gee, who asked him along after spotting him kicking about the streets alone in April 2004.
When a hitman fired at Gee’s car, Craig was in the passenger seat.
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In The Drug Wars That Killed Olivia, Gee says: “He was just on the estate by himself and we shouted him over and said ‘we’re going for a McDonald's, do you want to come with us?
“We took him with us and basically he was shot dead.
“It brings it all back when I speak about it, when I was driving him to the hospital, when he was crying for his mum. I just wanted to save him, I just wanted him to stay awake.”
When Gee was wrongly told a rival drug dealer, dad-of-five David Regan, 36, had been behind the hit, he arranged for him to be shot dead at his car wash.
Gee said: “David was someone who was placed in front of us as someone involved. I knew him, knew his wife. I used to go for my Sunday dinner at his house but all that became irrelevant when he was implicated in the murder of a young boy on our estate.”
But the tip-off was wrong.
The man who killed Craig was actually SAS-trained contract killerDarren Waterhouse, once awarded the Military Cross for bravery in Bosnia, who had been hired by drug dealer William Moore. They were both jailed for at least 30 years in 2005.
The law finally caught up with Gee in 2006 when he was jailed for 18 years for conspiracy to murder David Regan.
He tells Panorama: “I deserve the prison time I got.”
Tragic deaths
Liverpool residents have been left devastated by the killing of Olivia – just like that of Rhys Jones, the 11-year-old who was gunned down by accident during a gangland feud.
Killer Sean Mercer was just 16 when he shot Rhys dead as he walked home from football practice in 2007.
Olivia was the third person to be shot dead over an eight-day period in August last year.
Sam Rimmer, 22, was fatally injured when strangers on electric bikes started shooting at him and his friends in Dingle.
Five days later, council worker Ashley Dale, 28, was found dead of a gunshot wound in a back garden in the city's Old Swan area.
Peter Walsh, author of acclaimed book Drug War, tells Panorama how the original mafia bosses, who grew out of the docks of in the 70s, were replaced over the decades by more violent, younger gangs.
He said: “Very young teenage gangs, some barely out of school, showed an extraordinary propensity for violence.
“It was their preparedness to use it against anybody. A very substantial criminal organisation in Liverpool had a beef with one of these young groups, so these older guys went to confront this young guy.
“The young guys met them and said ‘look we know who you are, we don’t care who you are. We’ll put bullets in your head, go away.”
Wave of drugs
Drugs first came into Liverpool in the 60s when the city’s original ‘Mr Big’ Tommy Comerford, worked on the docks.
The career criminal, who started as a driver, was the first gang leader to establish an international network to bring shipments of drugs into the city.
Anti-drugs campaigner Angela Preston told how one city estate – the Radcliffe in Everton – was so ravaged as heroin took hold that it had to be demolished.
Built in the mid-70s to look like a Cornish fishing village, Angela said heroin “went right through the estate."
She said: “In most blocks families were affected all the way along.
“The people were looking different. People on heroin weren’t the same person from the one before heroin took over them.
"Their appearance changed which was heartbreaking to see because you’d grown up with these people. I’m angry and sad that money is more important than people; that people have chosen greed over humanity.”
The estate had so many addicts that it fell into disrepair and was knocked down in 1988 – 11 years after it was first built.
But the tide could be turning after Olivia’s murder after more decent people than ever came forward with information.
Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Keeman, of Merseyside Police, said: “If you live in areas where those crime groups operate and they are there day in, day out, hanging around the shops, riding around on electric bikes, their faces covered up, shooting guns, targeting individuals, I understand it can be very very daunting.
“It’s difficult for you to take the decision to put your hand up and stand forward with us. However, with Olivia’s murder we’ve never had as many pieces of intel submitted to the force. It far exceeded any other community engagement we’ve ever had.”
Chief Constable Serena Kennedy warned there will be no hiding place for gangsters – especially those who helped Olivia’s killer.
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She said: “Those people who enabled that crime to happen, those people who supplied the weapon, who enabled him (Cashman) to do what he did on that night, we are absolutely coming after those people.”
Panorama's The Drug Wars That Killed Olivia will be shown on BBC One at 8pm tonight
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