to our private phone calls for months before Ricky was arrested; I still think that our home is bugged now. I loved this house, but, after what the police have done here, it doesn’t feel like ours any more.
‘My thoughts about our future are moulded by our past. We have decided that we are going to move and start anew when Ricky comes home.
‘I have used those words again: “the past”. They are the two words that dominate my day, my thoughts and my dreams. The past is all I long for. It’s a time when this nightmare didn’t exist and I was surrounded by my family. Dare I think about the future?
‘I will when Ricky’s appeal is granted and the vast amount of new evidence that has been uncovered is presented to the court to secure his release. Because of the fresh evidence that this book has unearthed that day might not be too far away, and that thought alone gives me hope and the strength to keep going.
‘The police held a press conference after the trial and said that they were pleased the case was over. I want everybody involved in wrongly convicting my son to know that this case is far from over: in fact, it’s just beginning. This case will only be closed when the truth about the matters my son has been convicted of have been laid bare, and Ricky walks back through my front door.’
3
CLOWNS AND ACID TRIPS
Southend seafront’s neon-lit landscape is somewhere between hell and a down-at-heel Las Vegas. Like its vastly superior and more glamorous American equivalent, Southend has for many years been the haunt of delinquents, the deranged and anybody else trying to make a name for themselves in the thriving Essex underworld, where life is all about the paper chase. That is: hard cash.
During the 1980s and 1990s, gangs led by men such as Tony Tucker, Mickey Roman and Malcolm Walsh would spend their ill-gotten gains in the numerous bars and nightclubs that litter the area that once adjoined Southend Pier. Tucker and Walsh have since been murdered, Roman blew his own brains out with a handgun, and Southend Pier, once the world’s largest, sank beneath the waves after being destroyed by fire in October 2005. These days the gangs, mainly Burberry-clad chavs, loiter with intent around the Adventure Island theme park, revelling in the fact that their town, their county, is considered by many to be the baddest of Britain’s most notorious badlands. If you dare to ask these snarling morons what it’s like to be an Essex boy, they will proudly boast that, according to legend, Essex is such a magnificent place to be born it was originally chosen by God to be the birthplace of Jesus. Unfortunately, due to its lack of virgins and wise men, God was forced to abandon his dream of bestowing such a coveted title upon his only son and ended up making last-minute arrangements for his debut appearance in Bethlehem. Into this make-believe environment, where visions of grandiose and false hope are the norm, emerged the ultimate wannabe: Damon Alvin.
At the tender age of ten, he was already out of control and had been arrested by the police for arson. Aged 14, he had put away his matches and progressed to committing commercial burglaries, a trade he excelled in. When Alvin left school at the age of 15, he also left home, because he ‘was bored’. The sparkle that lit up his dreary life of crime came in the form of a man several years his senior named Malcolm Walsh.
Alvin had got to know Walsh through Malcolm’s younger brother, Kevin. They both attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School on Manchester Drive, Leigh-on-Sea. Alvin would often visit Kevin’s home after school and it was during these visits that Alvin met and became acquainted with Malcolm. Despite the fact that Alvin was just eleven years of age and Malcolm was seven years his senior, members of the Walsh family have described the pair as inseparable.
Having left school with no job and few prospects, Alvin moved into Malcolm and his wife
‘My thoughts about our future are moulded by our past. We have decided that we are going to move and start anew when Ricky comes home.
‘I have used those words again: “the past”. They are the two words that dominate my day, my thoughts and my dreams. The past is all I long for. It’s a time when this nightmare didn’t exist and I was surrounded by my family. Dare I think about the future?
‘I will when Ricky’s appeal is granted and the vast amount of new evidence that has been uncovered is presented to the court to secure his release. Because of the fresh evidence that this book has unearthed that day might not be too far away, and that thought alone gives me hope and the strength to keep going.
‘The police held a press conference after the trial and said that they were pleased the case was over. I want everybody involved in wrongly convicting my son to know that this case is far from over: in fact, it’s just beginning. This case will only be closed when the truth about the matters my son has been convicted of have been laid bare, and Ricky walks back through my front door.’
3
CLOWNS AND ACID TRIPS
Southend seafront’s neon-lit landscape is somewhere between hell and a down-at-heel Las Vegas. Like its vastly superior and more glamorous American equivalent, Southend has for many years been the haunt of delinquents, the deranged and anybody else trying to make a name for themselves in the thriving Essex underworld, where life is all about the paper chase. That is: hard cash.
During the 1980s and 1990s, gangs led by men such as Tony Tucker, Mickey Roman and Malcolm Walsh would spend their ill-gotten gains in the numerous bars and nightclubs that litter the area that once adjoined Southend Pier. Tucker and Walsh have since been murdered, Roman blew his own brains out with a handgun, and Southend Pier, once the world’s largest, sank beneath the waves after being destroyed by fire in October 2005. These days the gangs, mainly Burberry-clad chavs, loiter with intent around the Adventure Island theme park, revelling in the fact that their town, their county, is considered by many to be the baddest of Britain’s most notorious badlands. If you dare to ask these snarling morons what it’s like to be an Essex boy, they will proudly boast that, according to legend, Essex is such a magnificent place to be born it was originally chosen by God to be the birthplace of Jesus. Unfortunately, due to its lack of virgins and wise men, God was forced to abandon his dream of bestowing such a coveted title upon his only son and ended up making last-minute arrangements for his debut appearance in Bethlehem. Into this make-believe environment, where visions of grandiose and false hope are the norm, emerged the ultimate wannabe: Damon Alvin.
At the tender age of ten, he was already out of control and had been arrested by the police for arson. Aged 14, he had put away his matches and progressed to committing commercial burglaries, a trade he excelled in. When Alvin left school at the age of 15, he also left home, because he ‘was bored’. The sparkle that lit up his dreary life of crime came in the form of a man several years his senior named Malcolm Walsh.
Alvin had got to know Walsh through Malcolm’s younger brother, Kevin. They both attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School on Manchester Drive, Leigh-on-Sea. Alvin would often visit Kevin’s home after school and it was during these visits that Alvin met and became acquainted with Malcolm. Despite the fact that Alvin was just eleven years of age and Malcolm was seven years his senior, members of the Walsh family have described the pair as inseparable.
Having left school with no job and few prospects, Alvin moved into Malcolm and his wife
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