Parle, also known as ‘Hemp,’ is Britain’s most wanted fugitive
21:47, 03 Aug 2025Updated 21:52, 03 Aug 2025
Kevin Parle (Image: NCA)
Mum-of-three Lucy Hargreave was murdered inside her family home on Lambourne Avenue, Walton, in the early hours of August 3 2005. The 22-year-old was asleep on the sofa when three men gained access to her house. She was shot three times with a sawn-off shotgun before the thugs doused her duvet in petrol and set the house alight.
The flames engulfed the home forcing her partner, who had been sleeping upstairs and their two-year-old daughter to escape through an upstairs window. Twenty-one people have been arrested in connection with Lucy’s murder over the years but no one has been convicted. Police consider Kevin Parle the prime suspect in the case – and in the killing of 16-year-old Liam Kelly in the Dingle a year earlier.
Despite extensive efforts from investigators to return him to Merseyside to face charges for both murders, Parle remains at large. He is currently Britain’s most wanted fugitive.
Who is Kevin Parle?
Kevin Thomas Parle, also known by the alias “Hemp,” is a Liverpool-born fugitive who has been on the run for two decades and remains one of Britain’s most wanted men. Standing at around 6’5” with ginger hair and a stocky build, Parle was linked to two high-profile murders on Merseyside in the mid-2000s.
The first, in June 2004, was the killing of 16-year-old Liam Kelly in the Dingle. Kelly was shot dead in the street reportedly over a £200 drug-related debt.
Liam Kelly was murdered in the early hours of June 19 2004 on Grafton Street, Dingle(Image: Merseyside Police/PA Wire)
Parle was arrested and questioned but released on bail. Another man, Anthony Campbell, admitted arranging the killing and was jailed but Parle has been sought ever since in connection with the shooting.
Just over a year later Lucy Hargreaves was murdered in her Walton home. Three masked men broke into the house, shot her dead while she slept on the sofa, and then set the home on fire using petrol.
Lucy was an innocent party; the attack is believed to have targeted her partner, Gary Campbell, who was thought to be the intended victim due to a feud going back to the 1990s.
Kevin Parle became the prime suspect in the murder and although two men were arrested and charged, the cases against them were dropped due to lack of evidence. Parle was never apprehended.
Lucy Hargreaves with her oldest son
Since vanishing in 2005, Kevin Parle has evaded capture despite being the subject of international manhunts and appeals. The popular-held view was that Parle was lying low in Spain after fleeing the UK authorities. However eyewitness accounts and detailed descriptions of brief incidents have indicated he could have been, at different times, in Europe and Asia.
Parle, who is privately educated, used to be smartly dressed and had links when younger to Mossley Hill. There have been claimed sightings of Parle in the Canary Islands, Asia, and many eyewitness accounts of him on the Costa Blanca in Spain.
Other claims have been made of the Liverpudlian regularly visiting a cannabis café and also being with a group of women allegedly snorting coke in a bar’s toilets, prompting Parle to square up to a barman who wanted to throw them out, it was said.
Both those sightings are claimed to have happened in Albir, a small beach resort sandwiched between Altea and Benidorm on the northern coast. He is also said to have spent a whole summer in hiding at Mi Sol Holiday Park in Torrevieja in 2006.
In 2016, the Australian Federal Police and Merseyside detectives confirmed they had credible information that Parle may be in Australia, or had previously visited Perth on or about 2013. Parle had a relative in the area who owned a stud farm.
The exact location of the farm is still unknown but it’s believed Parle may have used it as a hideout. Intelligence also emerged to suggest Parle had a very close friend who lived in Perth’s northern suburbs and he may have been spotted at the Old Bailey Bar and Bistro in Joondalup, a venue which has since closed.
There is also information Parle may have spent time in the West Australia outback during his time on the run.