The 55-year-old was assassinated on his own doorstep in July 2015
Paul Massey
Almost ten years after he was gunned down on his own doorstep, a senior coroner has ordered Greater Manchester Police to write a dossier detailing all the contacts officers had with Salford ‘Mr Big’ Paul Massey in the weeks before he was assassinated, the Manchester Evening News can reveal.
It represents a small victory for his family which is battling for a full inquest to be held into his death. They have accused the force of a ‘cover up’ and claim that if a police ‘threat-to-life’ notice had been handed to him personally eight weeks before his murder, he would have taken steps to protect himself and he would be alive today.
The precise number is a matter of debate, but Massey received at least five so-called ‘Osman’ warnings during his life – from 2009 right up until assassin Mark Fellows blasted him to death with an Uzi sub-machine on the doorstep of his home in Clifton in July 2015, the nadir of a vicious war between a Salford gang known as the A Team – whose members considered Massey a mentor and elder – and a rival faction, the Anti A Team.
Massey’s family say he received a threat-to-life warning from Greater Manchester Police in April 2012 – around the time he mounted a failed bid to become mayor of Salford – and that he talked openly about it and took steps to protect himself.
Some saw Massey as a working class hero(Image: Manchester Evening News)
His final ‘Osman’ warning was delivered to his home in May 2015, just eight weeks before his death. It was posted through the letter box and his family believe officers should have made efforts to deliver it personally. The Massey family say he would never have gone to a funfair with his grandkids two weeks later if he knew of the threat to him.
A 2017 internal investigation by GMP cleared two cops who delivered the warning, the Manchester Evening News has previously reported. The officers said nobody answered the door and Massey’s partner, when they informed her they had a threat to life warning for him, shouted from a window for them to post it through the letterbox ‘with the rest of them’.
GMP’s internal investigation found Massey was handed five ‘Osman’ warnings in his life, but said there was no record he received another one – as his family claims – during his failed 2012 bid to become mayor of Salford.
Paul Massey(Image: MEN Media)
National police guidance says such warnings should be handed over personally ‘where appropriate’, but can also be delivered in other ways, for instance over the phone if the subject is abroad.
At a pre-inquest review hearing at Bolton Coroners’ Court this week, Senior Manchester West Coroner Timothy Brennand ordered GMP to write a report for him detailing police contact with Massey in the months and weeks before his murder.
He told the members of the Massey family in court: “I want to be clear about what police contact had or had not taken place in relation to the the service of the threat-to-life notice but also from that date through the following eight weeks but in particular in the fortnight prior to your father’s death. I want to know if and what contact had taken place even if that’s a negative.”
He also said force now accepts the way the final threat-to-life notice was issued was ‘suboptimal’.
Mr Brennand said the family had waited ‘such a long time’ and that he wanted to have ‘all the information that’s available to me’ before deciding whether to go ahead with a full inquest into Massey’s death to examine whether the state played a role in his death.
The coroner went on that GMP was urging the court to ‘draw an inference’ that Massey must have read the threat-to-life notice as, following his death, the document was found at his home and it was said to have had Massey’s fingerprints on it. Mr Brennand said there was ‘strong primary evidence available to the court that your father was in fact told about the threat to life’ but on its own this was not a ‘technical knock-out blow’.
Paul Massey(Image: SEAN WILTON)
He has also requested a copy of a 300-page employment tribunal judgment which ruled against GMP whistleblower Pete Jackson, who was in charge of GMP’s Major Incident Team at the time Salford was erupting in gang war. The former detective said he was repeatedly ‘undermined’ as he battled to bring gangsters and gunmen to justice as part of GMP’s Operation Leopard. He argued alleged gang bosses escaped justice because of the internal strife at GMP at the time.
And the coroner said he was also seeking statements Massey made to journalists during his life. He told the BBC in 1998 for a documentary which was never aired that he could be murdered ‘at any time’. He suggested there would be dire consequences for any would-be assassin, laughing: “I pity the bastard who did it after.”
He said he knew of supposed friends who wanted him dead, but that he was ‘just laughing at them’ because they wouldn’t dare to do it.
He said ‘they know what would f***ing happen after’ and insisted he didn’t consider any of them a threat ‘because they ain’t got the f***ing balls’.
Mr Massey’s daughter Kelly Massey questioned the fingerprint evidence at the hearing and insisted GMP ‘knew fine well there was an active gang war going on in Salford’ at the time officers delivered the warning. “My dad’s life was in immediate danger,” she said, arguing officers who arrived on her father’s doorstep should have given the notice to him ‘personally’.
Paul Massey with his grandchildren at a fair on June 20, 2015, just weeks before he was shot dead(Image: Kelly Massey)
Ms Massey said there were ‘missing details’ from the evidence bundle the family had received, including missing statements from two of the three officers who visited her father’s home with the notice. She said her father would have moved to north Wales as he had done following the alleged 2012 threat-to-life notice and ‘put his own protection in place’.
She accused the police of a ‘cover up’ and said: “I believe my father would still be alive today if the police had done their job.” She said her father would have taken steps to protect himself if he had been informed of the threat.
Despite his well-known criminal history, she says her father deserved like anyone else to be informed if there was a threat on his life.
In 1999, Massey was jailed for 14 years for a stabbing. The vicious attack came as he was being followed by a film crew round the city’s nightclubs for a documentary that was never released.
His victim, a member of a stag party visiting a club on Whitworth Street, was stabbed in the groin after confronting and headbutting Massey for smashing the window of their minibus. Suffering a severed artery he only survived thanks to the skill of a surgeon, who was called away from a black-tie dinner that night.
Paul Massey and his daughter, Kelly Massey(Image: Kelly Massey)
Massey fled to Amsterdam, but was extradited to the UK to face justice. When he came out of prison, he retained a fearsome reputation in Manchester’s gangland.
The trial of Massey’s killer Mark ‘The Iceman’ Fellows revealed police handed Massey formal ‘threat to life’ warnings in April 2009, September 2011, February 2013, and March 2015. The last one was issued as Mark Fellows was plotting his murder.
Massey was hit by a hail of bullets almost as soon as he stepped out of his silver 5 series BMW, at 7.27pm on July 26, 2015. Badly wounded, the Sunday night bottle of Bacardi he had bought at his local Bargain Booze smashed across his driveway as the carrier bag dropped from his hand.
He staggered backwards and fell, rendered helpless by terrible injuries to his foot. He tried to dive for cover behind his bins, tried to fend off the bullets from a gunman who was dressed head-to-toe in combat gear, and attempted to scramble away from him.
The assassin followed, standing over his target as he pulled the trigger of an Uzi a second time. Fellows was generally thought to be a gangland ‘nobody’ before he slaughtered the man famously dubbed Salford’s ‘Mr Big’ by a local councillor.
A decision on whether there will be a full inquest is due to be announced at another hearing at Bolton Coroners’ Court on July 31.
Kelly Massey at the grave of her murdered father Paul Massey(Image: Kelly Massey)
After the hearing, Kelly Massey, 42, told the Manchester Evening News: “I’m glad we are finally getting listened to and the police have been told to provide further evidence. This has been hell for our family. We’ve been through hell. I feel like I’ve lost my whole life but fighting for my dad at the coroners’ court makes me feel proud because I feel like I’m actually doing something for my dad.”
A GMP spokesperson said: “GMP is cooperating fully with the ongoing coronial process in relation to the death of Mr Massey. It would not be appropriate to comment further on issues which may be subject to examination by His Majesty’s Coroner as part of those proceedings.”