A childhood motorbike accident left Longsight Crew founder Julian Bell paralysed from the waist down. But he used his wealth to wage a bloody gang war. Damon Wilkinson reports.Julian Bell

Half a million pounds. It was a hell of a lot of money.

And it was sitting in the bank account of Julian Bell. The 18-year-old had been awarded the cash in compensation after being left paralysed from the waist down when he fell off the back of a motorbike six years earlier.

He could have used the small fortune to build a new life for himself away from the guns, drugs and violence that were threatening the tear apart his childhood home of Longsight. But Bell had a different plan in mind.

In 1996 Bell’s younger brother Orville was shot twice in the neck as he sat at the wheel of his Honda CRX on Linnet Close, Longsight. The mountain bike-riding Gooch Gang gunman then snatched his blood-splattered gold chain before feeing.

The 17-year-old survived for four days on life-support before succumbing to his injuries. After his death Orville became a talismanic figure for his older sibling. And when the compensation landed, Bell set about avenging his slaying.

Julian Bell

He used some of the cash to buy a specially adapted BMW and a smart bungalow in a quiet village in Preston. The rest went on funding his criminal ambitions.

He returned to his old stomping ground and set up the Longsight Crew in Orville’s memory. He built up an terrifying arsenal of Mac-10s and Uzis. Using his wealth rather than strength, he ruled through a mixture of fear and reward, buying the loyalty and respect of those around him with jewellery, designer watches and bulletproof jackets.

The LCS were an offshoot of the Doddington Gang, but unlike bitter Longsight rivals Tommy Pitt’s Pitt Bull Crew, they stayed loyal to their Moss Side forefathers. And Orville’s murder meant the LSC had their owns reasons to go to war with the Gooch, the traditional enemies of Doddington.

Bell quickly established himself as one of the most feared gangsters in the city. Rivals and anyone else who stepped out of line were ruthlessly punished, earning Bell the nickname the ‘Godfather of Death’.

Speaking in the early 2000s one gangland figure told the Observer the LSC were ‘trying to take over everything’. “They are the youngest and most violent and are trying to make a name for themselves,” they added. “They will take out anyone who gets in their way.”

Ammo seized from the Longsight crew

Soon the LSC were at war with Pitt Bull Crew, Doddington and Gooch as they fought a bloody battle for control of the city’s multi-million-pound drug trade. Between 1999 and 2004 at least 26 killings were linked to the four gangs.

Langport Avenue, the street where Bell grew up, was the scene of a number of shootings. In September 2000, Devon Orlando Bell, 22, was shot by masked gunmen.

Three years earlier, 19-year-old Zeus King, son of the late Sweet Sensation frontman Marcel King, had been shot dead there. That same year, Bell, then 19, was also shot while sat in a car parked on Cottingham Road, Longsight.

The bullet passed through his hand and embedded itself in the leg of a teenage friend in the next seat. But in February 2000, Bell’s rise through the underworld ranks came juddering to a halt when was jailed for two-and-a-half years after threatening to kill a witness who was due to testify in a gangland assault trial.

It was just a temporary hiatus. On his release he employed his cousin Richard Solomon as his ‘chief minder’ and got straight back to business. But Solomon was jailed for life after shooting dead DJ and former Manchester City starlet Stephen Amos outside Bexx nightclub in Ashton in 2002.

How the Manchester Metro reported Bell’s 2004 conviction

And the murder investigation would be key to bringing down Bell’s estimated £1m drugs empire. Solomon’s movements led police to Bell’s Lostock Hall bungalow, where they seized guns, ammunition, a drug-cutting agent and a list of drug customers. A raid on another property in Salford found a drugs press capable of producing kilo-sized blocks of heroin or cocaine for wholesale distribution.

Bell’s time was almost up. In March 2004 he was jailed for 20 years at Manchester Crown Court for conspiracy to supply heroin and conspiracy to possess firearms. But he still he wasn’t quite ready to turn his back on a life of crime.

Bell served his time and on his release moved to upmarket Dover Road in Southport, close to the renowned Royal Birkdale Golf Club, where today homes can fetch almost £600,000. And from his new base on the Merseyside coast he began plotting his return to the drugs trade.

But this time he set his sights on the affluent south-west towns of Cheltenham and Gloucester. Using a contact with local crime boss Kieran Robinson, who he knew through a long-term association with his mother, Bell set up a cross-country supply line, becoming a wholesale supplier of heroin and crack which was ferried from Liverpool and Bradford to dealers in Gloucestershire.

Cash seized during the operation to bring down Bell’s Gloucestershire drug dealing ring

Robinson, then 20, was behind bars at HMP Bristol for possession of a sawn-off shotgun, but was still able to direct operations using 10 contraband mobile phones which had been smuggled into the prison and topped up with pay-as-you-go vouchers bought by friends and family.

Under the guise of running a jewellery business it’s thought Bell moved at least £500,000 of drugs into the two towns, ferried in taxis and trains from Manchester via Birmingham in more than 20 trips over the course of 12 months. Handovers took place in McDonalds and on Cromwell Street in Gloucester – once home to serial killers Fred and Rose West.

Julian Bell and Kieran Robinson

All time Bell, Robinson and his family were under surveillance as part of of a wide-ranging investigation being led by Gloucestershire Constabulary, alongside Merseyside Police, West Yorkshire Police, British Transport Police and the Prison Service. And when police decided to pounce justice was quick.

In 2018 a total of 14 people were jailed for various drug trafficking and money laundering offences. When police searched Bell’s Southport home they seized items of jewellery worth more £40,000. Robinson was jailed for 10-and-a-half- years for his role in the conspiracy.

Bell, then aged 40, was was given the same sentence after pleading guilty to supplying crack cocaine and heroin. His ruthless reign was finally over.