Three teenagers found a stolen car in Huyton, Liverpool. It had been abandoned by the original thieves because it had run out of petrol. The teenagers laid their hands on some fuel and began to treat the car as a plaything. It was driven at high speed, the engine was revved excessively, and the wheels could be heard screeching as it tore around local streets.

Behind the wheel was 14-year-old Andrew Ellis. Apparently he had never driven a car before. Watching on was Gary Campbell. As Ellis reversed the car at high speed he collided with a number of pedestrians, one of whom was four-year-old Kevin Downes. Kevin was killed instantly. His six-year-old brother Tony Downes was deeply traumatised by his brother’s death, an event that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

In the early hours of Saturday June 19^th 2004, 16-year-old Liam Kelly was getting out of a car in Grafton St, Dingle, Liverpool, when he was approached by two armed men. Liam was blasted in the chest and arm by a shotgun. Liam dragged himself to a nearby house but died of his injuries a short while later. The police soon identified a number of suspects and made some early arrests, but the suspects were released on bail pending further enquiries. One of the arrested suspects was the privately educated, 6’ 6”, broadly built, ginger haired, Kevin Parle, of no fixed address.

Fourteen months later, in the early hours of Wednesday 3^rd August 2005, three masked men forced their way into the home of 22-year-old Lucy Hargreaves, in Lambourne Road, Walton, Liverpool. Lucy was asleep on the sofa. A duvet covered her. Upstairs her partner Gary Campbell, was asleep, together with their two-year-old daughter. Their other two young children were away on holiday with their grandparents.   

Lucy screamed, which woke Gary Campbell. She was then shot twice and died instantly. Campbell heard a voice say, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’ Soon afterwards flames engulfed the house. Campbell and the two-year-old daughter managed to escape the blazing building by leaping out of an upstairs window. They were both blackened by soot.

In June 2006 a number of people went on trial, charged with offences connected to Liam Kelly’s murder. Anthony Campbell, (No relation to Gary Campbell), pleaded guilty to murder. Peter Sinclair pleaded guilty to assisting an offender. Sinclair accepted that he helped Kevin Parle dispose of mobile phones, burn clothing which contained incriminating evidence, and had driven Parle to collect a vehicle after Liam’s murder. Parle however, was now on the run and was therefore not in court. Another defendant, Hannah Morgan, pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice by making a false statement to the benefit of Parle. Patrick Smeda was acquitted of murder.

In November 2007 Tony Downes and Kirk Bradley went on trial charged with Lucy Hargreaves’ murder. Adam McNally stood in the dock alongside them, charged with stealing the getaway car. The police openly stated at the trial that they were seeking another man in connection with Lucy’s murder. This man was Kevin Parle, who was now wanted in connection with two of Liverpool’s most shocking murders of recent times. At this trial, Lucy’s murder was described as an ‘execution’ by the prosecution. The court heard that after Lucy had been shot, petrol was doused around the living room and hallway before being ignited.

Gary Campbell gave evidence from behind a curtain. He claimed the attack on the house was an act of revenge for his ‘involvement’ in the fatal car crash that killed Kevin Downes way back in 1993, and said ‘Nobody wanted to kill Lucy, they wanted to kill me.’        

Downes and Bradley were acquitted of Lucy’s murder, despite Downes’ defence barrister, Nigel Power QC, publicly admitting there was ‘compelling telephone evidence’. Downes and Bradley did not use this scrape with the law and the criminal justice system as a catalyst to live law abiding lives, instead they went on to conduct a reign of terror throughout the city of Liverpool, which saw them locked up in 2011 for a series of crimes involving guns, grenades and indiscriminate violence. Whilst awaiting trial, on 18^th July 2011, they were sprung from a prison van by a gang of masked men, armed with a sledgehammer and a gun. One gang member shouted at the prison van driver, ‘Get the fucking keys out or I will blow your fucking head off.’

Downes and Bradley escaped to Holland where they were later arrested. They were brought back to the UK to serve life sentences. They have since fallen out whilst in prison and it was reported in November 2012 that Bradley had been stabbed by Downes who used a ‘shank’ fashioned out of razor blades and plastic. These ruthless criminals who once described themselves as ‘blood brothers’, appealed their sentences but were told by an appeal judge that their ‘campaign of terror was so serious only life sentences were justified.’ Their lives of crime alone might be enough to fill a true crime book.