The real story of the Rolex Watches
It was the late 70's & Althia & Donna were at the top of the charts with "Up Town top Ranking". I had now become a familiar & trusted face on the All Saint's Road, I'd get ask to follow older men up the road to collect & deliver from secret stash houses, close by the All Saints Road, one of my early friendships on the All Saints Road, was with an older guy called Vince Lee. Vince had the looks of a young Bob Marley, he was a strikingly handsome young man. Vince lived just round the corner on Westbourne Park Road, he owned a White Rover V8 3.5 manual car, and boy did he know how to drive that car, he drove that car exactly the style the police drove they Rover police car, what you call fast & furious today.
During my many escapades I accumulated 4 Rolex watches, 2 real & 2 fake, each fake was identical to the real one and i put them in 2 pouches, the real ones in one pouch & the fake ones in another pouch, i had a regular fence, who could get rid of the watches for me, for an agreed regular price, but on this occasion i wanted more, i had recently purchased my first diamond ring & i wanted to purchase more diamonds to have a local jeweler etch into my bracelet the words 'Skully Boy", which is what i was called by many of my peers at that time.
So i approached a gentleman on the All Saint's Road who i thought that i could trust, i showed him the real Rolex watches, but when i fleetingly mentioned this to Vince, his face changed & he told me that i had just made arrangements with a notorious police informer, and that i should swap the real watches for the fake ones when he calls to arrange the exchange of money, i was suddenly in turmoil, up until now i had just breezed thru life on the All Saint's Road, i hadn't upset anyone nor had anyone upset me, apart from once when we were refused entry into the Mangrove one night by a known bully called "The Beast", a gruesome looking Black man who delighted in throwing his weight around, we retaliated by going to the phonebox & phoning the fire brigade, & reporting a serious fire in the Mangrove, as soon the fire brigade engines arrived on All Saints Road most people thought it was a plot for another pre-planned police raid, & people started leaving or hiding whatever they needed to hide, whenever sirens arrived on the All Saints Road, it always seemed to turn the whole road into a Carnival type scenario, anyway it gave us the opportunity to re-enter the Mangrove.
I received the shout from the gentleman who cannot be named for obvious legal reasons, telling me to come upstairs to his car, he immediately told me how much was on the table for my watches, and the offer would be dead if i walked away today without accepting the cash, i accepted the cash offered, but told him that the deal had to be made here on the All Saints Road, i wasn't gonna do it nowhere else where i felt vulnerable, he looked stunned for a moment & said to me, "you want me to bring £12,000 to you here?", i said with a smile of joking bravado, "where else you wanna bring it to me, Notting Hill police station?' 'he stared at me with cold eyes now, which made me tremble a lil' bit, had i over stepped my mark? before i could say another word he grabbed me around the throat, & said to me "if you wanna make big man jokes with me, i gonna give u big man punchlines" i pushed his hand away & said i wasn't joking, sometimes doing things under peoples noses is the best place, he told me to be back here in 2hrs , i said I'll be in the back of Ray's mini cab with the watches.
What was unbeknown to me, not being an avid reader of the daily broadsheet newspapers at the time, was that the report of the disappearance of these Rolex watches had been widely reported in the press, the police had a photo-fit of the person responsible for the walk-in theft & the photo-fit fitted me down to my front tooth gold frame, the only discrepancy was the report of a large scar on my right hand, which in fact was a weal that had healed. Also unbeknown to me i was about to be given Metropolitan police marked cash in exchange for the two Rolex watches, with police waiting to arrest me immediately when departing All Saints Road with the cash, the fact that the police were happy for they money to be let loose, in what they considered a containment of All Saints Road, while the watches were recovered for confirmation that they were in fact from the theft widely reported, showed the importance of the owner of these watches & the urgency to capture & convict the person responsible for the theft.
At the agreed time i sat in the back of Ray's mini cab with the 2 fake Rolex watches, when the gentleman opened the door, he asked me to step out & come into his car, i refused and told him, the watches are here if he wants to do the deal, he came inside the car, took the pouch off me, looked inside, then gave me 4 big white envelopes which when i looked inside one of them, was stuffed with £20 notes, we said goodbyes & i told Ray to turn the car around & park it outside the Apollo pub, just as he did this, a car came pass slowly containing 2 white men and a woman, i ignored eye contact but i was shaken up enough to abandon my plan of jumping into another cab & hiding on the floor, i stuffed all the money into the rucksack i had brought with me & bolted into the Apollo pub, thru the back, onto a wall & jumped every garden fence, like a grand national horse until i arrived in the garden of a house on St. Luke's Road, when i poked my head over the garden wall, i could see a bicycle by the gate, i jumped onto the bicycle & rode it to what is called Meanwhile Gardens, a piece of greenery by the Grand Union canal, i rode along the canal all the way to Kensal Rise, where i knew of an ex-girlfriend parents house. once inside i explained the story to my ex & asked her to look after the money whatever happened to me.
I never returned home for 3 weeks, because i was convinced the police were waiting to arrest me, i had given a known police informer 2 fake Rolex watches for £12,000 of the police's cash money, something or someone had to pay. 3 months later i was arrested for an unrelated charge & taken to Notting Hill police station, while in the cells i was visited by two men from Scotland Yard police corruption squad and asked a series of questions, which i refused to answer unless my solicitor was present, the officers left & i never saw them again.
20yrs later in 1997 while on temporary release from the open prison Latchmere house in Richmond, i was spending a great weekend with friends, so much so that i decided with just 18 months left to serve, i was gonna join my friends in Spain, where they were living life like Kings, in a Villa a few miles outside Marbella, after 2 months in the sun i arrived back in London on a false passport & the very next day, they was a report in the Daily Mirror saying that i was wanted for a spate of Rolex robberies, & also questioning for a murder committed near a train station, that i used daily when i was inside the open prison.
When i read more closely who the officer in charge was conducting this search for me, well coincidentally, it was the same officer who had authorised the release of £12,000 of the police's money, i now had after me, a police officer who was willing to frame me for every theft & robbery of a Rolex watch in London, for an incident that had happened many years ago, which they could not prove, unless they admitted the name of the police informer in open court, which will then put the gentleman's life in obvious danger, i was re-arrested the following year on separate matters, but i was never questioned about the Rolex watches or the £12,000 cash, and when i ordered my solicitor to start proceedings against the Newspaper, the Daily Mirror, for the story that was printed, accusing me of conducting a spree of Rolex robberies against the rich & famous, i was told that i was 1 day too late to sue, because the law says u need to sue within 1 year & 1 day, in regards to defamation.