As Salford buries its Mr Big, his gang want revenge and the turf wars grow

Paul Massey’s murder has left a vacuum in the north-west’s criminal underworld, and a question: was the infamous drug baron a police informant?

Just beyond the towering stands of Old Trafford lie plots of wasteland that on match days are transformed into lucrative makeshift car parks. Most Manchester United fans attending Saturday’s match against Newcastle United would have been unaware that until recently many of these parking spaces were part of an organised crime racket linked to a series of stabbings and a gangland turf war involving the notorious Paul Massey, Salford’s “Mr Big”.

Now Massey is gone, murdered a month ago on the drive of his family home. The hitman remains at large.

The killing of Salford’s most prominent felon has heightened tensions on streets infamous for its criminal firms – at least 19 are currently operating in a city of 240,000 people. London, by comparison, has 58 gangs “particularly active”, according to Scotland Yard, in a metropolis of eight million.

Massey’s crew want revenge, believing that they know who the killer is. The fact that such a high-profile hit – in daylight by a gunman wearing military-style fatigues – has yet to yield a single arrest has prompted unease. A 33-year-old Salford man has already been shot in an incident linked to Massey’s murder and days after he was killed, men on a motorbike fired at a terrace house. Drive-by shootings at homes of rivals are a Salford signature.

City councillor Paul Wilson, who has lived in the city his entire life, said: “I’ve never known crime at these levels, the number of incidents in a short space of time. These are targeted attacks but my fear is that an innocent person will get caught up in it.”

The likelihood of further shootings has prompted a huge security operation, with MI5 and officers from the National Crime Agency assisting the inquiry to find Massey’s murderer and thwart reprisal attacks. Undercover officers are deployed throughout Salford, with at least 60 known criminals being monitored. In addition, gang members have been visited by officers and written warnings have been handed to Massey’s affiliates telling them not to exact revenge. Chief superintendent Mary Doyle, head of Salford police, said: “There is always a chance of retaliation and I would encourage people not to take the law into their own hands.”

But who really was Salford’s “Mr Big”? In the aftermath of his death, much of the media ran with the line that the city had lost a man who had turned his life around, a reformed character who had even run for Salford mayor in 2012.

Yet sources from Manchester’s criminal underworld – who say they have no axe to grind with Massey – offer a profoundly contrasting portrait. Massey, they claim, exploited the young and impressionable to do his dirty work, remained active in the underworld and, most damagingly, had become the most reviled criminal type of all, a grass.

“He fed on the weak, he was like a Fagin type. We called him a paper gangster because he never got his hands dirty,” said one, speaking to the Observer in his Salford home on condition of anonymity, aware of the likely repercussions for accusing such a high-profile figure of being a police informant. Others, all with longstanding knowledge of Salford’s criminal landscape, repeated allegations that Massey helped the police. Greater Manchester Police refuse to comment.

Ten minutes’ walk from Old Trafford, across the river Irwell, is the inner-city Ordsall estate, a warren of bleak social housing and cul-de-sacs bordered by Salford’s gleaming MediaCity. The contrast recently moved the Greater Manchester chief constable, Peter Fahy, to remark on the planning vision that had created MediaCity while “areas like Ordsall are hardly touched”.

Massey was born in Ordsall in 1960 and it is here where his loyalists remain. Sources with detailed knowledge of Salford’s criminal scene say Massey’s success was founded on ensuring that Ordsall’s teenagers worked for him. “He’d get to them before they grew up. All of them,” said one. Initial revenue streams included “ramraiding” shops outside the city and extortion rackets on the estate.

But mainly it was drugs. Massey’s firm has been linked to the closure of the Hacienda nightclub in 1997, a short walk from Ordsall. Sources say Massey obtained narcotics from source: Holland for ecstasy and Spain for imports of cocaine from South America. He favoured “kamikaze runs”, in which his young recruits dumped drugs in the boot of a car and headed through France to the northern ferry ports, knowing that enough would get through.

Those who talked to the Observer are keen to dispel the widely touted claim that Massey was anti-heroin, a stance developed in reports that the father-of-five was behind stickers on lampposts warning: “Use smack and get smacked.”

One source said: “That is the biggest load of shite. He was only anti-smack if it wasn’t his. He became the biggest dealer on the [Ordsall] estate and grew from there,” he added.

Unlike many of the city’s gangsters, Massey, who was scarcely 5ft, was not known for being able to handle himself. “He couldn’t have a proper row [fight],” the source added. Others acted as his muscle. Massey’s recruitment of teenagers provided a steady flow of fearless youngsters yet to endure a lengthy prison sentence. “They couldn’t punch their way out of a paper bag. But cross them and they’ll come back with a gun,” added the source.

All those who spoke to the Observer said they would be targeted if identified. “There’s still lunatics on that firm who’ve put Massey on a pedestal and wouldn’t take kindly to anyone questioning him.”

Massey’s longevity within Salford’s underworld – he was 55 when murdered – is explained by his ability to forge pacts with nearby gangs, such as the Cheetham Hillbillies, and alliances with Mancunian dynasties such as the Noonan family, a syndicate so violent that by the end of the 1990s it had been linked to 25 gangland murders. A card signed by a Damien Noonan was among those left outside Massey’s home following his death. Other influential friends included Glasgow’s Paul Ferris, 49, former debt collector for the late Arthur Thompson, known as Scotland’s “Godfather”.

Others were less impressed by Massey’s approach, one alleging that the feuding over the Old Trafford car parks was overly protracted and vicious. “There were a lot of stabbings between the Salford lot and the Gooch Gang from Moss Side and Hulme, but you could make a few thousand each game. Massey was never arrested, but everybody knew he was involved.” The car parks, some close to the Ordsall estate, are now run by legitimate companies following police raids.

Allegations that Massey may have been a grass will reverberate throughout the Salford underworld. The city has always had an anti-authoritarian, anti-police element and, among its criminality, a strict no-grass culture. “I don’t think there was money involved. He was just passing on bodies – information,” said one, who had known Massey for decades. He added: “In turn the police helped him, backed him up. He didn’t speak to the local officers; he spoke to the serious end. Sometimes if you crossed him, next thing you’d know is that your front door was being kicked in by the police.”

One recounted rumours of a firearms deal for which, instead of Massey, police officers turned up. Another source cited an alleged incident in which police intervened to avoid a tax inspection at Massey’s Salford security firm in the late 90s. “It was common knowledge the book-keeping was dodgy, that it was a front, but the police got involved, saying it was under surveillance.”

A spokesman for HM Revenue & Customs said they would not comment on individual cases, adding: “We take allegations of impropriety extremely seriously and such allegations are always thoroughly investigated.”

A later security firm linked to Massey, 21st Security, was raided in 2011 and Massey and five others were arrested over money laundering, although he was never charged despite being on bail for more than three years. Massey, for the record, claimed that the police were conducting a “witch hunt” against him.

Massey was jailed, however, in 1999 when he stabbed a man in an artery and left him for dead. More recently, rumours surfaced – denied by Massey in April – that he had been asked by police to intervene as mediator following violent incidents in Salford, including a grenade and machete attack.

Breaking the wall of silence that has traditionally shrouded Salford will be crucial to snaring Massey’s killer. So low-key has been the response to his murder that even Greater Manchester Police registered surprise, conceding that they were “not getting anything at all” following the attack.

No one expects anything to emanate from the Ordsall estate. Four years ago, in Ordsall’s Wellington pub, Lee Erdmann, 37, was shot at the bar. Around 30 people were inside at the time, but no one has come forward. “Everybody on the estate will tell you who shot him,” said a source.

Why Massey was shot remains a topic of debate, but all sources maintain he was a violent man who lived by the sword. “Just look at his former right-hand man,” said one, referring to Bobby Spiers, 47, who was jailed for life for masterminding the attempted killing of a gangland rival by sending texts to hitmen while he was watching a game at Old Trafford.

Yet all sources maintain that Salford is getting safer. Project Gulf, a council and police initiative aimed at organised crime in the city, has arrested 103 people this year. One imminent flashpoint will be Massey’s funeral on Friday. Hundreds are expected to show up for a Salfordian whose death will define the next chapter in the city’s deadly underworld.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Manchester was dubbed ‘Gunchester’ as gang-related violence was largely blamed for the fatal shooting of 112 people in the city between 1999 and 2009.

One in eight shootings in Greater Manchester during the last four years has taken place in a single postcode in Salford.

More than 300 people have been arrested and 26 guns seized (along with ‘large quantities’ of ammunition) from Salford’s streets since Project Gulf, the city’s response to tackling organised crime, launched in 2012.

Three gangland turf wars are behind the rise in shootings in Greater Manchester, with disputes in Salford, North Manchester, and Wythenshawe accounting for most of the 34 recent shootings.

During the height of Gunchester in 2007/08, gun crime in Greater Manchester was running at an average of more than three incidents a day - there were 1,160 incidents that year, including 146 shootings. The 397 firearm incidents recorded last year equate to an average drop of almost two thirds.

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