August 19, 2022 • 26 mins
In the shadow of Manchester United's legendary Old Trafford stadium, an almost mythic crime boss amassed power against a backdrop of drug trafficking, hooliganism, and rave music. Writer Reid Forgrave tells the story of Paul Massey, the Red Army, a grisly murder, and the one tiny mistake that landed two men in prison for life.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we get started, please rate and review our show.
It helps people find us. On this episode of Sports
Illustrated Weekly. In the shadow of one of the best
soccer teams in the world, one super fan of Manchester
United doubled as a legendary area crime boss until he
was assassinated. The wild true story of who killed Manchester
(00:24):
United hooligan and criminal Paul Massey and why he was
killed is told here by SI contributor Read four Grave.
I'm your host John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and I
Heart Radio this Sports Illustrated Weekly. A quick heads up
(00:48):
that this story features foul language, gun, violence and murder.
The year was Manchester United had a new manager. Here
he is on the first day of his new gig,
telling the BBC about the awkwardness of meeting the players
after former manager Ron Atkinson was Austin, don't they all right?
Once week got relationship, I'm sure we'll do Vediville Alex
(01:12):
Ferguson didn't know it, but very well was a vast understatement.
He was about to usher in a new era for
the team, an era that would redefine English soccer, not
just United, all the champions up the Premier League. Of
course you do. No one can cross a ball or
(01:33):
bend it like that. And there's a goal from coasts
But why wonderful save by Hichall got hit by Ryan Giggs.
Oh what's it good? Oh my goodness the Christiano. Yeah.
(02:00):
In the mid eighties, Manchester United was on the precipice
of greatness, but just across the river from the Grand Stadium,
Old Trafford, a gritty, rough and tumble area of Manchester
called Salford was giving rise to an almost mythical criminal.
His name was Paul Massey. His story is one of
hubris and deceit in the shadow of one of the
greatest soccer teams ever. The legend of Paul Massey can
(02:23):
be told through these three things soccer hooligan firms, the
drug trade, and the rave music scene. So you can't
tell the story of Paul Massey without telling the story
of Manchester and specifically the story of Salford. That's writer
Read four Grave, who reported this story for an SI
(02:43):
Daily cover Manchester. He was really the first industrial town.
The Industrial Revolution in the seventeen hundred comes about and
it becomes this textile capital and it gets pretty rough
and tumble, right away. What Chicago is to New York
is what Manchester is to London. Very much the second city,
very much, the more hard scrabble city, very much like
(03:05):
a city with a chip on its shoulder. And within
Manchester he is this community of Salford. And what made
Salford so gritty, so tough, a place where the gangster
was respected, it was because it was a docktown. Salford
was the terminus of the Manchestership Canal, the third biggest
port in in all of England, which is crazy because
(03:28):
it's inland. It's thirty five miles inland. But they built
this canal in the late eighteen hundreds to import and
export all these goods that are being manufactured in Manchester.
Paul Massey is a child of this area. He's born
in the early nineteen sixties and Salford was still rolling
as a doc city. But by the nineteen eighties, when
(03:51):
Paul Massey is supposed to be entering his prime, the
docks closed. Unemployment at one time among young men in
Salford was close to and you know anywhere in the world,
when you get unemployment like that, people turn to bad things.
That's what Paul Massey did. This is a guy who,
(04:11):
look he had a rough upbringing. He was kind of
a guy who was always getting in trouble, always out
on the streets. So he gets sent off to reform
school and ends up just really having a life of
sort of low level crime. But then by his twenties
this soccer hooligan stuff that he got involved with with
Manchester United, most famous soccer team probably in the world,
(04:33):
and he was a member of the Red Army, one
of their hooligan firms. Alright, so hooligan firms also called ultras.
They're more than just a group of fans, right, It's
like a step below organized crime, but they're still pretty
organized guys who just get out, get drunk, getting fights.
(04:54):
Paul Massey uses those connections to really find a footing
in the gang world. You know, there were small time stuff,
credit card scams, gasoline scams or steal gasoline and sell it.
He's doing jail time for this sort of stuff and
slowly that ends up building into something much bigger. And
this is sort of how Paul Massey's greatness comes together.
(05:17):
He's sort of at the nexus of soccer hooligan firms,
of the drug trade, and most interestingly, and to me,
you know, as an outsider of this, most surprisingly the
rave music scene. Paul Massey is the nexus of these
in the late eighties and early nineties, and that that's
(05:38):
where he really makes his name, pulling him millions of
dollars a year. Whose security firm at one point had
a twenty employees. That is when in the nine when
these hooligan firms come together with drug importation and rave music,
that's where Paul Massey goes from a tough guy to
Mr Big. Manchester became the sort of nexus not just
(06:04):
for England but also for Europe to be this destination
for drug culture and ecstasy. And at one point Manchester
becomes known as mad Chester because it's this drug fueled
club scene and one of the clubs was the Hacienda.
Explained to everybody how Paul Massey factored in there. He
(06:24):
had been pretty active hooligan member in the late seventies
early eighties. This is when hooliganism in England was you know,
it was enough of a big deal that Margaret Thatcher
convened a quote unquote war Cabinet to address hooliganism. This
is a big deal. Manchester United got banned from matches
(06:45):
on the European mainland for a short period because it's
fans were so crazy. So Paul Massey comes from that world.
And then in the mid eighties the band New Order,
who was the band that came out of Joy Division.
They were right at the forefront of rap music. They
owned this club called the Hacienda, and this is when
Manchester was at its roughest spot in the mid nineteen eighties.
(07:09):
But then New Order goes to a Bitha, the island
off of Spain, to record an album and that's when
they discover that's the very beginnings of rave music, and
New Order brings that back to England, brings that back
to the Hacienda, and the Hacienda transforms into the hottest
club maybe in all of Europe. At this point it's
(07:33):
the mid to late eighties when the Hacienda really starts
picking up. Manchester is also a university town. There's a
hundred thousand university students there and it becomes the place
to be for young, cool, hot people in Manchester and
for Manchester, this city with a chip on its shoulder,
to suddenly become cool, not just cool for the North
(07:56):
of England, but cool for all of England, for all
of Europe. That's something that the city very much took
pride in and I think we all probably by this
point no what goes with rave music ecstasy. So in
this weird way, the business model for this club doesn't
(08:17):
work that well for the people own it, not for
Peter Hook, not for the guys from newer because people
are taking pills that they buy at the front door,
they're drinking water, they're not drinking alcohol, and they're just
raving all night long. But guests who figured out how
to leverage selling the pills to all these ravers, it
was Paul Massey. So he figures out if he controls
(08:41):
the doors to these clubs, he can control the entire
drug trade for all of Manchester and for all of
this club scene. Paul Massey's greatest skill was that he
could turn out a crowd that goes back to his
hooligan days. He he just had this natural charisma to him.
He wasn't the big sky who wasn't the best looking guy,
(09:02):
but he was someone who never backed down from a
fight and someone who just had a respect with so
many people. So if Paul Massey said we're gonna go
to this club on a Saturday night. We're gonna get
a hundred people. When you get two hundred people, these
ex hooligans, and we're gonna go to the security staff
in the front and we're gonna basically occupy this club
until the owners were lent and say okay, you're our
new security staff. And then Paul Massey guts to sell
(09:24):
all these ecstasy tabs at a huge markup and make
millions upon millions of dollars doing this over the years.
So Paul Massey figures us all out. He creates this
criminal enterprise with these other hooligans that he was associated with.
He's quite literally living the high life. And as we
all know, these things generally tend to run their course.
(09:48):
Eventually it does for Paul Massey rolls around and he
gets arrested. What happens to him? And why is he
sentenced to fourteen years in prison? You know, this is
a story of I think great ubris. Paul Massey was
on top of the world in Salford and in Manchester.
Paul Massey, according to authorities, stabbed a guy. Stabbed a
(10:10):
guy in the groin. The guy almost died he's put
on trial and he sentenced to fourteen years for attempted murder.
This is when Paul was at the top of his world.
But it's not like this is a guy who is
afraid of prison. If anything, that's a recruiting ground for him.
If you get the sense of like the Godfather aspect
(10:30):
of Paul Massey, he had so many friends who were
in prison, and once he got out, he'd send Christmas
cards to them and he'd include fifty pounds that they
could spend at the prison commissary. Paul Massey when he's
in prison, he's still connected and he assumes when he
comes back out that he's gonna kind of pick right
up where he went off. He gets out of prison
(10:57):
and he says he's a change man, but really it's
more are about even though he had these connections while
he was inside, and he meets new people in the
criminal underworld when he gets out, Manchester has sort of
changed a little bit. There are new gangs. There's a
new gang called the A Team and another new gang
called the Anti A Team, which is not very creative
but still no joke. So Massey doesn't quite have the
(11:19):
same power and influence he did when he went inside.
Right Paul Massic gets out of prison, he proclaims to
be a new man. I think if you talk to
law enforcement authorities out there, they would look at that
claim very skeptically. But he did end up running for
mayor of Salford. Question Salford because it was bought and
betted that would be And I watch when I watch
(11:42):
side as well, and maybe a little hard to understand
what he's saying. They're somewhat ironically it's I got a
passion for Salford because I was born and bred here.
I want to help the elderly, I want to help
the youth, and I want to try to reduce crime
and also try to reduce the problem of drugs and
Salford as well. He restarts his security firm, p m
(12:07):
S Security, and he says, you know, this time we're
above board. However, he's running for mayor and the police
arrest him for all sorts of fraud allegations for PMS Security,
which sort of tanks his candidacy. I think he finished
like seven out of twelve. But yeah, in a way,
this world had kind of moved on. However, Paul Massey
(12:29):
still commanded respect in this world. He ends up becoming
sort of like the advisor to this this gang called
the A Team, specifically a young man named Stephen Britton.
He's brought in to broker peace between gangs when they
are gang wars. This is not a place in Salford,
(12:50):
especially among these people who grew up in this gang
world where they snitch. They refer to it as grasses.
We say, you know, snitches go and did is right,
But they very much lived by the code. And this
is something that's really important to understand about Paul Massey
and his world. Police aren't the ones who are called
in to sort of mediate these gang wars. It was
(13:13):
Paul Massey. So that also means he can find himself
suck in some pretty hairy situations. Yeah, and one of
the harriest read it goes down on the night of
July in the shadow of Old Trafford Stadium. Something really
dark happens. Yeah, something incredibly dark. He's driving home, he
(13:37):
had just gotten back from a vacation with his partner
of almost thirty years, louise Lydiat. He ends up going
to a bookie and then before he gets home, about
a half mile from his house, there's a place called
Bargain Booze, and he got a bottle of Bacardi, two
leaders of coke, and he drives home just have a
quiet night with his wife. And as he's getting home,
(14:01):
about seventeen seconds behind him, there's a stranger who's following him.
He gets home and pulls up his BMW five series
to the gate. Outside is really nice red brick home
that you know his decades as this sort of gang
leader and used all his his money to purchase And
(14:22):
just as he gets out of his car, a man
pulls up on a bicycle. He's wearing military gear and
he has what prosecutors believe is a newzy and this
dude just starts firing at Paul Massey. This rain of bullets,
(14:44):
eighteen bullets rained down on him. One of them hit
his left shin, another one hit three fingers in his
right hand, just tore one finger all the way off.
He sort of escapes this first barrage, hides behind some
trash men's calls. Imagin He's yelling, I'm shot, I've been shot,
(15:07):
hurry up, and the operator is trying to figure out
where he is. He tells him his address and he's
saying hurry up, hurry up. He shot at me and
then his phone cuts out and what happened right then
was a bullet tore through Paul Massey's fifth rib on
the left side of his body, passed right through his chest,
(15:28):
hit his heart and his lungs and it lodged in
his back. The bicyclists jumps on his bicycle bikes away
through a through a cemetery and a church parish. This
(15:48):
was not something Paul Massey was particularly surprised of. He
he knew that he was, you know, a man who
had been hunted. He had told a documentary crew from
the BBS, see this mant Swten. It's Matt Swaten and
I'm not sending of it. I know the stakes and
immediately word starts to get around. This wasn't just some
(16:12):
dude who got nicked in a gang killing. This was
Mr Big, a guy who was renowned, not just a Manchester,
all over England. And that night people first show up
at the scene. His son, one of his sons comes
to the scene and they end up gathering at a
pub just down the street called the robin Hood Pub.
It starts raining and they basically had more or less
(16:35):
awake for him. Immediately the pub closes and they end
up going out in the rain after midnight in the
parking lot of the pub, just remembering this man that
it was certainly a dangerous man, but was absolutely revered
and feared in this world of Salford. Eventually two men
(16:58):
emerge as possible suspects, of them order of Massey and
also one of his associates, John Kinsella. So tell us
a little bit about who the suspects were and how
the investigation unfolds. For three years, there's nothing. You get
the sense that everyone on the streets knows what happened.
But for three years this was an unsolved murder. But
(17:18):
then John Kinsella, one of Paul Massey's lieutenants, an enforcerer,
guy who was really talented martial artist, also happened to
be the man who was accused of throwing acid in
someone's face at Paul Massey's funeral. Really classy guy. And
guess what happens. A man on a bicycle he pulls up,
(17:38):
he fire shots at John Kinsella, kills John Concella point blank.
She she shoots him in the back, and then it
doesn't take a genius to say, hey, maybe these two
things are related. Maybe this gang war between the A
team and the Anti A team, this gang war that
Paul Massey had mediated, this gang war that Paul Massey
had taken one side on the This led to Paul
(18:00):
Massey's murder, and this also leads to John Concella's murder.
But this time the assassin who we'd all think would
probably be the same assassin from three years ago, this
time he didn't cover his tracks as well. There was
CCTV security footage they captured a man on a bicycle
with his face covered, peddling towards John Concella's home at
(18:24):
five am. Enough the suspicion that authorities thought they could
arrest this man, Mark Fellows gets arrested, and he did
make a key mistake that police investigators quickly find out.
And this is a really interesting part of your story, read,
(18:45):
because I think in TV and in the movies, they're
all these dramatic, sensational ways that investigators cracked the case,
but that actually happened here. Mark Fellows. He didn't really
look like a gangster. He looked either like an accountant
or like a competitive jogger, which guess what he was.
He was a talented runner, and when he would run,
(19:08):
he would track his runs with a garment four runner
ten GPS watch. And if you are would be assassin, uh,
you don't bring your cell phone with you. You don't
want to be tracked. You want to really be sure
that there are no ways that police can figure out
where you were. You certainly don't want to wear a
(19:28):
garment four runner ten GPS watch. Now, Mark Fellows did
not wear this watch when he assassinated Paul Massey. He
did not wear it when he assassinated John Kinsella. But
when police searched his home had probably cause of searches home,
they find this watch a few weeks before Paul Massey
had been killed, back in two thousand fifteen, they find
(19:52):
what they believe was a reconnaissance mission that Mark Fellows
had gone on. Traces him going from his house and
it goes to massey house, It goes to the cemetery
at the parish church of Saint Anna across the street.
It gets turned off for about eight minutes and then
it gets turned back on and goes back. Why would
this man travel fifteen miles on a bike to go
(20:16):
right across the street from Paul Massey's house, just weeks
before Paul Massey would be murdered. That was really one
of those caught red handed type moments. Yeah, So what
happens then with Fellows because Massey and can sella the
(20:36):
trial for their murders is sort of combined and the
prosecution lays out its case. What ends up happening with
the verdict. Their murders are combined, and also the defendants
are combined. Remember earlier I told you when Paul Massey
was driving to the liquor store that the day that
he got murdered, there was someone seventeen seconds behind him
in a car. There was a spotter in this His
(20:58):
name was Steven Boyle. And Steven Boyle and Mark Fellows
were both arrested in connection with these two murders. And
Steven Boyle what he said to investigators right when he
got arrested, he did the most unsoulfard thing possible. He
opened his mouth. What he said to police he said,
I haven't murdered anybody, but I probably know more things
(21:21):
about it than I should. And when he goes on trial,
Mark Fellows doesn't cop to anything, but Stephen boyle does
he breaks the code. He says on the stand that
he thought this was just a drug deal and he
basically threw his fellow gang member under the bus. After
both of these men were found guilty of homicide, Mark
(21:44):
Fellows was given a double life sentence, which is incredibly
rare in England. No chance of parole. The judge said
to him after he gave him the sentence. He said,
I have never had to deal with a contract killer
of your kind before, and Mark Fellows kind of mixed
the hair on your neck. Stand up a little bit.
(22:06):
When the sentences were being read, he smirked, and then
guards were leading him out of the courtroom and he
supposedly turned to boil the guy who broke the spotter,
his old friend, the guy who broke the code and
threw him under the bus. He made a throat slashing
gesture him and he said to him, it's your fucking fault,
(22:26):
you fucking grass. If it weren't for two things, if
it weren't for this Darman watch, and if it weren't
for this guy who who broke the code, who he
spoke to police, who testified in court. I believe and
I know the prosecutor believes that there would not have
been enough evidence to put him in jail. What's so
(22:56):
interesting about this story. Paul Massey and Mark fell those
they were, they were enemies, they were on opposite sides
of this blood feud between these two games. But in
this weird way, because Mark Fellows, even though he killed
Paul Massey, he followed the code. He was a true
(23:16):
Salford lad as they would call them. In a weird way.
I feel like Paul Massey would respect that. Kelly Massey
is is his daughter would vehemently disagree with it. Thinks
that he's a rat and a coward and it's an
awful human being. I know Louise his his partner, would
disagree as well. But in that world, the worst thing
(23:39):
you can do. Paul Massey said at one point in
this BBC documentary, you know, if he ever got caught
by the cops and he said, I do my jail,
but the last thing that he would do is grass
on someone. He said, I'd rather hang myself first. I
think the overlap here is important because you you mentioned
Massey's funeral. All these people turn out, lot of people
(24:00):
wearing Manchester United gear. Paul Massey is buried in Manchester
United gear. And so there's this tribalism for football and
soccer hooliganism, but there's also a tribalism to the criminal underworld, right,
And isn't that the intersection really of the story, that
it's this tribalism that got Massey into the life and
(24:22):
that same tribalism that ended up being his undoing. And
we'll talk about tribalism. If you're a Tottenham Hotsper fan,
if you're a Manchester United fan, you know you wear
the jersey, you're excited, you're a big fan. Tribalism with
hooligan firms goes so much deeper, and I think that's
very much what happened in the streets of Salford with
(24:43):
these gang wars that went on for decades. I think
you're dead on right when you talk about the tribalism.
People don't just want to be make money. They want
to be identified with something, as part of something, and
same with hooligan's, same with gangs. I think it's all
just how we as humans just want to be part
of something bigger, even if it's something that will lead
(25:05):
to our demise. It's such a sensational, over the top
story that it's almost too much to be believed, but
it actually did happen. A remarkable bit of reporting and
writing by you. You can read his story. I encourage
everybody to do so on SI dot com. We will
(25:26):
link to it in our show notes read four Grave,
Thank you you're the man. Appreciate you having me, Thanks
for listening, and a reminder to please rate and review
the show that helps people find us. Sports Illustrator Weekly
is a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
(25:49):
favorite shows. And for more of Sports Illustrated It's best
stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of
Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jordan Rizzieri, Jessica You're Mooski,
and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our
senior producers are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our
executive producers are Scott Brodie and me John Gonzalez. Our
(26:12):
theme song is by Nolan Schneider. And if you've stuck
around this long, we leave you with this Yeah, one
of the one of the more thrilling moments like we
we we get a little bit like jaded when you're
interviewing athletes, like Okay, I'm going, you know, ask a
few questions Lebron James, But interviewing rock stars a whole
different beast. I got to interview Peter Hook from New
(26:35):
Order for this story. Was just the coolest dude on Earth.
And he was telling me I live in Minneapolis, and
he was telling me about playing at the local club
that I sometimes go to, and I'm like, oh man,
so I'm supposed to the next time Peter Hook and
his new band is Peter Hook in the Light, next
time they come to Minneapolis, I'm supposed to grab a
beer with him. Fingers crossed on that
Before we get started, please rate and review our show.
It helps people find us. On this episode of Sports
Illustrated Weekly. In the shadow of one of the best
soccer teams in the world, one super fan of Manchester
United doubled as a legendary area crime boss until he
was assassinated. The wild true story of who killed Manchester
(00:24):
United hooligan and criminal Paul Massey and why he was
killed is told here by SI contributor Read four Grave.
I'm your host John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and I
Heart Radio this Sports Illustrated Weekly. A quick heads up
(00:48):
that this story features foul language, gun, violence and murder.
The year was Manchester United had a new manager. Here
he is on the first day of his new gig,
telling the BBC about the awkwardness of meeting the players
after former manager Ron Atkinson was Austin, don't they all right?
Once week got relationship, I'm sure we'll do Vediville Alex
(01:12):
Ferguson didn't know it, but very well was a vast understatement.
He was about to usher in a new era for
the team, an era that would redefine English soccer, not
just United, all the champions up the Premier League. Of
course you do. No one can cross a ball or
(01:33):
bend it like that. And there's a goal from coasts
But why wonderful save by Hichall got hit by Ryan Giggs.
Oh what's it good? Oh my goodness the Christiano. Yeah.
(02:00):
In the mid eighties, Manchester United was on the precipice
of greatness, but just across the river from the Grand Stadium,
Old Trafford, a gritty, rough and tumble area of Manchester
called Salford was giving rise to an almost mythical criminal.
His name was Paul Massey. His story is one of
hubris and deceit in the shadow of one of the
greatest soccer teams ever. The legend of Paul Massey can
(02:23):
be told through these three things soccer hooligan firms, the
drug trade, and the rave music scene. So you can't
tell the story of Paul Massey without telling the story
of Manchester and specifically the story of Salford. That's writer
Read four Grave, who reported this story for an SI
(02:43):
Daily cover Manchester. He was really the first industrial town.
The Industrial Revolution in the seventeen hundred comes about and
it becomes this textile capital and it gets pretty rough
and tumble, right away. What Chicago is to New York
is what Manchester is to London. Very much the second city,
very much, the more hard scrabble city, very much like
(03:05):
a city with a chip on its shoulder. And within
Manchester he is this community of Salford. And what made
Salford so gritty, so tough, a place where the gangster
was respected, it was because it was a docktown. Salford
was the terminus of the Manchestership Canal, the third biggest
port in in all of England, which is crazy because
(03:28):
it's inland. It's thirty five miles inland. But they built
this canal in the late eighteen hundreds to import and
export all these goods that are being manufactured in Manchester.
Paul Massey is a child of this area. He's born
in the early nineteen sixties and Salford was still rolling
as a doc city. But by the nineteen eighties, when
(03:51):
Paul Massey is supposed to be entering his prime, the
docks closed. Unemployment at one time among young men in
Salford was close to and you know anywhere in the world,
when you get unemployment like that, people turn to bad things.
That's what Paul Massey did. This is a guy who,
(04:11):
look he had a rough upbringing. He was kind of
a guy who was always getting in trouble, always out
on the streets. So he gets sent off to reform
school and ends up just really having a life of
sort of low level crime. But then by his twenties
this soccer hooligan stuff that he got involved with with
Manchester United, most famous soccer team probably in the world,
(04:33):
and he was a member of the Red Army, one
of their hooligan firms. Alright, so hooligan firms also called ultras.
They're more than just a group of fans, right, It's
like a step below organized crime, but they're still pretty
organized guys who just get out, get drunk, getting fights.
(04:54):
Paul Massey uses those connections to really find a footing
in the gang world. You know, there were small time stuff,
credit card scams, gasoline scams or steal gasoline and sell it.
He's doing jail time for this sort of stuff and
slowly that ends up building into something much bigger. And
this is sort of how Paul Massey's greatness comes together.
(05:17):
He's sort of at the nexus of soccer hooligan firms,
of the drug trade, and most interestingly, and to me,
you know, as an outsider of this, most surprisingly the
rave music scene. Paul Massey is the nexus of these
in the late eighties and early nineties, and that that's
(05:38):
where he really makes his name, pulling him millions of
dollars a year. Whose security firm at one point had
a twenty employees. That is when in the nine when
these hooligan firms come together with drug importation and rave music,
that's where Paul Massey goes from a tough guy to
Mr Big. Manchester became the sort of nexus not just
(06:04):
for England but also for Europe to be this destination
for drug culture and ecstasy. And at one point Manchester
becomes known as mad Chester because it's this drug fueled
club scene and one of the clubs was the Hacienda.
Explained to everybody how Paul Massey factored in there. He
(06:24):
had been pretty active hooligan member in the late seventies
early eighties. This is when hooliganism in England was you know,
it was enough of a big deal that Margaret Thatcher
convened a quote unquote war Cabinet to address hooliganism. This
is a big deal. Manchester United got banned from matches
(06:45):
on the European mainland for a short period because it's
fans were so crazy. So Paul Massey comes from that world.
And then in the mid eighties the band New Order,
who was the band that came out of Joy Division.
They were right at the forefront of rap music. They
owned this club called the Hacienda, and this is when
Manchester was at its roughest spot in the mid nineteen eighties.
(07:09):
But then New Order goes to a Bitha, the island
off of Spain, to record an album and that's when
they discover that's the very beginnings of rave music, and
New Order brings that back to England, brings that back
to the Hacienda, and the Hacienda transforms into the hottest
club maybe in all of Europe. At this point it's
(07:33):
the mid to late eighties when the Hacienda really starts
picking up. Manchester is also a university town. There's a
hundred thousand university students there and it becomes the place
to be for young, cool, hot people in Manchester and
for Manchester, this city with a chip on its shoulder,
to suddenly become cool, not just cool for the North
(07:56):
of England, but cool for all of England, for all
of Europe. That's something that the city very much took
pride in and I think we all probably by this
point no what goes with rave music ecstasy. So in
this weird way, the business model for this club doesn't
(08:17):
work that well for the people own it, not for
Peter Hook, not for the guys from newer because people
are taking pills that they buy at the front door,
they're drinking water, they're not drinking alcohol, and they're just
raving all night long. But guests who figured out how
to leverage selling the pills to all these ravers, it
was Paul Massey. So he figures out if he controls
(08:41):
the doors to these clubs, he can control the entire
drug trade for all of Manchester and for all of
this club scene. Paul Massey's greatest skill was that he
could turn out a crowd that goes back to his
hooligan days. He he just had this natural charisma to him.
He wasn't the big sky who wasn't the best looking guy,
(09:02):
but he was someone who never backed down from a
fight and someone who just had a respect with so
many people. So if Paul Massey said we're gonna go
to this club on a Saturday night. We're gonna get
a hundred people. When you get two hundred people, these
ex hooligans, and we're gonna go to the security staff
in the front and we're gonna basically occupy this club
until the owners were lent and say okay, you're our
new security staff. And then Paul Massey guts to sell
(09:24):
all these ecstasy tabs at a huge markup and make
millions upon millions of dollars doing this over the years.
So Paul Massey figures us all out. He creates this
criminal enterprise with these other hooligans that he was associated with.
He's quite literally living the high life. And as we
all know, these things generally tend to run their course.
(09:48):
Eventually it does for Paul Massey rolls around and he
gets arrested. What happens to him? And why is he
sentenced to fourteen years in prison? You know, this is
a story of I think great ubris. Paul Massey was
on top of the world in Salford and in Manchester.
Paul Massey, according to authorities, stabbed a guy. Stabbed a
(10:10):
guy in the groin. The guy almost died he's put
on trial and he sentenced to fourteen years for attempted murder.
This is when Paul was at the top of his world.
But it's not like this is a guy who is
afraid of prison. If anything, that's a recruiting ground for him.
If you get the sense of like the Godfather aspect
(10:30):
of Paul Massey, he had so many friends who were
in prison, and once he got out, he'd send Christmas
cards to them and he'd include fifty pounds that they
could spend at the prison commissary. Paul Massey when he's
in prison, he's still connected and he assumes when he
comes back out that he's gonna kind of pick right
up where he went off. He gets out of prison
(10:57):
and he says he's a change man, but really it's
more are about even though he had these connections while
he was inside, and he meets new people in the
criminal underworld when he gets out, Manchester has sort of
changed a little bit. There are new gangs. There's a
new gang called the A Team and another new gang
called the Anti A Team, which is not very creative
but still no joke. So Massey doesn't quite have the
(11:19):
same power and influence he did when he went inside.
Right Paul Massic gets out of prison, he proclaims to
be a new man. I think if you talk to
law enforcement authorities out there, they would look at that
claim very skeptically. But he did end up running for
mayor of Salford. Question Salford because it was bought and
betted that would be And I watch when I watch
(11:42):
side as well, and maybe a little hard to understand
what he's saying. They're somewhat ironically it's I got a
passion for Salford because I was born and bred here.
I want to help the elderly, I want to help
the youth, and I want to try to reduce crime
and also try to reduce the problem of drugs and
Salford as well. He restarts his security firm, p m
(12:07):
S Security, and he says, you know, this time we're
above board. However, he's running for mayor and the police
arrest him for all sorts of fraud allegations for PMS Security,
which sort of tanks his candidacy. I think he finished
like seven out of twelve. But yeah, in a way,
this world had kind of moved on. However, Paul Massey
(12:29):
still commanded respect in this world. He ends up becoming
sort of like the advisor to this this gang called
the A Team, specifically a young man named Stephen Britton.
He's brought in to broker peace between gangs when they
are gang wars. This is not a place in Salford,
(12:50):
especially among these people who grew up in this gang
world where they snitch. They refer to it as grasses.
We say, you know, snitches go and did is right,
But they very much lived by the code. And this
is something that's really important to understand about Paul Massey
and his world. Police aren't the ones who are called
in to sort of mediate these gang wars. It was
(13:13):
Paul Massey. So that also means he can find himself
suck in some pretty hairy situations. Yeah, and one of
the harriest read it goes down on the night of
July in the shadow of Old Trafford Stadium. Something really
dark happens. Yeah, something incredibly dark. He's driving home, he
(13:37):
had just gotten back from a vacation with his partner
of almost thirty years, louise Lydiat. He ends up going
to a bookie and then before he gets home, about
a half mile from his house, there's a place called
Bargain Booze, and he got a bottle of Bacardi, two
leaders of coke, and he drives home just have a
quiet night with his wife. And as he's getting home,
(14:01):
about seventeen seconds behind him, there's a stranger who's following him.
He gets home and pulls up his BMW five series
to the gate. Outside is really nice red brick home
that you know his decades as this sort of gang
leader and used all his his money to purchase And
(14:22):
just as he gets out of his car, a man
pulls up on a bicycle. He's wearing military gear and
he has what prosecutors believe is a newzy and this
dude just starts firing at Paul Massey. This rain of bullets,
(14:44):
eighteen bullets rained down on him. One of them hit
his left shin, another one hit three fingers in his
right hand, just tore one finger all the way off.
He sort of escapes this first barrage, hides behind some
trash men's calls. Imagin He's yelling, I'm shot, I've been shot,
(15:07):
hurry up, and the operator is trying to figure out
where he is. He tells him his address and he's
saying hurry up, hurry up. He shot at me and
then his phone cuts out and what happened right then
was a bullet tore through Paul Massey's fifth rib on
the left side of his body, passed right through his chest,
(15:28):
hit his heart and his lungs and it lodged in
his back. The bicyclists jumps on his bicycle bikes away
through a through a cemetery and a church parish. This
(15:48):
was not something Paul Massey was particularly surprised of. He
he knew that he was, you know, a man who
had been hunted. He had told a documentary crew from
the BBS, see this mant Swten. It's Matt Swaten and
I'm not sending of it. I know the stakes and
immediately word starts to get around. This wasn't just some
(16:12):
dude who got nicked in a gang killing. This was
Mr Big, a guy who was renowned, not just a Manchester,
all over England. And that night people first show up
at the scene. His son, one of his sons comes
to the scene and they end up gathering at a
pub just down the street called the robin Hood Pub.
It starts raining and they basically had more or less
(16:35):
awake for him. Immediately the pub closes and they end
up going out in the rain after midnight in the
parking lot of the pub, just remembering this man that
it was certainly a dangerous man, but was absolutely revered
and feared in this world of Salford. Eventually two men
(16:58):
emerge as possible suspects, of them order of Massey and
also one of his associates, John Kinsella. So tell us
a little bit about who the suspects were and how
the investigation unfolds. For three years, there's nothing. You get
the sense that everyone on the streets knows what happened.
But for three years this was an unsolved murder. But
(17:18):
then John Kinsella, one of Paul Massey's lieutenants, an enforcerer,
guy who was really talented martial artist, also happened to
be the man who was accused of throwing acid in
someone's face at Paul Massey's funeral. Really classy guy. And
guess what happens. A man on a bicycle he pulls up,
(17:38):
he fire shots at John Kinsella, kills John Concella point blank.
She she shoots him in the back, and then it
doesn't take a genius to say, hey, maybe these two
things are related. Maybe this gang war between the A
team and the Anti A team, this gang war that
Paul Massey had mediated, this gang war that Paul Massey
had taken one side on the This led to Paul
(18:00):
Massey's murder, and this also leads to John Concella's murder.
But this time the assassin who we'd all think would
probably be the same assassin from three years ago, this
time he didn't cover his tracks as well. There was
CCTV security footage they captured a man on a bicycle
with his face covered, peddling towards John Concella's home at
(18:24):
five am. Enough the suspicion that authorities thought they could
arrest this man, Mark Fellows gets arrested, and he did
make a key mistake that police investigators quickly find out.
And this is a really interesting part of your story, read,
(18:45):
because I think in TV and in the movies, they're
all these dramatic, sensational ways that investigators cracked the case,
but that actually happened here. Mark Fellows. He didn't really
look like a gangster. He looked either like an accountant
or like a competitive jogger, which guess what he was.
He was a talented runner, and when he would run,
(19:08):
he would track his runs with a garment four runner
ten GPS watch. And if you are would be assassin, uh,
you don't bring your cell phone with you. You don't
want to be tracked. You want to really be sure
that there are no ways that police can figure out
where you were. You certainly don't want to wear a
(19:28):
garment four runner ten GPS watch. Now, Mark Fellows did
not wear this watch when he assassinated Paul Massey. He
did not wear it when he assassinated John Kinsella. But
when police searched his home had probably cause of searches home,
they find this watch a few weeks before Paul Massey
had been killed, back in two thousand fifteen, they find
(19:52):
what they believe was a reconnaissance mission that Mark Fellows
had gone on. Traces him going from his house and
it goes to massey house, It goes to the cemetery
at the parish church of Saint Anna across the street.
It gets turned off for about eight minutes and then
it gets turned back on and goes back. Why would
this man travel fifteen miles on a bike to go
(20:16):
right across the street from Paul Massey's house, just weeks
before Paul Massey would be murdered. That was really one
of those caught red handed type moments. Yeah, So what
happens then with Fellows because Massey and can sella the
(20:36):
trial for their murders is sort of combined and the
prosecution lays out its case. What ends up happening with
the verdict. Their murders are combined, and also the defendants
are combined. Remember earlier I told you when Paul Massey
was driving to the liquor store that the day that
he got murdered, there was someone seventeen seconds behind him
in a car. There was a spotter in this His
(20:58):
name was Steven Boyle. And Steven Boyle and Mark Fellows
were both arrested in connection with these two murders. And
Steven Boyle what he said to investigators right when he
got arrested, he did the most unsoulfard thing possible. He
opened his mouth. What he said to police he said,
I haven't murdered anybody, but I probably know more things
(21:21):
about it than I should. And when he goes on trial,
Mark Fellows doesn't cop to anything, but Stephen boyle does
he breaks the code. He says on the stand that
he thought this was just a drug deal and he
basically threw his fellow gang member under the bus. After
both of these men were found guilty of homicide, Mark
(21:44):
Fellows was given a double life sentence, which is incredibly
rare in England. No chance of parole. The judge said
to him after he gave him the sentence. He said,
I have never had to deal with a contract killer
of your kind before, and Mark Fellows kind of mixed
the hair on your neck. Stand up a little bit.
(22:06):
When the sentences were being read, he smirked, and then
guards were leading him out of the courtroom and he
supposedly turned to boil the guy who broke the spotter,
his old friend, the guy who broke the code and
threw him under the bus. He made a throat slashing
gesture him and he said to him, it's your fucking fault,
(22:26):
you fucking grass. If it weren't for two things, if
it weren't for this Darman watch, and if it weren't
for this guy who who broke the code, who he
spoke to police, who testified in court. I believe and
I know the prosecutor believes that there would not have
been enough evidence to put him in jail. What's so
(22:56):
interesting about this story. Paul Massey and Mark fell those
they were, they were enemies, they were on opposite sides
of this blood feud between these two games. But in
this weird way, because Mark Fellows, even though he killed
Paul Massey, he followed the code. He was a true
(23:16):
Salford lad as they would call them. In a weird way.
I feel like Paul Massey would respect that. Kelly Massey
is is his daughter would vehemently disagree with it. Thinks
that he's a rat and a coward and it's an
awful human being. I know Louise his his partner, would
disagree as well. But in that world, the worst thing
(23:39):
you can do. Paul Massey said at one point in
this BBC documentary, you know, if he ever got caught
by the cops and he said, I do my jail,
but the last thing that he would do is grass
on someone. He said, I'd rather hang myself first. I
think the overlap here is important because you you mentioned
Massey's funeral. All these people turn out, lot of people
(24:00):
wearing Manchester United gear. Paul Massey is buried in Manchester
United gear. And so there's this tribalism for football and
soccer hooliganism, but there's also a tribalism to the criminal underworld, right,
And isn't that the intersection really of the story, that
it's this tribalism that got Massey into the life and
(24:22):
that same tribalism that ended up being his undoing. And
we'll talk about tribalism. If you're a Tottenham Hotsper fan,
if you're a Manchester United fan, you know you wear
the jersey, you're excited, you're a big fan. Tribalism with
hooligan firms goes so much deeper, and I think that's
very much what happened in the streets of Salford with
(24:43):
these gang wars that went on for decades. I think
you're dead on right when you talk about the tribalism.
People don't just want to be make money. They want
to be identified with something, as part of something, and
same with hooligan's, same with gangs. I think it's all
just how we as humans just want to be part
of something bigger, even if it's something that will lead
(25:05):
to our demise. It's such a sensational, over the top
story that it's almost too much to be believed, but
it actually did happen. A remarkable bit of reporting and
writing by you. You can read his story. I encourage
everybody to do so on SI dot com. We will
(25:26):
link to it in our show notes read four Grave,
Thank you you're the man. Appreciate you having me, Thanks
for listening, and a reminder to please rate and review
the show that helps people find us. Sports Illustrator Weekly
is a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
(25:49):
favorite shows. And for more of Sports Illustrated It's best
stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of
Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jordan Rizzieri, Jessica You're Mooski,
and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our
senior producers are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our
executive producers are Scott Brodie and me John Gonzalez. Our
(26:12):
theme song is by Nolan Schneider. And if you've stuck
around this long, we leave you with this Yeah, one
of the one of the more thrilling moments like we
we we get a little bit like jaded when you're
interviewing athletes, like Okay, I'm going, you know, ask a
few questions Lebron James, But interviewing rock stars a whole
different beast. I got to interview Peter Hook from New
(26:35):
Order for this story. Was just the coolest dude on Earth.
And he was telling me I live in Minneapolis, and
he was telling me about playing at the local club
that I sometimes go to, and I'm like, oh man,
so I'm supposed to the next time Peter Hook and
his new band is Peter Hook in the Light, next
time they come to Minneapolis, I'm supposed to grab a
beer with him. Fingers crossed on that
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