12 August 1966: Harry Roberts and two other men went on a shooting spree in Shepherd’s Bush, killing three plain clothes officers. The gang were planning an armed robbery and feared that the police were about to discover their weapons stash.
13 August 1966: A preliminary police post-mortem finds that two of the officers had been shot in the head, the other in the back.
14 August 1966: The police discover the gang’s discarded getaway car in Lambeth.
15 August 1966: As the public called out for the return of capital punishment and the arming of the police, one of the gang members, John Edward Witney, from London, is captured and charged.
17 August 1966: Days later, the police raid a Glasgow tenement block and arrest John Duddy, another suspect. The final, and most dangerous of the trio, Harry Maurice Roberts, remains at large. In the meantime, the funerals of the police officers takes places in Shepherd’s Bush.
25 August 1966: Despite police raids, a reward for information, and even a TV appeal by his mother, Roberts, an ex-military man, continues to evade one of biggest man hunts in the UK.
14 November 1966: The trial of Roberts’ alleged accomplices starts at the Old Bailey. The court hears evidence from several children who witnessed the killings, but the trial is adjourned as news breaks of Harry Roberts’ capture in a barn in Hertfordshire.
6 December 1966: All thee men stand trial together at the Old Bailey. Though Roberts is quick to admit his guilt, the other two men protest their innocence. The defence for Duddley claims that Roberts was the ‘ringleader’, Whitney the ‘brains’ and their man, the ‘tool’.
12 December 1966: All of this was dismissed by the jury, who took half an hour to deliver a guilty verdict on all three men. Roberts was found to have shot and killed two of the officers. John Duddy, shot the third. The gang received life imprisonment for murder. They were also found guilt of possession of firearms with intent to resist arrest or commit an offence.
