PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes didn't stand a chance as they responded to what they thought was a routine report of a burglary. The pair stepped out of their police van and walked up to the front door of a three-bed maisonette, into a slaughter that was so gratuitous the shock still reverberates today.
Inside was one-eyed fugitive Dale Cregan - wanted for murdering two gangland rivals. Before the officers had even knocked on, the merciless killer burst through the door, shouted 'police' and unleashed a hail of bullets on the two unarmed officers, probationers who had only just joined GMP. He tossed a hand grenade on their dying bodies and then calmly handed himself in at the nearest police station.
Ten years on, M.E.N. crime reporter John Scheerhout, who wrote a book about the awful murders perpetrated by Cregan, revisits one of the most shocking crimes Greater Manchester has ever seen, a crime that has left deep scars - not only among families and friends of the two fallen officers, but in policing.
To say he simply shot dead two officers doesn’t give the merest hint of the extreme violence used by Dale Cregan when he launched his sickening assault on the morning of September 18, 2012. Any one of the 32 shots he fired from his Glock - with its extended magazine - could have killed either officer. Parts of the attack were so gratuitous as to defy belief. It shocked the nation.
As he opened the front door to the maisonette in Abbey Gardens, Mottram in Longdendale, to confront the approaching officers, he blasted them both in the chest. The only reason they didn’t perish there and then was because they were wearing body armour.
Both made a run for it. PC Bone tried to dart to the side across the front garden while PC Hughes, feisty but only a touch over 5ft 3in tall, turned back up the path. They didn’t get far. More shots were fired at them. A shot to PC Hughes’ back severed her spinal cord and she collapsed paralysed onto the ground. She was shot three more times either as she fell, or while laying face down on the path.
Cregan then turned to PC Bone, who he had trapped in front of the lounge window through which he had seen the officers arriving. He fired another 24 shots at her. Some missed. The brave officer fought back. Somehow, she managed to draw her Taser stun gun, which was no match for Cregan’s Glock. She pulled the trigger but hit the pavement rather than Cregan. In all she suffered eight gunshot wounds. Most of the bullets Cregan had fired at her were stopped by her body armour or hit the wall of the house. But one of those bullets penetrated a gap in the side of the body armour under her arm and caused fatal injuries to her heart.
PC Bone had defied every natural instinct to run away. Even though by now she had been blasted repeatedly in her body armour, she stayed and tried to help her fallen fellow officer. The fatal injury to her side suggested she had adopted the classic side-on stance she had been taught in training, where the palm of one hand is raised and the target is ordered to stop. Detectives who investigated the murder would later marvel at the bravery shown by both officers, but particularly PC Bone.
Despite the fact both police officers were dying in front of him, Cregan’s assault had not yet run its course. He turned again to PC Hughes who was by now face-down, motionless and bleeding heavily on the pavement. Cregan lowered the gun to the back of her head and fired three more shots. In total she was shot eight times.
Still the carnage wasn’t over. Just before he fled, Cregan threw a hand-grenade and ran. It detonated in the garden where the officers lay dying. It landed closest to PC Hughes, further harming her already terribly injured body.
The cul-de-sac echoed to the sound of gunfire and an exploding grenade, terrifying everyone who lived there. Neighbours who saw Cregan would describe how he seemed oblivious to everything else around him. He didn’t care that he might be seen. He was interested only in the kill.
Cregan dropped his Glock near the fallen officers, having emptied the magazine. He ran back into the house where he had spent the night throwing himself a mini party for what he knew would be his last taste of freedom. He had trimmed his beard and put in his black onyx false eye in readiness for the police mugshot he knew would be published. At the time he shot PC Hughes and PC Bone he was already a double killer, wanted for the murders of a father and son. He had held two terrified residents hostage at the house before making his bogus 999 call to lure the officers to him. The hostages would count their blessings they weren't also murdered.
Cregan grabbed car keys and fled in a BMW parked outside which belonged to one of his hostages, driving at speeds up to 100mph along the M67 to Hyde police station, three miles away, where he handed himself in.
A 42-day manhunt was over but it had come at a terrible cost. Call handlers repeatedly tried to raise the two fallen officers over their radios, which lay unanswered in Abbey Gardens, crackling with increasingly desperate messages to respond. But they couldn't respond.
“Golf Mike 41. Please respond. Golf Mike 41. Please respond.”
Back-up officers were scrambled and walked into a terrible scene. They found a neighbour trying desperately to stem the bleeding from a wound suffered by PC Hughes with a towel. One of the arriving officers, a female officer, took over the vain attempts to stop the bleeding from her stomach, a gaping exit wound caused by the bullet which had gone through her back.
The second officer, a male PC, tended to PC Bone and removed her stab vest. But it was useless. It was clear she was dead. Paramedics arrived and took over the care of PC Hughes both at the scene and in the ambulance on the way to hospital. It was a minor miracle she appeared to have been able to cling onto life for so long despite suffering such terrible injuries. Death was formally pronounced at the hospital.
As he sped to the station - and as he had done after each of his four murders - Dale Cregan called his girlfriend. There was a swagger in his step as he walked into Hyde police station. He appeared calm and casual when he walked into the front desk, telling the counter clerk: “I’m wanted by the police and I’ve just done two coppers.”
Cregan, still talking to his girlfriend on the mobile held between his shoulder and ear, stretched out his arms and invited to be handcuffed.
Asked whether he was armed, Cregan made a startling admission in his broad Manchester accent: “I dropped the gun at the scene and I’ve murdered two police officers. You were hounding my family so I took it out on yous.”
When he was arrested, Cregan admitted he had let a grenade off and expressed regret for the first and last time over his murder spree over the previous five months. He had not counted on killing two women. “Sorry about those two that have been killed. I wish it was men,” he said.
Later that day a grim-faced Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy confirmed the deaths of two of his officers, and a decade of grieving would begin. It was one of his force’s ‘darkest days’, he said.
It changed how policing was done in Britain and left deep psychological scars. Some officers, especially those who saw the carnage for themselves, would never return to work. One took his own life. For others who still remain, police officers of all ranks, it defines their lives, the policing decisions they make.
It was the end of a summer of bloodshed.
Months earlier, on May 25, 2012, Cregan had coolly walked into the Cotton Tree pub in Droylsden and shot dead amateur boxer and fellow criminal Mark Short, 23. Cregan had wanted to kill his great rival David Short, 46, Mark's father, but his main target was in the toilet at the time.
When David Short returned from the loo, he sobbed as he cradled his dying son in his arms. He no doubt vowed revenge there and then.
Cregan celebrated the assassination with friends by flying business class to Thailand for a holiday at the luxury Peace Resort on the paradise island of Koh Samui. When he stepped off the return flight into Manchester, detectives were waiting and arrested him on suspicion of murder. He said nothing during interview and was released on bail.
Cregan lay low for a while and decided he had to murder his great rival David Short, the much-feared and heavily-convicted head of the Short family. Although David Short's partner denied it, evidence was heard in his subsequent trial that Short had threatened to take his revenge for his son's killing by murdering and raping people close to Cregan.
After watching Usain Bolt win Olympic gold in the 200m, Cregan made final preparations for the murder of David Short. On the morning of August 10, Cregan and his friend Anthony Wilkinson, who was said to have owed David Short £20,000 drugs money, gunned down their target at his home in Folkestone Road East in Clayton. Cregan threw a grenade onto the body for good measure.
Wilkinson and Cregan had staked out Droylsden Cemetery where David Short would visit his son's graveside three times each day but changed their plans when he didn't turn up.
Bare-chested David Short was unloading new chrome furniture from the boot of his car when he was attacked outside his home. Cregan and Wilkinson chased him through the house, shooting at him. Desperately trying to get away, he collapsed behind a gate in an alleyway where more shots were fired down onto him. Cregan finished the job by throwing the grenade on his prone victim.
Later that day Cregan was named for the first time as wanted in connection with the murder of both Shorts - and his startling police mugshot was released to the media. The hunt was on for the one-eyed fugitive. A £50,000 reward was available for information leading to his capture. It tempted nobody. Unconfirmed reports suggested Cregan had been able to go boozing in Tameside pubs, despite being the nation's most wanted man.
Like so many things in Cregan's life to that point, he did everything on his own terms. He wasn't captured. After shooting dead the two PCs, he didn't hang about waiting for the armed police to turn up. He went to the nearest police station and handed himself in.
Cregan was handed a whole life term following his 2013 trial at Preston Crown Court. He had changed his pleas to guilty towards the end of his trial. He was acquitted of the one charge that remained, of attempted murder. He had tossed a grenade into a garden moments after he had slaughtered David Short but the jury concluded he had not meant to harm the occupant. His barrister had successfully argued that if his client had wanted to kill someone his record showed that he would have succeeded.
Wilkinson was also jailed for life with a minimum of 35 years behind bars. Other associates were also caged for helping Cregan.
Cregan's gym buddy Luke Livesey, then 28, and career criminal Damian Gorman, 38, known as 'Scarface', were found guilty of playing their part in the murder of Mark Short and attempting to murder three others in the pub. They had been in the car which ferried Cregan to the pub and took part in the clean-up operation afterwards. They were both jailed for life and told they must serve a minimum of 33 years.
Jermaine Ward, then 24, a drug dealer known as 'Jam', was found guilty of playing a part in the murder of David Short in Clayton. He had been Cregan's getaway driver - Cregan had jumped into the rear of the getaway car with David Short's blood all over his body and celebrated with a fist-bump with Wilkinson. Ward was jailed for life to serve a minimum of 33 years. Mohammed Imran Ali, then 32, from Chadderton, was found guilty of assisting an offender, and was jailed for seven years. Known as 'Irish Immie', he had driven Cregan, Wilkinson and Ward to their hideout in Leeds.
Ali has long since served his sentence but has sparked outrage for his efforts to efforts to set up a 'vigilante' group in Chadderton, purportedly to tackle burglary and car crime.
Leon Atkinson, a pal of Cregan from Ashton under Lyne, was found not guilty of murdering Mark Short. The Crown had alleged Atkinson had recruited Dale Cregan to commit the murder after his mother had been slapped 12 days earlier by a member of the Short family.
He remained on the police radar and, earlier this year, Atkinson, 44, was jailed for playing a leading role in an international cocaine gang and for laundering £10m in dirty money. When cops arrested him, they found letters Cregan had written to 'Aki' from prison in his bedside drawer.
It was truly shocking summer of violence in Greater Manchester. Before he had even killed the two police officers, Cregan had become a demonic figure, with his one good eye staring out from his police mugshot, feared not only by the public but by police officers too.
For years after the murders of the two PCs, inside GMP, there was concern among some officers about the way the manhunt had been conducted. Some officers believe it was the height of folly to wind him up with daily visits to his mother. Cregan himself had said upon his arrest 'you were hounding my family so I took it out on yous'.
These concerns about the manhunt only became public this year at the continuing employment tribunal of former senior detective turned whistleblower, Pete Jackson, who alleged he warned senior officers about the dangers of a 'provocative' tactic of repeatedly visiting Cregan's mother Anita while he was a fugitive.
He claimed he and other officers, and even a forensic psychologist, had warned about the 'dangerous and misguided tactic' of repeated police visits to Cregan's family. GMP is contesting this and a string of other allegations by the whistleblower, who says he was passed over for promotion and sidelined after he made 'protected disclosures' to bosses inside the force.
Aside from the media, one person who has been keeping an eye on the tribunal is Bryn Hughes, the former prison officer father of Nicola Hughes. He had been alerted by GMP that these allegations would be made.
When asked what he thought about the allegations, Bryn told the M.E.N. they were 'hindsight'.
He explained: "I feel personally that there wasn't much that could have been done. We know there was a manhunt. They had to do certain things. It would have been a different story if they hadn't done what they'd done and tried to find this person. It was a targeted ambush.
"For all intents and purposes, it was a routine call... There was six on their shift that day. All six of them could have been killed. It was so ferocious.... They didn't even have time to react. It was that quick. From that point of view it would be difficult to learn any lessons from that."
Asked if lessons could be learned, either for himself or the police, Bryn went on: "I think from the policing perspective, I think personally there wasn't that much that could have been done. We know what was going on. We know there was a manhunt. They had to do certain things. It would be quite a different story if they hadn't done what they've done and tried to find this person.
He added: "'If' is the smallest word with the biggest consequence. I suppose if you sat alone and thought about these things, what if they'd done this, what if we'd have done that and what if this would have happened, you could torture yourself every day.
"When I saw Nicola the night before... she leaned into the car to give me a kiss to say goodnight and I stalled the car and it jumped forward. She said 'you nearly run over my toes then dad'. You beat yourself up. 'Why didn't I run over her toes because she wouldn't have been able to go to work the following day'.
"But you can't do that. What if I'd discouraged her from joining the police three years prior to it? You can't."
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