Mascara ran down Coleen Campbell's cheek as she heard her ex-husband's screams. She fought back tears, putting her hands over her ears as she listened to Thomas Campbell's last, terrifying moments.
Dressed all in black, with tied back, jet black hair, Coleen played the perfect grieving widow. The only thing that shattered this impression was the reinforced glass securing her inside the dock of a crown court.
In fact, beautician Coleen Campbell was not there as a grieving widow, praying justice would be done for her former spouse of 10 years. She was facing a possible life sentence accused of performing a key role in his brutal murder, one of the most shocking gangland killings in Greater Manchester’s recent history.
READ MORE: All the evidence in the Thomas Campbell murder trial
Here, in CCTV footage published for the first time, Coleen, then with dyed blonde hair, can be seen on the phone with the alleged 'mastermind' of the attack, just two hours before Thomas, 38, was ambushed at his front door. From the comfort of her front garden, wearing pink pyjamas, the mum-of-four plotted with John Belfield, a man she had apparently never met or spoken to until a week earlier.
Exactly what was said during that 25 minute call on a warm summer's evening will likely remain a mystery. But the fact that she felt the need to walk away from her home and her children during the call provides an ominous indicator of what the topic of discussion might have been.
Within the space of a few days, she and Belfield had formed an apparent alliance with a common goal - seeking revenge against their former partners.
Coleen began speaking to Belfield after her ‘toxic’ marriage broke down, and after Belfield’s ex dared to move on from him and start a new relationship with Thomas Campbell. While she was on the phone to Belfield, after 9pm on Saturday, July 25 last year, Thomas had turned up at their former marital home in Clayton, to visit their two children.
His daughter sat on his lap in his car, before he headed home to Tameside. It would be the last time she or Coleen would ever see him alive.
Burned, bound and brutalised while being tortured for two hours, his smart, new build three storey home in Mossley became a bloody house of horrors. Blood splatter covered the carpets and the walls, a visual display of the ferocity of the crime after Thomas had been ambushed by three men at his front door.
He was attacked with weapons, punched, kicked, strangled and stamped on. In a final indignity, Thomas had boiling water poured over his buttocks.
He was dragged around his home as his attackers ransacked the £300,000 townhouse, intent on taking as much money, valuables or drugs as they could get their hands on. Thomas was found dead the next morning, naked apart from a pair of socks, his ankles tied together with duct tape.
Whether Coleen knew what was awaiting her husband as he drove away from their former home is unclear. Even prosecutors accepted that it was unlikely she wanted Thomas dead.
But as she sat in the dock fighting back tears, the sheer horror of his last moments, captured on a neighbour's video doorbell, became very real. Her betrayal, after providing key information about her ex-husband’s movements and his vehicle, had terrifying consequences for a man she had once promised to love and to cherish.
With their father dead, and their mother accused of his murder, perhaps the most tragic victims of this appalling crime are the couple's two children. Coleen will have years to consider exactly how she became embroiled in a conspiracy which ended with an appalling, cold blooded killing. A killing driven by jealousy, revenge and greed.
Despite being nowhere near the scene of her ex-husband's grisly demise, Coleen, 38, was put on trial accused of murder. She was found not guilty of murder, but convicted of manslaughter under joint enterprise laws, after providing invaluable intelligence to Belfield.
He is on the run, wanted by police. Two men Belfield is accused of recruiting to overwhelm Thomas Campbell, Reece Steven, 29, a convicted armed robber, and Stephen Cleworth, 38, a thug previously jailed over a horrific knife attack in an Indian restaurant, were also convicted. Steven faces a life sentence after being found guilty of murder. Cleworth was found guilty of manslaughter.
After a dramatic five week trial, the Manchester Evening News examines how Coleen Campbell turned on her ex after she accused him of sleeping with her best friend.
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Growing up in Clayton, east Manchester, Coleen was brought up by her mother in a single parent household. From the age of five, her father was absent from her life. "He went to prison and then he went on drugs,” she told her trial.
Leaving school at 16, she went to work at a hotel and had her first child aged 17, the day before her 18th birthday, with a previous partner. She knew Thomas Campbell from when they were both younger. But by the time he came back into her life, he’d already been to prison.
He was locked up for nine years after playing his part in a terrifying robbery conspiracy in 2002, which involved the use of weapons including a samurai sword. Then just 19, he was sentenced to nine years in prison.
The pair met again in 2008 after his release, when they bumped into each other on nights out. "We just really clicked and really got on,” Coleen told her trial. “It just seemed so right."
Their first child, a boy, was born in 2010. The Campbells were married on Tuesday, June 21, 2011, and settled down together, setting up their marital home in Coleen’s hometown. A daughter followed in 2015.
Thomas and Coleen enjoyed married life. And they enjoyed spending money.
Travelling on luxury foreign holidays, wearing designer clothes and driving expensive cars, the cash was flowing. On one occasion they splashed out £10,000 on a 10 day holiday to Cancun, travelling in ‘premium seats’ and staying at the five-star Hard Rock Hotel.
The plush accommodation included a hot tub, 24-hour room service and an Xbox. Their jet set lifestyle also included trips to Sharm el-Sheikh and a resort in Bulgaria.
Holiday snaps showed them posing with dolphins, drinking cocktails by the pool and enjoying a ride on a motor boat. They also had his and hers luxury cars on the drive, complete with personalised number plates.
Thomas drove a black 6.3 litre £42,000 Mercedes AMG, purchased on a finance agreement, while Coleen had a black BMW X5, which cost £16,500. The cash was on show at home too. A £60,000 double storey extension was added to their semi-detached home in Clayton, to include a bigger kitchen and a bar.
Large, electric gates offered protection from the road, gates which appeared incongruous with the rest of the properties on the street. 'Keep out, beware of the dog', a sign on the gates read.
The reason why the Campbells may have felt they needed such protection might not have been obvious to the outside world. Coleen worked part time at Matalan and received working tax credits, while Thomas was registered as a self-employed fitness instructor.
But to cops investigating drugs and organised crime in east Manchester, their wealth did not stack up. Thomas was a convicted drug dealer. He'd been in court in 2010 for cannabis dealing.
And it seemed as though Coleen had joined her husband in committing crime. The couple came into the crosshairs of GMP's Operation Harness, one strand of the force's war on organised crime.
Their home was raided in March 2015, and the Mercedes and BMW on the drive were both seized. GMP said the operation focused on the Campbells' 'involvement with cocaine supply' in Clayton.
The couple had links with convicted drug dealers, including one man who was caught in Cheetham Hill with cocaine worth between £600,000 and £1.3million. They were jointly prosecuted and pleaded guilty to money laundering, enjoying around £100,000 of dirty money between 2009 and 2015.
Eventually in 2019 at Manchester Crown Court, Thomas was jailed for two years. Coleen escaped with a suspended prison sentence.
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Coleen visited him ‘every single week’ in jail. It was after his release from prison that their relationship began to break down. She claimed that Thomas became paranoid and accused her of seeing other men while he’d been inside.
Coleen made a number of allegations to police that Thomas had attacked her, placed tracking devices on her car, or threatened her. Thomas also made allegations about Coleen, claiming that she had thrown things at him, damaged his vehicle and abused him over the phone. In one incident, after visiting the city centre apartment he was then living in, Coleen had thrown tuna and paint around and launched a phone at him, he alleged.
Both did not pursue the allegations and no further action was taken. But for Coleen, their marriage was over after she accused Thomas of cheating on her with her best friend.
"If he had an affair with someone I didn't know, maybe I could have got over it," she told her trial. So angered was she about her husband’s infidelity, she went to the woman’s house, smashed the windscreen of her car and drove into it.
She was hauled before the courts again in 2021 and fined after admitting causing criminal damage. That year, their split became formal and they divorced.
Thomas left the marital home and spent time in Spain and Dubai, before returning home and settling in Mossley. Coleen claimed he'd fled abroad because he feared he was being investigated by police over the hacking of EncroChat, a sophisticated encrypted communications network often dubbed 'WhatsApp for criminals'.
On his return to the UK, Thomas and Coleen appeared to resolve their differences. Their previously 'hostile' relationship became more amicable, and a schedule for visiting and caring for his children was agreed. The couple put on a united front and attended a prize giving ceremony together at one of their children’s schools.
Thomas had only been in his new home for a few weeks when he was ambushed at his front door on Saturday, July 2 last year. Despite their apparent reconciliation, a lingering resentment clearly still bubbled inside Coleen.
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It all began with a simple Instagram notification. On Saturday, June 25, Coleen Campbell received a follow request from a man called John.
The day after, while browsing his profile, she liked one of his posts. It is the kind of social media activity that happens millions of times a day, across the world.
But 'John' had an ulterior motive. He suspected that Coleen's former husband was in a relationship with his ex-girlfriend.
And the next activity on John Belfield's phone was telling. He began reading a Manchester Evening News story, with the headline 'couple enjoyed 'five star' lifestyle funded by crime while claiming benefits'.
It was a report of the Campbell's court appearance in 2019 for money laundering. Reading the news article on his phone appeared to be a lightbulb moment for Belfield.
How could he get back at his ex-girlfriend, punish her new lover, while profiting from it at the same time? John Belfield was already known to law enforcement.
Intelligence collected by Greater Manchester Police claims that he is ‘heavily concerned in the large-scale supply of class A drugs'. And his attitude to his ex-girlfriend was made clear in a message he sent her on June 28.
"You will never have a boyfriend, you will have to move country, give it a week and you will see why and what happens when you take the p***". By the time of his death, Thomas Campbell appeared to have continued his ascent through the echelons of the criminal underworld.
At his murder trial, he was described as a ‘big time drug dealer’, and was said to be ‘thriving in the dog eat dog world of cocaine dealing'. Coleen, despite knowing how her ex-husband would likely react to any attack on him or his ill-gotten gains, was only too willing to help Belfield’s alleged audacious plan to rob his rival in love and crime.
After their initial contact on Instagram, Belfield and Coleen shared 35 phone calls and 68 messages and once met up in person. It was a key factor in an extraordinary week-long build up of preparations, which culminated in a cold blooded killing.
Within the space of a few days, two embittered conspirators had united for a common purpose, revenge.
—
The street was busy with parents, hurriedly making their way to an east Manchester primary school to collect their little ones. In plain sight, John Belfield made his first move.
He arrived on the same street where another parent, Thomas Campbell, was heading in order to pick up his daughter. Sat in the safety of a Ford Focus, he watched on as the first act of the plot unfolded.
With the coast clear, after Campbell had parked up and walked to the school, Stephen Cleworth, with Reece Steven acting as lookout, calmly crouched down and placed a tracking device on Campbell's van. Now, Thomas Campbell's whereabouts could be followed at the touch of a mobile phone.
His ex-wife also did her bit, to make sure they targeted the right car. "Ye sorry it’s the small grey one a transit connect xx”, she texted Belfield.
Not content with tracking his movements remotely, the gang also carried out hostile reconnaissance outside his home. On June 27, Belfield and Cleworth scoped out Campbell's Mossley base.
"It's 17," Coleen texted Belfield, to help ensure they got the right house. Hours later, Belfield returned for a second visit, this time with Steven.
Two days later, Belfield and Coleen Campbell met for the first time. In a street adjacent to her beauty parlour on Manchester Road, Droylsden, Belfield was said to have showed her the tracking device.
They spent half an hour in her VW Tiguan, after she took some time out from her busy schedule as a businesswoman and single mum. That night, Belfield and Cleworth were back in Mossley for a third visit. They watched on from a van as Campbell arrived home and unlocked his front door at 11.26pm.
"Tomorrow," Belfield texted Coleen Campbell, in a chilling message about 20 minutes later.
In fact, Thursday, June 30 became a dress rehearsal for what would follow two days later. His attackers were in place, but were outfoxed after Campbell decided to take his dog for a walk, rather than go inside his home.
The plot was aborted, but Thomas Campbell's reprieve was brief. Unknown to him, he was again being stalked on Saturday, July 2.
But Belfield's apparently well oiled plan had hit a last minute snag.
Cleworth, who had been due to be part of the hit squad, was uncontactable. He was on a 'bender', at a swingers club in Rochdale.
"This is what I mean about you mate, you can’t even work with you bro," Belfield told his absent conspirator. It appeared as though this was not the first time Cleworth had let him down.
The missing Cleworth left Belfield requiring a driver to head to Mossley, anxious to keep any cars he was linked to away from the scene. He turned to family friend Karl Murphy, a 50-year-old dad from Denton. Murphy was an innocent stooge, unaware of what was to follow.
Belfield had turned up at his front door and asked for him and two friends to get a lift to the pub, Murphy told a jury.
The trial heard that after being dropped off in Mossley by Murphy, Belfield, Steven, and a third man, who police have been unable to identify, decamped to a Vauxhall Combo van which they'd parked on the drive next to Campbell's home. The house was unoccupied.
To Thomas, the van could have belonged to a workman carrying out renovations. They were there for five minutes before Campbell arrived home.
After inserting his key into the front door, he was ambushed from behind. Outnumbered, he desperately tried to fight off the trio.
For 40 seconds, they punched and kicked him as they tried to subdue him and get him inside. He was already bleeding by that point. They were finally able to shut the door, after Campbell screamed out and his desperate attempt at self defence failed.
Only four people know exactly what happened in that house over the next two hours. One is dead, another is out of the country. The third, Reece Steven, chose not to say. A fourth is unknown to police. But the subsequent murder trial was offered a brief glimpse into the pure horror of his final moments.
Thomas Campbell had sustained 61 separate injuries. One, a stab wound to his right arm, could have killed him on its own.
He'd been punched, kicked, stamped on, strangled, and cut to his face. Thomas was dragged around the house, as the robbers ransacked his home in search of anything of worth.
Not satisfied with repeated, brutal assaults, they tortured him. He had boiling water poured over his buttocks, while bound by the ankles and wrists with duct tape.
Just before 1am, close to death, he mustered up the strength to call 999. On the verge of death, he was too severely injured to answer the call handler's questions.
"Fire, police or ambulance?," the operator asked. Met with silence, he continued: "What number have you dialled please?
"I can't release your line until you say you don't need an emergency service.
"If you can't speak, tap the handset, cough or make a noise."
He received no response. The next sign of movement at the house was just before 1am, in the early hours of July 3.
The door opened and the three men fled, leaving Campbell to die in his hallway, still tied up by his ankles. It was 10 hours later when the alarm was raised.
Lee Barraclough, a neighbour of Mr Campbell who lived on the same street, had been heading out for a bike ride at 7.30am. After returning home, his partner told him she'd noticed that the front door across the road was 'wide open'.
He will never forget what he saw. Thomas Campbell's body, long deceased. Police officers arrived soon after.
It soon became clear that the killing was the work of professionals. Crime scene investigators were unable to recover any of the killers' DNA from the house, with evidence of a clean up at the scene. A CCTV system had been ripped out.
Police visited Coleen Campbell later that day, at 5.40pm, to inform them of her husband's fate. The day after, she felt able enough to return to work at her beauty salon in Droylsden.
A concerned client, who had heard of her ex’s death, told her they completely understood if their appointment had to be cancelled.
"Please tell me Tom has not gone," the client said. "I know you are not together but the kids will be heartbroken."
"I be in work to do you both x,” Coleen replied. And over the next 10 days, Coleen went from grieving widow to suspect.
On July 13, she was arrested on suspicion of Thomas's murder, at the home they used to share. She was 'visibly shaking' and looked 'shocked and confused', telling officers she still loved Thomas and had no reason to want him dead.
"This is nothing to do with me," she told police.
After a five week murder trial, a jury disagreed. Damning messages, which she desperately tried to cover up after leaving an incriminating mobile phone with a friend, laid bare just how she had betrayed her ex-husband, a man she claimed to love.
Coleen Campbell, of Bamford Street, Clayton, was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter.
Stephen Cleworth, of Charles Street, Heywood, was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter.
Reece Steven, of Poplar Street, Middleton, was found guilty of murder.
The trio were all found guilty of conspiracy to rob.
They will learn their fate when sentencing takes place on Wednesday at Bolton Crown Court.
Karl Murphy, of Lancaster Road Denton, was found not guilty of participating in the activities of an organised crime group and was discharged from the dock.
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