The Essex Boys: murders in Rettendon

Three drug dealers shot dead in a Land Rover on a frozen farm track — a killing that became a byword for Essex gangland and was never truly solved.

In the early hours of 6 December 1995, a farmer near the village of Rettendon in Essex found a Range Rover parked on a track beside a wheat field. Inside were the bodies of three men, each shot at close range with a pump-action shotgun.

The dead were Anthony 'Tony' Tucker, 38, who ran a firm providing security for nightclubs across Essex and had once been the bodyguard of a boxing world champion; Patrick 'Pat' Tate, 37, an amateur bodybuilder and drug dealer; and Craig Rolfe, 26, Tate's associate. All three were known to police as major players in the Essex drug trade.

The killings bore the marks of a professional hit. The three men had been lured to the isolated track, apparently on the promise of a drugs deal, and executed while sitting in the vehicle. The scene became one of the most famous in British criminal history, and the murders entered folklore as 'the Essex Boys' killings.

Police launched a major operation, codenamed Operation Century, but the investigation produced no arrests. Years later, a separate operation led to charges against several men over the killings, including a man named Jack Whomes and a former police officer, John 'Goldfinger' Steele, who were convicted in 1998 of conspiracy to murder and jailed for life.

The convictions did not end the arguments. Both men have always maintained their innocence, and over the years a number of other suspects have been named in the press. The case became the subject of books, documentaries and a feature film, each offering a different version of what happened on the track that night.

What is not disputed is what the murders represented: the violent end of an era in which Essex drug dealers believed they could operate with impunity. The Range Rover murders — and the stories that grew around them — became the defining image of 1990s gangland Britain.