My name’s Kevin Lane. I’m here today to speak to the Student Pocket Guide about my conviction. I served 20 years in prison for a crime I did not commit, contract killing. It’s all in my book, Fitted Up and Fighting Back. I’m here to discuss my life, where my case is going now, and hopefully help people in the same situation who have had struggles.
Kevin Lane Interview | Convicted Contract Killer
Content warning! This interview includes graphic details of crimes and actions taken against individuals. Viewer discretion is advised.
Thank you for travelling all this way, Kevin. Can we start at the beginning, please, and can you tell us what your childhood was like?
You’re welcome. I loved my childhood. I grew up in the country. A vibrant village. A lot of activity in the village, a lot of pubs, fates, and carnivals, each year. I loved to grow up with lakes and boats around you, canals, and forests. Building houses out of straw – we’re going nuts, of course. Fights in the cornfields with corn of the Cobb. Black eyes through them sometimes. Getting one of them launched on you was pretty hard. So, I loved it growing up in the countryside. It was great. Problematic in some areas. I had no father. My mother and father separated. Family of four, which escalated to seven. My stepbrother Liam Cooper who I haven’t seen since I was a child. My father passed away. Not seeing your father growing up as a child, that was very difficult. However, I seem to recall my childhood being a lot of fun and a lot of heartache. Wanting things that other kids have got that you haven’t. They’d get a Chopper, your bike would be made up from spare parts from a dump that I made. Go-carts that we made. Making your own go-carts with nuts and bolts and hammers and nails. Banging a nail in over a rod that has come off a pram with two wheels on to make a go-cart. So, ingeniousness like that as a child, looking back now, you’re using skills that you’ve adapted as a child that would go on to be an advantage to you later in life. So I had a great childhood, although somewhat hard.
And obviously, you know, the sad news with your father and you not growing up with a father figure, how did that affect you as a young man?
Really hard, really hard. I remember my father teaching us to drive. He had a Mini Clubman. Driving around the fields on his lap, and I do it with my son now. And sitting in the kitchen on the floor holding the nylon strings making rabbit nets. My dad was Scottish and he’d go, “sit there you idiot”. I said, I’m not an idiot. And coming home from the pub on a Sunday and going to bed because he’s had a few to drink. I’d go and get in bed with my dad and then I’d crawl out of bed in the morning, late in the afternoon. Go back downstairs. So, I remember doing that and then not having a father. It was very, very difficult because why isn’t my father here? Why doesn’t my father want to see me? All the kinds of questions that children have now of course. But not having any answers to them because they don’t understand why such matters are taking place. You’re just not mature enough or you can’t fathom out that your father loves you, you love your father. Why isn’t he here? So, it was very difficult for me.
Is there an element of sort of learning almost right from wrong that maybe you miss out on from not having a father figure?
Most definitely. You know, there’s not much fear in someone saying “My mum would kill me if she finds out.” Whereas when my dad found out he’d kill me. Big difference isn’t it? What is that? I don’t know what it is. Is it because he’s the alpha male and your mum’s not? My mum was a bit of an alpha female. She was a bit of a tomboy as a kid and can fight like thunder my mum. So can my sisters. Or two of them anyway. But having my father, he would have definitely stopped me from venturing into some of the areas that I did. If for instance, we smashed up some diggers on the building site when we were kids – throwing stones and the windows got broken. I’d have got a bloody good hiding for that. And I might have had more activity with my father taking me to work with him. Learning from my dad having a camaraderie with a child and father that most kids have. So, you’re focusing on different areas instead of going out of the evening with your pals running around the streets playing Knock Down Ginger and all sorts of things like that, getting into mischief, where if my dad had been around, it wouldn’t have happened so freely. A lot of people say, “Oh, you can’t say not having a father”. Well, the facts are, a lot of men that are in prison, and girls that are in prison, their parents were short of one of those main factors. So, statistically, it’s proven. But you can’t blame it on that, you do have a choice, but unfortunately, sometimes, you’ve made the wrong choices because you didn’t have dual parenting.
Before your contract killing conviction, you kidnapped multiple people. Would you be comfortable talking about this in more detail?
Yeah, what do you want to know?
How many people did you kidnap? What did you do to them?
I couldn’t tell you, too many. So, kidnapping comes under many forms. I put you in the back of a car. That’s kidnapping. It’s holding you against your will. I don’t know how many times that’s happened. It’s just a regular occurrence that was when I was a young man. I have tortured some people quite badly. Broken their legs, tied them up, spread-eagled them. So much so, that the iron bar that I was using bent. When someone’s gaffer taped around their mouth, and you can hear their screams through the gaffer tape. Now, I think back and look at that. It was quite ferocious, but in the same breath, deserving. People say, “How could it be deserving?”. Well, details of what those people did never led to an arrest. People in the local area might say, “It couldn’t have happened to a better person. Well done, Kevin”. In other factors, other areas, people may say, the police weren’t able to do or put a stop to maybe what a person was doing or had have done and had have gotten away with it. And was still possibly inflicting themselves upon a business or normally it’s a person, pretty much. So, with that came myself and I used to love watching the John Wayne films. Even when he was a sheriff, he was a wild sheriff, wasn’t he? Always fighting for the underdog and shooting the baddies. Well, I’m sure he made a move for his gun (laughs). I love Rooster Cogburn – absolutely love that film. The original John Wayne and the one that came out later. But I always fought for people at school, girls who were getting bullied, I’d say “Leave the girls alone, or leave him alone”. That came obviously from my brother. When I was in the Infants I’d fight for my brother. You might want to talk to me about that, but I’ll probably answer it now. So that comes from… it’s heavily entrenched in me that my brother was run over as a child and used to have to wear this crash helmet, the extended crass helmet, like Mr. Magoo the cartoon. From that came taunting from children. I remember coming out of class in the infants, I was three or four. And I’ll have to ask my mum because my brother got run over at a certain age, I think it was five. And I came out, so it was about that age before he went to the juniors, and two lads – I’m not going to name them, but I remember their names clearly, we’re giving it to my brother, I’ll just set about them. The pair of them. I hit one and then the other. Not at that time did I know anything about my capabilities of being able to use my hands at that time. But what I felt was just sticking up for your loved one. And then from that, it just escalates. You go through the rankings of schools. My brother couldn’t take care of matters himself ‘till he was pretty much 15, 16, something like that. By then I’d been fighting with his pals and older pals. My brother’s two years older than me, so at the age of three, fighting a five-year-old and then going into the juniors, doing the same, then going into the seniors and doing the same. And then when you’re 14, getting expelled from school, getting a flat of 15 and fighting men in the village, in their 20s, it just escalated to that length really, quite severely.
And specifically with the kidnappings and the various sorts of things that you would have done to people, do the memories stay with you, haunt you or how do you deal with that sort of thing?
No, they don’t haunt me. What haunts me is that I kidnapped two people that weren’t deserving of it. One I’ve done Restorative Justice with, Will Gilluley. However, I was led to believe that he had placed a knife against, originally I thought it was to a baby, and to the lady’s face. And I subsequently found out when I did Restorative Justice at his request, Will’s, that she hadn’t had the baby, but he put the knife to the lady’s belly, and said, “I’ll cut you and your baby”. And Will was put forward as a person who had done that by his own colleagues and people in the area thought that it was him that had done it, and it wasn’t. So, when I kidnapped him, I thought, you’ve done what? Fu*king hell, you can have some of this, then. And so since I’ve met Will, I can live with what I’ve done to him because of the reasons why I was told to do it. But in the same aspect, I do feel bad about it. And I try to make that right as best as I can for him because he is a lovely fellow. You look at him now on camera and you think, God, and look at me, it makes me look worse. But at the time I kidnapped him, we were both at the same age, 21. He was a young lad, far bigger than he was now. But you look at him on camera now and you think oh my God, it doesn’t look good on me. So I don’t have nightmares, I don’t have bad thoughts. No, they don’t bother me at all.
What did you do to him?
I took him from where he worked, at the front of his car. I opened the door and just hit him around the head with an iron bar. A few times kept hitting him. I put him in the car, took him away, carried on beating him. Took him to a wooded area in a rural area. I laid him in front of the car, run over him a few times, placed the car back on his legs. I made him repeat some information about his family members, phone numbers, where they lived. Then we telephoned these people to check that they were who they were so we had their details. I then took him to another area near London, there’s a bridge there. I pulled over, exited him out of the car, helped him down to the edge of the canal. Obviously, he was in extreme pain. Hit him over the head again, sprayed him with CS gas and pushed him in. My thought pattern at the time was you’re going to get freezing cold now. I wasn’t trying to kill him, it was just “Go on, get in there, you’re bleeding ba*tard. You won’t do that again, you’ll remember this won’t you, what I’ve done to you? It’ll stop you doing what you did then.” Little did I know the consequences of my actions were far-reaching, it ruined the man’s life for years. So I’ve had to live with that and think about that and think about trying to put people off from doing such things that I did and making people realise that you’re not always right, far from it as I wasn’t then. And look at the consequences of my actions. So I have thoughts about that but I don’t have nightmares. It’s not that I am a psychopath where I don’t have emotion. I had twenty-odd years in prison for something I didn’t do to consider my actions and think about that during that time when I had lots of heartaches, lots of things, my God, for many actions. So, I’ve had a lot of time to I say repent, but seriously consider a lot of things in my life.
Kevin Lane Interview
Let’s talk about the murder of Robert McGill. You were found guilty of this crime and have served over 20 years for the hit, always proclaiming your innocence. Would you mind talking about your alibi? Where were you on the 13th of October 1994?
I took my children to school in the morning. Sometimes did, sometimes I didn’t, depending on what my diary was of that day. Then unfortunately for me, the mother of my child was obviously going to give evidence for me, and the corrupt police officer in the case turned up at the house. Phoned her at home, turned up at her work, turned up at the gym, intimidating her. It was bad enough for her in the first place that the house was raided twice by armed police. Without the copper doing what he did, that made her even more of a nervous wreck. She had to move the house four times, I think, in about 16 months or something like that. Move, literally, had a nice house, brand new. We just moved into it when I got arrested. That was given back. And then she went again to another area. So, I was at home.
There’s a stack of evidence to prove your innocence and suggest corruption of the highest order. A lot of things are pointing at Spackman. Can you explain to the viewers who he is?
Christopher Spackman, former detective inspector before he was in prison for £160,000 of theft from his own Hertfordshire Police Force, was a police officer who arrested me some years earlier for car ringing. However, I wasn’t ringing cars with the people he thought I had been. I remember him coming to my cell and gobbing off at me and saying, “I’ll have you one day, Lane”. And I jumped off the bed in the cell, run at the cell door, because he had given me a bit of gobb and he slammed the door in my face. When he arrested me at the time, I lived in a new house. It was a nice area. I’d had a front extension on the house, front wall, multi-folder, ex-fold stocks inside, brought up from Cornwall, marble. I spent about at the time £6,000 on the garden, which was in 1991, I think, something like that. It’s quite a bit of money to spend on the garden then. And he said, “You’ve gotta better house than me.” Cheekily I said, “Well change your job then”. He didn’t like that, of course. I had a 911 Porsche, RS Turbo, XR2. But the same breath I always worked. I liked working as a child. I worked very hard working in a paper round when I was 12. But Spackman was a corrupt police officer in Hertfordshire. He was reported to have been the most feared man in Watford in terms of police officer. A lot of people are frightened of him. A lot of people are scared is what one of his victims said. Police officers have come forward, spoken to Duncan Campbell, of the Guardian, the Observer. Sally Chidzoy, former journalist for BBC Look East. And told both of those that I was innocent, and that Spackman had made up statements, and signed them in other people’s names. A gentleman called David Smith, he was a former suspect for the murder and one of Spackman’s informers. As well as another that I’m not allowed to mention because… He’s complained that I’m endangering his life by naming him as a police informer. They’ve subsequently been found guilty of another murder, shooting David King in Hertfordshire with an AK47 a few years later. But Spackman was a well-known police officer in Watford, Hertfordshire, corrupt to the core. That’s pretty much a fair description of him, I’d like to think.
Why has it taken so long for the system to listen to your story specifically?
Well, you must have heard that the wheels of justice turn very slowly. And they never want to say you’ve been fitting up. Regardless of, police officers coming forward, regardless of, in my book, Fitted Up and Fighting Back, there’s a volume of evidence in there that… I’ll say suggests, I won’t say proves, but the evidence in there quite clearly shows that there’s been some unjust… An underhand tactic has gone along at least, which has had an implication on my conviction. So… For instance, in the book, there was an investigation that was spring boarded by Hertfordshire Police, in relation to whether they could charge one of the former suspects again for the murder, who’s then subsequently gone on to commit another murder, at the hands of the corrupt police officer. The police officers that were instructed to conduct that investigation, by their own police force, were firstly refused access to all of the papers. They were only allowed to have access to some, not all of the papers. And then the investigating officers, the high-ranking investigating officers of that case, refused to be interviewed by their own colleagues, by their own police force that paid their wages. Now, how can that be? Are they above the law? And I’ve got that in writing as well. But when you look at the evidence in my case, is it in the book? Is it me crying about spilt beans, or is it factual? Well, it’s factual, because my book’s been out two years now. I’ve never had a black order on it. The police are pretty good at that type of stuff if you’re slandering them or such. I name some of the coppers in there. I state factual details about, informers being given information to supply to the police, getting paid for that, and then giving that money back to the bent copper Spackman, having sex with one of them, forcing sex upon her. We know that’s quite rife now, don’t we? But why wasn’t he charged for that then? Why did he keep his pension up until he was arrested? Should have been wiped clean. but no, he kept his pension up ‘till then. And he wasn’t allowed to be named by the programme Panorama that Mark Daly did with Louise Shorter. He was allowed to keep his new identity because it may ruin his life. But he gave an alibi for the original suspect in the case, in terms of he did two runs to the Ministry of Defence from the murder scene, one by bus, one by car. One of the journeys got him there at twenty-two-ten, and one got him there at twenty-past-ten. As a result of that, he was acquitted by the judge without it going to the jury. And there’s a wealth of evidence in relation to that, such as he was bragging about the murder, he was seen showing off a gun in the pub, going around telling everybody that both him Smith and this fella I am talking about they called themselves Ronnie and Reggie and they had committed the murder. I don’t know which one was Ronnie yet, but you know, probably both of them. The deceased niece was living with the former suspect in his house, not with him, but in his house with his mother. And there’d been an argument a couple of weeks before with the niece’s mother and the former suspect’s mother, where the suspect’s mother was slapped round the face. That was kept from the jury. His fingerprints were found on the car. He’d given a car to another male and asked that male to dispose of that car. That was kept from me for 12 years. And that male says, “I was given a car by blah, blah, blah, and Smith and they asked me to burn it.” So, there’s a wealth of evidence that has been withheld that should have gone before the jury. However, Kenny Collins, the Hattengarten burglar, you might recall the film Heist and such, which facts on there aren’t quite what they should be, because the information was given by the police there. It isn’t what people were led to believe anyway, how they came across that person. I’ll say no more about that, because I haven’t got permission off people. But Kenny was told that I was going away, the deal was done, and I was gonna get 30 years. Ralph Himes was the solicitor, he used to look after the Kray’s. And the former suspect used to write to the Kray’s and visit them when he was a teenager, he was their idol. I’m not knocking the Kray’s, but just giving you an idea of what the former suspect was like. So, he then went to Ralph Himes as a solicitor. Ralph Himes was known to work on both sides of the fence with the police, he was corrupt at the core. Now how did he know that the trial was gonna get stopped halfway through and that the client was gonna be acquitted if the deal hadn’t been done? And I remember at the time, during the trial that the other suspect was sitting in the dock, and he was going, “They said I’ll be out of here by now”. And I’m looking and thinking. Does he mean his legal team? And of course I didn’t know at the time what Kenny had told me. He said “I couldn’t tell you, you might have had a chance. You thought you had a chance. It might have messed up your chances if I told you that”. So, the evidence against me was built around me once I’d been arrested. I wasn’t arrested due to the evidence in the case. So normally the police, obtain evidence for research or informers or investigations. And then they come to someone’s door, don’t they? Now they came to my door because my co-defendant gave them information that said I was responsible for a number of murders. And without a doubt I’ve done this one, I’ve done that one, stuff like that. And as a result of that, they started fabricating the case against me. My fingerprints weren’t found on the bag involved in the case until two weeks after I’d been arrested, prints taken twice and then released. At that time they’d been in the police custody. So, looking at October, November, December, January, they’d run through all the home national computers, Ireland, Scotland as well, and no match to me. I get arrested, prints are taken, the police are asked if they could take my prints. My solicitor stopped the interview there and then and said, “Okay, we’ll take the prints now”. They sent him home and then got me back out of my cell when he’s not there, took my prints and said, “Are you left or right-handed?” I held up a left hand. It’s a left-handed printer that they found on the bag. And they sent that bag off to be independently examined for a second time and they found my print. However, let’s just get this out in the open as well. That bag was taken out of the exhibit’s room with the tags broken with no signatures to who had broken that bag. That’s the only time there’s no co-adjoining signatures for that bag to be taken out of the exhibit room at the time of my rest in the police station. My solicitor was told that the bag had been lost, that the police didn’t know the exact geographical location of the bag. We were given photographs only of the print, we wasn’t allowed access to the bag. And you have to ask yourself why? Things such as the evidence would have been bent or tampered with or witnesses’ evidence was being squashed. So, the gentleman was caught with a car’s name’s Bennett, Leonard Bennett. He told somebody that the original suspects gave him a car license, to burn it, and that they had committed a murder. So, I’m going on hearsay evidence here but that is evidence that other people are aware of in the area that never came to light that the police were aware of. And the suspect that got caught with this car, Leonard Bennett, he told the police that he was paid to dispose of the car. His charges were dropped because if his charges were not dropped he would have had to be in the dock next to me and his statements would have had to have been disclosed to me whereby he was naming Smith and the second person as a person that approached him to dispose of the car. Not that I’ve finally got those 12 years later because I’d petitioned everybody. Chief Constable of Police, all sorts of people, and they were finally disclosed to me. Now, the case would have taken a different direction if I’d have had them before trial, as well as a number of other factors in relation to the investigation. So, the case against me was heavily, I’d say, tainted by corruption. I was told, Sally Chidzoy was told, and Duncan Campbell was told that, a letter was written out by Spackman, signed in the name of Smith and put before the judge’s evidence on the PII, Public Immunity Interest. And that was naming me for the murder. So, a police officer called Derek Webb, he was a former police officer for Hertfordshire Police. He had a file called the Miscarriage Justice of Kevin Lane file. He was gonna sell to the papers that he said, undermined my my conviction, showing that I’d been fitted up. However, at the time that he was gonna do this, he was surveying the Royal Family, and he worked out that they didn’t change the car per member of the Royal Family. So, that’s a massive security breach, isn’t it? With that came 35 police officers from MI5 raiding his house in black suits. They took everything out of there that you could write on, type on, and such or read, including my file. I found out about this investigation some years later. As a result of another investigation that involves Sadiq Khan, and a number of journalists. I made applications and wrote letters to various police forces for this file, and they told me it didn’t exist, no such file. However, Heather Mills of the Private Eye magazine was sitting for a trial at Kingston Crown Court, in relation to these journalists who have been involved in leaking information about Sadiq Khan visiting the terrorist in Woodhill Prison. And what comes up? The Miscarriage of Justice of Kevin Lane file. It was put under public immunity interest. It don’t exist. Well here we go, Tommy Cooper’s just made it appear. This is one I done earlier (laughs). Bleeding corrupt ba*stards. So, when you hear of stuff like that and what I’ve just told you about the investigation, the officers who lead in the investigation refuse to be interviewed, you have to ask yourself why?
Why are they refusing to be interviewed by the police, by their own constabulary? Panorama. Like I can say Louise Shorter and Mark Daly and Tracy Alexander of the City of Westminster Police conducted an investigation into the bag. During the trial a forensic expert for the crown told the jury that I had gripped a Mossberg pump-action inside that bag and that the deceased was killed with a Mossberg pump-action. I’m sitting there thinking you lying ba*tards. I know I’ve not gripped a gun in that bag and I said to my mum as a result, “I’m gonna get guilty here mum because they’re lying, and it’s not looking good”. There’s a lot more about my case that is unsatisfactory that will maybe come out in this interview.
How did you feel when you heard the guilty verdict?
You pretty much hope it’s not gonna happen. You always hang on for that hope, don’t you? Without hope and horizon, you’re doomed. What’s going on around you is secondary noise because you’ve got your own noise going on in your own head, your own thoughts. Oh my God, what the fu*k? What am I gonna get sentenced to now? Because the police stood up in court and asked for the maximum sentence to be imposed on me, at that time of 30 years. I got 18 sentenced by the judge and the tariff, it wasn’t a recommended where they say you will serve a minimum of and then we will look to send you home. He didn’t sentence me in court and I turned to the jury and I said “You’ve made a terrible mistake here, I’ve never done this” and I looked at them and I always believed that a former was a police officer because my jury was selected and then I had to pick from a selected jury, if that makes sense to you. So, you can pretty much dwindle down a lefty, or a righty, to the numbers. If you were selecting a jury from the police side, you can see well upper to middle class, council estate, which would they go. I’m not labelling or typing people into that scenario, but there’s a lot to be said about that. And I remember it was going off in the gallery when I turned to the judge and said “How long have I got to do?”. He said “Take him down, take him down, you’ve been sentenced to life imprisonment, take him down”. I thought life imprisonment, what does he mean by that? I got my tariff three years later, but I felt a lot better when I got my tariff, believe it or not three years later because I didn’t understand the difference between tariffs and recommendations at the time. A tariff means you can go home before if you’re really lucky or you can go home on it. 20 years I served before I was released, but that was only as a result of a number of factors in my case that catapulted me through the system. 16 years I was still Cat A going nowhere. Then some paperwork came to light. I had the prison director at Danny McAllister outside of my cell in Frankville Prison and asked me if that paperwork was correct. I said “it is”. Then as a result of that I was downgraded and flew through the prison system and out the door and then I went up on appeal based on the paperwork that had come to light that was sent to my solicitor from an anonymous source and it obviously came out the police files although some of it they said they couldn’t be recognised but the other stuff had. So, there was some factual correctness in that as well as some stuff that they said wasn’t but in terms of how I felt I felt God, my life’s over, that’s what I felt.
Kevin Lane Interview
Can you describe your first night in prison as a lifer?
I went back to Belmarsh Special Secure Unit because they was revamping the special secure unit after the escapes from Parkhurst Prison and Whitemoor SSU. They spent a lot of money on the whole entire high-security prison estate. So, I’ve come back into house block 4 I believe it was and I had a governor there, and a sea of prison officers, and a couple of Alsatians in the reception as well, in the house block, waiting for me to kick off. I had quite a few problems like that during my sentence. I went to the healthcare that evening and I asked for a sleeping tablet, not being someone who takes sleeping tablets. And I was refused and I said, “I tell you what, I don’t want to be sitting up here all night thinking about what’s just happened, I want to get my head down, wake up in the morning and start fresh.” He said, “I can’t give you one”. I said, “You’ll wish you’d give me one if you find me strung up at the windows later, won’t yer?” That tablet comes straight across, yeah. So that’s how I was treated at the time and I got my head down, woke up in the morning, got on the phone, you know, it’s the hope and horizon was still there. Believe me, you don’t realise that at the time, it’s just a distant view that you don’t realise isn’t coming for a very, very long time.
What was that walk like, you know, into the cell? What’s the noises, the atmosphere?
Steel doors, slammed, high-vaulted ceilings, no curtains, nothing like that, no rugs, a metal seat, metal toilet, no toilet seat, straight onto the metal. A metal sink. So it’s cold, bleak, echoey, helicopters going over the unit, police helicopters, ambulances, sirens, you could hear all the time. A bit of a horror story really because it’s all doom and gloom and if you was pitching a film, it could quite easily be in the background, all those noises of a very dire situation that was being filmed, that’s what it was like. So cold, it’s prison with flashing lights and barbed wire and all that type of stuff, very, very bleak.
A quote from your book which grabbed me is “time attacks your head”. What goes through your mind during all that time inside and how do you remain sane in that environment?
You’ll have a million thoughts go through your mind and more over 20 years. I stayed sane through training really hard, getting stuck into the paperwork – that was my avenue of release, and drink. I used to drink in the SSUs. They had quite a few altercations with a few staff. Big bullies actually. Well, I just knocked them spark out. They went to a fu*king hospital. I went to the strip cell (laughs). Wallop, have this you cheeky ba*tard. I thought you won’t threaten me. Yeah, go get the MUFTI, all of yer, and I’ll fight yer. But you’re not gonna threaten me. Someone just passed a comment lately saying, “Oh, you’re the type of fella that turns up with two geezers”. Well, actually, when I was in that cell on my own, and I’m telling other people to go and get the MUFTI, the riot squad, to go and get kitted up, well, I didn’t have two fellas with me then. I was bringing a fight to them. So, you got that one wrong, mate, didn’t yer? Prison, what got me through prison? When I came out of the units on one record, it said “Lane drinks, manage him”, so I had a working relationship with the prison service. I thought, happy days (laughs). What got me through was drinking, training and working on my case. I didn’t have a TV. I said “you can keep your TV, I’ll watch it when I go home.” Most people sit there, click, click, click. And then they’re not really watching what they’re watching most of the time. They will drift off, they think about something else – it might be your old woman. You know, is the milkman going in there in the morning or the postman? I shouldn’t really say that, but I mean, they have them thoughts, the lads. That type of thought pattern. And I believe that being heavily entrenched in getting out of prison, and heavily immersed into my paperwork. Kept the brain ticking over ticking over ticking over instead of the TV. So that’s what got me through. And good comrades in the prison system. We had a different type of clientele then to what you’ve got now. Far more respectful of your fellow interns, literally. Now they’ve got no respect for people. Boiling water over their feet, send some money to my family, or you’re going to get this again or sticking spoons up people’s asses to get their contraband out, whether it be puff, or heroine, or coke or spice, whatever it is. But that didn’t happen when I first started my sentence. Now it happens in abundance, that type of stuff, across the prison system. So having real career criminals who put time into a bit of work, thought about something morally they didn’t believe in hurting women and children. If you came in, you’d hurt a woman or a child, you’d be considered a nonce or bad-ass criminal and you weren’t thought of very well and you might have to go on the numbers, protection that is. Different type of men then, older school. Now you go and rob someone for their drugs you’re considered to be a criminal. Really? That’s not what I consider a criminal. Different types of crime, completely different thought patterns. So having the right people around me, older men. I had the IRA around me because I was made exceptional triple Category A. I wasn’t even convicted, I was on remand, and I was placed on their spur, they just broke out of Whitemoor Special Secure Unit so I was made Triple A. Exceptional risk. Michael Howard had just introduced closed visits for that grade and legal bugging of my legal visits and had a screen where I couldn’t touch anybody. So, if I had visits it was through a screen, I had a camera above the head so you could see the paperwork, you have to hold paperwork up to your barrister and your solicitor on the other side of the screen, and what chance do you stand? You stand no chance but in terms of who I was around at the time… The Irish were a good craic. I’ve got to tell you, I had the best laughs with some of them lads. And a fair understanding of the British government’s tactics, what they used to influence people’s thought patterns against, say, the IRA or a convicted contract killer, trial by media. I remember the IRA used to say to me, “Kevin, if we want to kill people, we’ll put a bomb in a football stadium”. Give that some thought. “We don’t want to kill people. And it’s propaganda to have them bombs go off, isn’t it? Hatred towards us”. I thought I’ve never thought of that. I said, otherwise, why are bombs going off killing people all the time? Which, if you look at the other side of terrorists, from Islam, you can’t say I’m bleeding racist, because my last girlfriend was a Muslim. And my girlfriend before that was Iranian and Indian. I can’t tell you the nationalities of the other ones (laughs). But they weren’t all English, alright? So, anyone who wants to jump on that bandwagon, get off of it. Because that bandwagon is not rolling with me! I like people for being decent. Different types of people, and that’s what got me through it.
Because of the situation and you being locked up, you know, for life, were you more angry and did anger lead to clarity for your situation?
Not clarity, but I was so angry! The anger had to go somewhere. As most of the other prisoners are. They direct the anger at each other. They come out of the cell in the morning and they are angry. “I don’t know why that fu*king ba*tard… he cooks eggs and bacon every morning.” (laughs). Anger’s got to go somewhere. I realised very early on, I was doing that, by bit*hing. Men are just so much fu*king bit*hes as women are. But I was finding fault with other people because I was so angry, that stopped very quickly with me. I thought, cor, well, I’m not getting involved in that because I didn’t have a TV or stuff like that. So I could think about watching someone go running up to a member of staff playing up to a woman. Well, I was doing that, like most men do, because you are starved of sexual contact and natural hormones that other European prisons give you, less violence in the prison. Women stays with the husband through the sentence, gives him something to come home to, doesn’t turn to drugs, got his kids coming up. So they deprive us of that. So, when I get to see other people’s actions, if I’m laying in my cell or working on my case, and then studying myself, but the anger side of things, cor, there’s plenty of anger in me, that came out in my training and it came out in the fights I had in the prison system. So, I directed my anger at a bandwagon that was already rolling. In terms of bullies, assholes, or just fu*king real horrible gits. And sometimes I wanted it, so I’d hear something, and thought, “I’m gonna have him, he’s getting it”. That was the anger coming out of me. And then years later it was more, “For fu*k sake, not again, why are you coming to me with this”, you know? And then I’d feel bad if I didn’t do something, because I could do something, I could make a stand for the right reasons against what I considered, and most other people considered the people committing that act as the wrong reason. And if I didn’t make a stand, and I felt myself somewhat of a coward, or how could I live with that happening to that person when I know I could put a stop to it, or at least stand in their way. So, in terms of morally an anger, it was a two-pronged attack for me, and that took about 10 years before I stopped doing that. Not stopped, but really tamed it down. My Category A report was saying, “Lane uses instrumental violence as a means”. I thought hold on a minute, one minute you’re calling me up into the governor’s office saying, “Kevin, why do you keep burning down the wings? Why do you keep burning down the TV rooms? Can you have a word with the lads, Kevin?” Yeah, I’ll have a word with then it comes up in your Cat A report: Lane is the main influencer of the wing. I thought hold on a minute! You’re asking me to go and have a word with the lads! So, it took about 10 years before I finally switched on and matured in many areas.
How often were there clashes, fights, and arguments to obviously release this anger?
A lot. It’s prison.
Daily?
Oh yeah, of course, there’s daily violence in prison.
I mean with yourself.
Oh, not daily, monthly, to begin with… When I was in the unit, it was monthly with the staff, not the cons. For the first few months, it was always fighting with the MUFTI and knocking someone out in the block. And then they said to me, “You’re gonna remain in the block indefinitely unless you sign this contract to stop assaulting staff and inmates”. I thought, well, I’m only assaulting people who threaten me. And the staff used to say “Fu*king hell, don’t threaten him, because he’ll hit you straight back”. That’s a fact. The screws have come forward and said that. George Shipton, the screw, was surrounded by eight screws and asked to make a statement against me. A false statement. He said, “I’m not doing this, that screw was threatening him all day. Stop threatening him, what are you threatening him for? He’s not done anything wrong. He’s polite, he’s quiet”. The screw said, “If we get you down here, Lane, we’ll kill you”. I said, “Well, take the cuffs off, and we’ll fu*king talking about it”. But I’ve gone off the angle a bit there. What was your question again just quickly to remind me?
Well, it was how often do you have the anger build up…
When I was first in the prison, it was monthly and there was a lot of it. In fact, I came out of the special secure unit and I was fighting quite a bit. Quite a bit. I say fighting, it was just normally left, right, or a right, and they’d go to sleep or go over or something like that. Anyway, I signed that, I got that contract, I was in the block. Segregation, isolation, they’d take me out of the strip box, no clothes. You’re laying in there fu*king naked, freezing your nuts off. Like I said earlier, your cock’s gone that small. Freezing cold, teeth chattering and all the rest of it. And I mean, believe me, that’s torture. When you go through the night and you’re naked, there’s no heating in that cell, just pure concrete, no bed, no blankets, on the floor. It’s not good. If you’ve been there for long periods of time until they break you, they didn’t break me. They tried to, but they never broke me. You’re only meant to be in there ‘till you stop being violent. I would stop being violent as soon as I’ve had to tear up. I said, “Alright, it’s over now, don’t take the piss. If I need to take the piss, I’m going to get the first one I can, the first instance, the first chance I get one of you is getting it. We’ve had the tear up, get me in the strip box, don’t cut my clothes off me, take them off because it costs money.” They used to unbutton my clothes (laughs). I thought, well hold on a minute that’s a Sonneti, that’s a fu*king this and that’s that, don’t be cutting my clothes off. And I’d come out of the strip box eventually, but… When I signed this contract, I signed in big red marker pen across it, “bollo*ks” (laughs). Give it back to him. That governor called Governor Carroll, he told me he was friends with another police force who was investigating me. And then it was, I believe, his motive to keep me in the block by the screws threatening me, because when you’re in the block, you don’t have access to the outside world, I was cut off even more by, say, for instance, you, Ben, who might be having an open visit because you are only high risk, say, only, you’re AA. But you’ve got someone in front of you, you might be able to slip them a bit of paper or something written on a cigarette on a Rizla paper. You’ve got ways of getting information out. Making me exceptional risk and putting me behind the screen, upstairs with the IRA, where you couldn’t even come onto the spur unless you were security approved. So, you’re approved to work in a unit but to come onto the spur that I was on, which was like a porta cabin-sized spur, cells on each side. To come onto there, you had to be cleared again. And they had newspaper over the glass in the door coming in, so you couldn’t even see in. Newspaper! It was like bleeding banged up with Steptoe at times you know, so it was a bit raw.
Which prison is the roughest in your opinion and why?
Ohhh, Whitemoor! (whispers): “Whitemoor, Whitemoor, Whitemoor”. That’s what people think, the worst of the worst. The Whitemoor documentary, I’m in that quite a bit and that shows talking about strip cells, the unit. It’s the most observed building in Europe at one point 74 cameras on it, or 84 – a ridiculous amount – checked every 20 minutes in your cell. Every 20 minutes you are in that cell day and night you are checked. The flap opens, you look. Are they coming in on me? That’s what it was like. When I came off the Cat A, I realised I was looking at the door all of the time, like a tic.
Long Lartin was extremely dangerous. Used to have a metal shop in there. What does red spell backwards? DER! You should have said that to fu*king someone in that prison because people were making great big knives that would go straight through you, tools, a metal shop!? They had a metal shop in Parkhurst. Matthew Williams or Andy Rogers one of them might have been Keith Rose who escaped out of Parkhurst a couple of months before the Whitemoor escape, made a gun, that they believed would have worked! It definitely looked like a gun… in a metal shop! Prisons are very ingenious aren’t they. So, I would say Long Lartin for the weapons that could be made and the violence, Whitemoor for the way it was run – it turned into a really violent place in the 20th century. So in 1995, 1996, 1997, those years, violent but a lot of the old school prisoners in there, older prisoners, but then start going home and the new generation comes in, Operation Trident, they’re shooting people all the time, the young black kids. The parents went to the police and said, “You’ve got to stop our young kids killing themselves” and that’s how Operation Trident came about from the parents asking, because there were so many black deaths, young black kids killing themselves, pointless deaths, terrible deaths, as there still is on the streets now. And then with that, they come into the prison system and they’ve killed the fella on the opposite landing, killed the fella’s brother on the opposite landing or someone of the other gang. So they’re going down the church on a Friday afternoon for Friday prayers because they’ve signed up to Islam and stabbing the life out of each other. At one point, there was more staff down the bleeding church on Friday prayers than there was inmates. It just went off. They got their knives in there still after they’ve been searched, coming off the wing, strip searches. You can’t find a plastic knife, can you? It’s in between someone’s cheeks or their arse. Unless you want everyone to squat coming off and then feeding them up and that, they’re never going to do it. So they might have a belt on, they might have the blade down there with a razor blade in it. The wand would go off, they’d say “It’s my belt, Governor”. They don’t make you take the belt off, they go alright through. And it is kicking right off in there. So Whitemoor turned out to be a very, very violent prison, very violent. As did Long Lartin. So those two, I spent a lot of time in and out, in and out, of course. Long Lartin – I think I went back there twice. Whitemoor, I went back there a handful of times. I had 18 moves in four years to begin with. So that’s how many fights I had, that they knew about. And that’s the truth, is what they knew about. I walk into a cell, you have a confrontation with someone. I mean, Long Lartin, I remember I was put in the block there, I had a fight with a fella called Stitchie. He’d shot three people. Dangerous dude. And I like to say I get on really well with him after that. But he didn’t give two fu*king monkeys. He came in playing his jungle music, boom, boom, boom. “Give me a Rizla, give me a bacca”. And I said, “Look, mate, you can’t carry on like that in here. People won’t tolerate that. You’ll get stabbed or you’ll get oiled. And it ain’t no good”. Because first of all, I asked him to turn his music down. I said, “Oi, turn your music down a bit, mate, will you? It’s two o’clock in the morning playing jungle, it’s not good, it comes into people’s cells. And we’ve all got to get on here as a community. People gotta get up for work, you ain’t going up for work”. He’s still playing it. I went to his pals. Give the geezer a bit of a break. He’s only just come away, he’s got a big sentence. About 26 years, I think he got then. Might’ve been more, actually. And I said, “Have a word”. Stretch was the fella’s name. Oh, good stuff Stretch anyway, about six foot fu*king six Stretch was. I said “Stretch, go and have a word with your pal and ask him to stop playing music, please”. So then after I did that, this Stitch asked if he could have a word from me in my cell. I thought no problem. He’s knocked on door, come in, and he’s gone “I heard you’ve been asking people to turn the music down?” I said “Yeah”, and told him what I just told you. He turned on his side, his side towards me and said “Let me tell you, no man will be taking sides with me”. I went crash, crash. He went to sleep on the floor. I leant over him, I’m picking him up. “See what you fu*king made me do now?” I hit him. “You fu*king listen when I told you?” I give him a few right-handers to the face, a few to his body. And I had to go to his stretch and say “Come and get him out of my fu*king cell. He’s asleep and he’s bleeding all over it”.
They’ve carried him out. He went to an outside hospital. And then I was training with a member of a staff called Paul. I remember him seeing me. Proper screw. He come 125th out of Ironman. And he was in the MUFTI, he said “Kevin, they are coming to get you”. And I was then taken to the block. Kept down there for quite a while. No further charges. Put back on another wing. So that’s the type of thing you’re dealing with. Sometimes people have got no real understanding, they haven’t settled into their prison system. They’re quite angry themselves actually, which is probably why he was playing his jungle music. He might have been having a spliff or something, you know, and then falling asleep. And they actually said to me, “Turn my music off”. You had electric boxes outside your cell. He said “If you’re not happy with it, come and turn my music off”. I said “I aint fu*king getting out of bed to turn your music off every night, mate”. So, there’s a lot of anger going on there. If that had happened now, and I was my age now, and he was of his age now, he wouldn’t be playing his music at that time and I wouldn’t be responding in the type of manner that I did because we were both young lads full of testosterone and full of anger. I say he shot people, it don’t make him a decent man. Stitchie was real laid back and years later when I see him, cool as a cucumber. So, they’re very violent places. I’ve seen boiling hot fat put over someone’s head and their ears come off and their head goes like crackling. I’ve seen people stabbed to bits, slashed to bits. It kicked off in Frankland one night. On two wings, it kicked off. They didn’t have enough space in the block. They had to bang people up. It was a ridiculous amount of numbers on the wing until they could get space in the segregation and the blocks. It kicked off on one of the other wings. I was on F, it was G-wing, it kicked off. It kicked off on F-wing on all few times, you know. But these are two incidents that were far worse than on the F-wing ones. On G-wing, it kicked off with some terrorists in normal locations, black and white normal location, having fights with the terrorists for different reasons, ridiculous reasons. Again, playing music in the gym. “It was our fu*king session. Don’t come to this session. You don’t like our fu*king music. Go to a session where you ain’t got no bleeding music then. But don’t be telling us you can’t play no music in here”. Stuff like that. And believe me, having an oil put over their head because of that. Terrible. Blokes were knocked out on the floor asleep. And I know this is true, factual true. Coz I know a couple of blokes that done it. As soon as they run past, they got stabbed. Sleep on the floor! Wallop, you can have some, to the next one. Sleep on the floor. Plunge. Next person. That’s pretty frightening. That’s pretty dangerous. But I walked those landings. Same as any other man. Because you become not accustomed to it, but you’re aware of your surroundings. As if you’re in the jungle with animals that will kill you. I was in the jungle with animals that would kill me.
Kevin Lane Interview
One of your quotes reads, “You judge a country by how it treats us prisoners”. What in your opinion can be done by the UK government to improve the system?
Look at Norway. Okay, they have conjugal visits. It’s got the lowest repeat offender crime rate in Europe. It’s got the best economy, although across the board that is. However, people are less likely to re-offend after doing bird out there than they are in England. So, what are they doing right that we’re doing wrong? This country is so inhumane. Lock them up, bang them up and beat them with sticks. Put them in the seg. There’s so many rules in England prisons that are just… to be a prison officer in England, it’s nine weeks or something like that. Might have gone up, might have gone down now, but it’s not much more than that. In Argentina, to be a prison officer FOUR years, you get a degree in that time in England. Phil, the screw I mentioned earlier… Someone would be kicking off at the door going “I’m going to fu*king smash your head in”. He’d go “Look, I’ll tell you what, get in your cell. If you wanna smash my head in tomorrow morning when you wake up, smash my head in then aye, but have the night to think about it, good night”. Shut the door, on him (laughs). Other members of staff would go, “staff, staff”. Next thing you know, you’re getting wrapped up and taken to the seg. It’s how you deal with people. We do not deal with people how we should do in this country. Giving them TVs, they just become mongs. Not very nice word, but become vegetables. The days when you used to play cards, Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble, or learn to read an instrument, or learn to read and bloody write, okay? Instead of click, click, click, click, click, click and becoming a vegetable. You bang someone up for 30 years or 40 years – I accept some crimes may be considered that they are needed for that. But you bang a young kid up who shot someone because he’s had a gun at 16 or 18 or 19 or 20. Believe me, I still think he’s immature in the ways of life. You might give that kid 30 or 40 years. What are you doing to that lad in giving them hope on horizon to be released back in this community? Vegetables, post-traumatic stress, bang on the spice, bang on the heroine, bang on whatever, costing us fortunes, can’t work, don’t wanna go work. Many other associated problems with that. That comes from what I call the English criminal justice system. And I do not believe it is working at all. Giving people TVs and putting them behind the door for long periods of time is not constructive for the brain. Whereas we should be looking at Norway and Sweden and other countries and saying: what are they doing right that we are definitely doing wrong? Why do we follow America? Why do we do the ETS course, the Essential Thinking Skills it’s called? After 10 years of that being in America and Canada, I think it started in Canada they wrote to say it was ineffective and it doesn’t work. And then we were doing it in England. 10 years after they said it don’t work but we followed suit and then we had to do it. I had to do it twice and I’ll tell you what that consists of… You are screaming in my face, alright? I’ve cut you up in a car by mistake. I’ve come to a turning, oh shit I want to go in there. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. You’re going nuts. You’ve got the women and the kids in the car. I’m in the car on my own, don’t matter, whatever. But you’re going nuts for some reason. You’re following me. This is a red flag situation, what have I got to do? “Alright mate, alright mate, alright mate”. I’ll get out of the car, you’re coming at me. Red flag situation. “Come on mate, come on mate”, but you’re coming at me to hit me. You are supposed to talk your way out of that. Or run. Well, let me tell you, if you’re in my face and you’re coming past there (holds fist up), you’re getting that. What anybody would do. But that’s considered bad behaviour. There’s many situations in life where you cannot talk people down. It’s a red flag situation and it’s red. Which means it’s red for a reason. It’s gone past green, it’s gone past amber. It’s fu*king red. Give it some thought. But you’re not meant to, you’re meant to say “Oh. What skills have I learned in this course to get me out of this?” None! Gelignite and dynamite, take your pick, because you’re going to sleep if you come anywhere near me mate, or anywhere near my kids, or anywhere near my car, when you’re punching the winder screen so I won’t get out of the car because I don’t want to get in an altercation with you, the kids are screaming in the car. I’ve had that by the way, I’ve had it, and it didn’t go down well for the person in my passenger driver’s side window at all. I had to get out of the car, when I got out of the car he was trying to punch me, he went to sleep very quickly, and I left him asleep. In fact, I run him over. I’ve knocked him out, I’ve got in the car and went straight over him, and I hadn’t done a single thing wrong. At all, I was sitting in the car, stationary, geezers come running up towards me, vroom, vroom in his car, and I’m like “alright mate”, reverse back to let him through, he’s got out of the bleeding car. A great big lump! What have I done to this geezer? And there’s two of us in the car by the way and two kids. He was a big lump, I must accept that. I probably look like a little baby face at the time. Which I did, I looked like a little college-looking boy from the countryside. I used that expression a lot. That would have been considered a red flag situation. And bad behaviour by me if I was out on licence for putting him to sleep. It would have been bad behaviour running him over, I accept that. But putting him to sleep in my defence with one punch, would still be considered bad behaviour. I consider it a fu*king good punch (laughs).
If you were PM for the day, what would you change?
Immigration. Straight away, I’d make internment, open the army camps. Every single refugee that comes over on a boat put them straight into internment. Make them sign up to do a two-year course to go to war for us. You want to be part of this country. Go to war. Not on the front line, but operational support. We’ll give you a wage, we’ll train you, we’ll teach you a structure, we’ll teach you discipline, learn the language. And you can be a support network to the soldiers that are going to war. So, internment straight away. I’d put the navy in the channel. Why aren’t they in the channel now? Get in the channel. Round em up, bang em up. Not bring them into the country and let them go out and commit crime, rape, bring drugs in, get a house, get signed up, put them in hotels, costing us millions. Put them to work! You wanna come over to this country? Well, let’s see if you’ll wanna come in the first instance, if you knew you was coming over here to this, they wouldn’t come. They’d stay where they are. But you come over here, you’re going in the army. That’s what I would do, straight away. I’d reduce the sentences. I’d change the prison system. Dramatically. I’d make them so that you go to work, you have something to look forward to in terms of your family coming in, having your family in for the weekend in an area in the prison where you’ve got your kids for the night or the day or the weekend. I know you’re going to have contraband, but if you have any suspicion of being involved in drugs, you don’t get that at all. And believe me, staff know who’s bringing in drugs and who’s serving it up. It’s a fact. Because cons are on the gear, they’re talking about it. If they think they’re not, that they’re going unknown, then they’re fools. Because the prison knows everything about who’s doing what pretty much. So I’d work out a scheme where you will definitely not do that, but you can earn money in prison to provide for your family, teach them skills such as making modular manufacturing for instance. You look at the industry that’s going to now, make materials that can be used in the industry that we need in this country to build homes, but they don’t do nothing like that. It’s minimal. You might have a workshop doing… 15 painters teaching them how to paint. Have ‘em painting made-up walls that you can prefabricated walls that get put together to make a house. Have them painting them, spraying them or whatever. There’s lots of work to be given to the prisoners where they’d earn a living. Germany used to put a fraction of a person’s wage away, so when they go home, they’ve got a nice few quid, a nice few quid to go rent a house or buy a car. That’s fact. That was in 1991 when I went away for the kidnapping on remand. The German prisoner told me that then. I thought, really? Not having to get your family to keep sending you money in all the time? And they might be on benefits, like, well, I bought a house when I was away, actually. Yeah, I went and bought a house, so I had money, you know. There weren’t many people in that position, my age, 21 at the time. So that’s one of the things I would change. I’d definitely change how long you’ve got to be a prison officer for. I’d definitely change the nicking system. If you’re on the dole and you can’t find work, then I’m going to give you work and it’ll be working for the government. And you will be painting walls that have got graffiti on them, going around the streets with a dustman, but you will do a number of days’ work for the money you get. And if you don’t go to work, then you won’t get your money. Simple. Is that a stupid idea? But na, they’re having people sitting at home doing fu*k all. And sorry for all those people, I’m offending, but it would make a better country and give our kids a little bit more backbone, a little bit more respect. Not sponging. I mean, we’re all sponges. We never used to be! A working nation years ago. So… I think that’s enough anyway, isn’t it? I could go on all day there.
It’s interesting to hear about it, it’s interesting to talk about, the country needs a cleanup.
It definitely needs a cleanup. It’s a small country that we’re having invaded. And we’re releasing rapists and murderers and drug importers and people are bringing guns into the country. I see the prison landings change dramatically when we opened the European borders. People coming in for human trafficking, they’re driving through the borders with a boot full of guns and getting the king’s ransom for it, where they come from. That happened a lot. Why do you think Little Boy Blue, the film, the kid that got shot. 16-year-old, nine-year-old kids with guns? That’s because we opened the European borders. Human trafficking, again, down to the European borders. Not good.
In your case, you must be very careful to avoid being recalled again. Do you find that difficult? One mistake and you could be back.
Difficult when people owe you money and they keep sticking their fingers up to you. Because normally I’d get them, go around there and see them and I’d say, well, I’ll tell you what, I make life very difficult for them. If they owed me money, legitimate money, of course. But these people owe me money for is legitimate deals that are signed in the solicitors. And going like that to me (sticks fingers up). I’d have proper give that person a good hiding to begin with. And because he knew I’d give him a good hiding; they wouldn’t knock me. But now they know I can’t give them a good hiding. They can knock you. So who’s the arsehole out of us? Me or them? Where there’s millions of other people who would do what I do. Oh, they’re not knocking me for money. “My family need to eat. I’ve worked hard for that money”. They’d go round there and confront the person, wouldn’t they? Firstly, in the first instance, it wouldn’t happen because they didn’t have a leverage to do that to me. It’s very difficult in that people can make accusations. I can say things like, as a fellow that shot me years ago. And I say, yeah, I want to fu*king fight you. I want to fight you. But I’ll fight you in the ring. And we fight for charity. I will hurt you. I will punish you over a long period of time. I will break your ribs. I will bash your face up. I won’t knock you spark out for the first few rounds because I want to really pummel your face and pummel your body. They might see that as a bit sadistic, but you shot me. So I’ve had a lot of time to think about you gobbling off when you’ve got loads of coke up your nose, telling people you’re going to shoot me. Right, because he shot me before. And I get Osmond warnings by the police that this alarming for some people, Osmond warning means a police warning – you’re going to be shot or you’re life’s in immediate danger. So, for that, they could say, well, that Kevin, that’s aggressive behaviour. Well, hold on a minute. What do you want me to do? Do you want to come round for tea and cakes? And we’ll have a little chat about this. When the geezers actually a known asshole in the area, he’s had quite a few beatings here and there. People have left him for almost not dead, but in a bad way because of his behaviour as a person. So for me, saying I like to fight him, or if I, when I overturn my conviction, I bump into him. Say “Hello, shake my hand”. No, I won’t be saying that to him. But by saying what I’m saying to you now, it can be seen as I am not rehabilitated. I’m rehabilitated in that I don’t want to go back to prison. I’m rehabilitated in that I do charity work, voluntary, and I love doing it. And that outside of this room, I bump into people and they meet me and say “What a lovely, pleasant young man”. I won’t say too much of the “young”, I don’t wanna milk that too much, but a nice man that doesn’t give across any violence, he’s friendly, completely different to this interview. However, I’ve got it in me to be violent. That violence is now controlled in that I don’t want to go back to prison. But if someone threatens me or comes at me, threatening me and then wants to put violence onto me, then I will defend myself, and if I use too much force in defending myself, I will go back to prison. I got put in the block once in Whitemoor, I had a fight with two brothers, one was a great big lump, one was a dangerous little Yorkshire Terrier, no doubt about it. I didn’t leave ‘em look too well, just had a straightener with them in the toilets, two of them. I went to the seg for 17 days, and I went on a 28-day lay-down to Belmarsh Unit, and then I come back to the prison, and I walked onto the wing, this is no word of a lie, I’m coming on the ones, and there’s three spurs, people would look down, “who’s coming, who’s coming in?”. They all started cheering! It was like, we’d won the FA Cup or we’d won the World Cup and I swear, screws thought it was going off and the screws said to me, “Kevin, I’ve never seen that before. Fu*king hell”. They didn’t know what was going down, they said. Because of the injustice of me being sent away when I didn’t even want to fight. Geezer was going off his head and at me, so I was like, “No, calm down, calm down. You said you want to train with us, you’re taking too long, we’ve got to set hour, get in here, get on with your workout. You’ve jumped in with us, so come on then. We’ve had to ask two or three times to get a move on and then you’ve got nuts and started swearing at me”, and I said, “Look, don’t keep swearing at me”. He said “No problem”, I went into the hall, I went into his brother, I said, “Look, he’s got nuts around here”, fu*king 19 stone, great big bodybuilder, “You better have a word with him. He’s swearing his nuts off at me”. And then at the end of the gym, I went “Oi, listen, you ever swear at me like that again, I said, we’re going to have to go in the changing rooms”. And his other brother said, “Well, if he goes in there, Kevin then I’ll come in there”, I said, “No problem, I’ll have the pair of yer”. I walked straight in there, turned around, bang, he went down, the other one went in, bang, I spun on my toes, it went like that for a little while, he went over, he went over, he got up, he went over, he went over, someone jumped on me, I got a punch on the nose, it’s a tiny little pin-prick, nose was bleeding. Anyway, I went to the seg. Squeak McCann, he’s dead now, love squeak. I came back, he goes, “Kevin, fu*king hell, I don’t know what you hit ‘em with, but they looked like I’d been hit by a bus.” (laughs). It was just the old gelignite and dynamite. I went to the block for that, for defending myself, so it’s very difficult. It’s hard really, when you’re not an asshole.
Say for instance a woman was getting pestered on a train – I’m sitting there and thinking “Oh God, I wanna say something”, I’m biting me lip, and that young or old lady is getting harassed or there’s drunk kids that are there being right pain in the asses, I will say something. I’ll say “Come on lads, give it a rest will yer? Come on lads you’ve had a good time, let’s not ruin it aye”, in that manner, but they normally turn around and be quite aggressive. Or they may be aggressive. Or say they have, my approach would be a lot different to, “Well, now I’m fu*king telling you, pack it in”. You’ve got palms open. “All right, lads, you had a good night? Come on, leave the old lady alone, or leave the young girl alone. You horny little ba*tard”. And laugh at them like that. But some of them take offence, and say “Who do you think you are?”. They got a blade in their pocket or something? So, very difficult.
And what about the Osmond mornings? When did you last get an Osmond morning? And did they worry you?
No, I carry on doing the same. I go to the same places where people and I go every week. I do the same charity work. I get announcements where I’m going to be, guest appearances, public speaking, all sorts of things. No one’s ever shot me or tried to shoot me outside since I’ve come out of prison. Four people were asked to kill me in prison and every one of them come up and told me they’d been asked to kill me, which was pretty decent of them. One, because they said, “We like you Kevin, you’re good, you’re a nice fella”. Two, “Because we don’t want you to find out because then you think we’re plotting us and then we might have a problem”. I’m like, fu*k you know what I mean, either way. Do they worry me? I’d be a fool to say that if you didn’t give it some consideration and was blasé about it, I’d be a fool. So, I’ll take every threat seriously, keeps you on your toes. Would I drink in say a certain pub, which is a known area for where I might bump into someone that I’d love to have a punch up with in a ring or for charity? No, I wouldn’t, because then I’m asking for trouble for someone to sit and plot me. So I do think about where I’ll go because I don’t want to go back to prison. The Osman warnings, no, I’ve had loads of people tell me they’re going to kill me over the years. When I’ve been on the door “I’ll fu*king come back and shoot you”. “Alright mate, no problem”. Yeah, we’ll have a look for cars pulling up, be a fool if you didn’t, but I’ve had that loads of times. But a lot of time at the minute, it’s either down to the assholes that put me in prison, they don’t like me doing podcasts like this or radio interviews or paper interviews. Highlighting that got police informers in my back and putting the paperwork in there in relation to the same. They don’t like that, they want me shut up. So that is always evident and it’s always going to be there. Mind you, they’re under pressure themselves at the minute. People calling them grasses in prison and doing sirens when they come onto the wings and things like that. They’re getting a bit of their own punishment now. But does it worry me? It doesn’t worry me. What worries me is other people being hurt as a result of people trying to get to me. If that happens, then that’s very bad.
When was the last Osman warning you received?
A couple of years ago. I got took off a plane for an Osman warning, and then I got another one where I was living. It was the darkest – I lived in a barn in a right dark area. I had to go there past all bushes and that. Loved it, and I never moved. I thought “I’m staying here. I like this place” (laughs). So, did it worry me that much? No, it never!
How does the conviction against your name impact your everyday life, considering you haven’t yet won the appeal?
Massively. Yeah, massively. The mother of my children absolutely abuses that. I got told two days ago by the police that there was no further action to be taken in relation to stalking my ex. Do you know what the stalking of my ex was? Turning up at her work and her premises when my son was meant to be handed over to me on a court-ordered date. And she told me he was ill, and she was ill. I get down there in a Batman Lamborghini, beautiful it was. I went down there and that to pick him up. Told him I was coming down there to pick him up in it. And she phoned me on Thursday, said, “Coopers ill, he’s come home from school Friday ill. I’ve been ill since Thursday”. I said, “Well, I’ll bring him down to get-well card, it’s on my designated date, just let him know that his daddy’s thinking of him. He might be better by tomorrow morning, hey”. “No, Kevin”, he didn’t reply to me. “I’m coming down soon”, no reply. I get down there. She’s at work in her hairdressers. All right, so much for her being ill. My son’s been taken out of the country by his nan. Yeah, she reported me to the police for stalking. But I told the judge six or something months before that I was gonna get a court order, and that I was going to hire a private detective to find out if she was still seeing a gentleman called Harry Jones who had previously, my son said, “Yeah, he says, you’re stupid, daddy, and he shouts and smacks me. He smokes big green cigarettes, throws them on the floors and the birds eat them and die”. I said, “Does he really?”, “Yes, he does, daddy”. I said, “What do you want me to do about it?” He said, “Just punch him, daddy”. For a little boy who’s loved at school and he used to cuddle me and squeeze me like something was wrong, but he couldn’t tell me. And I was to say to my mates and my family, he’s trying to tell me something. So, I told the judge. And the judge said, “Well, come back to court, I don’t think blah, blah, blah, would like to have someone following her, Mr. Lane?” I said, “Well, what options do I have? It’s to safeguard my son”. The police investigated it, seen that I only went down there when I was meant to have my son. I wasn’t stalking her, but that’s what she does, goes to the police all the time. It’s terrible.
How is the appeal going?
Brilliant. So, I’m lodging my application. I’ll be attaching my book to the application and the investigations on there. For instance, there was another investigation when this paperwork came to light that got me downgraded.
And we went straight to the Court of Appeal, we circumvented the Criminal Case Review Commission and the judge said to the CPS, “We’re not interested in your views, just your findings”. So, Hertfordshire Police were instructed to conduct the investigation. I thought, really? Two police officers that had retired were given the job, who came out of retirement. And I said this, I said “They’re gonna get retired police officers to do this and they’re going to go back into retirement.” I said this before they were even told who would be doing it. These police officers that was instructed went into the evidence in the case. Twenty days after doing that they came back to the Crown Prosecution Service and said there was a conflict of interest. One of them had been tutored by Spackman for two years and one of them had worked on a number of high-profile cases with him. They were colleagues of him, conflict of interest. And then he went back into retirement and I was saying “Well surely you knew that. You should have made that known before you got into the paperwork”. There’s stuff like that in the book. The Panorama programme – my appeal will be focusing on their findings because you cannot second guess what you think or the next person thinks of that evidence. Was that damning for me? Well, I believe it was damning for me being told I gripped a gun in the bag. The same gun that the deceased was killed with – the same type of gun. And the law used to be Pendleton but that’s been superseded now by another one. And I think that undermines my conviction as well as a number of other factors. So I’m very very confident that my conviction is going to be squashed. Maybe I’m wrong but put yourself in the shoes of the domain of a jury member. Do you think that’s damning in evidence what they were told? That I’d gripped a gun in a bag and then Panorama turned around and said it was all rubbish. Would that be damning in your eyes if you as a jury member?
The evidence would be damning which is questionable, right? If that’s what you mean?
It’s very questionable in that if you was told that that was factual evidence by a prosecution expert that I’d gripped a gun in a bag and it was the same type of gun that killed the deceased. That’s damning in my considered opinion. Then when you find out that it turns out to be absolute rubbish and the expert wasn’t qualified to give that evidence, I think it’s damning. So, let’s see what the Court of Appeal or the Criminal Cases Review Commission think of that.
How many people do you want answers from?
The Court of Appeal, not guilty. That’ll answer everything, won’t it? That’s all I want.
So, the appeal… if it goes in your favour, how will that change your life?
I’ll buy an island somewhere, go live in a part of the world where we’ll be safe from a nuclear war, probably go to Argentina, buy an island over there, come and go as I want, come back to England when I want, and live the rest of my life happily. Leave something in the community for people. I’d like to buy a piece of land in a community centre there, self-sufficient with solar panels or whatever it takes to run it and have a youth club for kids to go to that is run by mentors – you’re not coming in here to puff and all the rest of it. Get them doing things like canoeing, camping, we used to do so much of that when I was a kid in the community, all the community centres have gone.
Get kids doing things that they like, like dancing “You like dancing?” Let’s have some lessons in here for the kids. Whatever they want to do, find something that the kids like to do and get them into it. I want to do something like that. And get the film finished by the Lennox Brothers. That’s out there at the minute. That’s been looked at. Great film. So that’s been looked at at the moment. Would it change my life any further to that? Just so I can turn around and go “I told you a lot, didn’t I? Who’s coming to the pub?” (laughs). And I’d like to buy a few people some houses. There’s a lot of people out there that need some money from me. I would like to give Will some money. I’d like to give somebody else some money that I took away a few years ago – they didn’t deserve it. Yeah, and a few other people that are needed.
Will it make up for the time that you’ve lost or will there always be resentment or anger?
No. It won’t make up for it. But you can’t look back can you, you’ve got to look forward. If I carry the rucksack on my back full of bricks, it’d get heavy after a while, wouldn’t it? Take that rucksack off and put it down. I done that years ago. And I thought that you cannot keep focusing on why me, why me, why me. Pat Purcell said to me, “This is your life now, make it the best life you can”. I thought, actually, you’re quite right. So I did. And I went forward in that manner, which is my personality.
What are the three most important things in your life right now?
Family. Friends. And all that I’m doing in relation to public media. I could say my charity work, but when I say all the things that I’m doing now in relation to my conviction, charity work that came about as my conviction, that I set about doing it myself when I come home. There’s so many avenues in relation to my conviction of things that I do that are really important. So, a lot of things that are associated to my conviction is good. My family and very close friends.
What about passions? You know, what are you passionate about?
Shagging (laughs). I’ve got a bit of catching up I do. No, I do like to just, I just like being around nice people. It’s so nice to be around nice people and have a laugh, isn’t it? I talk to people on trains, I talk to people on buses, I talk to people down the street, I have a laugh with people and I just find that really nice and that’s living. I don’t want to exist, I want to live for the years I’ve got left.
What about the fame side of things? Obviously you’ve been on the TV, Channel 4 – Banged Up, and so on, and people recognise you now. How do you find the fame side of things?
Alright, really, and people when they meet me, I keep smiling because people, they go like this (turns head), they look again. I just smile as if I’ve seen them looking “What the f*ck you smiling at mate?” (laughs). I’m finding it warming. I’ve got an evening coming up with Kevin Lane, Peter Fury, Kenny Collins and Matt Legg who fought Anthony Joshua, lots of other celebrities there. Nick Yarris, he was on death row, in America, and he asked for his sentence to be brought forward because he wasn’t going to be punished and tortured anymore within the criminal justice system in America. Anyway, he sacked his legal team, sacked his council, and the next thing you know for some mad reasons, some DNA come along, proved he didn’t rape the woman and didn’t kill her, and he never met her. He was released He’s going to be there, the Banged Up crew, a few other people, celebrities. So there’s a lot of other stuff really. I get invited everywhere, really do. People see me. I’ve got 300 people there and have sold over half the tickets now. Someone paid 250 quid to sit next to me. I said “Is a bird or a bloke?” (laughs). I wanna make sure. Easy tiger. Stuff like that, you know, I just like to laugh. So, I’ve got a lot to look forward to. Just enjoy your life. It’s one life, live it. It’s only a dress rehearsal, is it? So you’ve got to get on with it. I’ve got that tattooed on there, OLLI, One Life, Live It. I’ve got a tattoo on this arm, CODE – Chivalry, Honour, Decency, and Empathy. Honour is spelt with an H (laughs). So, I changed it to Oath (laughs).
What about your film? There’s some exciting news about a film isn’t there?
Great film. The Lennox Brothers that has been written. So New Amsterdam had it, and they’re busy for a year, but they said, “Can we be involved in the production and the filming of this? Very good script, but we are absolutely tied up for this year”. I want it done before then. I want it on the TV in a year. So, it’s currently with someone at the minute who is looking at it. Although they’re not in the film industry, they’re venture capitalists. The reason why I’ve done that is because then there’s more money. But even so, that’s just a peripheral. I’ve been asked if they can have a look at it because they’re friends of a person. But it will be going out into the industry once these have looked at it. And there’s a lot of interest, a lot of interest. I’ve had a few producers ask, I’ve had been asked recently on two occasions if they can put it into production. And I said “no”, for different reasons. I actually said no. Most people go why? Well, there’s reasons associated to that. Not in a negative format of course, but for other reasons. So, the film will be happening.
This question is actually from my friend when he was asking this one. Kai, he asked, how has the world changed since you went to prison compared to coming out into society again?
Christ. The cars, Bluetooth, sat-nav, banks, and memorable information, going into hotels with a card, cashless places now, foreigners, Johnny foreigners in the country. I went to Hull on my first escorted town visit. I see funny-coloured hair, big bumper trainers, people talking all foreign languages. It’s good for the country to have a certain degree of that, of course, I understand that. It’s nice to have culture, but not overwhelming culture, which I did see in many areas of certain populations, and certain countries. They overpopulate the area, then they become a community amongst themselves, and then they segregate themselves.
You’ve got Bradford, places like that, other parts of the country that are certain origins there, that have become their own sort of community. We don’t want that in this country because then what you’re doing, you’re isolating communities again, creating divides.
I believe that you can’t have that. We are a small island, and it doesn’t matter where you go, there’ll always be conflict with different nationalities, as well as people getting on and marrying into that. Do the government think by bringing in other nationals from other countries, eventually everyone will be married into the same, and everyone will get on? No they won’t, because with other nationalities comes their crimes from their countries, and that ruins a country, as we’re seeing now in certain areas.
And talk to us about your life and how you envisage it in the future. Are you going to move to an island? What is your dream and how does the story end?
Hopefully, I’ll be going to an island. I’m going to buy some houses for people in this country. Set them up so they don’t have to worry no more about moving out of that house, funding the bills because they’ll be self-sufficient. So I want to do some good. It’s always been my dream to go and have my own island. And have people coming and going as they want, interview people to come on the island for doctors, small community, grow your own vegetables, animals running around wild, not wild but free, shall I say, free community. But with people who I want on the island to live with us and everybody get on, a real community, no worries. And with no worries, I think it will become hardly any stress and you’re living an enjoying life for what’s around you and who’s around you. That’s living. And then come back when you want to go and see a show in London or come back and see your family for a month or something or your friends and go back again or come for a week or two and then go back again. Go back to what I would call civilisation, real civilisation where you’re living amongst your loved ones and nature. And then die an old man, healthy with loads of kids. I want to keep reproducing. I want to have a few more children if I can, of course. But they say the older the bullock, the harder the horn (laughs). I don’t know if you get that folks, but you know bulls have got hard horns. They get old, so it gets harder. I don’t know if that’s true, of course. I’m just going by what I’ve heard. I’d like to have a few more kids like Rod Stewart, go on, Rod, use your rod, Rod (laughs). He has, aint he? So that’s about it really. Then whatever else comes along, just enjoy myself.
Fitted Up and Fighting Back
Well, Kevin, thank you very much. It’s been very interesting to talk to you. I really appreciate your time.
Thank you very much. So my name is Kevin Lane and I was convicted of contract killing. And that’s who I am. And that’s who I’m not going to be when I overturn my conviction. So, at the minute, I have to live by that. But you’ve seen the person in front of you. It’s not quite what people make out, is it? Thank you for the interview.
