Drug dealer Connor Chapman was found guilty of the murder of Elle Edwards in a botched gang shooting on Christmas Eve last year.
“Wholly innocent” beautician and dental nurse Elle, 26, who had been enjoying a night out with her sister and friends, was struck twice in the back of the head as she sat perched on a raised wooden flower bed outside the Lighthouse pub, Wallasey Village. Five men were also injured, one critically, but all survived.
A jury of seven women and five men came to a unanimous decision this afternoon after three hours and 48 minutes of deliberation, following a three and a half week trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
READ MORE: Elle Edwards latest: Jury retires to consider verdicts in Connor Chapman murder trial
Chapman’s friend Thomas Waring, 20, was convicted of possession of a prohibited weapon, and also assisting an offender by helping Chapman torch the stolen black Mercedes car used to flee the scene.
The court had heard 23-year-old career criminal Chapman, described as “at the heart” of the Woodchurch estate organised crime group, lurked outside the busy pub for nearly three hours before the shooting.
Inside, Elle was recorded on CCTV happily chatting with her friends. At one stage she even left for a period to go to another pub, before dropping her sister Lucy off at home and returning to the Lighthouse.
At 11.47pm, Elle left the pub for a cigarette where she was seen on CCTV chatting to the other victims.
Meanwhile, with his trademark long brown hair and face covered by a hood or balaclava, Chapman was loitering in the car-park. Harrowing CCTV footage, played again and again in the trial as Elle’s family looked on, showed him stepping out from the side of the pub and unleashing 12 shots from a military style Skorpion sub-machine gun while simultaneously backing towards the getaway car.
Elle was seen slumping forwards, instantly unconscious.
The jury heard the astonishingly reckless attack was the “culmination” of a violent, tit-for-tat feud between the Woodchurch group and its rival, a gang based around the Beechwood/Ford estate on the opposite side of the M53 motorway.
Two of the men shot that night, Kieran Salkeld and Jake Duffy, were described as involved in the Beechwood gang and are already serving jail sentences for dishing out a savage beating to a Woodchurch linked criminal, Sam Searson, the day before the shooting.
Salkeld was the most severely injured of the survivors after a bullet penetrated his chest causing internal bleeding and organ damage, while Duffy was wounded in both legs.
Three other men injured by the volley of bullets; Harry Loughran, Liam Carr and Nicholas Speed, all described as “innocent bystanders”, made quicker recoveries.
Duffy, the jury heard, had been spotted in a stolen vehicle later used in the shooting of a man called Kieran Cowley, outside the address of a criminal associate of Chapman called Mason Smith, in Noctorum on December 18.
Another friend of Chapman, Curtis Byrne, was also shot in an attack believed to be related to the feud in Orrets Meadow Road, Woodchurch, on December 3.
Nigel Power, KC, prosecuting, told the jury: “Gun crime often includes criminals shooting at each other. There’s no doubt this is such an event, but of course here, a young, beautiful, unconnected, innocent, life was brutally ended as a direct result of the then ongoing, but for now at least paused, gun feud between the Ford Estate and the Woodchurch Estate.”
Chapman claimed he was at home all night on the evening of the shooting, telling the jury that although he accepted his friend, Byrne, had been shot “he wasn’t angry about it” and had no plan for revenge.
He accepted he was a drug-dealer with a long-list of previous convictions, but told the jury: “I wouldn’t say I’m an expert criminal. I’m not proud of what I’ve done. I’m not trying to portray myself in any kind of way. I’ve not said one good word about myself. I’ve told the truth and nothing but the truth.”
However Mr Power said CCTV evidence showed someone leaving Chapman’s home in Houghton Road, Woodchurch, at 8.31pm and getting into the Mercedes 12 minutes later.
A combination of CCTV and automatic number plate recognition cameras tracked the Mercedes to Wallasey village, where it stayed until the shooting.
Afterwards, the jury heard the car was tracked to Private Drive, Barnston, the home address of his long-term friend Waring.
CCTV from Private Drive showed a figure with long hair walking along and dropping the gun, which skidded along the floor.
A taxi, booked by Waring under a fake name and with a vague pick up point, took Chapman home to Woodchurch at around 5am on Christmas morning.
The pair then took steps to cover up their vile crime by driving in convoy to a remote spot off Grassy Lane, Frodsham, on New Year’s Eve, where the stolen Mercedes was torched.
Chapman told the jury he accepted he had access to the car for weeks before the murder, but claimed it was a “pool car” used by him and others mainly for drug-dealing.
He said a man who called him shortly before he left to travel to Wallasey had arranged to take the car that evening, and sent an underling to pick up the keys.
The jury heard Chapman accepted he burned the car out, but claimed this was after he figured out it had been used in the shooting and because he knew he was “forensically linked” to it.
Waring, who refused to give evidence in what Mr Power called “the ultimate in cowardice”, told his barrister William England to suggest to Chapman that he did in fact travel to Waring’s house after midnight on Christmas Day, effectively shredding his defence.
However Waring’s case was that although his phone was tracked on the journey to burn out the car, someone else was using it and he was not involved.
The jury never heard any more from him.
Much of what Chapman did next was not disputed, the jury heard.
After initially preparing to flee to Santander in Spain via car ferry, Chapman became aware the police were hunting for him when a search warrant was executed and the home of his grandparents in Woodland Road, Woodchurch. In a call from Chapman’s granddad’s phone, a police sergeant asked him to hand himself in for questioning over a “serious” matter, which Chapman refused to do.
Instead, he asked a friend to book a stay for him and his partner in Penllwyn Lodges, North Wales.
Merseyside Police soon got wind their man was over the border and an operation involving plain clothes police officers was executed on January 10 at a Tesco in Newtown.
Although the murder weapon was never recovered, the investigation revealed Chapman’s DNA in a mixed sample on a bullet casing found at the scene and on a red glove recovered from Waring’s home which matched one the gunman was wearing. A single particle of gunshot residue was also present on the glove.
As the verdicts were read, Elle’s family let out sighs of relief, whispered "yes" and her dad, Tim Edwards, punched the air.
Chapman was convicted of Elle’s murder, the attempted murders of Salkeld and Duffy, wounding Mr Loughran and Mr Carr with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and assaulting Mr Speed causing actual bodily harm.
He was also convicted of possessing an prohibited weapon and ammunition with intent to endanger life.
Judge Mr Justice Goose asks the prosecution and defence counsel to “make submissions on whether a whole life order is necessary”.
Chapman and Waring will be sentenced at 2pm tomorrow.
