Smartly dressed and wearing glasses in court, Callum Halpin looked nothing like his wanted poster. One of the UK's most wanted men, he had stayed under the radar for nearly four years after playing a key role in the brutal murder of a much loved dad.
Previously described as being a 'gym goer' with an 'athletic build', Halpin had undergone a dramatic change in appearance when he was dragged back to his home city to face justice. Stood in the witness box in the imposing surroundings of Minshull Street Crown Court's oak panelled courtroom, his new bookish style, with long, grown out hair, was not fooling anyone.
The reality was depicted on the court's TV screens, for all to see. Because CCTV footage captured the murder of Luke Graham, a 31-year-old smalltime drug dealer known as 'Tank'.
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The gunman, 32-year-old Wade Cox, a rival drug dealer, unloaded a hail of bullets on a residential street where children were playing nearby. One bullet hit Graham in the shoulder, a wound which would prove fatal.
Cox's attentions were also trained on Anton Verigotta, a friend of Graham's who he had met in prison. He blasted Verigotta in the legs. He just about managed to escape with his life as he desperately fled.
The catalyst of the terrifying crime, as gangland feuds so often are, was drugs. Graham and Verigotta were small time dealers who had encroached on the turf of a rival outfit.
The pair had been lured to a crack house in Ashton-under-Lyne, Tameside, before Cox burst out of the property and unleashed terror on a warm, Wednesday afternoon. Amy Clowes's children were playing outside when she saw balaclava clad men burst out of the house. She witnessed Cox murder Luke Graham.
"My only intention was to get my children back in the house," she told Halpin's trial. "I was screaming and shouting at my kids to get them back in the house." For one of GMP's most senior detectives, it was an appalling example of when the feuds of the criminal underworld spill out into everyday life.
"Very, very rarely does this kind of thing happen like this," Detective Chief Inspector Liz Hopkinson previously told the M.E.N. "So much organised crime occurs in the shadows away from most civilian life. "They don't want to crossover into our lives, and certainly don't want to crossover into mine, because that gets attention.
"2018 was a very hot summer. There were little girls running around playing in their princess dresses. It's just absolutely awful that there were children playing in the street while this happened.
"It was just one of those incidents which did creep over into that civilian side. Mainly organised criminals largely target people of a similar stature - they are not going after members of the public.
"But Wade Cox in particular wasn't a complicated or intelligent character. He was really careless and he certainly wasn't any kind of leader. He behaved in an uncontrolled way."
She said of Graham and Verigotta: "They were not an organised crime group - really they were an unknown quantity. The first we knew about it was when the murder occurred."
Within a matter of hours of the shooting, on June 13, 2018, police had the shooter Wade Cox's name and a wanted appeal was circulated across Greater Manchester. Cox was duly caught and put on trial for murder and wounding with intent. Following a trial in 2019, Cox was found guilty of both counts and jailed for life, to serve a minimum of 36 years.
Jordan Atkinson, Jak West and Connor Cornforth, were also accused of murder at the same 2019 trial, but were found not guilty. The trio were instead convicted of other offences.
Jordan Atkinson, 30, of Stamford Drive, Stalybridge, was found guilty of encouraging or assisting an indictable offence and was jailed for eight years. West, 32, of Parrenthorn Road, Prestwich; Cornforth, 31, of Calder House, Old Mill Wharf, Droylsden; and Dodd, 31, of Easton Road, Droylsden, were all found guilty of assisting an offender.
Sentenced at the same time as Cox, West was jailed for 42 months, Cornforth received 37 months; and Dodd was locked up for 30 months. The trial heard Atkinson had helped Cox, including by going with him to collect a stolen vehicle. West and Cornforth assisted Cox to avoid detection in the aftermath, knowing he had shot Graham.
Dodd also helped but was unaware of the shooting. Cox's life term was one of the longest murder sentences to be handed down in recent times.
Speaking of how the underworld feud spilled over into everyday life, Det Ch Insp Hopkinson added: "It is rare, but that's why I think that his sentence was so high. We can't allow this to happen and that's why we put in so much resources to bring as many of the group to justice."
In July 2019, after the sentencing hearing had concluded, the case was over as far as the court was concerned. But the hard work would continue for detectives hunting Callum Halpin.
The case came back to prominence in March 2021, when it featured on the BBC documentary show The Detectives: Fighting Organised Crime. Documentary makers were given access to the investigation team and shocking CCTV footage was released for the first time. Then, in January last year, the hunt for Halpin went up another gear.
The National Crime Agency, often dubbed the UK's version of the FBI, named Halpin as one of the UK's 12 most wanted fugitives. Detectives believed he may have been in Spain or Turkey.
Four months later came the dramatic news that Halpin had been arrested in Portugal. Halpin was detained by Portuguese on May 2 last year at an address near Vilamoura in the Algarve.
On its website, the Portuguese tourist board describes Vilamoura as 'modern, lively and sophisticated'. It has 'excellent hotels and tourist villages' as well as 'golf courses of international repute'. One of the 'largest leisure resorts in Europe', it offers a 'complete package for those looking to spend some relaxing days by the sea'.
Within days, Halpin swapped that tranquil environment for the less salubrious surroundings of an English jail. And now, with days on the run far behind him, he will have to get used to being locked up for many years to come.
This week, about four-and-a-half years after the shooting, Callum Halpin was found guilty of murder and handed a life sentence, to serve at least 30 years.
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