Grieving teenager Danielle Cable's hands shook uncontrollably as she delivered the testimony that would bring the man who murdered her fiance to justice.
Aged just 19, in a faint voice the brave young woman told the Old Bailey how her boyfriend Stephen Cameron, 21, stumbled towards her clutching his bleeding chest after a road rage row with gangster Kenneth Noye.
"I saw Steve clutching his chest," she told the jury.
"He said, 'he stabbed me Dan, take his number plate.' I saw blood on his chest. It was dreadful. I was screaming and crying for someone to help me. Then Stephen collapsed on the floor."
Danielle was just 17 when the murder took place on an M25 slip road on May 19, 1996.
But she embarked on a determined bid to bring the thug to justice, travelling to Spain to pick him out and later testifying in court – despite mum Mandy urging her not to.
Such was the perceived danger to her life, that for almost 25 years she has been forced to live in witness protection under an assumed identity.
Career criminal Noye, now 75, stabbed Stephen twice - once in the heart and once in the liver - after cutting in front of his Bedford Rascal van at traffic lights near Swanley, Kent, as Danielle drove.
The villain disposed of his Land Rover Discovery along with the murder weapon, both of which were never recovered.
Noye was flown out by the owner of a helicopter, believed to be gangster John 'Goldfinger' Palmer, from the Bristol area to a golf course in Caen, Normandy, the day after the killing.
Clutching a briefcase stuffed full of cash he flew on in a private jet to Madrid.
Noye was identified by detectives as a possible suspect three days later and a search warrant was executed on his Kent home on June 2.
A few days later he was publicly identified as a suspect in the murder.
Detectives spent the next two years on the manhunt and they were beginning to despair of ever finding Noye when they got the break they desperately needed.
Former Detective Superintendent Nick Biddiss, who led the hunt for Noye after he fled the UK, previously told The Mirror that a tip-off came in to his team that Noye, who had previously stabbed police officer John Fordham to death in 1985 but was cleared of murder, was living in an isolated farmhouse in southern Spain.
He despatched two senior Kent detectives to look for him. Mr Biddiss said: "I went into confidential mode and instructed them to tell no one else where they were going. It was totally against protocol.
"I was in the position where I was sending two officers to a foreign country with no back-up to look for a man who has previously killed an officer on an undercover operation."
A few days later the police chief got a call from his team saying they had identified Noye. But he could not order his arrest as his officers had no authority in Spain.
It was then he made the unprecedented decision to ask Danielle if she would participate in an undercover operation to pick out Noye.
Mr Biddiss said: "I went to see Danielle. I had already warned her that it may well be necessary for her to go out and she was up for it but her mum wasn't."
Mum Mandy instinctively knew her family would be torn apart if her daughter helped.
Mr Biddiss added: "Her attitude, understandably, was, 'Look my daughter has had her life ruined as it is and if she gets involved with the likes of who you are after it's going to ruin her life."
Danielle was onside. She wanted justice and she got on well with Stephen's parents. She was in love with Stephen and wanted to make sure whoever killed him was brought to justice.
"She was coming on to be 19, but she was very brave and an honourable person."
She spent around week with a team of British detectives posing as tourists on the Andalucian coast in 1998.
On August 27, Danielle was taken by a specialist Kent police identification officer to the isolated El Forno restaurant at La Muela, near where he had a villa.
Surveillance detectives had followed Noye and his wife Brenda to the location.
Mr Biddiss said: "It was a patio area where Noye was sitting and Danielle was in the bar with the identification officer.
"He said she was looking around and she froze. She froze, she later told us, because she saw the man and she immediately recognised as the person who had stabbed her fiance to death some two plus years earlier.
"She said, 'The man that killed my fiance is sitting at that table.' She identified Noye.”
The next day Mr Biddis obtained an arrest warrant from Dartford magistrates court and the same evening Spanish officers arrested the crook at the El Campero restaurant.
He was extradited in May 1999 and forced Danielle to relive the attack in court after denying murder.
But the jury rejected his claim it was self-defence and he was jailed at the Old Bailey for life with a recommended minimum of 16 years. He was released in 2019.
Mr Biddiss said: "This man has lived his life by crime, violence threats, doesn't give a damn about anyone other than himself. He left Stephen dying in the gutter giving him no help.
"He has left a trail of devastation. People like him who are career criminals if they commit heinous crimes they shouldn't come out."
As for Danielle, while Noye is free, she is not. She remains in witness protection and is only allowed to see her parents twice a year.
Noye has spoken out for the first time in a new book by Donal MacIntyre and Karl Howman, insisting he is 'no danger' to Danielle.
"She is at no risk from me. I would be happy to assure her of that... It should never have happened," said Noye. "As I walk free, so should she."
Claiming to bear no ill will towards Danielle, Noye said in the book: "She gave honest evidence at the trial. I have no issue with her. I am truly sorry for her loss and I am glad she has moved on with her life. She may not believe me but I do want to say this. I am not a danger to her in any respect.
"I was never a danger to her and there was never a million-pound price on her head, as the police suggested. She should be able to fully enjoy her family and friends because there are no threats to her from me – there never was.
"I am devastated at Stephen’s death and the circumstances around it."
But Mr Biddiss said Danielle, who is now married and has a daughter, will live in fear for the rest of her life.
"Whether it's real, I don't know but Kenneth Noye is a man who has got his tentacles everywhere. She was very brave in what she did," he said.
"It turned out that Danielle's mum was not far wrong when she said if my daughter gets involved she's going to have her life ruined.
"That's what's happened. She's still in witness protection."
- A Million Ways To Stay On The Run: The Uncut Story Of The International Manhunt For Public Enemy No.1 Kenny Noye, by Donal MacIntyre and Karl Howman, is published by Mirror Books and available via Amazon and all good book shops.
