The complicated jigsaw of events which culminated in the execution-style killing of former Carlton couple John and Joan Stirland features in a new crime documentary narrated by Silent Witness star Emilia Fox. For people in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, the catalogue of crimes which lead to the unassuming and quiet couple being gunned down in their home on the Lincolnshire coast a hot summer's day is all too familiar.
Eighteen years have passed but the memory for residents, councillors, police, the families and local journalists is one they will never forget. When gun crime was a worrying problem across Nottinghamshire, the trail of shocking events here and in Lincolnshire were among them, and have been the subject of a handful of documentaries.
Crime+Investigation channel has recommissioned Workerbee’s Murdertown for a fourth season hosted by Emilia, who also stars as Dr Nikki Alexander on BBC crime drama Silent Witness.
READ MORE: Ex-cop who dealt with the 'prowler' fax the day John and Joan Stirland were executed
In Episode 5 she visits Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire Coast. According to Crime+Investigation's website: "The quiet seaside town of Mablethorpe was an unlikely location for what appeared to be an organised hit on a couple in their 50s. Emilia travels to the Lincolnshire coast to learn about the violent murders of Joan and John Stirland in 2004.
"These were murders that had links to organised crime in Nottingham, and the investigation into the deaths led to the downfall of one of Nottinghamshire's most feared underworld figures."
Episode 5 - to be aired on Sunday, October 9, at 9pm - features Nottinghamshire Live's court reporter and legal affairs correspondent Rebecca Sherdley, who extensively covered the demise of Colin Gunn and his henchmen at their trial, and also the trial of Michael O'Brien, undercover cop Neil Woods, who helped bring down Colin Gunn's drug empire, and former police Inspector Phillip Parkinson, the officer who received a fax that neighbours had seen a prowler in the garden of John and Joan Stirland's bungalow hours before they were shot dead.
The background
Mr and Mrs Stirland had fled to the peaceful seaside town of Trusthorpe, one mile south-east of the town of Mablethorpe, to escape of the horrors of what happened at their Carlton home when a unknown gun-toting moped rider shot out their windows.
Despite their assumed anonymity in Lincolnshire, where no-one knew their past, they were tracked down and shot in cold blood, and the gunmen, two people wearing boiler suits who parked their car on the wide bend of the busy road running by Radio St Peters, where the Stirlands lived, have never been caught.
Three men were convicted of conspiring to murder the Stirlands. A court was to hear how the execution of the couple was a bitter reaction to the death of a young man in Nottingham called Jamie Gunn. Jamie was the nephew of Bestwood crime lord Colin.
The family held Mrs Stirland’s son, Michael O’Brien, responsible for Jamie’s demise after he witnessed his best friend, Marvyn Bradshaw, shot dead in front of him. The official cause of Jamie's death was pneumonia. Mrs Stirland's son Michael O’Brien was later convicted of Mr Bradshaw’s murder.
His imprisonment left his mother and stepfather as the only remaining targets for a revenge attack by Gunn and other members of the Bestwood Cartel crime gang. And the conspiracy was hatched to kill O'Brien's mother and step-father, John and Joan.
READ MORE: Police criticised in verdict at Stirland inquest
No-one was convicted of their murder but, in 2006, Colin Gunn - who was connected to the killing by CCTV and mobile phone records - was sentenced to 35 years for conspiring to murder the Stirlands, while John Russell, of Northcote Way, Bulwell, was jailed for a minimum of 30 years, and Michael McNee of no fixed address, was jailed for at least 25 years, both for the same offence. Colin's brother David Gunn was found not guilty by the jury.
When Colin Gunn was arrested, he told police in his interview that he was just "on holiday" at a caravan park not far from where the killings took place, and that he went there "most weekends".
Speaking on a YouTube video posted earlier this month by Shaun Attwood, another ex-prisoner who now runs his own true crime podcast, David Gunn maintained the innocence of everyone who was put on trial over the murders.
He said: "I had a double murder charge for a thing in Skegness but [I was] totally innocent, every one of us was. But the way they did it, how deceitful they was, they ended up convicting three people...
"John Stirland, lovely bloke, he was one of my best pals, the man who got killed"
"John Stirland, lovely bloke, he was one of my best pals, the man who got killed. So obviously it was nothing to do with me, I didn't know his wife but I knew her family. But it had absolutely nothing to do with none of us."
* In each episode of Murdertown, Emilia visits towns and local communities throughout the country rocked by murder and tragedies, from which the scars persist to this day. Through the testimony of investigating police officers, local journalists, friends and relatives, the series re-tells these shocking incidents and how the lives of those directly affected will never be the same again.
Other crimes and towns feature in series four. They include: Rotherham (to uncover the details of a horrific double murder separated by more than two decades), Swanley (where the murder of Stephen Cameron hit national headlines as one of the first examples in the UK of a road rage killing), Glasgow (where 24-year-old student Karen Buckley went missing whilst on a night out with friends), Peterborough (where, in 1979, a young woman went missing, having last been seen in the city centre.)
READ NEXT:
- The Stirland killings: How a community will never forget the double tragedy
- Former undercover cop opens up on attempt to infiltrate Colin Gunn's empire
- David Gunn on the Stirland killings which jailed brother Colin for 35 years
- When Nottinghamshire's most notorious criminals are due for release from prison
- The killing which led to downfall of an empire...
