Biker gang guilty of M40 murder

Creighton (left) and Turner (right) shot at Mr Tobin while Garside drove Enlarge Image

Two more members of a biker gang have been found guilty of murdering a Hells Angel on the M40 in Warwickshire.

Gerry Tobin, 35, from Mottingham, south-east London, was shot as he returned from the Bulldog Bash biker festival in August last year.

Karl Garside, 45, and Ian Cameron, 46, both of Coventry, were found guilty by a jury at Birmingham Crown Court.

Four other men have already been found guilty while a seventh pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing.

During the trial the jurors heard that Mr Tobin was targeted by the South Warwickshire chapter of The Outlaws, a rival gang to the Hells Angels, because he was a "fully patched", meaning fully-initiated, member of the Hells Angels.

Two bullets

Prosecutor Timothy Raggatt said the incident was "thoroughly ruthless" but executed with great skill and planning.

Two bullets were fired at him from a Rover car which pulled up alongside him on the M40.

Karl Garside and Cameron were both cleared of possessing a shotgun.

Hells Angel Gerry Tobin was shot on the M40 last year 'Angel' targeted by rival gang Victim of a global biker feud

Simon Turner, 41, of Nuneaton, and Dane Garside, 42, of Coventry, were convicted of Mr Tobin's murder and possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life on Monday.

Malcolm Bull, 53, of Milton Keynes, and Dean Taylor, 47, of Coventry have also been convicted of murder and a firearms offence.

Sean Creighton, 44, of Coventry, admitted murder and firearms offences before the trial began.

Between them the seven men made up the south Warwickshire chapter of the Outlaws gang.

They will all be sentenced on Friday.

The court heard two shots were fired at Mr Tobin, described in court as a law-abiding citizen, from two different guns as he rode home from the festival, held at Long Marston, near Stratford-upon-Avon.

The Outlaw members went "scouting" for a victim

Creighton, the South Warwickshire Outlaws' president, and Turner, the sergeant-at-arms, shot at him from the Rover car.

One bullet lodged in Mr Tobin's skull, killing him almost instantly.

Another bullet passed through a mudguard on his rear wheel. The bullet has not been found.

The killing followed three days of "scouting" by the gang members.

'Ruthlessly planned'

Creighton, Turner and Dane Garside waited in a layby near junction 15 of the M40, near Warwick, before selecting the Hell's Angel for "execution".

The court heard lorry driver Dane Garside, a father-of-seven, was at the wheel of the Rover and put the car in position.

Three more defendants, Karl Garside, Taylor and Cameron, acted as back-up, patrolling the M40 in a white Range Rover.

Bull, driving a Renault Laguna, was also in the area when Mr Tobin was killed.

This was not a random killing but the result of a cold-blooded, premeditated, almost military plan Chief crown prosecutor for Warwickshire, David Robinson Mother's tribute to killed biker

Mobile phone evidence proved the people in the Rover contacted the "units" in the Range Rover and the Renault telling them to "stand down" moments after the murder.

All seven then returned to the Coventry area and the Rover was set alight and left on a country lane.

David Robinson, chief crown prosecutor for Warwickshire, said the killing was a "carefully and ruthlessly planned ambush".

He added Mr Tobin was not targeted for personal reasons but because he was a member of rival gang.

'Agonising suffering'

"This was not a random killing but the result of a cold-blooded, premeditated, almost military plan which was put into place with great precision," he said.

The prosecution case was that even though two men fired the shots, seven men carried out his murder in a joint enterprise, each playing an important part before, during and after his death.

After the case Mr Tobin's fiancee, Rebecca Smith, said she wanted to thank her family and members of the Hells Angels who had supported and carried her through a "nightmare".

"They have never failed to pick me up when I have been at my lowest," she said.

His mother, Maria Hutton, said: "We are absolutely heartbroken, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually in agonising suffering."

Det Supt Ken Lawrence, who led the investigation, said he had not seen any evidence of remorse from any of the defendants.

"This horrific crime was committed on a busy motorway in the summer.

"That in itself demonstrates the mindset and callousness of these individuals."

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His killers were in the Outlaws biker gang