Clarke, who was rumored to drive a £75,000 Jaguar, laundered money by exporting top-of-the-range cars, of which police have recovered four, a fraction of the number he dealt with. He was a cocaine dealer who made his money by using drug mules to carry cocaine via Jamaica to the United Kingdom.
He was living the life of a high roller and never knew it would come to an end, at least for a moment. He was arrested, charged and sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2004.Clarke has since been released and deported from the United Kingdom, but maintains the limelight in Jamaica.
UPDATE: Owen Clarke aka Roy Fowl was shot and killed in Jamaica on February 22, 2019.
Date - 3rd October 2004
Courtesy of - Guardian Unlimited
Four years of graft lead police to gang leader who led double life in London and Jamaica
Timing was everything, when Detective Sergeant Steve Waller finally got hold of Owen Clarke, aka the King of Bling, aka Father Fowl, Britain's biggest cocaine importer.
Thirty seconds earlier and Clarke's fingerprints would not have been all over the implements he was using to cook up crystals of crack cocaine. Thirty seconds later and he might have escaped through the second floor window he was trying to shimmy out of when police burst in.
Scotland Yard, the national criminal intelligence squad, customs, the FBI, and Jamaican authorities were all involved in Operation Jasle to catch the flamboyant multi-millionaire drugs baron.
Now, Det Sgt Waller, who ran the on-the-ground police unit on Clarke's tail reveals the story behind four years of intelligence-gathering, surveillance and hard graft.I n July 2000, when Operation Trident, Scotland Yard's black gun crime unit was established, officers set about finding out every scrap of information about Clarke. Then they picked off his lieutenants, dismantling his kingdom as they inched closer to the man himself. Finally, they caught Clarke making crack, and that, together with a conviction for supplying cocaine, was enough to jail him for 13 years.
"It was very, very satisfying," admits Det Sgt Waller, a detective of the old school who battled bureaucracy to keep the investigation going. "Not only the cocaine market but the violent activities of the British Link-up Crew [a notorious Jamaican/UK drugs gang] have been severely disrupted. Fewer drugs on the streets, fewer bodies in car boots."
Det Sgt Waller estimates Clarke's reign as head of the British Link-up Crew lasted more than 13 years, a marathon in an underworld. He crafted an empire, using dozens of human "mules" to import multi-million-pound consignments of drugs from Jamaica, by plane, cruise ship and cargo boat, and then hundreds more dealers who sold it all over London and every major English city, from Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester to Bristol and Brighton.
Now, handcuffed on the floor against the fridge in a grimy kitchen in Colindale, north-west London, Clarke was a long way away from the "bling-bling" life he led in Jamaica. It was a parallel existence, alongside his life in a nondescript two-bedroom bungalow in Sudbury, north-west London, with his English wife.
In Jamaica he mixed with pop and sports stars. He owned a multi-million-pound cliff top mansion, drank champagne at £200 a bottle and smoked cannabis joints rolled in £50 notes. He threw huge parties for up to 7,000 people at La Russe, a beachfront nightclub, outside Kingston.
"It was Jamaica's Hollywood," said Det Sgt Waller. "We have videos of these parties where British-based Jamaican gangsters dressed to outdo each other in suits and watches worth tens of thousands of pounds. It was all about status. They would even flick their shoes up to show the price tags. "On one occasion, a lorryload of designer dresses arrived as gifts for all the female party guests. Father Fowl had gold chains dripping off him, and he always made his entrance like a rock star, to wild applause."
Clarke, who drove a £75,000 Jaguar, laundered money by exporting top-of-the-range cars, of which police have recovered four, a fraction of the number he dealt with, said Det Sgt Waller.
Womaniser
The drugs baron was an insatiable womaniser. At the time of his arrest, he had eight girlfriends and had seduced countless others. "He tried it on with almost every woman he met," said Det Sgt Waller. "Quite a few turned up in court with babies and toddlers in tow and I'm sure there are a few more in Jamaica. Yet they were incredibly loyal to him, maybe because he was so generous with his cash."
For a man whose wealth and power created many enemies, Clarke led a charmed existence. The bullet richoted off his arm when he was shot at in London in 1999, and he survived at least two murder attempts in Jamaica.
But his luck was running out. In 2000, detectives started on one of his "generals" - Nadia Codner, who ran his network in Hackney/Stoke Newington, north-east London. A four-month surveillance snared Codner and three others, recovering £1m-worth of cocaine. The jury took just 11 minutes to convict Codner who was jailed for 15 years.
In the next few years, other "senior officers" tumbled like ninepins. Paul "Pepsi" Hamilton and Vernal "Luddy" Anderson supplied the Luton and Bedfordshire areas. Police discovered 50 kilos of cocaine, worth about £10m, had passed through their crack conversion factory in Luton. Clarke recruited Mikey McDaniel and Bibsy Findlay to take over from Pepsi and Luddy, but police caught them too, finding a kilo of cocaine in the washing machine in their Harrow flat.
The next target was Sherise Taylor, Clarke's main Birmingham courier, then, brothers Michael and Gifford Sutherland, from Croydon, south London. Their main role was finding and financing couriers, but the UK and Jamaican authorities were clamping down on Clarke's supply routes, so a key part of the brothers' job was developing new routes through Panama and Havana.
They recruited Phoebe Goran, a 53-year-old Zambian-Irish woman, in Dublin to carry out a complicated pick-up in Antigua, which resulted in all three being arrested at Waterloo station. Then, Clifton Rochester, Clarke's right hand man in Bristol, was arrested by the national crime squad.
Surveillance
By now the squeeze was on. Officers already had hours and hours of surveillance and telephone tapes, linking Clarke to Rochester, the Sutherlands and the others. Although in personal terms, everyone had always been dispensable to Clarke, he needed business done and now the panic-stricken phone calls flew, wondering what was happening and how he would replace his people.
Then detectives spotted a new face, 24-year-old Jason "Jazzy P" Sadler. Jazzy P and Clarke often visited the same flat in Colindale, but never arrived or left together. Clarke had by now perfected a new, more efficient way of making crack, and police were sure this address was key to this operation.
In June last year, they spied him meeting a man in Harlseden, north-west London, from whom he collected a large envelope. They trailed Clarke to the flat in Colindale, and five minutes later Jazzy P turned up carrying the same brown envelope.
Police lay in wait, crouching in cubbyholes outside the second floor flat. Det Sgt Waller counted down five and a half minutes before he gave the order to pile in. "He was completely taken by surprise," said Det Sgt Waller
"At first, he thought we were other dealers going to rob him. When he realised what was happening, his look was priceless.
"He's a real cry baby. He's never acted the tough man since he was arrested. He always expected others to take the rap, and he pleaded he was forced to deal drugs. But the jury was having none of it. Clarke is where he belongs and the streets are a safer place."
No comments:
Post a Comment