One Kickstarter project you shouldn’t fund

In January 1967, Dennis Stafford and Michael Luvaglio murdered Angus Sibbet. They forced his car off the road, blasted him to death, and without making any attempt to cover up the murder, sped off to the Bird Cage club in Newcastle where they did their best to fake an alibi, including feigning an accident to their own already damaged vehicle. Unusually, the police were up to speed, impounding the car and gathering all the other evidence that put them in the dock.

Five years earlier they would almost certainly have been hanged, but were both paroled after serving a mere 12 years of their life sentences; compared with the case of Marissa Alexander, they have little to complain about. Apart from insisting for the past 46 years that they are innocent, that the police who investigated the crime had tunnel vision, or even that they were framed.

Both men have had appeal after appeal, and every decision up to and including the House of Lords has gone against them. The reason is not hard to seek, the case against them was, remains and always will be, rock solid. If that is the case, then why is a company in Consett making a film that will claim they are innocent?

There is probably no simple answer to that, but it is a fact that even before the Internet, certain sections of the media thrived on garbage. The so-called alternative media today is often no better, indeed it can be worse because knowing how untrustworthy is the regular media on certain subjects, many people give undue weight to what the alternative media says, unaware that very often a myriad of agenda driven special interest groups, hatemongers or just plain nutters are pulling the strings.

The company concerned – Media Arts – is appealing for a very modest sum: £2,000. It remains to be seen why they should need to appeal for funds at all, because even if career criminal Stafford didn’t make any money from his worthless autobiography, he could surely arrange for one of his underworld associates to bung them a wad of forged travellers’ cheques. Oh, didn’t he tell you about that, boys? What they have been telling the film makers and anyone else who will listen, for some time, is that Angus Sibbet was murdered by or more likely on orders from the notorious Kray Twins, they of Profession Of Violence infamy. This is garbage of the first order, along with any new witnesses that have been “found”.

The Krays were two big fish in a very small pond, the East End of London. In December 1966, they sprang Frank “Mad Axeman” Mitchell from Dartmoor Prison, whom they murdered shortly after. It is the most arrant nonsense to suggest that while they were running their criminal empire and legitimate businesses in the Smoke, they took time out of their busy schedule to snuff out a small time errand boy three hundred miles away. In any case, the motive for the murder of Angus Sibbet was clearly established, as was the identity of the man who ordered the “hit”, although not wishing to get blood on his own hands in the literal sense, he made sure he had a rock solid alibi.

Similar claims that the police suppressed evidence are likewise garbage. Anyone who has the time and resources can read the original papers which are held at Kew as files ASSI 45/798, DPP 2/4345 and DPP 2/4346.

One final point, if you like this article, feel free to click the LIKE button, and feel equally free to tell Kickstarter what you think about this particular project.

[The above op-ed was first published November 14, 2013, not November 13 as indicated here.]

Back To Digital Journal Index