Three in jail, one on the run: where gang is now

GARY DOBSON

IT took a change in the law for Gary Dobson, 41, to be convicted of Stephen’s murder.

The thug had been acquitted of Britain’s most notorious race killing but the subsequent reform of the double jeopardy law – a consequence of the Mail’s Lawrence campaign – meant he could be re-tried after compelling new forensic evidence emerged.

The 2012 convictions boiled down to three things; blood, fibres and hair. These tiny fragments of new evidence emerged in 2007 as scientists conducted a massive ‘cold case review’. The successful prosecution of Norris and Dobson for Stephen’s murder hinged on tiny traces of forensic evidence found by a cold case team.

The most important of their discoveries were 16 fibres linked to the black teenager’s clothes and three tiny specks of blood.

In the debris from the original evidence bag holding Dobson’s jacket, they found three blood fragments that had less than a one in a billion chance of not being Stephen’s.

They re-examined clothing taken from Dobson and Norris, starting a process that eventually led to a guilty verdict for both men.

At the Old Bailey in January 2012, Dobson was ordered to serve a minimum of 15 years and two months.

In March 2013, Dobson abandoned his appeal against his conviction and it later emerged he had received £203,309 in legal aid.

The killer’s family continue to insist he is innocent, despite the holes in his story about what happened on the night of the murder and evidence from a damning police surveillance video shot 20 months after Stephen’s death. The footage showed Dobson using violent, racist language. He was also seen recalling a time he threatened a black colleague with a knife.

Two years ago it emerged that he had been dumped by the mother of his two sons, who was reported to have left him for a new man. He is currently an inmate at Gartree Prison, a category B jail in Leicestershire.

DAVID NORRIS

GANGSTER’S son David Norris, 40, continues to protest his innocence after being jailed for a minimum of 14 years and three months.

Like Dobson, he is in a high security prison – HMP Garth near Preston, Lancashire.

After losing a second attempt to challenge his conviction, Norris has asked the Criminal Cases Review Commission to investigate his case and refer it to the Court of Appeal for a new hearing. His latest appeal bid is still under review. Norris’s lawyers have argued that the police surveillance video, shot 20 months after Stephen’s murder, did not prove he was involved in the killing and should not have been admitted as evidence at his trial.

In the police surveillance film, he was secretly filmed telling friends he wanted to torture and kill black people. ‘If I was going to kill myself, do you know what I’d do,’ he said, in one appalling clip. ‘I’d go and kill every black c***, every Paki, every copper, every mug that I know, I’m telling ya.

‘I’d go down Catford and places like that with two sub-machine guns, and I’d take one of them, skin the black c*** alive, mate, torture him, set him alight. I’d blow their two legs off and say: ‘Go on, you can swim home now.’

The father of five received £222,346 in legal aid to defend the murder charge.

NEIL ACOURT

THE shaven-headed yob, 41, is said to have revelled in his notoriety about the Lawrence case.

But the smirk disappeared from his face when he was detained over drugs charges a year ago.

He is due to be sentenced later this month after admitting being the mastermind behind a £4million cannabis smuggling ring.

Acourt faces up to seven years in prison for running a gang that couriered 200lb loads of the Class B drug between London and Newcastle. Although the smallest of the Lawrence murder gang, Neil Acourt was regarded by murder squad detectives as the leader.

At his family home a few minutes from the crime scene, officers found weapons including a knife, a Gurkha-type dagger and a sword.

In 2001, he was convicted of possessing an offensive weapon, a baton, which he claimed he needed to protect himself.

The next year, he and Norris were each jailed for 1 months for a racist attack on an off-duty black detective.

JAMIE ACOURT

THE 40-year-old younger brother of Neil Acourt is believed to have fled to the ‘Costa del Crime’ after being linked to a major drug smuggling ring.

He is suspected of being a ‘principal member’ of an organised crime group involved in the largescale supply of cannabis.

Detectives believe the fugitive is being harboured by a network of contacts at locations along the southern Spanish coast.

The unemployed father of two has previously tried to start a new life in Spain with his partner, but they decided against emigrating at the last minute.

In 2012, the Mail revealed his penchant for designer clothes, his preference for greased back hair and how he rarely drove anything more than a year old.

Although he had no obvious signs of employment, he drove a £25,000 Vauxhall Insignia.

Since the Lawrence case, he has had only one conviction, when he and Norris stole empty soda siphons from a drinks warehouse in 1999. He was allowed to pay his £250 fine at £10 a week after the court heard he was living on disability allowance.