It was me who stabbed Stephen ... and I’ve never lost a wink of sleep over it
Alleged boasts of Armani-clad killer with an Xbox in his cell caught taking illegal selfies that make a mockery of the prison system
THE cost of living crisis has forced many of us to change our spending habits, with families understandably cutting back on non-essentials.
But not, it would seem, on E Wing at His Majesty’s Prison Dartmoor, where one of the country’s most reviled killers has recently taken delivery of two prized additions to his wardrobe.
David Norris, 46, who murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993, is seemingly unaffected by the widespread need to tighten purse strings after acquiring a £150 pair of Emporio Armani EA7 trainers and, from the same brand, a £145 sweatshirt.
From the outside, the need to wear expensive designer clothes to socialise with inmates in the Category C jail in Princetown, high on Dartmoor in Devon, is perplexing.
But a whistle-blower, who spoke on condition of anonymity as part of a major Daily Mail investigation into the Norris ‘selfie scandal’ and his alleged luxury life behind bars, said it all came down to his ‘status’.
‘Norris has got an air of “I don’t give a f***” about life and spending this amount of money is proof of that,’ said the source, who has seen Norris’s new purchases.
‘In his mind, it is good for his status to wear this gear.’
Norris is said to revel in his reputation as one of Britain’s most notorious killers.
He and his racist gang stabbed 18-year-old Stephen to death simply because of the colour of his skin. According to an uncorroborated
‘A portrait of arrogance and conceit’
account relayed to us during our inquiries, Norris has told inmates at Dartmoor that he delivered the fatal blows.
A source who witnessed the alleged confession said: ‘I am not sure whether it was bravado or not, but I was quite shocked by his comments. One day Norris admitted in his cell that he stabbed Stephen. I remember it clearly. He added that he had “never lost a wink of sleep over it”.’
Bravado or not, being able to wear flashy attire ensures Norris remains at the very top of the hierarchy in the inmate population at Dartmoor, which includes dozens of rapists, paedophiles and other sex offenders. In criminal circles, HMP Dartmoor – owned by the Duchy of Cornwall – is nicknamed ‘Monster Mansion’ because of the high percentage of sex offenders.
Just how the ardent Millwall supporter is able to acquire such costly items will be a question asked by law enforcement and prison officials today as the Mail exposes his extraordinary lifestyle behind bars.
In 2013, I revealed that ‘hard up’ Norris had received £222,346 in legal aid to defend the murder charge against him the previous year. He was convicted of killing Stephen and jailed for life with the recommendation that he serve a minimum of 14 years and three months before he could apply to be released on licence.
Today, we have been told, he earns about £18 a week working in the garden at HMP Dartmoor, where he maintains a polytunnel greenhouse with lettuce, courgettes and chillies among the produce grown. It is one of the best paid and cushiest jobs in the prison – second only to being a gymnasium orderly, which pays about £20 a week. But it is still a paltry sum when you consider the amount his newly acquired Emporio Armani clothes and accessories cost. But a more pressing concern for investigators will be how Norris obtained a smartphone to communicate with the outside world and, according to an informed source, go on Facebook, YouTube and possibly dating apps while confined to his carpeted cell at night.
Across the country, scores of inmates are said to use dating apps to strike up relationships from their cells – or even continue their criminal activities.
The ease with which Norris has been able to bypass strict prison rules, which bar inmates from having and using mobile phones, is an indictment of the regime at Dartmoor.
Who supplied him with the device? Was it delivered by a visitor, by a drone or thrown over the prison wall? Or, perhaps more likely, given to him by a corrupt member of staff who has been handsomely rewarded?
So cocky has Norris been about his recently acquired device that he has posted pictures on WhatsApp of himself in his cell on E Wing, which is reserved for well-behaved inmates, for his friends and contacts in the outside world to see. On September 4, he put a picture of himself on his WhatsApp ‘status’ with the caption: ‘I’m coming home in 2 to liven you all up.’ The next day,
September 5, he unleashed a rant against then justice secretary Dominic Raab, who blocked his bid to be moved to a Category D open prison.
Under a Facebook screenshot of an attractive woman, he wrote on WhatsApp that day: ‘High Court decision in morning about high risk offenders and parole. Dom Raab your f ***** c*** cos the Nozza is defo home in 2 [years] and High Court now agrees.
‘Get that party sorted girls cos I be there soon. Eye Eye the man’s bk in town. F ****** buzzing you c **** !!!!! ’ These are not comments which suggest Norris, whose racist
language and hatred of black people was caught on a police surveillance video after Stephen’s murder, is a reformed character.
On September 10, just after the Queen died, Norris posted another, very revealing, selfie from his cell. Staring into his shaving mirror, he is seen wearing Top Gun-style aviator sunglasses and a blingy gold watch and holding a smartphone. It is a portrait of arrogance and conceit: a two-fingered salute to the justice system.
In the background are his largescreen TV and his Xbox games console. Also in the image are family pictures and prison artwork. In addition Norris has a CD player/ sound system and access to library books and DVDs.
His fellow inmates in Dartmoor have included the so-called ‘Cornwall Strangler’ Bradley Trengrove, an ‘exceptionally dangerous’ rapist who was previously on D-wing with Norris and Hull baby murderer Oliver Longcake. He is close friends with a notorious murderer from North-west England, we are told.
For someone who does not have to worry about food, heating or electricity bills – and has never publicly apologised for murdering Stephen – life could be worse for Norris. His routine involves coming out of his cell at 8.45am (breakfast cereal is delivered there the night before), after which he goes to the prison garden.
He is back for lunch – hot food – at about noon, when he is locked away for an hour and a roll call takes place. Then he returns to the prison garden until around 4.30-5pm. Dinner at Dartmoor is relatively good – certainly by other prisons’ standards, according to sources – with toad in the hole and pizza frequently on the menu. Then he is locked up overnight in his ‘luxury cell’.
Despite his refusal to say sorry to Stephen’s family, Norris has found time to express remorse about the passing of his dog.
Last Friday the killer was back online when he paid a tribute on WhatsApp to his deceased Staffordshire bull terrier, whose picture he posted. He lamented: ‘My loyal, game, butchy boy RIP mushy I’ll forever miss ya boy. We had some turn outs [prison slang for fights] didn’t we me an you, and won em all!! xxx’
He also shared a picture of a pouting young woman with giant sunglasses, believed to be a girlfriend or pen pal.
Norris’s shocking disregard for prison rules is a clear vindication of Mr Raab’s decision to deny his request to move to an open prison.
The unrepentant killer was among five young men arrested over the racist murder of A-level student Stephen. In 1997, the Mail published its widely acclaimed ‘MURDERERS’ front page, accusing the shameless five of being Stephen’s killers – and challenging them to sue us if we were wrong.
They never did and the groundbreaking article proved to be a major turning point in the Lawrence family’s campaign for justice, paving the way for a public inquiry, a change in the law and the successful prosecution of two of the original main suspects, Gary Dobson and Norris.
After failures by the police and the criminal justice system initially allowed the killers to evade court, the pair were convicted of murder after a forensic breakthrough in the case following a reinvestigation headed by respected senior investigating officer, Detective Chief Inspector Clive Driscoll.
The 2011-2012 trial centred on tiny fragments of blood, fibres and hair uncovered in a ‘cold case review’. The most important of the discoveries were 16 fibres linked to Stephen’s clothes and three tiny specks of blood.
In the debris from the original evidence bag holding Dobson’s jacket, police found three blood fragments that had less than a one in a billion chance of not being Stephen’s. Officers also reexamined 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.
Among the other evidence submitted to court was a police surveillance video shot 20 months after Stephen’s murder in which Norris told friends he wanted to torture and kill black people.
His lawyers tried to have it dismissed, saying it did not prove he was involved in the killing. Norris was heard saying: ‘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, torture him, set him alight. I’d blow their two legs off and say: “Go on, you can swim home now”.’
In 2017 Norris – whose father Clifford was a notorious gangland figure in south London in the 1990s and who has been linked to alleged police corruption in the Lawrence case – failed in his four-year bid to clear his name after an exhaustive review of the case.
He had asked the Criminal Cases Review Commission to investigate and call in the Court of Appeal for a new hearing. But they rejected his legal bid. Dobson, now 47, dropped an appeal against his conviction in 2013. This was a major relief for Stephen’s parents, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, as the 25th anniversary of their son’s racist murder neared.
Only four years ago, Norris settled a claim with the Ministry of Justice after he was attacked in prison. He suffered a broken nose and ribs at HMP Belmarsh in south-east London in 2011 where he was being held on remand ahead of his trial for murder. He sued for damages – reported to be £8,000.
Now Norris is decked out in designer clothes, dressing to impress while online in his cell from 6pm to 8am each night.
As a supposedly well-behaved and trusted inmate he can watch TV in the evenings, although he is said to have refused to tune into a controversial ITV drama series about Stephen’s murder last September.
A source told us: ‘He has been trapped away for ten years and is desperate. But the bottom line is that you can’t have a mobile phone in Dartmoor. It is illegal.’
Norris’s conduct suggests that a ‘Better Man’ self-development course, which he has been attending behind bars according to our sources, has made little or no impact and he now faces the prospect of being moved to a tough, top security prison and having his jail term increased as punishment.
Despite bragging that he is coming out of prison in two or three years’ time, an informed source said that Norris was fully aware his case is ‘political’ and realises that Stephen’s campaigning mother may use her influence in the House of Lords to block his release.
What is certain is that he will not be a welcome addition to society if and when he leaves prison. Can the Emporio Armani-clad killer ever be freed if he fails to publicly acknowledge his guilt, let alone name the others involved in Britain’s worst race murder?
‘One of the cushiest jobs in the jail’