February 8, 2007
Notorious gang boss is caged
By IAN HEPBURN
IT took ten years of painstaking investigation but the “Godfather” of Britain’s most feared crime family was finally behind bars last night.
Terry Adams faces up to 14 years in jail after he admitted conspiring to hide £1million — a tiny slice of an estimated illicit fortune of £200million.
The 52-year-old mobster — head of the so-called “A Team” Adams family of North London — made his money from 30 years of violent racketeering and drug trafficking.
His family have been linked to 23 people who have vanished and are feared to have been murdered.
A former National Crime Squad senior detective, who spent years shadowing them, revealed: “They had the curse of death around them. They employed some very heavy people and they would not tolerate disloyalty.
“If anybody tried to turn them over they were eliminated. They would do it themselves or get one of their henchmen to do it.”
Former British high jump champion Claude Moseley got involved with the Adams network when he took to selling drugs.
Luxury … Adams' house worth £2m and wife Ruth
Adams suspected he was skimming money from the deals and sent his enforcer Gilbert Wynter to clarify a few of the family rules.
Wynter, who rammed a Samurai sword into Moseley’s back so hard it almost cut him in two, was charged with murder but walked free from the Old Bailey when the chief prosecution witness refused to give evidence.
Then Wynter disappeared after he was suspected of becoming a loose cannon by the Adams family. According to informed underworld sources he was buried in the concrete foundations of London’s Millennium Dome.
Terry Adams was a phenomenon in London’s underworld. His cruelty and razor sharp brain made the Kray twins Ronnie and Reggie look like amateurs.
One minute Adams could be relaxed and affable but in an instant he would erupt with violence that shocked his friends. He was once holding court in a restaurant when an enforcer made an inappropriate remark.
The table fell silent. Adams slowly put down his knife and fork and punched the guy in the face. Other diners heard his nose crack and the man was covered in blood.
Adams then picked up his knife and fork and carried on eating. So did the rest at his table, including the man with the smashed nose.
Lower league … Kray twins
That ruthless streak helped Adams and his brothers Patsy and Tommy to hit the crime jackpot.
He ran a drug-trafficking operation believed to have earned more than £100million.
The National Crime Squad source said: “Adams was into everything — nightclubs, pubs, horse racing scams, ticket touting, drugs, money laundering.
“His tentacles stretched across the Continent and into Eastern Europe. He was supposed to have connections with the Russian Mafia.
“Once when he went out of the country, he got to the X-ray machine at the airport and pulled wads of £50 notes from his pockets. They were so thick he could barely got his hands round them.”
Adams was the eldest of 11 children born to working class North Londoners who brought up their family in a council flat.
The brothers cut their criminal teeth extorting money from market stallholders then graduated to armed robbery.
In the Seventies, they got heavily involved in drugs and had direct links with the Colombian cartels.
Although Adams’ roots were humble, he liked the finer things in life. He lived in a £2million house in Mill Hill, North London, furnished with antiques worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and even owned Picasso works.
He dressed in the style of his childhood cinema hero Errol Flynn, whose swashbuckling movies he adored. He wore bespoke shirts with ruffed fronts and suits made from dark velvet.
Proceeds of the family’s criminal activities are said to have paid for a box at Arsenal and at one time Adams showed an interest in buying rivals Tottenham — but he daren’t reveal just how rich he was.
His wife Ruth would have loved to have shopped at Harrods but paying with wads of cash tends to attract unwelcome attention.
The Adams brothers adopted a low profile. While Terry remained in the UK, Patsy and Tommy spent months each year in Spain.
But police and the security services were moving in to close them down — but at a high price. The final bill for the ten-year investigation will top £50million.
First to fall was Tommy, who was jailed for 7½ years after admitting an £8million cannabis smuggling racket. The black London taxi he used to conduct meetings had been successfully bugged.
He eventually settled a £1million confiscation order to avoid a further five years behind bars. He sent the money to a police station in two separate cash payments.
Terry was next in the firing line. The National Crime Squad source said: “He was living like a recluse. He hardly went out. He was frightened of his own shadow.”
And as the pressure mounted Patsy did something out of character for an Adams — he began paying income tax for the first time.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007060394,00.html
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