George “G” Williams
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During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, George “G” Williams carried out a murderous vendetta against Suge Knight and his Death Row Records.
Charlene Downes
"gone into the kebabs"
In the seaside town of Blackpool in the north-west of England, Charlene Downes went missing in November 2003 under mysterious circumstances. In May 2007, two men were tried for involvement in the murder of the young teenager, but were later released without conviction. Since then, police have continued to investigate the disappearance and offered a reward of £100,000 for information leading to the conviction of Downes’ killers.
Charlene Downes: The Girl Who Vanished
When the BBC One Panorama programme “The Girl Who Vanished” aired on November 10, 2014, the story of Charlene Downes, a young teenager who went missing just over a decade previously, was brought back into the public spotlight. The investigation into her disappearance was still on-going, with detectives confident that she had been murdered.
Eleven years on from the disappearance of the Blackpool schoolgirl Panorama reporter Shelley Jofre investigated the reasons why no-one had been brought to justice for her murder. The programme revealed a story of serious police failings, a flawed investigation and an inexplicable negligence in protecting vulnerable girls from grooming and sexual exploitation.
The Panorama programme aired in the wake of a police announcement in November 2013, in which a specialist team was assigned to reinvestigate the case of Charlene Downes, alongside the case of Paige Chivers, another teenager who had also disappeared in Blackpool in 2007. A month after the documentary, BBC Crimewatch staged a reconstruction of the last sighting of Downes.
A substantial reward of £100,000 was offered for information leading to the conviction of the killer(s) or recovery of the body. By this time in the investigation, police had already arrested and charged two men with the murder of Downes, however both men were later released, but not ruled out as suspects.
Detectives had worked on the theory that 14-year-old Charlene Downes knew her killer(s), and had been the victim of child sexual abuse at the hands of one or more men. It was discovered early during the investigation that Downes and many other young girls had been victims of a form of child sexual exploitation, known as localised grooming.
Charlene Downes: Lost Childhood
Born on March 25, 1989, Charlene was one of four children to Robert and Karen Downes. The family originally lived in Coventry, West Midlands, but later moved to Blackpool, Lancashire, when Charlene was ten-years-old. The family lived in Buchanan Street, Blackpool, and Charlene attended St George’s School, Blackpool.
She was described as a “well and happy” child, but had experienced “chaotic” lifestyle after being expelled from school. She would often frequent the area around Blackpool’s Central Promenade. Police would later learn that Downes, along with sixty other young girls from the Blackpool area, some as young as 11, had been groomed for sexual exploitation.
The girls would given gifts by ethnic Pakistani men to carry out sex acts. These men would often be male employees of fast-food outlets, who provided the girls with given food and cigarettes in exchange for sex. Charlene Downes was, tragically, no stranger to sexual exploitation, and had suffered sexual abuse from a young age.
Child protective agencies (CPA) in Coventry, Walsall, had become involved with the Downes family during an investigation in 1989, the same year Charlene was born. When the family moved, they became known to social services in Blackpool. These agencies found that Charlene had been exploited sexually from a young age.
The Downes family had been surrounded by sex offenders, many of which had been invited into the family’s Coventry home by Robert Downes. It was found that at least 16 men, with convictions for a range of crimes such as rape, assault and violence, and known as Robert Downes’ “drinking acquaintances,” had visited the family home or stayed at the residence for an undetermined amount of time.
In defence of this, Downes’ parents insisted they had no prior knowledge of their visitors convictions. Despite these claims, it was uncovered that social services in West Midlands had spoken to the family, following concerns that one of the visitors, a convicted rapist, was a frequent visitor to the Downes home.
The man in question had previously committed an assault on two young girls and been jailed three times for buggery. When visiting the Downes home, the man was allowed unsupervised access to the children, and social services “strongly advised” Robert Downes to ban him from visiting again.
However, a witness told authorities that they had seen the same man fondling a child in the house, while the Downes parents were present. In 1998, when Downes was nine, she and another girl alleged that they were both being sexually abused by a man who had been “trusted by Mr and Mrs Downes to take them to school”.
The man was arrested and charged with rape, but the prosecution’s case collapsed after the other girl involved failed to give evidence. Social services became involved after police reported that Downes’ parents had some knowledge of the abuse but had failed to act and prevent the abuse of their child.
Social services threatened to charge the parents with wilful neglect and remove the children from the Downes’ home and into care. However, before this could take place, the family moved to Blackpool. The abuse in the family home continued after the family moved, with one of Robert Downes’ friends admitting to authorities that he had paid Charlene Downes to perform a sex act on him.
A second man aged in his 60’s had been discovered in bed with Downes, who was 12-year-old at the time. The man’s trousers had been unzipped and his belt unfastened. In another incident, the Downes’ parents permitted a man to stay at the family home while on bail for sexual offences.
Three days after Downes went missing, that same 34-year-old man was jailed for sexually assaulting three 10-year-old girls, and later admitted under police questioning to having indecently touched Downes when staying at the family home. In this atmosphere of child sexual exploitation, the young Charlene Downes was a victim who had been failed by both social services and her parents, the very people who were meant to protect her.
Charlene Downes: Disappearance
On the day she went missing, Charlene Downes was in Blackpool town centre, where she was seen and spoken to by her mother Karen in the early hours of the evening of November 1, 2003. It was about 6:45pm, when Karen Downes, who was in Church Street handing out flyers for an Indian restaurant, saw Charlene and one of her other daughters, Rebecca.
The three talked briefly, with Rebecca telling her mother she was going home, while Charlene said she was going to meet some female friends. She called them from a local telephone box, and waited with her mother until they arrived. Karen watched as the girls walk off together toward the Winter Gardens.
That was the last time she saw her daughter. According to Charlene’s friends, they spent only a short time together, before Downes met with another friend at around 9:30pm and visited the Carousel Bar on the North Pier. Police located CCTV footage of a girl at the junction of Dickson Road and Talbot Road, a main thoroughfare that leads from North Pier to the town centre, and around 9:00pm and who is believed to be Downes.
The girl seen on the footage is with an unidentified woman, described as in her 30’s with dyed-blonde hair wearing a three-quarter-length coat. Downes’s friend told police she and Charlene left the Carousel Bar at around 10:00pm, and returned to the town centre. She was last seen by her friend near Talbot Road/Abingdon Street at around 11:00pm.
Charlene Downes: Police Investigation
Because Charlene Downes was known to spent periods of time away from home, she was classed as a runaway by police and her disappearance was not taken seriously for several days. By November 3, 2003, Charlene had still not returned to her home address on Buchanan Street, and her mother Karen Downes reported her daughter as a missing person.
When it became clear she was missing, police focused at first on the Downes family, with suspicion cantered on her father, Robert Downes. Known as an alcoholic, who often beat his wife and children, Robert Downes was a violent individual who allowed his children to be exposed to men with criminal convictions for a variety of sex crimes.
Without evidence of Robert Downes’ involvement, police looked at other avenues of investigation, focusing on the men Charlene and other girls her age were known to be involved with, and who may have known her whereabouts. Police found teenage girls were “swapping sex for food, cigarettes and affection”.
Don Fraser, one of the detectives who worked on the Charlene Downes case, said: “It became very difficult to see the wood for the trees. Girls of Charlene’s age were reluctant to tell the truth. They thought it best to tell a white lie to protect their own reputation.” As part of the investigation, police interviewed more than 3,000 people, and in the process eventually received information from a potential witness.
An individual came forward and told detectives they had overheard two men discussing the sexual abuse of young girls, one of whom had been Charlene Downes. The witness, who worked at a different restaurant, claimed that owner of Funny Boyz fast-food outlet in Blackpool, 29-year-old man from Jordan national Iyad Albattikhi, claimed he had previously had sex with Downes.
Albattikhi and other men were reportedly overheard joking that Downes had “gone into the kebabs”. Albattikhi was accused by the witness of having been involved in the murder of Charlene Downes, and that Mohammed Reveshi, Albattikhi’s business partner and landlord, was guilty of having disposed of her body.
After conducting surveillance on the two men, that included covert listening devices in their homes and vehicles, Iyad Albattikhi and Mohammed Reveshi were arrested and charged with the murder of Downes. After a two years investigation, police were confident they had caught the killers of the missing Blackpool schoolgirl.
Charlene Downes: Trial
In May 2007, the case went to trial at Preston Crown Court. The prosecution contended that Downes had been groomed and raped by older men who worked in the fast-food shops. They suggested that Iyad Albattikhi and Mohammed Reveshi were responsible, and that Downes may have been raped by one, or both, of the men before her death.
The court heard that in December 2004, a second witness, later identified as local businessman David Cassidy, had come forward to report information on Downes murder. Cassidy claimed that Albattikhi’s brother had confided in them that he knew what had happened to Charlene Downes, claiming that she had been murdered, and chopped up, and that there had been a lot of blood.
Cassidy had apparently then been threatened not to tell anyone, and later offered “an interest-free £20,000 loan” from Reveshi to keep quiet. It was then that he decided to go to police. The prosecution stated that Downes parents claimed that she had told them about receiving gifts from Asian takeaway staff.
The audio evidence obtained by police was presented in court. From concealed microphones that they had been placed in both the men’s flats, and inside Reveshi’s car. A total of 52 tapes were made over the course of four weeks and Det Sgt Jan Beasant was the investigating officer who sat down to listen to what had been said.
Despite the poor quality of the recordings, police were confident they overheard the two men talking about Charlene Downes. DS Besant said: “In the first few tapes, clearly they were shocked and worried and panicking. The first thing they talk about is the murder inquiry.”
DS Besant believed she heard the two men referring to returning to a “burial place” and “big bones”. In one of the recordings, she believes she hears Raveshi say, “I can’t cope. I’m so worried and you were the one who fucking killed her.” It was the evidence on the tapes and David Cassidy’s testimony, that provided police with enough evidence to charge the two men.
However, the defence argued the tapes were not evidence of any wrongdoing, describing them as “hard to decipher”. It had taken the police 2,400 hours to transcribe the audio over a two-year period, and it was learned the prosecution’s sound expert had a difference of opinion with the police over the transcription of the records.
The jury deliberated for 49 hours over 11 days, before reporting they had failed to reach a verdict, and were subsequently discharged. A re-trial was scheduled for April 2008, however the Crown Prosecution Service conceded it had “grave doubts” about the reliability of the covert surveillance conducted by the Lancashire Constabulary.
The serious errors in the covert surveillance evidence were raised with the Crown Prosecution Service and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). As a result the Prosecution Service could offer no case, and Albattikhi and Reveshi were released. After the collapse of the case, the investigation into Charlene Downes murder had suffered a serious setback.
Charlene Downes: IPCC Investigation
In an effort to understand why the trial had collapsed, the IPCC opened an 18-month-long investigation into the covert evidence collected by the Lancashire Constabulary. The final report was published in 2009, with the IPCC identifying several failures that lead to the trial collapsing.
The most prominent of these included failure by police to keep proper records, failing to ensure the integrity of their evidence, use of inexperienced and untrained officers, and failing to fully transcribe material that they had collected. It was found that the covert surveillance in particular had been handled poorly and in an unprofessional manner.
It was the recommendation of the IPCC that one officer face a disciplinary hearing, another receive a written warning, and five officers receive words of advice. In December 2011, a disciplinary hearing found Det Sgt Jan Beasant guilty of misconduct following a review of the investigation.
Lancashire Police said Ms Beasant had shown conduct that “let everyone down”. It was reported that two other officers who retired prior to the IPCC investigation could not be considered for disciplinary sanctions. Naseem Malik, IPCC Commissioner for the North West, said it was “abundantly clear” that the covert surveillance was “handled poorly and unprofessionally”.
The IPCC review concluded that the investigating team, headed by Det Sgt Jan Beasant, were guilty of a strategic and tactical failure in the management of the material. The quality of the covert recordings had previously been criticised during the trial by defence barristers as “poor” with confidence “low” in the accuracy of the transcriptions.
At an earlier hearing, Lancashire Police found Ms Beasant guilty of two counts of misconduct and forced her to resign. The force “expects the highest professional standards from all our staff and the panel has found this individual’s conduct has fallen well short of these standards,” said Supt Simon Giles.
“This sort of behaviour and conduct lets everybody down – not just the police service but those the police serve,” he said. “It is appropriate they have faced the consequences of their actions.” Despite the IPCC ruling, a Police Arbitration Tribunal overturned the decision in 2012.
In 2014, Beasant’s lawyer said she was suing the police for up to £500,000, as her transcripts were, in fact, entirely accurate. According to Beasant, the evidence her team had collected showed that Iyad Albattikhi and Mohammed Reveshi were overheard discussing the death of Charlene Downes, and that police had arrested and charged the perpetrators.
Charlene Downes: Aftermath
The investigation into the disappearance and suspected murder of Charlene Downes brought to public attention what was described by the press as “endemic child sexual abuse” in Blackpool. A police report found that employees of 11 takeaway shops in Blackpool town centre had given cigarettes, food and alcohol to dozens of white girls aged 13–15 and grooming them for sex.
According to Mick Gradwell, a former detective superintendent with Lancashire Constabulary, the police inquiry into child grooming in Blackpool, Blackburn and Burnley had been “hampered by political correctness,” allegedly because the underage victims were white and the perpetrators non-white.
In April 2008, the week after the attempt at re-trial failed, Karen Downes was arrested for stabbing her husband during an argument. The wounds were not considered serious and Robert Downes declined to press charges, saying that his wife was maddened with worry and frustration at the collapse of the trial and failed re-trial.
Charlene’s sister, Emma, pleaded not guilty in March 2009 to racially aggravated assault against the brother of the Iyad Albattikhi, who had been charged with murdering Charlene. Emma maintained that her assault on the man’s brother had never been racially motivated, and on the first day of her trial the prosecution accepted her plea to common assault, a less serious offence, and she was sentenced to community service.
The Funny Boyz takeaway, that was renamed to Mr Beanz, lost its license to serve hot food between from 11pm-5am in 2010. Blackpool Council’s licensing panel were warned by a police solicitor that young girls were still frequenting the takeaway, and that there were concerns around sexual activity occurring.
Mr Albattikhi and Mr Raveshi appealed the decision, claiming that they were victims of a smear campaign, however their appeal was rejected. In June 2011, Iyad Albattikhi was arrested and charged assaulting another teenager by headbutting her. The court heard the 18-year-old victim in this case was Albattikhi’s former girlfriend.
The court heard she was lured into a lifestyle of drink and drugs. When she attempted to leave the premises after a row, Albattikhi assaulted her in the street and tried to tamper with the CCTV footage. Albattikhi was bailed for pre-sentence reports. He had denied the assault, but was convicted after trial, and sentenced to 20 weeks custody and given a two-year restraining order.
That same year, Karen Downes made social media posts blaming Asian takeaway staff for sending her daughter “off the rails,” and claimed that all Muslims should be burnt “with petrol and explosives”. These comments were considered obvious to many that the Downes’ family believed their daughter had been murdered by people associated with Asian takeaways.
In 2012, Charlene’s younger brother was arrested and charged with assault. At trial, he admitted to the court that he had punched the man who had faced the charge of helping to dispose of her body, Mohammed Reveshi. Found guilty, he was given a fine and a suspended sentence.
The case of Charlene’s disappearance and suspected murder attracted the attention of British far-right groups, the English Defence League and British National Party, who both hosted marches demanding “Justice for Charlene”. The Downes family joined these marches, with Charlene’s mother, Karen, defending the groups involvement saying, “No one else has been doing anything to help us.”
Britain First launched a campaign called “Operation Downes”, that they claimed would “combat the scourge of Islamist grooming gangs around the country.” Members of Britain First (BF) handed out flyers as part of the campaign that contained pictures of Asian men who had been convicted of grooming offences.
The BF members asked for members of the public to contact them if they witnessed any circumstances or people that could be connected to potential grooming gangs. They also recorded and uploaded videos of members handing out the flyers to local businesses and mosques in Rotherham.
Two years after the Crimewatch appeal, CCTV footage of Charlene crossing the road with her sister Rebecca in Blackpool on the last day she was seen was released to the public, in an effort to garner fresh information from any potential witnesses. A year later, a break was made in the case when a suspect was arrested.
On August 1, 2017, it was announced that a 51-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of murdering Downes. The suspect from Preston was described as living in Blackpool at the time of Downes’s disappearance, and had previously been questioned by investigators in 2003 when she went missing.
The suspect, Nigel Lloyd, had admitted abusing two girls, then aged 15, between 2001 and 2003 in Blackpool, Lancashire, around the same time that Charlene disappeared. Lloyd, a former chef and convicted paedophile, was questioned by detectives on suspicion of murdering her.
Lloyd was known to have lived in a property that backed on to the alleyway where Charlene often hung out. “He was living in the flat at the top of the alley, and he was forever there offering cups of tea…,” said Cusack. “It always sparks a copper’s intuition when someone’s being overly helpful.”
Despite this circumstantial evidence, Lloyd was questioned by police over the course of two days about his whereabouts on the day Charlene went missing. After intense questioning, Lloyd was released under investigation. He was later told by police that he is no longer considered a suspect in the case.
Channel 5 aired a three-part documentary ‘The Murder of Charlene Downes’ on May 21, 2019, that followed investigative journalist Joe Cusack’s research into the case and interviews with family and friends of Charlene. Karen Downes said during the documentary, “Charlene was my baby girl. She would be 29 now but to me she’s still a 14-year-old girl.”
“I’ve often walked round and thought I’ve seen her and shouted to her. I miss her terribly, I miss everything about her and I just wish I could have her back. She was hanging around in takeaways and meeting up with grooming men but I knew nothing about that but that was still part of her.”
Joe Cusack stated his belief in the Channel 5 documentary that convicted paedophile Nigel Lloyd was key to Charlene’s disappearance and possible murder. However, four years later he said he now believes that Lloyd was just a ‘smokescreen’ to keep him away from the investigation.
Cusack said: “Lancashire Police clearly channelled us towards Nigel Lloyd, but it was a distraction plan.” In a new documentary marking 20 years since Charlene went missing, Cusack said “We had boots on the ground ready to film episode four – but he’ll never be charged because he didn’t do it.”
When asked about his experiences with Lancashire Police, he said they “weren’t co-operative at all” at first, but became more helpful later on. “The documentary sparked a lot of interest [in Charlene Downes]. It laid dormant until our documentary and it was just drifting into the background, and I think that’s where Lancashire Police want it to be.”
Written by Nucleus
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