Essex Boys murderer Michael Steele released from prison

A triple murderer infamous for killing the so-called Essex Boys has been released from jail.

Michael Steele, now 82, was jailed for life alongside Jack Whomes at the Old Bailey in 1998 for the gangland murders of Tony Tucker, 38, Pat Tate, 37, and Craig Rolfe, 26.

The three drug dealers were ambushed and shot dead with a pump action shotgun while in a Range Rover parked in Rettendon, Essex, three years earlier.

Steele, who has always denied the murders, has now been released from prison following a decision by the Parole Board, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) confirmed.

“Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Craig Rolfe, Tony Tucker and Pat Tate,” a spokesperson for the MoJ told the BBC.

“This decision was made by the independent Parole Board after a thorough risk assessment.

“Michael Steele will be on licence for the rest of his life, with strict conditions and intensive probation supervision.”

Steele’s release comes about four years after that of Whomes, previously of Brockford, near Stowmarket, Suffolk, who was released in 2021.

The Parole Board first said that Steele would be released on licence in February after a panel ruled imprisonment “no longer necessary for the protection of the public”.

This was temporarily blocked when Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood asked for his release to be reconsidered, saying the decision was “legally irrational”.

But after a “thorough” risk assessment the Parole Board, which had previously been worried about the chances of him reoffending, decided to go ahead with his release.

“He faces an immediate return to prison if he breaks the rules,” the MoJ warned.

The Essex Boys killings, as they became known, were carried out on a snowy December morning on isolated farmland near Chelmsford.

Farmer Peter Theobald and his friend Ken Jiggins found the Range Rover parked on a little-known track and suspected the occupants were poachers.

But upon further inspection it became clear the trio had been subjected to a brutal killing – the severity of their injuries leaving them only identifiable by their fingerprints.

During Steele’s trial in 1998, the court heard how the three victims had been ambushed in a row about drugs.

Then aged 55, and from Great Bentley, near Colchester, he was found guilty of murder as well as conspiring to import drugs into the UK.

His minimum prison term was set at 23 years, which expired in 2019.

The case has since been endlessly examined and reconstructed in TV dramas, films, documentaries and books, each exploring its links to other high-profile homicides and the 1990s rave scene.

A Sky Documentaries series in 2023 interviewed detectives involved with the 1995 case who were critical of the original police investigation.

Former Met Police detective David McKelvey claimed “credible lines of investigation were not followed” and that the assassination was related to an armed robbery, not drug dealing.

Essex Police previously said the case was “exhaustively examined” and there was no fresh evidence to dispute the original verdicts.