It was no way to die. Brian Waters was a local cannabis dealer. He was accosted by six men wearing balaclavas when he reached Burnt House Farm, Tabley, Cheshire.
The man was kicked and beaten. He was then strung by his ankles on a beam. Finally, he was dunked into a barrel of water.
They used a stapler to place a knife on his body. He was beaten with an iron bar and whipped with canes.
Mr Waters’ children, Natalie, then 21, and Gavin, 25, were tied up, assaulted and forced to watch their father die.
Two of the gang also kidnapped Mr Waters’ wife, Julie, then 42. All of this over a £20,000 drugs debt.
Brian Waters, a small-time dealer in cannabis, was attacked by six men wearing balaclavas when he reached Burnt House Farm, Tabley, Cheshire. This is where he had grown skunk.
Christopher Guest More was yesterday the fourth man brought before Chester Crown Court for June 2003 murder. John Wilson, the gangster, was convicted of ordering the attack. Otis Matthews is his right-handman. Jimmy Raven, a Liverpool hoodlum has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Two days after the brutal killing, More, now 43, went on the run, to Spain, then South Africa, Mozambique, Turkey and Sicily before settling in Malta, where he captained £2million superyachts from the island’s exclusive Portomaso Harbour, and enjoyed what police called a ‘luxury lifestyle’ until his arrest in 2019.
The most remarkable thing about the BBC and More is their relationship.
Daily Mail today revealed the BBC paid Raven more than tens thousand pounds during the period of four years that led up to the crime. They worked as undercover journalists and were paid £52,000 for their final film alone.
After Raven’s conviction for the murder of Waters was overturned, More fled the scene and the BBC broadcast the document they worked on. It featured their undercover footage.
Fiona Campbell (BBC senior producer) believed they had both been convicted of violence. ‘For ABH or GBH, I can’t recall which one,’ she was to tell police when she was interviewed.
MISS Campbell is now the £215,000-a-year controller of BBC3, home to some of the corporation’s best output, including Fleabag, Normal People and Killing Eve. She was a specialist in programs about criminals and was filmed secretly back then. Raven and More were her main sources of information and secret footage.
A Crown Court judge in another serious criminal case delivered a searing indictment of the BBC’s dealings with the pair, citing no fewer than six infringements of the BBC’s editorial standards.
Raven could be very dangerous, and it would not have taken much for a genius to figure this out. Shaven-headed, he had ‘psychopath’ tattooed on one leg, while his arms bore the legends ‘approach with caution’ and ‘extremely violent’. His cousin was more, the son and daughter of wealthy private investigators, with a mother who received a PhD on moral philosophy.
They used a stapler to place a knife on Brian’s head. Pictured: Brian Waters’ torture room
They also worked together for Channel 4. However, TV executives learned that Raven was in jail for grievous bodily injury following an unprovoked road-rage attack and terminated their contract.
Executives at the BBC were aware of Raven’s violent record. But in a statement to police after Mr Waters’ murder, Miss Campbell felt the pair were ‘reformed characters.’
She insisted: ‘I deemed Raven and More to be organised, reliable and professional in their work on undercover journalism… I feel we acted professionally, ethically and responsibly at all times.’ Miss Campbell first commissioned the pair in 2000 for a series on car crime. They went on to work on her next series – Crooked Britain. It was their intention to portray real criminals who commit real crimes.
Miss Campbell wanted to capture a fake currency printing operation so she asked Raven and More to help her. They did it in the fall of 2002.
Before the broadcast could begin, however, Waters was shot to death.
Miss Campbell was interviewed by National Crime Squad detectives to determine if she kept any records of the meetings with Raven or More. Curiously, she told them she had lost her diary and admitted: ‘I’m not going to quiz someone to death about their sources when it’s confidential, especially in this kind of investigation.’
The worst was yet to come when the secretly filmed members of the counterfeiting operations were brought up for trial in 2005. A five-week hearing was held by Judge Bernard Lever to determine what BBC footage could be presented to the jury.
In the days leading up to Brian Waters’ murder, Accomplice James Raven poses for a photo. Christopher Guest More Jr (pictured right in 2003), was the son of ex-millionaire businessman Chris More.
While he acknowledged that the BBC had acted with good faith when dealings were made with Raven and More, he still held a sharp view of his judgement.
He said there had been little supervision of the pair, despite then director general Greg Dyke warning Miss Campbell and her colleagues ‘their note-taking was inadequate, and telephone calls to the undercover operatives had to be carefully logged’.
The worst breach of BBC rules was that Miss Campbell’s boss, Peter Horrocks, then head of current affairs, ‘was not briefed’ and there was a ‘lack of control, supervision, and documentation in relation to instructions to and debriefings from the undercover operatives’.
The title of the program became Funny Money. Raven had already been locked up in prison for a while. Raven was not the only one on the loose. His story is like a mix of James Bond, Walter Mitty and the end.
Both More and Raven, who were cousins, worked as undercover operatives for Fiona Campbell, (above) now the £215,000-a-year controller of BBC3
In August 2003, he obtained a fake passport using the identity of Andrew Lamb. Following his friendship with a North Africa millionaire from the oil and natural gas sector, he began working as a trader. He then started his own company.
More stated to Chester’s jury that he was an honest businessman. He was a crane shipper from Germany to Libya and he had delivered cargo to Taiwan to BP. The Moroccan royal family even invited him to help with structural issues at Tangier port.
More, his 13-year-old beautician girlfriend, was arrested June 2019. They were living in luxury villas with swimming pools when he was arrested. His true identity was unknown to her. The island was familiar with him because he owned an office and four people.
At least ten years younger than him, this glamorous Maltese brunette refused to speak out when the Mail reached her. ‘It’s a very difficult topic to speak about,’ she said. ‘It’s something that really hurts.’
One close friend of More, who has known him for over five years in Malta said that people were shocked when he was detained.
The friend said ‘Andrew’ claimed he had been brought up in South Africa. He was regarded as one of Malta’s best yacht captains and regularly took out wealthy families, who flew in by private jet, for £20,000 week-long charter trips.
‘He did some work on my house, he had a set of keys, that’s how much I trusted him,’ the friend said. While the game is over for More, the questions – even from events so long ago – are perhaps just beginning for the BBC.