Alfred James Moody

Alfred James Moody was shot inside the Royal Hotel public house in London on Tuesday 1 June 1993.

It was thought that he had discovered an IRA arms cache and was shot because of that although it was also noted that he had an extensive history of gangland crime and it was suspected that he had been involved in a wide range of criminal activities including several murders.

He was also noted for having been on the run for about 13 years since escaping prison and having known the Kray Twins and the Richardson gang from the sixties. At the time of his murder he was a wanted man having escaped from Brixton Prison on 16 December 1980 with two other people.

He had a conviction for manslaughter from 1967, being convicted for killing, along with his brother, a young merchant navy steward and was released from prison for that conviction in 1972.

At the time he had been living in a first floor council flat at Flat 12, Wadeson Street, Hackney off of Mare Street, and used to walk to the Royal Hotel public house on the edge of Victoria Park, about half a mile away, two or three times a week, generally during weekdays and always in the evening.

It was noted that it was not known how he got his council flat, which had security grilles over the windows, or who had known that he lived there, or knew that he was on the run.

He was described as being 6ft tall, broadly built and with black brows and greying hair. He was also described as a brick shithouse, extremely intimidating and a fearsomely hard man, resulting in a lot of villains being terrified of him. It was said that two days after his murder, an un-named policeman said, 'Moody was not the sort of guy you fight. You don't punch him or rough him up. You kill him'.

His route took him along the Grand Union Canal and down Gore Road to the Royal Hotel.

He had left his flat at 7.30pm on Tuesday 1 June 1993 to go to the Royal Hotel and was still there drinking at about 10pm when most of the customers had gone home and there were only about four people left there.

Alfred Moody had been standing at the bar between the two entrances drinking a beer when a Ford Fiesta car pulled up outside the pub and parked in a space in front of the park gates.

The driver then got out and went into the pub, ordered a pint, putting £2, in 2 £1 coins, on the bar, and then walked up to Alfred Moody and shot him four times with a Webley .38 revolver, swearing at him as he did so, which was said to have been unusual for a professional hit.

The gunman was said to have been between 5ft 10in and 6ft tall, aged between 30 and 40, with blue eyes, a lightly-tanned face and blonde (or possibly greying) shoulder-length hair. He had been wearing a dark brown jacket.

It was noted that the gunman had not touched his drink.

As he shot Alfred Moody, two young women approached the left-hand entrance from the street and tried to come in, but the gunman slammed the door in their faces and then left by the other door from which he had come in and drove away.

His post-mortem showed that he had two bullet wounds to his back, one to his chest and another to his head. When his body was searched, he was found to have had his flat keys and £90 in cash on him.

It was also found that attempts had been made to remove an eagle tattoo and the tattoo of a geisha girl from his arms which was presumably because he was on the run

As well as his conviction for manslaughter in 1967, he was also known for armed robberies on security vehicles and his use of a chainsaw to cut through the sides of them. It was said that gangs that he had been involved with had taken over £2,000,000.

He was also known for dressing up like a policeman. It was said that he had been involved in a hold up in the Blackwall Tunnel in 1978 during which he had been dressed as a policeman and had confiscated the keys from an armoured car as well as other cars in the tunnel to stop them from getting away.

However, it was noted that he became arrogant and that that led to his 1979 arrest when he was arrested for three armed robberies totalling £930,000. It was said that whilst awaiting trial he had been in an adjoining cell with a member of the IRA and they became friends. Then, later, when he and another man organised their breakout from Brixton Prison, they took the IRA member with them. They were said to have burrowed out using tools that had been smuggled into the prison in a sock.

It was reported that following his escape from Brixton prison that numerous crimes and a handful of murders were attributed to him, including the 1991 murders of David Brindle and Stanley Silk who were shot at the Bell pub in East Street, Walworth, and whose murders are themselves currently unsolved.

It was also suggested that he had been responsible for the shootings of Terry Gooderham and Maxine Arnold who were shot in a Mercedes Benz car in Epping Forest in 1989.

It was also suggested shortly after his murder that he had been involved in the murder of Peter Dixon and Gwenda Dixon who were at the time on holiday in Littlehaven, Pembrokeshire in June 1989, which was near an arms dump, however that murder was later attributed to John William Cooper who was convicted for it, as well as two other murders, in May 2011.

However, there were no suspects or arrests in Alfred Moody's murder.

A gangster that later wrote a book that touched on Alfred Moody's murder wrote that when you're dead you get the blame for everything. He said that following Alfred Moody's murder he was blamed for numerous crimes up and down the country, including the murders of Peter Dixon and Gwenda Dixon on the premise that they had discovered an IRA weapons cache and that because Alfred Moody had escaped with an IRA man that he was involved. The author noted that dead people can’t sue you, so people say what they like. He said that in the case of Peter Dixon and Gwenda Dixon that it was easy to connect Alfred Moody's posthumously, but noted that alternatively it could well have been Father Christmas.