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Amaurote
12-05-04, 05:49AM
Something not quite right about this conviction - he has a record of hiring hitmen back in the states, which does ostensibly support his mea culpa - and I somehow don't think this is the last we'll be hearing about it.

Bieber gets life for 'brutal' murder of PC

By Ian Herbert, North of England Correspondent

03 December 2004

One of America's most wanted criminals was sent to a British jail for the rest of his life yesterday after a jury unanimously convicted him of shooting dead a police officer on Boxing Day.

David Bieber, a former US Marine wanted in Florida in connection with a murder and an attempted murder, was told by Mr Justice Moses that he had shown "no remorse or understanding of the brutality" of murdering a traffic officer, PC Ian Broadhurst, last Boxing Day.

The judge said at Newcastle Crown Court that Bieber, 38, had continued to maintain a "cool and detached" approach when attempting to explain the evidence against him. The fact he had shot PC Broadhurst through the head - which the judge said was a "particularly aggravating feature" of the case - meant he must spend the rest of his life in prison. Bieber becomes the latest of only 24 criminals who are serving a full-life sentence in Britain.

As PC Broadhurst's family paid tribute to a "loving husband and a wonderful son, brother and uncle", the officer who led the hunt for Bieber said police had not ruled out the possibility that Bieber may have either murdered, or arranged a murder, on previous occasions during his seven years in the UK.

Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Gregg said: "It is possible that he was armed in the car that Boxing Day because he was on the way to a hit or was employing somebody else to carry one out."

He urged the public to study photographs of Bieber on television and in newspapers and to ask themselves what he might have been doing in the past seven years.

As the verdicts were read out, PC Broadhurst's widow, Eilisa, and mother, Cindy Eaton, had to be consoled. Bieber frowned at the family as their sobs filled the court, and placed both hands in his suit pockets as he stood to hear the verdict.

After the verdict, the former club doorman and steroid abuser showed little emotion. He nodded to his defence team and mouthed a few words.

Bieber shot PC Broadhurst during a routine check on a stolen BMW he had parked illegally in Leeds, West Yorkshire. PC Neil Roper, 45, was seriously injured in the attack but survived, along with another officer, James Banks, 27.

Bieber then hijacked another car at gunpoint, withdrew large sums of money from his bank accounts, assumed a number of disguises and booked a one-way coach ticket to Paris.

But his plans to flee the UK were thwarted when staff at the Royal Hotel in Dunston, Gateshead, where he was holed up, tipped off police and he was arrested by armed officers on 31 December - five days after the shootings.

Bieber, who, while in Britain assumed the identity of an American police officer's dead son - Nathan Coleman - was given concurrent life sentences with a minimum of eight years for the attempted murders of PCs Roper and Banks.

Assistant State Attorney Scott H Cupp confirmed that the Florida authorities would be seeking to extradite Bieber if he ever completed his sentence in the UK - though that now seems unlikely.

http://mas.scripps.com/NPDN/2003/12/31/COLEMAN-cma_d.jpg

http://newsfeed.tcm.ie/images/people/ianbroadhurst.jpg

Independent (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=589255)

PS: Oh shit -

GUNMAN GETS LIFE THEN GOES BERSERK

Mirror (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/tm_objectid=14942710&method=full&siteid=50143&headline=gunman-gets-life-then-goes-berserk-name_page.html)

Dec 4 2004

By Jeremy Armstrong


DAVID Bieber went berserk in his cell yesterday after being told he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.

It took six guards to restrain the 14-stone bodybuilder as he shouted and screamed and demanded to see his solicitor.

Gunman Bieber, 38, behaved like a caged animal in a cell at Newcastle crown court after he was told he could not see his lawyer Christina Hayward-Kourabas.

His guards told him: "You have just been sent down for the rest of your life.

"If you want to see a solicitor, you have to make an appointment."

A source said: "Then he went berserk, shouting and screaming when he was told that he could not see his solicitor.

"He kept on demanding his 'rights' and saying that he should be allowed to see her.

"The six guards who stood alongside him in the dock had to get hold of him before she was told to go. Then he was thrown into the prison van."

The former Mr Universe contestant was then taken to Frankland jail in Durham through police road blocks as a helicopter followed overhead.

Once there, he was stripped, showered, put into a blue shirt and uniform before being led to his high-security cell.

He will stay there for at least six months until the Prison Service decides if he should return to Wakefield jail where he was held on remand.

Bieber will have psychiatric tests while police look at gangland hits in which he may have been used as a contract killer.

They are re-examining the execution of drugs baron Peter Beaumont Gowling, 52, shot in Newcastle in 2001.

They believe Bieber deliberately headed for Tyneside from Leeds when he was on the run after killing Pc Ian Broadhurst.

An A-Z of the area was found among his things when he was arrested. He had been to the North East in the past and has links with a bodybuilder there.

Police think he may even have a girlfriend living in Gateshead.

Diva
12-05-04, 03:06PM
What is not quite right about it? What is different from the Frankland jail?

Amaurote
12-05-04, 03:22PM
It's just that he has previous for ordering hits, Di, not to mention something like a network - it isn't impossible that he was telling the truth when he said that he was covering for someone else.

Diva
12-05-04, 04:06PM
Are you disputing the charge that he shot the officer or the reason for the shooting?

Amaurote
12-05-04, 04:21PM
I just think we don't know who really did it. He certainly deserves to be put away for life for arranging and supervising a pitiless little cartel that murdered and brutalized people, but it is quite possible that the man who shot PC Broadhurst was simply one of his associates.

Diva
12-05-04, 04:56PM
I think what's missing is how they found him. If he was apprehended later then it is certainly a possibility. I assumed from this statement that he was captured at the scene.

Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Gregg said: "It is possible that he was armed in the car that Boxing Day because he was on the way to a hit or was employing somebody else to carry one out."

Is there information from the other PCs who were shot? Did they ID him?

Amaurote
12-05-04, 06:41PM
No, sadly, it was apparently all a bit of a blur - the one person who could have ID-ed an American accent is dead. The police radio was on, though: the station has a recording of PC Broadhurst saying, "Oh, no, don't shoot me - please don't shoot" before he was murdered. There's a DNA link to the stolen car, though, so on balance it looks like he's guilty, but I don't see how it can be the racing certainty they make it out to be.

Diva
12-05-04, 07:23PM
Not that it will help in this case, but I think that video cameras on cop cars are a great idea.

At this point he was found guilty by a court of law and should therefore be treated as such. They didn't say he couldn't see his lawyer, just that he had to make an appointment. I am not totally clear on how your justice system works, so it's tough to make a valid argument.

Amaurote
12-10-04, 03:56PM
I was wrong about the timing of this - when I got into the max last week I asked one of the POLs about him and he shrugged: apparently Bieber has been in there not just for a week, but for three months, all the way through his trial. Yet again the tabloids prove about as accurate as a GOP infomercial.