M25 killer bids for early release

He was once Britain's Most Wanted Man. And now, as he sits locked for 12 hours a day in his cell in the Safe Secure Unit of Whitemoor Prison in Cambridgeshire, with few visitors allowed and his every move monitored by CCTV, Kenneth Noye knows that he remains one of Britain's most reviled killers.

Sentenced to life four years ago for the infamous M25 road rage killing of 21-year-old Stephen Cameron, Noye - now 57 and a man described as a "career criminal" - had fully expected to die in jail. Captured after one of Scotland Yard's biggest ever manhunts, Noye had been on the run in Spain after brutally stabbing Cameron, and was extradited back to Britain in one of the most high-profile murder trials of the past decade.

But this week, Kenneth Noye - a perennially violent man both feared and loathed in equal measure - is quietly confident that the wheels of justice are slowly turning in his favour. So much so, in fact, that there is the very real possibility, as his appeal against his murder conviction comes under review next week, that he could be sensationally released within months. Incredible as it may seem, it is a simple legal technicality, and one buried within court papers, which may see him set free.

The reasons are twofold: firstly, Noye and his legal advisers claim that the extradition treaty under which he was sent back to Britain from Spain only allowed for him to serve a maximum of 12 years in prison; not, as he was given, life.

If that claim is upheld - and the original extradition request effectively thrown out - Noye's very conviction for murder could be dramatically overturned.

That a killer of Noye's notoriety and brutality - a man police hoped would rot in prison for the rest of his life - could very soon be freed, will come as a devastating shock to Cameron's parents, Ken and Toni. When Noye was originally sentenced, Ken Cameron said of Noye: "Life should be life. He has to serve life and hopefully it is going to be life."

Yesterday, a family friend reacted with shock at the possibility of his early release: "If Noye gets out early, it will be devastating for them. It will bring back all of the pain. They thought they'd got justice for their son. This will be like killing him all over again."

At the same time, Noye has always stated he killed Cameron in selfdefence, a claim which he hopes will be sent to the Appeal Courts in the Strand later this month. Yesterday, his lawyer, Giovanni di Stefano, confidently announced: "The incident that took place causing the death of Mr Cameron amounted to an offence of manslaughter and not murder."

On the eve of his new legal appeal, and in an exclusive interview for the Evening Standard from his prison cell, Noye - who was also once tried and sensationally acquitted of the murder of an undercover policeman - boldly maintains his innocence. "I am not a murderer," he says. "I can't bring the boy back. If I could I would have, a million times over. But I did not murder him."

The facts, as known, are these: on the afternoon of 19 May 1996, Noye and Cameron were involved in an altercation on a slip-road of the M25 interchange at Swanley in Kent. It is said that Noye recognised Cameron's girlfriend, Danielle Cable, as the two cars pulled alongside each other. For reasons which remain obscure, the two men got out of their cars and a verbal and physical struggle took place in which, claims Noye, he was actually the victim.

"I do regret what happened," he claims, "but what would you do if, on the M25, a big geezer is clobbering you? I know I should have taken a bloody lip and gone away but I didn't, and I am sorry but I can't change the past."

Noye maintains that he killed Cameron in self-defence after the younger man had attacked him. Twice, he says, he returned to his own car, warning Cameron to stop goading him. When Noye returned to his car for the third time, he retrieved a knife and stabbed Cameron once in the chest. The next day, in a fateful move, he fled Britain with £10,000 cash - allegedly with the help of underworld contacts - and was captured 18 months later.

Of course, Cameron wasn't the only victim that day. Danielle, the most reliable witness, needed 24-hour police protection and ultimately assumed a new identity, such were police fears that associates of Noye might try to intimidate her. Despite marrying an unnamed former soldier two years ago, she remains a frightened woman.

Today, Noye himself obstinately - and predictably - argues that he did not set out to murder the trainee electrician. "I never murdered Mr Cameron," he repeats. "I lunged at him once and there are witnesses that said that and saw that.

"He died and I am sorry. It was a fight, a stupid incident that should not have happened but witnesses saw that he was getting the better of me because he was fit and much younger than me.

"I should not have reacted the way that I did and I have said that I am sorry for that. What more can I do? He is dead. He was young. I should have just turned away."

However repellent his remarks will be to many people, Noye believes that he has served his time. "My sentence should be for manslaughter and set at whatever the system says is fair," he tells me. "I have accepted all the system has thrown at me. If I get released and, am allowed to, it's best that I go away from this country.

"They have a certain thing about me here, and once the system makes you a target, you will be a target for life. I will probably, if I'm permitted, live abroad because I can't see me being left alone in England."

Noye is no stranger to controversy, of course; nor to prison, for that matter. The son of a south London postal worker, he has a history of associations with organised crime: he was sentenced in the mid-1980s to 14 years in prison for his part in handling the proceeds from the infamous Brink's-Mat robbery in 1983. In the most audacious heist since the Great Train Robbery, an armed gang raided the security firm's depot near Heathrow and made off with £22 million in gold bullion.

It was because of his involvement with this robbery that Noye - well known to the police for his links to the criminal underworld - became embroiled in yet another shocking and vicious crime. An undercover detective, John Fordham, was stabbed in the grounds of Noye's Kent house while on a surveillance mission.

It was a shocking and vicious attack but Noye was tried and acquitted of murder - a verdict which, to this day, still rankles with senior detectives. In fact, each year, former colleagues of Fordham's from Scotland Yard meet for lunch in his memory.

According to Noye, the police have never forgiven him for Fordham's killing and he maintains that there has been a vendetta against him.

"The old Bill have never forgiven or forgotten what happened. I was made to do every day of the Brink's-Mats sentence, but we know why that was."

Noye's life in Whitemoor Prison is, by necessity, regimented. As a Double-A category prisoner, he is locked in his cell at 8pm each night and not let out until 8am. He shares the high-security wing with only five other inmates, all of whom are supervised 24 hours a day.

He spends most of his time in the prison gym and learning Spanish. He is allowed a weekly visit from his wife Brenda, who now lives in the south-west of England and remains loyal to him.

Always a fit, muscular man, after hours working in the gym he is in strong physical shape, although his hair has turned completely grey.

The fact that he is living under the strictest penal regime has taken its toll. Noye himself says that to treat him "like a terrorist" is absurd. "I have no intention of escaping anywhere," he says, "and I have never tried to escape nor will ever try. Where would I go? Wherever I went, people would all know me.

"I was in an open prison for the Brink's-Mat case and never ran away and never even gave it a thought. Okay, I went away after the M25 incident but, I ask you, what would you have done in the same situation? Who was going to believe me? In fact, who did believe me?"

When Noye speaks of his time in prison, you sense that this is a man truly confident that his release could be just a matter of time. And in a strangely damning indictment of his time in jail, he says finally: "Prison doesn't change anyone. It's just a place where time passes. Some of them pass time causing as much ruckus as possible and some use the time. I just mind my own business and do my time without any aggro."

What is certain is that, to the police, Noye remains a villain who has, to use their parlance, been "banged to rights". To Stephen Cameron's family, he is purely and simply a thug and a murderer. To prominent underworld figures I have spoken to, he is - in their own perverse vernacular - "a hard man but a fair one".

This month, the legal system will finally decide one way or the other. Today, Danielle, Cameron's former girlfriend, may have married and is said to be more confident about the future; but she still lives under a new identity, rarely seeing her own family.

How ironic, then, that while Noye could soon be reunited with his loved ones, Danielle is still effectively serving her own life sentence.