Before we get started, please rate and review our show. It helps people find us. On this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly. In the shadow of one of the best soccer teams in the world, one super fan of Manchester United doubled as a legendary area crime boss until he was assassinated. The wild true story of who killed Manchester United hooligan and criminal Paul Massey and why he was killed is told here by SI contributor Read four Grave. I'm your host John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio this Sports Illustrated Weekly. A quick heads up that this story features foul language, gun, violence and murder. The year was Manchester United had a new manager. Here he is on the first day of his new gig, telling the BBC about the awkwardness of meeting the players after former manager Ron Atkinson was Austin, don't they all right? Once week got relationship, I'm sure we'll do Vediville Alex Ferguson didn't know it, but very well was a vast understatement. He was about to usher in a new era for the team, an era that would redefine English soccer, not just United, all the champions up the Premier League. Of course you do. No one can cross a ball or bend it like that. And there's a goal from coasts But why wonderful save by Hichall got hit by Ryan Giggs. Oh what's it good? Oh my goodness the Christiano. Yeah. In the mid eighties, Manchester United was on the precipice of greatness, but just across the river from the Grand Stadium, Old Trafford, a gritty, rough and tumble area of Manchester called Salford was giving rise to an almost mythical criminal. His name was Paul Massey. His story is one of hubris and deceit in the shadow of one of the greatest soccer teams ever. The legend of Paul Massey can be told through these three things soccer hooligan firms, the drug trade, and the rave music scene. So you can't tell the story of Paul Massey without telling the story of Manchester and specifically the story of Salford. That's writer Read four Grave, who reported this story for an SI Daily cover Manchester. He was really the first industrial town. The Industrial Revolution in the seventeen hundred comes about and it becomes this textile capital and it gets pretty rough and tumble, right away. What Chicago is to New York is what Manchester is to London. Very much the second city, very much, the more hard scrabble city, very much like a city with a chip on its shoulder. And within Manchester he is this community of Salford. And what made Salford so gritty, so tough, a place where the gangster was respected, it was because it was a docktown. Salford was the terminus of the Manchestership Canal, the third biggest port in in all of England, which is crazy because it's inland. It's thirty five miles inland. But they built this canal in the late eighteen hundreds to import and export all these goods that are being manufactured in Manchester. Paul Massey is a child of this area. He's born in the early nineteen sixties and Salford was still rolling as a doc city. But by the nineteen eighties, when Paul Massey is supposed to be entering his prime, the docks closed. Unemployment at one time among young men in Salford was close to and you know anywhere in the world, when you get unemployment like that, people turn to bad things. That's what Paul Massey did. This is a guy who, look he had a rough upbringing. He was kind of a guy who was always getting in trouble, always out on the streets. So he gets sent off to reform school and ends up just really having a life of sort of low level crime. But then by his twenties this soccer hooligan stuff that he got involved with with Manchester United, most famous soccer team probably in the world, and he was a member of the Red Army, one of their hooligan firms. Alright, so hooligan firms also called ultras. They're more than just a group of fans, right, It's like a step below organized crime, but they're still pretty organized guys who just get out, get drunk, getting fights. Paul Massey uses those connections to really find a footing in the gang world. You know, there were small time stuff, credit card scams, gasoline scams or steal gasoline and sell it. He's doing jail time for this sort of stuff and slowly that ends up building into something much bigger. And this is sort of how Paul Massey's greatness comes together. He's sort of at the nexus of soccer hooligan firms, of the drug trade, and most interestingly, and to me, you know, as an outsider of this, most surprisingly the rave music scene. Paul Massey is the nexus of these in the late eighties and early nineties, and that that's where he really makes his name, pulling him millions of dollars a year. Whose security firm at one point had a twenty employees. That is when in the nine when these hooligan firms come together with drug importation and rave music, that's where Paul Massey goes from a tough guy to Mr Big. Manchester became the sort of nexus not just for England but also for Europe to be this destination for drug culture and ecstasy. And at one point Manchester becomes known as mad Chester because it's this drug fueled club scene and one of the clubs was the Hacienda. Explained to everybody how Paul Massey factored in there. He had been pretty active hooligan member in the late seventies early eighties. This is when hooliganism in England was you know, it was enough of a big deal that Margaret Thatcher convened a quote unquote war Cabinet to address hooliganism. This is a big deal. Manchester United got banned from matches on the European mainland for a short period because it's fans were so crazy. So Paul Massey comes from that world. And then in the mid eighties the band New Order, who was the band that came out of Joy Division. They were right at the forefront of rap music. They owned this club called the Hacienda, and this is when Manchester was at its roughest spot in the mid nineteen eighties. But then New Order goes to a Bitha, the island off of Spain, to record an album and that's when they discover that's the very beginnings of rave music, and New Order brings that back to England, brings that back to the Hacienda, and the Hacienda transforms into the hottest club maybe in all of Europe. At this point it's the mid to late eighties when the Hacienda really starts picking up. Manchester is also a university town. There's a hundred thousand university students there and it becomes the place to be for young, cool, hot people in Manchester and for Manchester, this city with a chip on its shoulder, to suddenly become cool, not just cool for the North of England, but cool for all of England, for all of Europe. That's something that the city very much took pride in and I think we all probably by this point no what goes with rave music ecstasy. So in this weird way, the business model for this club doesn't work that well for the people own it, not for Peter Hook, not for the guys from newer because people are taking pills that they buy at the front door, they're drinking water, they're not drinking alcohol, and they're just raving all night long. But guests who figured out how to leverage selling the pills to all these ravers, it was Paul Massey. So he figures out if he controls the doors to these clubs, he can control the entire drug trade for all of Manchester and for all of this club scene. Paul Massey's greatest skill was that he could turn out a crowd that goes back to his hooligan days. He he just had this natural charisma to him. He wasn't the big sky who wasn't the best looking guy, but he was someone who never backed down from a fight and someone who just had a respect with so many people. So if Paul Massey said we're gonna go to this club on a Saturday night. We're gonna get a hundred people. When you get two hundred people, these ex hooligans, and we're gonna go to the security staff in the front and we're gonna basically occupy this club until the owners were lent and say okay, you're our new security staff. And then Paul Massey guts to sell all these ecstasy tabs at a huge markup and make millions upon millions of dollars doing this over the years. So Paul Massey figures us all out. He creates this criminal enterprise with these other hooligans that he was associated with. He's quite literally living the high life. And as we all know, these things generally tend to run their course. Eventually it does for Paul Massey rolls around and he gets arrested. What happens to him? And why is he sentenced to fourteen years in prison? You know, this is a story of I think great ubris. Paul Massey was on top of the world in Salford and in Manchester. Paul Massey, according to authorities, stabbed a guy. Stabbed a guy in the groin. The guy almost died he's put on trial and he sentenced to fourteen years for attempted murder. This is when Paul was at the top of his world. But it's not like this is a guy who is afraid of prison. If anything, that's a recruiting ground for him. If you get the sense of like the Godfather aspect of Paul Massey, he had so many friends who were in prison, and once he got out, he'd send Christmas cards to them and he'd include fifty pounds that they could spend at the prison commissary. Paul Massey when he's in prison, he's still connected and he assumes when he comes back out that he's gonna kind of pick right up where he went off. He gets out of prison and he says he's a change man, but really it's more are about even though he had these connections while he was inside, and he meets new people in the criminal underworld when he gets out, Manchester has sort of changed a little bit. There are new gangs. There's a new gang called the A Team and another new gang called the Anti A Team, which is not very creative but still no joke. So Massey doesn't quite have the same power and influence he did when he went inside. Right Paul Massic gets out of prison, he proclaims to be a new man. I think if you talk to law enforcement authorities out there, they would look at that claim very skeptically. But he did end up running for mayor of Salford. Question Salford because it was bought and betted that would be And I watch when I watch side as well, and maybe a little hard to understand what he's saying. They're somewhat ironically it's I got a passion for Salford because I was born and bred here. I want to help the elderly, I want to help the youth, and I want to try to reduce crime and also try to reduce the problem of drugs and Salford as well. He restarts his security firm, p m S Security, and he says, you know, this time we're above board. However, he's running for mayor and the police arrest him for all sorts of fraud allegations for PMS Security, which sort of tanks his candidacy. I think he finished like seven out of twelve. But yeah, in a way, this world had kind of moved on. However, Paul Massey still commanded respect in this world. He ends up becoming sort of like the advisor to this this gang called the A Team, specifically a young man named Stephen Britton. He's brought in to broker peace between gangs when they are gang wars. This is not a place in Salford, especially among these people who grew up in this gang world where they snitch. They refer to it as grasses. We say, you know, snitches go and did is right, But they very much lived by the code. And this is something that's really important to understand about Paul Massey and his world. Police aren't the ones who are called in to sort of mediate these gang wars. It was Paul Massey. So that also means he can find himself suck in some pretty hairy situations. Yeah, and one of the harriest read it goes down on the night of July in the shadow of Old Trafford Stadium. Something really dark happens. Yeah, something incredibly dark. He's driving home, he had just gotten back from a vacation with his partner of almost thirty years, louise Lydiat. He ends up going to a bookie and then before he gets home, about a half mile from his house, there's a place called Bargain Booze, and he got a bottle of Bacardi, two leaders of coke, and he drives home just have a quiet night with his wife. And as he's getting home, about seventeen seconds behind him, there's a stranger who's following him. He gets home and pulls up his BMW five series to the gate. Outside is really nice red brick home that you know his decades as this sort of gang leader and used all his his money to purchase And just as he gets out of his car, a man pulls up on a bicycle. He's wearing military gear and he has what prosecutors believe is a newzy and this dude just starts firing at Paul Massey. This rain of bullets, eighteen bullets rained down on him. One of them hit his left shin, another one hit three fingers in his right hand, just tore one finger all the way off. He sort of escapes this first barrage, hides behind some trash men's calls. Imagin He's yelling, I'm shot, I've been shot, hurry up, and the operator is trying to figure out where he is. He tells him his address and he's saying hurry up, hurry up. He shot at me and then his phone cuts out and what happened right then was a bullet tore through Paul Massey's fifth rib on the left side of his body, passed right through his chest, hit his heart and his lungs and it lodged in his back. The bicyclists jumps on his bicycle bikes away through a through a cemetery and a church parish. This was not something Paul Massey was particularly surprised of. He he knew that he was, you know, a man who had been hunted. He had told a documentary crew from the BBS, see this mant Swten. It's Matt Swaten and I'm not sending of it. I know the stakes and immediately word starts to get around. This wasn't just some dude who got nicked in a gang killing. This was Mr Big, a guy who was renowned, not just a Manchester, all over England. And that night people first show up at the scene. His son, one of his sons comes to the scene and they end up gathering at a pub just down the street called the robin Hood Pub. It starts raining and they basically had more or less awake for him. Immediately the pub closes and they end up going out in the rain after midnight in the parking lot of the pub, just remembering this man that it was certainly a dangerous man, but was absolutely revered and feared in this world of Salford. Eventually two men emerge as possible suspects, of them order of Massey and also one of his associates, John Kinsella. So tell us a little bit about who the suspects were and how the investigation unfolds. For three years, there's nothing. You get the sense that everyone on the streets knows what happened. But for three years this was an unsolved murder. But then John Kinsella, one of Paul Massey's lieutenants, an enforcerer, guy who was really talented martial artist, also happened to be the man who was accused of throwing acid in someone's face at Paul Massey's funeral. Really classy guy. And guess what happens. A man on a bicycle he pulls up, he fire shots at John Kinsella, kills John Concella point blank. She she shoots him in the back, and then it doesn't take a genius to say, hey, maybe these two things are related. Maybe this gang war between the A team and the Anti A team, this gang war that Paul Massey had mediated, this gang war that Paul Massey had taken one side on the This led to Paul Massey's murder, and this also leads to John Concella's murder. But this time the assassin who we'd all think would probably be the same assassin from three years ago, this time he didn't cover his tracks as well. There was CCTV security footage they captured a man on a bicycle with his face covered, peddling towards John Concella's home at five am. Enough the suspicion that authorities thought they could arrest this man, Mark Fellows gets arrested, and he did make a key mistake that police investigators quickly find out. And this is a really interesting part of your story, read, because I think in TV and in the movies, they're all these dramatic, sensational ways that investigators cracked the case, but that actually happened here. Mark Fellows. He didn't really look like a gangster. He looked either like an accountant or like a competitive jogger, which guess what he was. He was a talented runner, and when he would run, he would track his runs with a garment four runner ten GPS watch. And if you are would be assassin, uh, you don't bring your cell phone with you. You don't want to be tracked. You want to really be sure that there are no ways that police can figure out where you were. You certainly don't want to wear a garment four runner ten GPS watch. Now, Mark Fellows did not wear this watch when he assassinated Paul Massey. He did not wear it when he assassinated John Kinsella. But when police searched his home had probably cause of searches home, they find this watch a few weeks before Paul Massey had been killed, back in two thousand fifteen, they find what they believe was a reconnaissance mission that Mark Fellows had gone on. Traces him going from his house and it goes to massey house, It goes to the cemetery at the parish church of Saint Anna across the street. It gets turned off for about eight minutes and then it gets turned back on and goes back. Why would this man travel fifteen miles on a bike to go right across the street from Paul Massey's house, just weeks before Paul Massey would be murdered. That was really one of those caught red handed type moments. Yeah, So what happens then with Fellows because Massey and can sella the trial for their murders is sort of combined and the prosecution lays out its case. What ends up happening with the verdict. Their murders are combined, and also the defendants are combined. Remember earlier I told you when Paul Massey was driving to the liquor store that the day that he got murdered, there was someone seventeen seconds behind him in a car. There was a spotter in this His name was Steven Boyle. And Steven Boyle and Mark Fellows were both arrested in connection with these two murders. And Steven Boyle what he said to investigators right when he got arrested, he did the most unsoulfard thing possible. He opened his mouth. What he said to police he said, I haven't murdered anybody, but I probably know more things about it than I should. And when he goes on trial, Mark Fellows doesn't cop to anything, but Stephen boyle does he breaks the code. He says on the stand that he thought this was just a drug deal and he basically threw his fellow gang member under the bus. After both of these men were found guilty of homicide, Mark Fellows was given a double life sentence, which is incredibly rare in England. No chance of parole. The judge said to him after he gave him the sentence. He said, I have never had to deal with a contract killer of your kind before, and Mark Fellows kind of mixed the hair on your neck. Stand up a little bit. When the sentences were being read, he smirked, and then guards were leading him out of the courtroom and he supposedly turned to boil the guy who broke the spotter, his old friend, the guy who broke the code and threw him under the bus. He made a throat slashing gesture him and he said to him, it's your fucking fault, you fucking grass. If it weren't for two things, if it weren't for this Darman watch, and if it weren't for this guy who who broke the code, who he spoke to police, who testified in court. I believe and I know the prosecutor believes that there would not have been enough evidence to put him in jail. What's so interesting about this story. Paul Massey and Mark fell those they were, they were enemies, they were on opposite sides of this blood feud between these two games. But in this weird way, because Mark Fellows, even though he killed Paul Massey, he followed the code. He was a true Salford lad as they would call them. In a weird way. I feel like Paul Massey would respect that. Kelly Massey is is his daughter would vehemently disagree with it. Thinks that he's a rat and a coward and it's an awful human being. I know Louise his his partner, would disagree as well. But in that world, the worst thing you can do. Paul Massey said at one point in this BBC documentary, you know, if he ever got caught by the cops and he said, I do my jail, but the last thing that he would do is grass on someone. He said, I'd rather hang myself first. I think the overlap here is important because you you mentioned Massey's funeral. All these people turn out, lot of people wearing Manchester United gear. Paul Massey is buried in Manchester United gear. And so there's this tribalism for football and soccer hooliganism, but there's also a tribalism to the criminal underworld, right, And isn't that the intersection really of the story, that it's this tribalism that got Massey into the life and that same tribalism that ended up being his undoing. And we'll talk about tribalism. If you're a Tottenham Hotsper fan, if you're a Manchester United fan, you know you wear the jersey, you're excited, you're a big fan. Tribalism with hooligan firms goes so much deeper, and I think that's very much what happened in the streets of Salford with these gang wars that went on for decades. I think you're dead on right when you talk about the tribalism. People don't just want to be make money. They want to be identified with something, as part of something, and same with hooligan's, same with gangs. I think it's all just how we as humans just want to be part of something bigger, even if it's something that will lead to our demise. It's such a sensational, over the top story that it's almost too much to be believed, but it actually did happen. A remarkable bit of reporting and writing by you. You can read his story. I encourage everybody to do so on SI dot com. We will link to it in our show notes read four Grave, Thank you you're the man. Appreciate you having me, Thanks for listening, and a reminder to please rate and review the show that helps people find us. Sports Illustrator Weekly is a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. And for more of Sports Illustrated It's best stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jordan Rizzieri, Jessica You're Mooski, and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our senior producers are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our executive producers are Scott Brodie and me John Gonzalez. Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider. And if you've stuck around this long, we leave you with this Yeah, one of the one of the more thrilling moments like we we we get a little bit like jaded when you're interviewing athletes, like Okay, I'm going, you know, ask a few questions Lebron James, But interviewing rock stars a whole different beast. I got to interview Peter Hook from New Order for this story. Was just the coolest dude on Earth. And he was telling me I live in Minneapolis, and he was telling me about playing at the local club that I sometimes go to, and I'm like, oh man, so I'm supposed to the next time Peter Hook and his new band is Peter Hook in the Light, next time they come to Minneapolis, I'm supposed to grab a beer with him. Fingers crossed on that

Before we get started, please rate and review our show. It helps people find us. On this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly. In the shadow of one of the best soccer teams in the world, one super fan of Manchester United doubled as a legendary area crime boss until he was assassinated. The wild true story of who killed Manchester United hooligan and criminal Paul Massey and why he was killed is told here by SI contributor Read four Grave. I'm your host John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio this Sports Illustrated Weekly. A quick heads up that this story features foul language, gun, violence and murder. The year was Manchester United had a new manager. Here he is on the first day of his new gig, telling the BBC about the awkwardness of meeting the players after former manager Ron Atkinson was Austin, don't they all right? Once week got relationship, I'm sure we'll do Vediville Alex Ferguson didn't know it, but very well was a vast understatement. He was about to usher in a new era for the team, an era that would redefine English soccer, not just United, all the champions up the Premier League. Of course you do. No one can cross a ball or bend it like that. And there's a goal from coasts But why wonderful save by Hichall got hit by Ryan Giggs. Oh what's it good? Oh my goodness the Christiano. Yeah. In the mid eighties, Manchester United was on the precipice of greatness, but just across the river from the Grand Stadium, Old Trafford, a gritty, rough and tumble area of Manchester called Salford was giving rise to an almost mythical criminal. His name was Paul Massey. His story is one of hubris and deceit in the shadow of one of the greatest soccer teams ever. The legend of Paul Massey can be told through these three things soccer hooligan firms, the drug trade, and the rave music scene. So you can't tell the story of Paul Massey without telling the story of Manchester and specifically the story of Salford. That's writer Read four Grave, who reported this story for an SI Daily cover Manchester. He was really the first industrial town. The Industrial Revolution in the seventeen hundred comes about and it becomes this textile capital and it gets pretty rough and tumble, right away. What Chicago is to New York is what Manchester is to London. Very much the second city, very much, the more hard scrabble city, very much like a city with a chip on its shoulder. And within Manchester he is this community of Salford. And what made Salford so gritty, so tough, a place where the gangster was respected, it was because it was a docktown. Salford was the terminus of the Manchestership Canal, the third biggest port in in all of England, which is crazy because it's inland. It's thirty five miles inland. But they built this canal in the late eighteen hundreds to import and export all these goods that are being manufactured in Manchester. Paul Massey is a child of this area. He's born in the early nineteen sixties and Salford was still rolling as a doc city. But by the nineteen eighties, when Paul Massey is supposed to be entering his prime, the docks closed. Unemployment at one time among young men in Salford was close to and you know anywhere in the world, when you get unemployment like that, people turn to bad things. That's what Paul Massey did. This is a guy who, look he had a rough upbringing. He was kind of a guy who was always getting in trouble, always out on the streets. So he gets sent off to reform school and ends up just really having a life of sort of low level crime. But then by his twenties this soccer hooligan stuff that he got involved with with Manchester United, most famous soccer team probably in the world, and he was a member of the Red Army, one of their hooligan firms. Alright, so hooligan firms also called ultras. They're more than just a group of fans, right, It's like a step below organized crime, but they're still pretty organized guys who just get out, get drunk, getting fights. Paul Massey uses those connections to really find a footing in the gang world. You know, there were small time stuff, credit card scams, gasoline scams or steal gasoline and sell it. He's doing jail time for this sort of stuff and slowly that ends up building into something much bigger. And this is sort of how Paul Massey's greatness comes together. He's sort of at the nexus of soccer hooligan firms, of the drug trade, and most interestingly, and to me, you know, as an outsider of this, most surprisingly the rave music scene. Paul Massey is the nexus of these in the late eighties and early nineties, and that that's where he really makes his name, pulling him millions of dollars a year. Whose security firm at one point had a twenty employees. That is when in the nine when these hooligan firms come together with drug importation and rave music, that's where Paul Massey goes from a tough guy to Mr Big. Manchester became the sort of nexus not just for England but also for Europe to be this destination for drug culture and ecstasy. And at one point Manchester becomes known as mad Chester because it's this drug fueled club scene and one of the clubs was the Hacienda. Explained to everybody how Paul Massey factored in there. He had been pretty active hooligan member in the late seventies early eighties. This is when hooliganism in England was you know, it was enough of a big deal that Margaret Thatcher convened a quote unquote war Cabinet to address hooliganism. This is a big deal. Manchester United got banned from matches on the European mainland for a short period because it's fans were so crazy. So Paul Massey comes from that world. And then in the mid eighties the band New Order, who was the band that came out of Joy Division. They were right at the forefront of rap music. They owned this club called the Hacienda, and this is when Manchester was at its roughest spot in the mid nineteen eighties. But then New Order goes to a Bitha, the island off of Spain, to record an album and that's when they discover that's the very beginnings of rave music, and New Order brings that back to England, brings that back to the Hacienda, and the Hacienda transforms into the hottest club maybe in all of Europe. At this point it's the mid to late eighties when the Hacienda really starts picking up. Manchester is also a university town. There's a hundred thousand university students there and it becomes the place to be for young, cool, hot people in Manchester and for Manchester, this city with a chip on its shoulder, to suddenly become cool, not just cool for the North of England, but cool for all of England, for all of Europe. That's something that the city very much took pride in and I think we all probably by this point no what goes with rave music ecstasy. So in this weird way, the business model for this club doesn't work that well for the people own it, not for Peter Hook, not for the guys from newer because people are taking pills that they buy at the front door, they're drinking water, they're not drinking alcohol, and they're just raving all night long. But guests who figured out how to leverage selling the pills to all these ravers, it was Paul Massey. So he figures out if he controls the doors to these clubs, he can control the entire drug trade for all of Manchester and for all of this club scene. Paul Massey's greatest skill was that he could turn out a crowd that goes back to his hooligan days. He he just had this natural charisma to him. He wasn't the big sky who wasn't the best looking guy, but he was someone who never backed down from a fight and someone who just had a respect with so many people. So if Paul Massey said we're gonna go to this club on a Saturday night. We're gonna get a hundred people. When you get two hundred people, these ex hooligans, and we're gonna go to the security staff in the front and we're gonna basically occupy this club until the owners were lent and say okay, you're our new security staff. And then Paul Massey guts to sell all these ecstasy tabs at a huge markup and make millions upon millions of dollars doing this over the years. So Paul Massey figures us all out. He creates this criminal enterprise with these other hooligans that he was associated with. He's quite literally living the high life. And as we all know, these things generally tend to run their course. Eventually it does for Paul Massey rolls around and he gets arrested. What happens to him? And why is he sentenced to fourteen years in prison? You know, this is a story of I think great ubris. Paul Massey was on top of the world in Salford and in Manchester. Paul Massey, according to authorities, stabbed a guy. Stabbed a guy in the groin. The guy almost died he's put on trial and he sentenced to fourteen years for attempted murder. This is when Paul was at the top of his world. But it's not like this is a guy who is afraid of prison. If anything, that's a recruiting ground for him. If you get the sense of like the Godfather aspect of Paul Massey, he had so many friends who were in prison, and once he got out, he'd send Christmas cards to them and he'd include fifty pounds that they could spend at the prison commissary. Paul Massey when he's in prison, he's still connected and he assumes when he comes back out that he's gonna kind of pick right up where he went off. He gets out of prison and he says he's a change man, but really it's more are about even though he had these connections while he was inside, and he meets new people in the criminal underworld when he gets out, Manchester has sort of changed a little bit. There are new gangs. There's a new gang called the A Team and another new gang called the Anti A Team, which is not very creative but still no joke. So Massey doesn't quite have the same power and influence he did when he went inside. Right Paul Massic gets out of prison, he proclaims to be a new man. I think if you talk to law enforcement authorities out there, they would look at that claim very skeptically. But he did end up running for mayor of Salford. Question Salford because it was bought and betted that would be And I watch when I watch side as well, and maybe a little hard to understand what he's saying. They're somewhat ironically it's I got a passion for Salford because I was born and bred here. I want to help the elderly, I want to help the youth, and I want to try to reduce crime and also try to reduce the problem of drugs and Salford as well. He restarts his security firm, p m S Security, and he says, you know, this time we're above board. However, he's running for mayor and the police arrest him for all sorts of fraud allegations for PMS Security, which sort of tanks his candidacy. I think he finished like seven out of twelve. But yeah, in a way, this world had kind of moved on. However, Paul Massey still commanded respect in this world. He ends up becoming sort of like the advisor to this this gang called the A Team, specifically a young man named Stephen Britton. He's brought in to broker peace between gangs when they are gang wars. This is not a place in Salford, especially among these people who grew up in this gang world where they snitch. They refer to it as grasses. We say, you know, snitches go and did is right, But they very much lived by the code. And this is something that's really important to understand about Paul Massey and his world. Police aren't the ones who are called in to sort of mediate these gang wars. It was Paul Massey. So that also means he can find himself suck in some pretty hairy situations. Yeah, and one of the harriest read it goes down on the night of July in the shadow of Old Trafford Stadium. Something really dark happens. Yeah, something incredibly dark. He's driving home, he had just gotten back from a vacation with his partner of almost thirty years, louise Lydiat. He ends up going to a bookie and then before he gets home, about a half mile from his house, there's a place called Bargain Booze, and he got a bottle of Bacardi, two leaders of coke, and he drives home just have a quiet night with his wife. And as he's getting home, about seventeen seconds behind him, there's a stranger who's following him. He gets home and pulls up his BMW five series to the gate. Outside is really nice red brick home that you know his decades as this sort of gang leader and used all his his money to purchase And just as he gets out of his car, a man pulls up on a bicycle. He's wearing military gear and he has what prosecutors believe is a newzy and this dude just starts firing at Paul Massey. This rain of bullets, eighteen bullets rained down on him. One of them hit his left shin, another one hit three fingers in his right hand, just tore one finger all the way off. He sort of escapes this first barrage, hides behind some trash men's calls. Imagin He's yelling, I'm shot, I've been shot, hurry up, and the operator is trying to figure out where he is. He tells him his address and he's saying hurry up, hurry up. He shot at me and then his phone cuts out and what happened right then was a bullet tore through Paul Massey's fifth rib on the left side of his body, passed right through his chest, hit his heart and his lungs and it lodged in his back. The bicyclists jumps on his bicycle bikes away through a through a cemetery and a church parish. This was not something Paul Massey was particularly surprised of. He he knew that he was, you know, a man who had been hunted. He had told a documentary crew from the BBS, see this mant Swten. It's Matt Swaten and I'm not sending of it. I know the stakes and immediately word starts to get around. This wasn't just some dude who got nicked in a gang killing. This was Mr Big, a guy who was renowned, not just a Manchester, all over England. And that night people first show up at the scene. His son, one of his sons comes to the scene and they end up gathering at a pub just down the street called the robin Hood Pub. It starts raining and they basically had more or less awake for him. Immediately the pub closes and they end up going out in the rain after midnight in the parking lot of the pub, just remembering this man that it was certainly a dangerous man, but was absolutely revered and feared in this world of Salford. Eventually two men emerge as possible suspects, of them order of Massey and also one of his associates, John Kinsella. So tell us a little bit about who the suspects were and how the investigation unfolds. For three years, there's nothing. You get the sense that everyone on the streets knows what happened. But for three years this was an unsolved murder. But then John Kinsella, one of Paul Massey's lieutenants, an enforcerer, guy who was really talented martial artist, also happened to be the man who was accused of throwing acid in someone's face at Paul Massey's funeral. Really classy guy. And guess what happens. A man on a bicycle he pulls up, he fire shots at John Kinsella, kills John Concella point blank. She she shoots him in the back, and then it doesn't take a genius to say, hey, maybe these two things are related. Maybe this gang war between the A team and the Anti A team, this gang war that Paul Massey had mediated, this gang war that Paul Massey had taken one side on the This led to Paul Massey's murder, and this also leads to John Concella's murder. But this time the assassin who we'd all think would probably be the same assassin from three years ago, this time he didn't cover his tracks as well. There was CCTV security footage they captured a man on a bicycle with his face covered, peddling towards John Concella's home at five am. Enough the suspicion that authorities thought they could arrest this man, Mark Fellows gets arrested, and he did make a key mistake that police investigators quickly find out. And this is a really interesting part of your story, read, because I think in TV and in the movies, they're all these dramatic, sensational ways that investigators cracked the case, but that actually happened here. Mark Fellows. He didn't really look like a gangster. He looked either like an accountant or like a competitive jogger, which guess what he was. He was a talented runner, and when he would run, he would track his runs with a garment four runner ten GPS watch. And if you are would be assassin, uh, you don't bring your cell phone with you. You don't want to be tracked. You want to really be sure that there are no ways that police can figure out where you were. You certainly don't want to wear a garment four runner ten GPS watch. Now, Mark Fellows did not wear this watch when he assassinated Paul Massey. He did not wear it when he assassinated John Kinsella. But when police searched his home had probably cause of searches home, they find this watch a few weeks before Paul Massey had been killed, back in two thousand fifteen, they find what they believe was a reconnaissance mission that Mark Fellows had gone on. Traces him going from his house and it goes to massey house, It goes to the cemetery at the parish church of Saint Anna across the street. It gets turned off for about eight minutes and then it gets turned back on and goes back. Why would this man travel fifteen miles on a bike to go right across the street from Paul Massey's house, just weeks before Paul Massey would be murdered. That was really one of those caught red handed type moments. Yeah, So what happens then with Fellows because Massey and can sella the trial for their murders is sort of combined and the prosecution lays out its case. What ends up happening with the verdict. Their murders are combined, and also the defendants are combined. Remember earlier I told you when Paul Massey was driving to the liquor store that the day that he got murdered, there was someone seventeen seconds behind him in a car. There was a spotter in this His name was Steven Boyle. And Steven Boyle and Mark Fellows were both arrested in connection with these two murders. And Steven Boyle what he said to investigators right when he got arrested, he did the most unsoulfard thing possible. He opened his mouth. What he said to police he said, I haven't murdered anybody, but I probably know more things about it than I should. And when he goes on trial, Mark Fellows doesn't cop to anything, but Stephen boyle does he breaks the code. He says on the stand that he thought this was just a drug deal and he basically threw his fellow gang member under the bus. After both of these men were found guilty of homicide, Mark Fellows was given a double life sentence, which is incredibly rare in England. No chance of parole. The judge said to him after he gave him the sentence. He said, I have never had to deal with a contract killer of your kind before, and Mark Fellows kind of mixed the hair on your neck. Stand up a little bit. When the sentences were being read, he smirked, and then guards were leading him out of the courtroom and he supposedly turned to boil the guy who broke the spotter, his old friend, the guy who broke the code and threw him under the bus. He made a throat slashing gesture him and he said to him, it's your fucking fault, you fucking grass. If it weren't for two things, if it weren't for this Darman watch, and if it weren't for this guy who who broke the code, who he spoke to police, who testified in court. I believe and I know the prosecutor believes that there would not have been enough evidence to put him in jail. What's so interesting about this story. Paul Massey and Mark fell those they were, they were enemies, they were on opposite sides of this blood feud between these two games. But in this weird way, because Mark Fellows, even though he killed Paul Massey, he followed the code. He was a true Salford lad as they would call them. In a weird way. I feel like Paul Massey would respect that. Kelly Massey is is his daughter would vehemently disagree with it. Thinks that he's a rat and a coward and it's an awful human being. I know Louise his his partner, would disagree as well. But in that world, the worst thing you can do. Paul Massey said at one point in this BBC documentary, you know, if he ever got caught by the cops and he said, I do my jail, but the last thing that he would do is grass on someone. He said, I'd rather hang myself first. I think the overlap here is important because you you mentioned Massey's funeral. All these people turn out, lot of people wearing Manchester United gear. Paul Massey is buried in Manchester United gear. And so there's this tribalism for football and soccer hooliganism, but there's also a tribalism to the criminal underworld, right, And isn't that the intersection really of the story, that it's this tribalism that got Massey into the life and that same tribalism that ended up being his undoing. And we'll talk about tribalism. If you're a Tottenham Hotsper fan, if you're a Manchester United fan, you know you wear the jersey, you're excited, you're a big fan. Tribalism with hooligan firms goes so much deeper, and I think that's very much what happened in the streets of Salford with these gang wars that went on for decades. I think you're dead on right when you talk about the tribalism. People don't just want to be make money. They want to be identified with something, as part of something, and same with hooligan's, same with gangs. I think it's all just how we as humans just want to be part of something bigger, even if it's something that will lead to our demise. It's such a sensational, over the top story that it's almost too much to be believed, but it actually did happen. A remarkable bit of reporting and writing by you. You can read his story. I encourage everybody to do so on SI dot com. We will link to it in our show notes read four Grave, Thank you you're the man. Appreciate you having me, Thanks for listening, and a reminder to please rate and review the show that helps people find us. Sports Illustrator Weekly is a production of Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. And for more of Sports Illustrated It's best stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com. This episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jordan Rizzieri, Jessica You're Mooski, and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer. Our senior producers are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our executive producers are Scott Brodie and me John Gonzalez. Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider. And if you've stuck around this long, we leave you with this Yeah, one of the one of the more thrilling moments like we we we get a little bit like jaded when you're interviewing athletes, like Okay, I'm going, you know, ask a few questions Lebron James, But interviewing rock stars a whole different beast. I got to interview Peter Hook from New Order for this story. Was just the coolest dude on Earth. And he was telling me I live in Minneapolis, and he was telling me about playing at the local club that I sometimes go to, and I'm like, oh man, so I'm supposed to the next time Peter Hook and his new band is Peter Hook in the Light, next time they come to Minneapolis, I'm supposed to grab a beer with him. Fingers crossed on that