John Marshall was a car dealer who made his living buying and selling high-performance vehicles to automobile enthusiasts.
By the mid-1990s, Mr Marshall’s business was going gangbusters. The Basildon-based tradesman was well on his way to becoming a millionaire.
But his fortunes were cut short in 1996 when he was murdered in South London.
His killer has never been caught.
Police officers discovered Mr Marshall’s body in Sydenham on May 22, 1996.
He was found covered with straw in the unlocked boot of his Range Rover with two gunshot wounds, one to the chest and head – and £5,000 on his person.
When they arrived at the scene, officers realised Mr Marshall was not killed in his car – and that the vehicle was moved after his death.
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Mr Marshall was a heavyset man. He was 6ft 2in and weighed 15st. Police concluded that at least two people would have been needed to lift him into the back of the vehicle.
Detectives wanted to know where Mr Marshall’s car had been before he was killed, and where the murder itself had taken place.
Officers determined that he had left home between 10.20am and 11.20am on May 15 for a business meeting regarding a house purchase in Kent. He told his wife he would be home in a few hours.
He was later spotted purchasing car parts at the Century Salvage parts yard in Pitsy. He left between 12pm and 1pm.
The last person to see Mr Marshall alive spotted him driving over the Queen Elizabeth II bridge shortly after. Save for the people who killed him, the next people to see Mr Marshall were the officers who found his body.
Officers did not know why Mr Marshall’s killers would have left £5,000 in the car after murdering him. Even stranger was the fact his car keys and a grey Head sports bag containing his business documents, two mobile phones and an 18-carat gold watch were both taken.
One of the car windows was open when police discovered Mr Marshall’s body, meaning his possessions could’ve been taken by a passerby.
But that didn’t explain why they left the £5,000 – which Marshall had reportedly taken for a business meeting the day he was killed.
Rumours circulated at the time that Mr Marshall had a business partnership with Pat Tate, member of a notorious drug gang known as the ‘Essex Boys’.
Five months before Mr Marshall’s death, Tate and two other Essex Boys were brutally murdered in a Range Rover on a quiet country lane in Rettendon, Essex.
The trio were “blasted” with a shotgun from close range, police said at the time. Two local farmers discovered them the next morning.
But officers investigating Mr Marshall’s murder said there was no reason to suspect he was involved with the Essex Boys, and so that line of enquiry fizzled out.
Another explanation for his death wouldn’t come until four years later, when career criminal Kenneth Noye was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Stephen Cameron, who he stabbed to death during a road rage argument on the M25.
Detectives now believe Kenneth Noye ordered a hit on Marshall
(Image: PA/Kent Police)
After murdering Cameron, Noye planned to leave the country.
He organised for a private helicopter to take him to the south of France, where he would then take a train to Paris and a private jet to Madrid.
But before he fled the country, Noye bought false papers showing that his Land Rover Discovery – the vehicle he was driving when he killed Cameron – was owned by an Anthony Francis.
Noye bought the fraudulent documents from Mr Marshall.
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Detectives concluded that Noye ordered a gangland hit on Mr Marshall to prevent a link being established between him and the car he was driving when he murdered Cameron.
Members of London’s criminal underworld at the time said Noye was worried Mr Marshall would inform the police, and ordered him to be silenced. Noye was never charged with Mr Marshall’s murder.
Mr Marshall was survived by his loving wife and three children, whom he is said to have adored.
Noye is now 73 years old. Mr Marshall’s murder remains unsolved.
