MURDER HUNT
Unmasked: The Gangland Legend And Grass Behind The Lovers' Lane Murder
At about this exact time thirty-four years ago, Terry Gooderham and Maxine Arnold were enjoying a light evening meal at her flat in Walthamstow, east London before meeting up with Maxine’s mum at the Essex Arms on nearby Forest Road.
At about this time thirty-four years ago, two gunman kidnapped the couple and forced Terry to drive his Mercedes to a lovers’ lane car park in Epping Forest.
There, facing a dark woodland, they were shot in the head, Terry first, with a 12-bore shotgun. The killers got away in a Golf that had been following the Mercedes.
At about this time thirty-four years ago, Maxine’s mum felt something wasn’t right when the couple didn’t show up for that Christmas drink.
So she let herself in to her 32-year-old daughter’s flat where plates were not put away, the fire still on and damp towels strewn on the bathroom floor.
This was not an era of permanent surveillance and mobile phones to reach loved ones at the press of a button.
Hours later, at around 4am on 23 December 1989, a patrol car came across the Mercedes, its engine still running, and peered into the gruesome interior.
Thirty-four years later to this day, the double execution of Gooderham and Arnold remains unsolved by Scotland Yard’s finest.
Maxine’s mother, Violet, died without seeing justice for a daughter who was an innocent and in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time.
The killers couldn’t have let her live because they were unmasked. In fact, so scary looking was one of them that when a driver behind the erratically-driven Mercedes saw his menacing face turn round he took the next exit.
An organised crime detective now working as a private investigator thinks, with good reason, Scotland Yard has done the same thing.
That for reasons the police cannot justify in the cold light of day, which include concern over corruption, it left these two murdered souls in limbo.
Within weeks of the execution, Scotland Yard had the names of the suspected gunmen, their getaway driver, the crime family and Kray associate believed to have put up the contract, and the motive.
It also had an informant who was a gangland legend as close as could be to the suspects, but who felt “a liberty had been taken” by killing an innocent woman.
The detective turned private investigator ran the informant back in 1989 and wrote up what he told him - the names of three suspects and the motive. But that intelligence log never got to the murder squad.
And days after submitting it through what he thought was a safe channel, because the informant believed one of the suspects had police cover, the detective was visited by a senior officer who effectively warned him off.
Thirty-four years later, he has decided to unmask his informant.
The name will send shockwaves through the underworld and asks searching questions of Scotland Yard’s commitment to solving this case.
