By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
The Independent
11 October 2001
Kenneth Noye has failed in an appeal against his conviction for the M25 road-rage murder of an electrician.
Noye, 54, had appealed on the grounds that a crucial witness at his trial in April last year was a criminal who
lied about seeing Noye stab to death Stephen Cameron in an attempt to win favour with the police. The Court of
Appeal ruled that the conviction was sound.
Noye, from Sevenoaks, Kent, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life at the Old Bailey after a jury rejected
his argument that he acted in self-defence when he stabbed Mr Cameron, aged 19, at the M25 Swanley interchange
in Kent on 19 May 1996.
Yesterday's ruling by the Court of Appeal means that details of Noye's escape to Spain after the murder, and his
connections with another notorious criminal, can be now published. They had been kept secret to prevent a possible
retrial from being prejudiced.
After stabbing Mr Cameron twice in the chest, Noye telephoned an old friend, John "Goldfinger" Palmer.
Noye is thought to have collected a case full of money from his Kent home and driven to Palmer's mansion near Bath
that night. Palmer arranged for him to be flown in his helicopter to a golf course near Caen, Normandy.
From there he travelled by train to Paris where Palmer's Learjet was waiting. Noye was flown to Madrid, then to
the Canary Islands where he stayed for a few days at Palmer's villa in Lanzarote. Noye was arrested in Spain in
August 1998.
Noye was previously jailed for 14 years for handling proceeds of the £26m Brink's-Mat gold bullion raid at
Heathrow in 1983. Palmer was acquitted over the robbery. Noye was cleared on grounds of self-defence of the murder
of Detective Constable John Fordham, who was stabbed to death after Noye found him in his garden on surveillance
duty during the Brink's-Mat investigation.
Palmer was jailed for eight years last year for cheating thousands of holidaymakers in a massive timeshare fraud
in the Canary Islands.
Noye's lawyer Michael Mansfield QC, argued in yesterday's appeal that adverse publicity after Noye's acquittal
for murdering Det Con Fordham had prejudiced a fair trial.
Mr Mansfield also argued that a prime prosecution witness, Alan Decabral – who was shot dead six months after Noye's
trial – was a criminal and "embellished his account to take in things he had never seen". Mr Mansfield
suggested Mr Decabral's reward came in 1999 when he escaped prosecution on a drugs charge.
But the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, sitting with Mr Justice Douglas Brown and Mr Justice Astill, said that
without Mr Decabral's evidence the jury would have reached the same verdict. They said Noye had had a fair trial..
After the ruling, Stephen Cameron's father, Ken, said: "I hope he [Noye] spends the rest of his life in jail.
I hope he comes out in a wooden box."
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