Sadistic gang members guilty of murdering small-time drug dealer
Small-time drug dealer Adam Vincent’s body was chopped into six pieces “behind closed doors” by the brutal gang.
Mr Vincent, 33, who was last seen alive on February 27, was tied up and kept prisoner, shot with air rifle pellets and savagely punched, kicked and stamped on in the weeks before his death.
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Hide AdHe was stabbed in the head with a screwdriver and an axe or golf club was used to bludgeon him to death.
The gang then cut up his body and scattered the parts in waterways across Lincolnshire.
His severed leg was found sticking out of the water by birdwatchers at Tetney Lock near Cleethorpes on March 3 last year. Two other parts were later recovered and his head, right arm and right leg were found in the River Ancholme, near Brigg in June.
The jury yesterday reached its verdicts on four of the five men charged with murdering Mr Vincent after a 10-week trial at Sheffield Crown Court. They are still deliberating on a fifth man charged with murder.
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Hide AdProsecutor Tom Bayliss QC said the gang headed by “Mr Big” Lee Griffiths believed Mr Vincent had stolen drugs and £5,000 from them and “grassed” them up to the police.
Mr Vincent sold “wraps” for the gang in return for using some of the drugs himself.
At the time of his death he was living with the gang whose headquarters was a bungalow on Southfield Road, Scartho, Grimsby.
Grimsby men Lee Griffiths, 43, his sons Thomas, 22, and Luke, 19, Lee’s stepson Mark Jackson, 27, and Matthew Frow, 32, all denied murder by joint enterprise between February 26 and March 4.
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Hide AdThe Griffiths and Jackson were all found guilty of murder. The jury has yet to decide on Frow.
All five were convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by concealing Mr Vincent’s body. The hearing continues.