Harry Roberts (criminal)
| Harry Roberts | |
|---|---|
| Born |
21 July 1936 Wanstead, Essex, England |
| Other names | Ronald Ernest Hall |
| Occupation | Carpenter |
| Criminal penalty | Life sentence with a recommended minimum term of 30 years |
| Criminal status | Released |
| Parent(s) | Harry Roberts Dorothy Roberts |
| Conviction(s) | Murder |
Harry Maurice Roberts (born 21 July 1936) is an English career criminal who in 1966 instigated the Shepherd's Bush murders, in which three police officers were shot dead. The killings happened after plain-clothes officers approached a van in which Roberts and two other men were sitting in Braybrook Street, near Wormwood Scrubs prison in London. Roberts feared the officers would discover firearms his gang were planning to use in a robbery. He killed two, while one of his accomplices fatally shot the third.
After Roberts had spent nearly 48 years in jail, in 2014 the Parole Board for England and Wales approved his release, at the age of 78. Having far exceeded his minimum term of 30 years, he was one of the United Kingdom's longest-serving prisoners, having remained in custody since 1966.
Roberts was born in Wanstead, Essex, on 21 July 1936 where his parents ran the George public house. As a child he became involved in crime by helping his mother sell stolen goods on the black market. Roberts later described how the family owned a café in north London where his mother was "...selling on mostly food—tea and sugar—and sometimes ration books. Anything she could get her hands on".
In his late teens, he was sentenced to detention after using an iron bar to attack a shopkeeper during a robbery. Roberts served a 19-month sentence inside Gaynes Hall borstal, and was released in January 1956.
One week after leaving the borstal, Roberts was called up for national service and joined the Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own), with whom he saw action during the Mau Mau Uprising and Malayan Emergency. Of his service in the jungle he said that this was where he learned to kill and that he had "personally killed at least four". Roberts has claimed that he reached the rank of Sergeant while in the Army although others have given his rank as Lance Corporal. Journalist and former armed robber John McVicar has said that Roberts "gloated" about his killings while in prison, and had "acquired a taste for killing prisoners [of war] on the orders of his officers" in the Army.
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