Accused tells court Mersey boxer Brett Flournoy worked for IRA drugs gang

Jan 14 2012 by Lorna Hughes, Liverpool Echo

A MAN accused of murdering two drug dealers shot dead and buried on a remote Cornish farm claimed they were working for an IRA gang that ran the Liverpool drugs trade.

Thomas Haigh, one of two men charged with murdering Mersey boxer Brett Flournoy and David Griffiths in June last year, claimed after he handed himself in to police the men were working for an Irish republican group which “ran Liverpool”.

The Truro Crown Court trial of Haigh and Ross Stone also heard both blamed the other for killing the two men to whom they both owed money – in Stone’s case £40,000.

Stone, who admits burying the bodies on his Sunny Corner farm at Trenance Downs, near St Austell, told police he arrived back on June 16 last year to find the bodies of the two men lying on the ground. Badly beaten Haigh was nearby, he said, and although he did not admit killing them, he said “Dave (Griffiths) wouldn’t die”.

Haigh, who returned to his native Yorkshire after the killing, told police after walking into a police station in Huddersfield Griffiths had beaten him up over a girl he had brought back to the farm and he had run off when the men were still alive. He said had he been involved in the killing he would not have left it to a “thick farmer to tidy up” – a reference to Cornishman Stone disposing of the bodies – but would have taken them to “a friend’s pig farm”. He also boasted of links to Triads and Turkish gangsters who could have whisked him from the country “with a click of their fingers” if he had been guilty.

On the second day of the trial Paul Dunkels QC, prosecuting, said both men’s claims were lies.

He said: “When arrested by the police, the alliance between these two men broke down and self-interest took over. The murders were the result of the joint efforts of these two defendants. Although Haigh worked for the two men and was sent to make sure Stone didn’t get out of line, he and Stone became allies.

“They had realised Flournoy and Griffiths were problems in their lives that were not going to go away.

“When these two men arrived there was a loaded shotgun waiting for them. It doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger, each of them played their part and so we say each of them is guilty of murder.”

The badly burned bodies of Mr Flournoy, a dad-of- two from Bebington, and dad-of-three Mr Griffiths, originally from Plymouth, Devon, were found dumped in the back of a van buried on the farm last July.

Haigh, 26, of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and Stone, 28, from St Austell, Cornwall, both deny two counts of murder. Stone admits a charge of obstructing a coroner.

The trial was adjourned until Monday.