Episode 11 Fugitives

Come on!

-On the run...

-Get back here!

..and over here.

Hands out now, hands out.

When foreign criminals flee their home countries,

many hide out in the UK.

Give me your hands.

But if they think they're safe, they're wrong.

They know they're wanted.

A lot of these people are waiting for that knock on the door.

But the traffic in fugitives isn't all one way.

Across Europe there are hundreds of British criminals

also trying to escape justice.

From the sun-drenched costas

to the busy streets of the Dutch capital.

GLASS SMASHES

This is how the police take down the fugitives...

You're under arrest under the Extradition Act.

Police officer!

..both at home and abroad.

Coming up on today's programme:

Wanted in America -

a double dawn raid on two brothers accused of drug-dealing.

Just tell me your name, please.

-I'm not going to give you my name.

-You're not. OK.

And unlucky in Amsterdam -

the Liverpool drug baron who ended up behind bars

after an unexpected appearance on this programme.

My fugitive walked past the camera.

Extraordinary set of circumstances,

and I'd like to know the odds on that one.

West Yorkshire Police have one of the busiest extradition units in the UK.

In the last year alone, they have brought in more than 100 fugitives

wanted for offences committed in other European countries.

This kind of police work takes persistence,

and PC Dave Lockwood and his partner PC Tom Allen are experts.

Today, they're out looking for a man they have been hunting

for more than two years.

But now Dave has new information which he hopes will crack the case.

This intelligence is only two months old.

It's one I worked on in 2014

where I was looking for him,

and he had connections to Leeds and Bradford with a number of addresses.

We didn't manage to locate him,

and it's now come back to us with a new address in Wakefield.

The man they're after is called Wieslaw Lewicz.

Poland has issued no less than five

separate warrants for his arrest.

Dave explains what the man is accused of.

He's either run a company,

or agreed to import or export cars for people,

he's taken a significant deposit

and then not followed up or done anything.

And he's done that repetitively, with different people,

gaining quite a bit of money in the process.

So we're going to try and locate him,

execute these five warrants and take him into custody.

The new intelligence has identified this house

as the home of the fugitive.

But it's not him who answers the door.

-Hello.

-I hear you.

-OK. Do you speak good English?

-Yes, of course, I speak.

-Are we OK to come in and speak with you?

-Yes.

-Cheers, thank you.

Are you well? We were thinking that there was another man living here,

and we've come to speak to another man, called...

Wieslaw.

No... He doesn't live here.

-Right.

-I allowed him to take correspondence here.

'The man Dave's after has been using this house in Wakefield

'as a postal address.'

..the number, would you?

'His friend reluctantly reveals

'that Wieslaw Lewicz is still living in Bradford,

'more than an hour's drive away.'

'Now it's a race against time.'

The chap that was helping us,

his loyalty is to his friend.

He couldn't at first give us his word

that when I left the address he wouldn't ring him straightaway

and tell him we were there looking for him.

So, with an hour that's passed now,

we don't know if he's been phoned and tipped off

or he's going to give us a bit of time to get over and talk to him.

Dave knows the time he's spent on the road

has given his target ample opportunity to go on the run.

It might be this one,

or it might be the white door to the left of me where I am.

There's no answer.

Dave doesn't know which of the flats the wanted man could be in.

It's one of these, we're not sure which one.

But there's somebody who does.

The owner of the restaurant next door

is the wanted man's landlord and he's got a spare key.

-Just want to leave it to us for a minute? Is it flats?

-Yeah.

Just come and show us which flat he's got.

Hello, it's the police, open the door, please!

Are you happy to open this and let us have a check?

Because the window's open - we think he could be in there.

Do you just want to stand back for us?

Cheers, thanks.

Tom, door's open, I'm going in.

Hello?

Hello?

Tom's heard a bang up here when we've come through the door,

and in this guy's flat he's got his mobile phone,

he's got everything there as if he'd just walked out.

So we're just being thorough and checking that...

We're just checking that there's...

nowhere he could have gone if he was home.

His belongings are all there,

but there's no sign of the man they're after -

until Dave gets hold of another phone number for him.

Bear with me a minute.

-Hello, is that Wieslaw?

-Yes.

Wieslaw, hello, it's PC Lockwood from West Yorkshire Police.

Hello? Hello, it's PC Lockwood from West Yorkshire Police.

The phone call seems to come as a surprise.

I need to speak with you,

I'm just wondering if you'd be willing to meet me and, uh...

So we could speak.

Well, where are you now?

Oh, right, OK. Well, I'm in Bradford too,

so do you want me to come to where you are now?

Say it again.

The fugitive doesn't seem too keen to meet up.

He didn't want to meet with us,

he says he's got something to do tonight.

He seemed quite evasive on the phone,

that anything I suggested he wasn't up for,

and he said he'll hand himself in to a police station tomorrow.

We can't work on that and just quit looking for him, thinking that -

we've got to take him for his word.

The landlord has just told me

he's actually given notice a week and a half ago,

given two weeks' notice that he's moving out.

So that suggests, maybe this weekend,

as soon as he moves out of this property, we've lost him.

So we've got today and tomorrow, I guess,

to try and locate him.

'The clock is ticking,

'and the suspected fraudster seems to have escaped justice yet again.

'But after spending two years searching,

'could an unexpected sighting

'lead to a lucky break for Dave?'

The Metropolitan Police's Extradition Unit

deals with hundreds of cases each year.

They work round the clock,

tracking down foreign criminals hiding here in the UK.

We're fairly successful at what we do.

We arrested over 550 people last year

for extradition requests.

And we don't stop working until we can either show

they've left the jurisdiction or never been here in the first place,

or we've arrested them.

Quite simply, we don't give up.

This morning, DS Pete Rance is on his way to Bedfordshire

to track down one of two brothers wanted in America on drugs charges.

They are wanted out in Nashville, Tennessee.

Charged with the cultivation and supply

of almost 4kg of illegal

hallucinogenic mushrooms

back in 2009,

Charles Culver and his brother Dane

fled the United States

while awaiting trial.

Charles and Dane Culver are wanted for serious offences,

offences which in the States

will attract really lengthy custodial sentences.

They'd fled the States whilst they were on bail,

and it was important that they weren't given an opportunity

to do that again.

But the two brothers lived 20 miles apart.

Obviously, when you've got a situation like this,

where there's two living at separate addresses,

you'll be careful how you handle that

because if one gets to speak to the other one,

or gets wind of the fact that one's been arrested,

or the police have attended an address,

your chances of actually locating

and getting both of them are minimised.

Pete has sent a second team of detectives

to the other address to try to catch both brothers

at the same time.

Their investigation has led them to this street,

but Pete wants to be sure they've got the right house.

It's the brown door one, straight ahead.

So, not the white one, but the one next to it.

Gosh, it's freezing out there.

I just wanted to check the doors

so I know which address we're dealing with, but the car,

that silver Mazda, is the car registered to him at that address.

The curtains are drawn on the bedroom upstairs,

but we'll just wait and see how the fellows get on at the other address.

Although everything suggests this wanted man is at home,

they need to be sure his brother is also in his house 20 miles away...

-All right?

-..otherwise, one could tip off the other.

Yeah, we're outside it, yeah.

We're in the road.

I'm pretty confident our bloke's going to be there

cos the car's there.

I'll let you do yours because it might rattle the cage

and when we get there, he might be up.

All right, I'll speak to you in a minute.

Pete waits to see what the other team, led by DS Jamie Derby, find,

before making his move.

But when they call him back, it's not what he wants to hear.

How's it going?

Have you got him?

Jamie had gone to Dane Culver's address

and ascertained that whilst he lived there,

he wasn't in, so I was confident

that Charles Culver was in at the address at Leighton Buzzard.

It left a bit of a dilemma, really, in the decision to be made.

If he's there, Jay, and he's living there,

we might be better off doing it in the morning.

It was a big decision to make

because you potentially run the risk of both of them being alerted

and both going on the run.

I might do that, then, I might call it off.

For Pete, it's a case of double or nothing.

He makes the decision to call off the operation.

We're going to pull off and do both jobs really early tomorrow morning

so we'll do them at a simultaneous arrest inquiry at both addresses,

and, hopefully, get both of them tomorrow.

So, it's a little bit of a holdback to, hopefully...

get the pair of them,

rather than start chasing around having to get one after the other.

But when they return the next morning,

can the detectives be sure they've got the right men?

-Just tell me your name, please.

-Am I obliged to do that?

Well, you don't have to give me it.

-I suspect I might know who you are.

-Right.

Liverpool - a city with a proud history of exports.

But in 2015, police were trying to stop

a very different kind of export.

On a cold January morning,

undercover cops staked out a fast-food restaurant.

Through a long lens, they snapped a group of men

discussing a plan to traffic a huge haul of cannabis resin.

Among the conspirators was this man, Terrence Earle.

Earle and younger brother Michael

planned to smuggle the drugs in the back of a lorry later that day.

Both Michael and Terrence Earle are significant individuals

within the organised-crime world.

These individuals are resourceful,

they're shrewd and quite deliberate

in their approach to trafficking drugs.

Detectives were one step ahead of the brothers.

They had intelligence the drugs were destined for South Wales.

As the cannabis resin was loaded from a white van onto a lorry,

officers in Liverpool were working with their south Wales colleagues

to stop it, and catch the men behind the drugs ring.

The decision was made between myself

and the senior detective in charge in Merseyside

that we would follow the vehicle

and, when it comes into the Wales region,

that we would pull it over in a safe environment.

Unmarked police cars tailed the lorry as it travelled south.

As it neared its destination,

police decided it was time to act.

It was along this stretch that I felt this was the most appropriate

time to bring the vehicle to a stop.

In the lorry, they found 179 kilos of cannabis resin

with a street value of over half a million pounds.

Police now went after the men

who had organised this drug-smuggling operation.

But by now the Earle brothers had disappeared,

their whereabouts a closely guarded secret

amongst the organised crime gangs of Liverpool.

Both Michael and Terrence, obviously, being brothers,

have trust, and that is a key ingredient

to either their success or demise.

We wanted to try and break that seal

and try and locate these individuals.

In August, 2015, after seven months of painstaking detective work,

police believed they had found where the brothers were hiding out.

They prepared to arrest them in a series of dawn raids.

Failure never came into my mind-set that morning.

The meticulous planning that had taken place,

the evidence we had gathered,

there was only going to be one outcome for me and that was success.

Unfortunately over the next 15 minutes or so

my worst dreams came true.

They had gone on the run.

Somehow, the Earles had slipped the net.

Detective Inspector Bull turned to the public for help.

'Number six tonight is this man, Terrence Andrew Earle.

'Detectives in South Wales want to talk to him...'

We had a number of calls, but one call in particular

pointed us to the fact

that the Earle brothers may well be overseas, in particular, in Holland.

A year after they had gone on the run,

the Earles were now international fugitives.

But then, while we were filming for this programme,

one of the brothers revealed his location

in the most unexpected way.

My fugitive walked past the camera.

Extraordinary set of circumstances,

and I'd like to know the odds on that one.

In West Yorkshire,

PC Dave Lockwood is on the trail of a man

he's been hunting for more than two years.

It's one of these, we are not sure which one.

Dave has found the wanted man's current address

and his phone number.

But Wieslaw Lewicz,

wanted on four counts of fraud and theft back in Poland,

has dodged him again.

Don't count your chickens until you've got them in handcuffs.

So, yeah. 2014, we tried and failed.

2016, close, but who knows?

Just as it starts to look like he'll have to give up the chase,

Dave spots a man in a black vest some distance away.

He looks familiar.

Right, OK. I'll get back to you shortly.

The man disappears around the corner.

Dave heads straight after him.

All right, cheers. Thank you.

Bye.

He suspects it could be the man he is looking for,

and he's determined not to let him get away this time.

-Hello.

-You know, I'm like to ring you.

Come on, let's go to your flat and let's have a talk.

-Just, you know...

-Come on, let's go round to your flat and have a chat.

Just confirm your name for me, please.

Your name? Wieslaw...

-Lewicz.

-Your date of birth?

-11/11/61.

-Right, OK.

There's been a warrant, or should I say,

there's been five warrants issued for your arrest from Poland.

So no trouble here in the UK, but in Poland,

the police there have issued five different warrants

for your arrest, OK?

They've passed that here to the UK, and it's come to me

to try and find you.

So once you've got changed,

and I know you've just come home from work,

get you sorted, I will be officially arresting you,

and we will be going to the police station.

His days on the run are over.

I've been looking for you since 2014.

Two years. Did you know?

You don't remember?

You don't know if police have been looking for you here?

All your old addresses in Bradford and Leeds since 2014,

we've looked at.

Yeah.

After two years of searching, Dave has his man at last.

Any questions or anything, or...?

You're all right? OK.

He'll spend the night in the cells

before being taken to London to appear before a judge

at the extradition court in the morning.

Back in January 2015,

Merseyside brothers Terrence and Michael Earle

plotted to traffic over half a million pounds

of cannabis resin from Liverpool to South Wales

in the back of a lorry.

These individuals are resourceful, they're shrewd,

and quite deliberate in their approach to trafficking drugs.

But the plan backfired when police intercepted the truck

and seized the haul.

They then spent months searching Merseyside for the brothers.

But it was a nationwide appeal on Crimewatch

that eventually led to a tip-off.

One call in particular pointed us to the fact

that the Earle brothers may well be overseas, in particular, in Holland.

And six months later, that's where one was found.

In January 2016, as Dutch police

were being filmed for this programme,

Terrence Earle, in the hooded coat, made an unexpected cameo appearance.

While we give the interview,

three men passes the camera.

One of our crew,

one of the police officers thought to recognise somebody

who is wanted by the English police.

We break the interview, and we followed that guy.

That guy was going to his car, to a parking garage over here.

And when the car came out of the garage, Dutch police were waiting.

They stopped the vehicle and questioned the three men inside.

One of the passengers had no identification.

It wasn't long before officers at the UK's National Crime Agency

got an unexpected call.

In the Netherlands, it's a requirement for Dutch nationals

and for foreign nationals to be carrying some form of ID on them.

So when people are stopped and they have no driving licence,

they have no passport, they have no kind of photographic ID,

it does raise suspicions.

Checks soon confirmed that the man who'd walked past the camera

was the fugitive drug smuggler.

So they've taken him into the station

and determined that his name is Terrence Earle

and that he was wanted here in the UK by South Wales Police

for, they believe, drug offences.

With Terrence Earle in custody,

it was time to focus on his brother, Michael.

He was thought to be in Spain, until another lucky break -

this time, from airport security.

He is flying in from Dubai, transits through Madrid airport,

they've got the EAW in their hands, they're ready for him.

I think he was travelling on his genuine ID,

so there's no issue establishing who he was,

and arrested and taken into custody.

So within two months or so,

we had both of the Earle brothers apprehended.

For more than a year, the Earles had stayed one step ahead of the law.

But now the brothers who'd tried to flood the streets of South Wales

with drugs had run out of luck.

It's the old adage within my world

that we've only got to be lucky once,

they need to be lucky all the time,

and it's true when it comes to both Michael and Terrence Earle.

They probably felt they were untouchable,

but unfortunately for them, they weren't.

It's just after 5am,

and DS Pete Rance is outside a house in Leighton Buzzard.

20 miles away in Bedford,

two detectives are waiting for his signal.

-TELEPHONE RINGS

-Hello.

We are in situ and good to go whenever.

The team are hunting for two

brothers wanted in Tennessee

on drugs charges.

Charles and Dane Culver

are accused of baking brownies

laced with magic mushrooms,

and planning to sell them at

a music festival.

Distributing the class A drugs is a serious offence in the US.

Yesterday, the officers decided to abort the arrest

because one brother wasn't at home.

Today could be their last chance

to seize both brothers simultaneously

so that one doesn't get the chance to tip off the other.

KNOCK AT DOOR

Whilst Pete is knocking on Charles Culver's door,

his colleagues, Dave Salmon and Jamie Derby,

are calling on his younger brother Dane.

They both fled while they were on bail

which obviously ups the ante a little bit as well

because they've fled the United States' jurisdiction.

If they get any inkling

the United Kingdom authorities

are looking for them pursuant to a US request,

there is a good chance they, again, might go on the run.

Hello. Can you open the door, please, mate?

-Police.

-Who is it?

-Police.

-For what?

Could you open the door, please?

Pete has got a response at the first house...

Hello, sir, thanks for opening the door.

Pete Rance, Detective Sergeant from the Metropolitan Police. OK?

..while the second door is opened by a woman.

-Hi.

-Is Dane in?

-Your partner?

-Yeah, why?

-Please can we speak to him?

-It's, like, five o'clock in the morning.

Yes, I know, and I'm sorry to bother you,

but I'll explain what it's all about when I come in.

These are my colleagues, they're both police officers as well, OK?

Can I just ask your name?

-Do I have to give that?

-I...

Am I obliged?

Well, no, I'm just trying to establish who lives here.

-It may be nothing to do with you whatsoever.

-What's it regarding?

It's to do with a matter in the United States of America.

-Right.

-That's the reason I'm here.

And it's somebody that may or may not live here

that I need to speak to.

-Can you just tell me your name, please?

-Am I obliged to do that?

Well, you don't have to give me it.

I suspect I might know who you are.

-Right.

-So, do you mind giving me your name?

I'm not going to give you my name.

You're not. OK. OK.

All right, can I come in and speak to you,

or do you want to do the business out in the street

that I need to speak to you about?

-You can speak to me here, yeah.

-OK.

Whilst Pete's not getting much cooperation,

20 miles away, Dave and Jamie have found their man

and are arresting him.

On the 10th of June, 2009,

they are saying that you were in possession

of a quantity of class A drugs

with intent to supply to another, OK?

So what it is, there is a warrant for your arrest in America, OK?

-Yeah.

-They've issued a warrant here for your arrest.

-Yeah.

-So, this morning we are going to arrest you under that warrant,

so you are under arrest, OK? You do not have to say anything,

but anything you do say may be given in evidence, OK?

Pete has no option but to get on with his arrest

on the doorstep.

As I say, my name is Pete Rance,

I'm a Detective Sergeant with the Metropolitan Police.

The reason I'm here

is that the United States of America have made a request

for your extradition in relation to some drugs matters.

Are you aware of that?

Are you aware of that?

I've got the warrant here, it is a warrant for the arrest

of Mr Charles Culver, date of birth, 25/9/1986.

OK? Because I suspect you are Charles Culver,

I am obliged to arrest you on the warrant.

You don't have to say anything,

but anything you do say may be given in evidence.

Do you understand? OK?

It will be a lot easier, Charles, if we could just do this.

You're not in trouble in the United Kingdom whatsoever.

Can I get some socks and shoes on?

Yeah, but I need to come with you.

I've arrested you, so you will be with us at all times.

I'll bring one of my colleagues with me, if that is OK.

In the meantime, Jamie explains what will happen next.

What's going to happen, we'll take you down to London this morning.

Dane, listen to me, OK? We'll take you to London this morning, OK?

We're going to book you into the police station,

and then you are going to go to court, OK?

What's going to happen in court, it's only an initial hearing.

The judge will ask you if you want to go to America by consent

to sort this matter out, OK?

If you say yes,

then in a number of days,

it will be arranged for you to go back to America, OK?

If you say no, it will be a long, drawn-out process, OK?

Pete's team have done the double,

and the wanted brothers are taken away into custody.

All things considered,

holding off yesterday was the right decision

because we've managed to arrest both of the people

that were wanted at the same time.

If the brothers are extradited back to the US to stand trial

and found guilty,

they could face a maximum term of 25 years in prison without parole.

While in custody, the brothers give their side of the story to Pete.

The Culver brothers were doing it to raise money,

according to their side of the events,

for Charles Culver's medical treatment.

So he was cultivating magic mushrooms to sell them

to fund his medical insurance.

That's the reason he's ended up getting arrested over here.

In February, 2017,

Charles and Dane Culver

were extradited back to the USA to face trial.

Wieslaw Lewicz,

the man accused of fraud in West Yorkshire,

has now been extradited back to Poland.

And in May 2016,

drug traffickers Terrence and Michael Earle

were both sentenced to three years in prison.