Baby-faced thug ‘Little Knocker’ went from ASBO terror to convicted killer
A baby-faced thug who spent years terrorising his community has finally been put behind bars after being convicted as a killer.
Michael Roberts, 25, did his best to convince a jury he had nothing to do with the senseless shooting of 17-year-old James Meadows .
But jurors saw through his lies and convicted him of manslaughter, resulting in a life sentence with a minimum of 12 years, reports LiverpoolEcho .
The story of how Roberts – known as Little Knocker – went from an ASBO terror teen to the right hand man of evil Dylan Westall can now be revealed.
Prosecutors alleged Roberts and convicted torturer Westall , 29, murdered James over nothing more than a friendship with a Huyton rival.
Evidence showed they arranged for a stolen Mercedes to be delivered to Roberts' street in the early hours of Sunday, October 8, 2017.
Mum of murdered woman says Helen's Law is 'best Christmas present ever'
Battersea murder: Man gunned down on doorstep of luxury townhouse in 'Christmas execution'
The black A-Class remained in Kipling Avenue, Huyton for more than 16 hours, before they set off with a loaded gun inside the vehicle.
A mobile phone shared by the pair with a number ending 4996 – dubbed the "murder phone" by prosecutors – moved at the same time.
And it accompanied them as they allegedly hunted down James, who was out riding on a motorbike together with a young friend.
The Mercedes did a "loop" of an area including James' home, before the killers found him in Lyme Cross Road, Liverpool, at around 9.30pm.
Someone in the vehicle shot the pillion passenger in the back of the head and the 14-year-old rider of the bike sped away in fear.
Verdicts of not guilty on the murder charges mean prosecutors failed to convince the jury Roberts and Westall intended to shoot James.
Sentencing at Liverpool Crown Court , Judge Andrew Menary, QC, concluded it was nonetheless a "deliberate shot", intended to either frighten or intimidate.
The killers were undone by a bullet casing left in the road bearing Roberts' DNA – for which he offered no explanation whatsoever.
Homeowner distraught after knife-wielding burglars steal Christmas presents
That was his approach to many of the questions put to him, answering "can’t remember" and "not sure", even to his own lawyer.
However, the dad-of-one was prepared to reveal his criminal past and a limited education linked, he said, to being "badly dyslexic".
Asked if he went to school, he said "no, not really", explaining he left in year four or five, and "got put in a naughty behaviour school".
Roberts said he couldn't read or write, backing up claims he made to police that he didn't have a phone or use any social media.
However, by the time of the trial he accepted he did have a phone – 4996 – but claimed it was only a "graft" phone for selling cannabis.
Roberts told the jury he was 10 or 11 when first arrested, in either 2004 or 2005, and first convicted of an offence at just 13.
He went to youth court twice in 2007, for having an offensive weapon and public disorder, then carrying a knife and more disorder.
Since 2007 he has been convicted of possessing cannabis six times and at the age of 14 was convicted of burgling a home.
He was sentenced for dangerous driving on an off-road quad bike at 17 and possessing a sharply pointed article in 2013.
Yet he was never locked up – instead handed referral orders, action plans, fines, conditional discharges and a suspended sentence.
Jurors heard Roberts was nicknamed "Little Knocker" and his brother Alan Roberts , whose name cropped up repeatedly, "Big Knocker".
The two siblings seemingly share many things in common – Westall said he bought cannabis from Alan Roberts, who "sells weed on Page Moss".
But what the jury didn't hear about was the two brothers' shared interest in guns.
Roberts told police: "I have never handled a firearm, except an air rifle years ago as a teenager. I have never seen any of my friends with guns."
In January 2009, Alan Roberts , then 16, was jailed for being part of a masked gang who stormed a house mob-handed and threatened three children at gunpoint .
He and an accomplice were among seven thugs who forced their way into a property in Southdean Road, Huyton, as the youngsters watched TV.
A judge branded them "cowards" after hearing how they threatened victims aged five, 11 and 16, in September 2008, who fled into their kitchen.
The 11-year-old boy grabbed a kitchen knife to protect his sisters, but one of the raiders pointed a black gun at him, yelling: "Do you want me to shoot you?"
Alan Roberts and another teen, who made off with a Vauxhall Vectra, were found guilty of attempted robbery, robbery and possessing an imitation firearm.
Locking Alan Roberts up for six and a half years, Judge Mark Brown said: "This case is yet another illustration of the gang culture in our society, with young men in a group thinking they can get away with anything."
Eight months later, Roberts was doing his best to follow in his big brother's footsteps, when hit with a two-year ASBO to curb his yobbish behaviour .
In August 2009, magistrates heard Roberts, then 15, and his friends had made people's lives a misery by terrorising residents on the Page Moss estate.
Roberts, who had since moved to St Helens , was told he couldn't enter a designated zone in Huyton, or associate with another teen – Sean Westall.
It was through Sean, a younger brother of Dylan, that the two killers struck up a friendship.
They became even closer after Sean killed himself at the age of 18 in 2012, ironically then being buried just yards from James Meadows' mum's grave – which she now shares with her son – in Knowsley Cemetery.
Roberts was also ordered not to use foul, threatening or abusive language or behaviour in public, and not to hurl stones, bricks or any other item at any property.
Sadly for the Meadows family and countless other victims, Roberts soon graduated from throwing stones to firing bullets.
DNA evidence on a bullet dropped by a masked gunman linked him to a shooting in Fell Street, Kensington on November 28, 2017 – just seven weeks after he and Westall killed James. As Judge Menary concluded, their behaviour was now "utterly lawless".
In the days after James was killed, police raided Roberts' Kipling Avenue home and found 15 bags of "skunk", weighing 416g, worth up to £6,240.
Roberts was convicted of possessing the Class B drug with intent to supply, plus a bail offence last October, and jailed for 13 months.
He told the murder trial he used a phone to sell cannabis, as he could read numbers, but could only "just about" write his own name.
Questioning him over his hazy memory, his barrister, Nicholas Johnson, QC, asked: "In your life is there a big difference between days in a week?"
Roberts replied: "No, every day is the same, isn't it?" He added: "I just about remember what happened yesterday."
He was allowed to take breaks during his evidence, firstly because it was "all a bit too much" and his head was "battered", and secondly because of diabetic illness.
Seeking sympathy, Roberts moaned: "Generally really, this is hard. I can't really go over the case. I've just been through a lot of stress… I just want to get this over with."
Later, having denied any knowledge of James or a feud between Westall and James' friend Reuben Murphy , he was asked whether he was involved in the shooting.
Roberts had the audacity to reply: "No, this has absolutely ruined my life. I've been in jail for almost two years. This is not me. I don't kill people."
Happy to claim that he was the true victim – not James and all the people's lives he had ruined – Roberts continued to blame others.
He accused the 14-year-old boy riding the bike when James was shot of knowing more about the murder and said he "left his mate on the floor dead".
Roberts even had the gall to say that if it had been him, he would have stopped to help James, before making more brazen claims.
He said the boy on the bike, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested for a murder the week later, and questioned if that was "retaliation" after James was killed.
Roberts suggested the boy should have been able to see the 'real killers' through the windows of the Mercedes, in the dark, at 9.30pm.
He even made an unsubstantiated claim that James had gunpowder on his body – not from the fatal bullet casing found in the street.
Roberts suggested James must have been out "shooting guns", prompting one of the tragic teen's family to storm out of the courtroom in disgust.
He later complained about the way he was treated on bail, arguing he breached a curfew because police arrested him and wouldn't give him a lift home, so he had to walk.
From February 2018 until his arrest that May, having skipped court, Roberts said he was moving from house to house, sleeping on people's couches.
That wasn't all he was doing. On March 8, he went to Knowsley Cemetery with Westall, who taunted James' grieving family with a gun at his graveside.
As the trial unfolded, it emerged the "graft" phone Roberts insisted had nothing to do with the fatal shooting, only ever contacted the two killers' family and close friends.
Nigel Power, QC, prosecuting, pointed out the device, which conveniently "disappeared" afterwards, couldn't be a "graft" phone, as it didn't ring any customers.
Westall claimed 90% of his family and friends "smoked weed" and refused to say whether this included his girlfriend Samantha McDermott, or even his mum.
His lawyers then called another friend, Connor Thompson , to give evidence about supposedly selling cannabis for Roberts with the phone, at the time James was shot.
Unfortunately for the pair, Mr Thompson said that while he took the device, he didn't actually sell any drugs, and gave it back to Roberts before the shooting.
That left them relying on the "alibi" account of a neighbour of McDermott, who recalled seeing them outside her Rudgate, Whiston home, at around 9.10pm.
Westall made the unsupported assertion that he wasn't in the Mercedes because he went out to move a motorbike and buy cannabis from "Big Knocker".
Roberts, meanwhile, now remembered with some clarity leaving Rudgate – "fairly late" and possibly at 9.30pm – on a pedal bike to go and see his daughter.
By their verdicts, the jury decided he didn't go to visit his child – he was driving around in a stolen car from which a boy was shot in the head and left to die.
Unless it's a prison visit, the ASBO terror teen who grew up into a killer gun thug now won't see his daughter for at least 12 years.
When mitigating on Roberts' behalf, Mr Johnson referred to his "intellectual capacity" and said he was "highly unlikely" to be a leader.
Judge Menary accepted Westall was the smarter of the two, but said Roberts was capable of running his own drugs business.
Having listened to days of his lies, the judge added: "He's not as daft as he might appear on first blush
Source: Read Full Article