M25 road rage killer Kenneth Noye won his release with £105k of taxpayers’ cash for legal aid
FREED road rage murderer Kenneth Noye blew more than £100,000 of taxpayers’ cash to win his freedom, The Sun on Sunday can reveal.
The father of his victim Stephen Cameron blasted it as ‘outrageous blood money’.
The 72-year-old killer racked up legal aid costs of £105,454 in failed appeals, judicial reviews and other lawyers’ bills.
Noye was controversially released from jail on licence last Wednesday following a successful Parole Board hearing a month ago.
Noye served almost 21 years in total for the May 1996 fatal stabbing of Stephen Cameron, 21, during a road rage row on the M25 and M20 interchange at Swanley, Kent.
Before that, Noye stabbed undercover cop John Fordham to death in the grounds of his 20-acre home in West Kingsdown, Kent, in 1985 during the £26 million Brink’s-Mat bullion investigation.
ACQUITTED OF MURDER
Leading underworld fence Noye was acquitted of murder, along with his gofer Brian Reader, after claiming self-defence - despite the officer being stabbed 10 times and having bruising to his arms, suggesting he was pinned down.
Noye is still believed to own property in Spain, where he fled for two years and developed houses after murdering Stephen.
But we can reveal today how Noye has used public cash to fund his legal battles.
His most recent legal bid cost the public purse £48,507 to fund a judicial review of his case between 2016 and 2018.
He was granted £7,282 for a judicial review between 2003 and 2005.
It’s unbelievable and disgusting that we’re paying for his legal battles. It’s so wrong
Ken Cameron
And the murderer spent £40,119 unsuccessfully appealing his conviction and sentence on repeated occasions between 2003 to 2011.
Additional legal aid costs came from representation at a police station, prison and in magistrates’ courts.
In 2006, he was granted £338 in solicitors’ fees at a police station.
From 2001 to 2004, Noye was given £1,023 to pay for solicitors in magistrates’ courts.
And over an 11-year period from 2007 to 2018, he used £8,183 for legal representation while in jail.
'BLOOD MONEY'
Information on his costs, revealed in a Freedom of Information request to the Legal Aid Agency, is only held from 2001 onwards.
It does not include the amount spent on lawyers’ fees during and before his Old Bailey murder trial in 2000 or his extradition from Spain following his August 1998 capture.
Stephen’s furious dad Ken, 71, who lives in Kent, said: “Using £105,000 of our money to win his freedom is bloody outrageous. It’s blood money.
“The man’s got money, everyone knows he has.
“It’s unbelievable and disgusting that we’re paying for his legal battles. It’s so wrong.
Applicants for criminal legal aid can be required to pay contributions up to the entire cost of the defence
Legal Aid Agency
“If he wants to fight his legal battles, he should fund it himself.
“He was involved in handling gold from the Brink’s-Mat robbery and loads of other things. Everyone knows that, yet we fund this.
“He shouldn’t have a right to legal aid.”
Following his acquittal over Det Constable Fordham’s murder, Noye was jailed for 14 years for handling stolen bullion, serving eight before he was released in 1994.
He was on licence when he fatally stabbed electrician Stephen in front of his 17-year-old fiancée Danielle Cable.
RE-BUILD HIS BUSINESS
Noye forced to pay back £3million to insurers from the bullion robbery proceeds, but is suspected to have salted away a fortune through fellow Brink’s-Mat handler John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer.
The pair are believed to have fallen out before Palmer’s 2015 murder at his Essex home, which came a month after fresh timeshare fraud charges were brought against him by Spanish authorities.
Noye is expected to try and return to Spain when he is released from jail, to re-build his property business.
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The Legal Aid Agency said: “Mr Noye’s history with the criminal justice system predates the scope of the MoJ’s (Ministry of Justice) data retention schedule.
“Anyone facing a Crown Court trial is eligible for legal aid, subject to a strict means test.
“Depending on their means, applicants for criminal legal aid can be required to pay contributions up to the entire cost of the defence.”
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