Investigation: I'M KING CRACK

THIS is the man who brought crack cocaine into Britain. Evil John Gooding says he has no regrets about the lives he has ruined.

He even compares himself to entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson and boasts: "It's impossible to put a number on the amount of people I've got into crack...thousands, tens of thousands.

"But I couldn't give a f*** if it's killed 100,000 people."

"I feel a sense of f****** pride. Crack has given a lot of people jobs.

"I made millions from it...and they've gone on to make billions."

Gooding, 43, who is now bankrupt, was speaking out after new figures showed crack cocaine seizures have rocketed by 200 per cent in the last three years.

An emergency Government summit last week heard how the epidemic is churning out addicts and dealers at record levels and fuelling muggings, shootings and prostitution.

Gooding - not his real name, which cannot be revealed for legal reasons - was the first person in Britain to be arrested for manufacturing crack cocaine after one of his "factories" was raided in Toxteth, Liverpool, in June 1988.

The father-of-14 says he learned the secret three years earlier from a Jamaican Yardie who had just returned from America where crack cocaine was raging through the ghettos.

He says: "The Yardie showed me how to wash the impurities out of an ounce of cocaine by heating it with bicarbonated soda to make crack cocaine.

"It took me a week to sell because no one had tried it before. But I made pounds 1,000 profit. Then I doubled up and bought two ounces and sold it from my car in Toxteth."

Gooding experimented with a microwave oven and kitchen utensils, plus household products such as bicarbonate of soda and ammonia, to find the most efficient way of producing crack.

It wasn't long before he had established Britain's first crack production line - which could be dismantled in minutes and moved between secret locations.

Gooding says: "That was the turning point. Up to then, people used to do it like a cottage industry in very small quantities.

"I installed a huge coal fire and had it burning 24 hours a day so that the gear could be vapourised instantly during a police raid."

Within months, Gooding had opened three more crack houses and was employing 10 street dealers.

He says: "As more people got into crack, each house made between pounds 5,000 and pounds 10,000 a week.

"I began to make an astronomical amount of money - even pounds 40,000-a-week became a pittance. I expected to make that a day."

Gooding enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle with a fleet of luxury cars and a wardrobe full of expensive Armani and Moshcino suits.

He bought two houses, a nightclub and two massage parlours, one with a swimming pool. "I found out that sex makes money as well," he says. "I got the girls on crack so it cost me nothing. I also bought two shops which sold TV and videos."

Soon Liverpool was saturated with crack and Gooding went in search of markets in other cities and country towns in the North East and Midlands.

"I had a sales pitch, like a system to get new customers into crack," he says.

"I'd go to private parties where people with plenty of money would be snorting cocaine.

"I'd take one or two people with me into the cellar and I'd start taking crack cocaine. Curiosity would draw them in.

"They got the first rock for nothing. The high only lasts 15 seconds.

"When the rock was gone they craved another one. Then they'd have to pay. They'd tell their friends and it just escalated."

Gooding feels no remorse when he describes how he deliberately snared young girls and they became prostitutes.

He says: "One was a lovely looking girl who used to do a bit of modelling. I gave her first rock for nothing of course.

"Within two days she was a prostitute on the street. Then I moved her into my parlour. Now she is back on the streets and will do anything for the crack cocaine."

Gooding' immorality and hypocrisy are breathtaking. As he cradles the latest of his large brood of children, new-born daughter Nikita, he says he would kill any drug dealer who offered his own children crack.

But in the next sentence he says he will be proud if they grow up to be crack dealers.

He says: "If I find anybody whose sells my kids crack cocaine I would be their worst nightmare. But if my children decide to sell drugs, that's fine. If they listen to me they'll make a hell of a lot of money."

Gooding's five-year jail term was the beginning of the end of his empire.

He went bankrupt, his wife and girlfriend sold his assets to care for his children and he developed his own pounds 3,000-a-day crack habit.

When he got out ,a new generation of crack dealers, who carried guns, and would kill for a pounds 10 rock, forced him into early retirement because he didn't want to leave his children fatherless and into less risky ventures like growing "skunk" cannabis. Now he lives with his girlfriend in a two-bedroom council flat.

He says: "People thought crack was a fad which would die out. But I made it big so that it will run and run and be there long after I die. No one can take that away from me."

Copyright 2002 MGN LTD
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.