Hitmen who do gangland's dirty work

GANGLAND-style executions have increased in recent years.

. 1995 - Pat Tate, Craig Rolfe and Tony Tucker, criminals who supplied drugs in Essex and east London, were shot dead by fellow dealers in a dispute over a shipment of poor-quality cannabis.

Jack Whomes and Michael Steele were sentenced to life.

. February 1998 - Playboy supergrass Peter McNeil, 40, who was given a new identity by Scotland Yard, was gunned down at close range at his home in Hook, Hampshire. He was later revealed as the main prosecution witness in a major London drugs case.

Businessman James Clelland was tried for arranging the killing but acquitted.

. October 2000 - Alan Decabral, the key prosecution witness in the Kenneth Noye murder trial, was killed six months later with a single shot to the head as he parked at a Halfords store in Ashford, Kent. The killer has never been caught.

. April 2001 - David Roads, 55, an underworld armourer for a former terrorist hitman, was shot dead in Kingston shortly after he had been allowed out of Latchmere prison to do work in the community. His killer has not been caught.

. May 2001 - Plumber Richard Rayner, 43, was shot at close range by a gunman on a motorcycle as he waited for his breakfast in the East End's River Bank caf. No one has been charged.

. May 2003 - George Francis, 63, an associate of the Krays, Kenneth Noye and the Great Train robbers, is shot dead by a hitman who pumped four bullets into his chest as he arrived for work on Old Kent Road. No arrest has been made.

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