Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
One Genesis
In the first instalment of Bernard O’Mahoney’s definitive six-part account of Britain’s most infamous gang, the Essex Boys, he returns to the beginning: a brutal childhood where he, his mother, and his three brothers endured relentless violence at the hands of his father. It was here that O’Mahoney’s hard persona and capacity for extreme violence were forged.
At eighteen, he enlisted in the British Army and was thrust into Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles, a posting marked by hunger strikes, bloodshed, and loss. Returning home hardened but restless, he wounded a man and fled the country, only to resurface in South Africa as a member of a private police force during the dark days of apartheid. Death was routine. Violence, constant. Nights were spent on Johannesburg’s notorious Murder Mile, working the doors of a nightclub where survival meant striking first.
Imprisoned, on the run, and eventually jailed back in England for the wounding offence, O’Mahoney’s path led him to Basildon, Essex. There, at the notorious Raquels nightclub, he carved out control through force and fear. To cement his grip, he brought in a volatile new partner: Tony Tucker.
That partnership would prove to be the spark. Together they lit the fuse that created the Essex Boys, the most feared and infamous gang in modern British history.
Genesis is not just the start of the Essex Boys story. It is the making of the man who stood at its centre.
Book Two Inception
From inception came consequence. In the underworld, a word, a look, a slight, the most trivial act could spiral into a storm of violence when left to fester. This was where the line between right and wrong blurred to nothing, where survival counted for more than truth, and loyalty was as fragile as glass.
In this second instalment of the Complete Story of the Essex Boys, founder member Bernard O’Mahoney reveals how Darren Nicholls, Jack Whomes, and Micky “the Pilot” Steele first crossed paths behind prison walls before being drawn into the orbit of Pat Tate, a man-mountain whose explosive temper and appetite for violence made him as unpredictable as he was dan8gerous.
For the first time, O’Mahoney strips away the myths to expose the shocking truth:
• Jack Whomes, long seen as a simple mechanic, was in truth a career criminal who erupted almost overnight into a cold-blooded triple murderer.
• The bloody battles in and around Raquel’s nightclub, where O’Mahoney crushed rivals to maintain control.
• His involvement with the infamous Kray Twins, who’s carefully cultivated public persona was as false as Whomes’s.
• His fight to free Lisa and Michelle Taylor, who brutally murdered love rival Alison Shaughnessy in a frenzy of 54 stab wounds; his tempestuous affair with Michelle whose need to control bordered on madness and Lisa’s link to the Essex Boys.
• The truth about so-called Essex Boy Steve “Nipper” Ellis, probably the most incompetent hitman in gangland history and Carlton Leach, myth inflated, man deflated.
• First-hand accounts of life within the Essex Boys gang from girlfriends and those who worked in Tate’s seedy massage parlours, including the shocking revelation of Tate’s vile plot to have one of them raped and murdered.
Shocking, brutal, and stripped of glamour, Inception lays bare the roots of betrayal, paranoia, and bloodshed that would ultimately define the Essex Boys.
“Myth made them icons. Murder made them history.”
Book Three Requital
Then came Requital, the settling of scores, the long memory of men who never forget. In a world where law was a rumour and justice a luxury, it crept on silent feet, carrying guns and dead eyes.
In the third instalment of the Complete Story of the Essex Boys series, daily life within the firm is laid bare where violence was currency and loyalty a lie. Read about Dodgy Dave Courtney’s failed plot to murder O’Mahoney, the senseless killing of Kevin Whittaker and the sordid tales of child abuse up until now left festering in the shadows.
Drug importations that promised fortunes but rotted into greed. Bitter fallouts over a dud cannabis importation by Mick Steele and his henchman Jack Whomes. The ecstasy deaths of Kevin Jones and Leah Betts, and the in-fighting and chaos that followed. The Blundells. The death threats. The storm gathering in Essex.
Branded “Big Bad Bernie” by Essex Police, O’Mahoney fought for survival whilst Steele and Whomes plotted the murders of Tucker, Tate, and Rolfe. But survival carried a heavy price, in a world where betrayal was routine and 8death never far away.
This is not the gangster fairytale the pretenders like to sell. It is the definitive truth, warts and all.
In the Essex underworld, loyalty was a lie, greed was King, and every man’s fate was written in blood.
One Genesis
In the first instalment of Bernard O’Mahoney’s definitive six-part account of Britain’s most infamous gang, the Essex Boys, he returns to the beginning: a brutal childhood where he, his mother, and his three brothers endured relentless violence at the hands of his father. It was here that O’Mahoney’s hard persona and capacity for extreme violence were forged.
At eighteen, he enlisted in the British Army and was thrust into Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles, a posting marked by hunger strikes, bloodshed, and loss. Returning home hardened but restless, he wounded a man and fled the country, only to resurface in South Africa as a member of a private police force during the dark days of apartheid. Death was routine. Violence, constant. Nights were spent on Johannesburg’s notorious Murder Mile, working the doors of a nightclub where survival meant striking first.
Imprisoned, on the run, and eventually jailed back in England for the wounding offence, O’Mahoney’s path led him to Basildon, Essex. There, at the notorious Raquels nightclub, he carved out control through force and fear. To cement his grip, he brought in a volatile new partner: Tony Tucker.
That partnership would prove to be the spark. Together they lit the fuse that created the Essex Boys, the most feared and infamous gang in modern British history.
Genesis is not just the start of the Essex Boys story. It is the making of the man who stood at its centre.
Book Two Inception
From inception came consequence. In the underworld, a word, a look, a slight, the most trivial act could spiral into a storm of violence when left to fester. This was where the line between right and wrong blurred to nothing, where survival counted for more than truth, and loyalty was as fragile as glass.
In this second instalment of the Complete Story of the Essex Boys, founder member Bernard O’Mahoney reveals how Darren Nicholls, Jack Whomes, and Micky “the Pilot” Steele first crossed paths behind prison walls before being drawn into the orbit of Pat Tate, a man-mountain whose explosive temper and appetite for violence made him as unpredictable as he was dan8gerous.
For the first time, O’Mahoney strips away the myths to expose the shocking truth:
• Jack Whomes, long seen as a simple mechanic, was in truth a career criminal who erupted almost overnight into a cold-blooded triple murderer.
• The bloody battles in and around Raquel’s nightclub, where O’Mahoney crushed rivals to maintain control.
• His involvement with the infamous Kray Twins, who’s carefully cultivated public persona was as false as Whomes’s.
• His fight to free Lisa and Michelle Taylor, who brutally murdered love rival Alison Shaughnessy in a frenzy of 54 stab wounds; his tempestuous affair with Michelle whose need to control bordered on madness and Lisa’s link to the Essex Boys.
• The truth about so-called Essex Boy Steve “Nipper” Ellis, probably the most incompetent hitman in gangland history and Carlton Leach, myth inflated, man deflated.
• First-hand accounts of life within the Essex Boys gang from girlfriends and those who worked in Tate’s seedy massage parlours, including the shocking revelation of Tate’s vile plot to have one of them raped and murdered.
Shocking, brutal, and stripped of glamour, Inception lays bare the roots of betrayal, paranoia, and bloodshed that would ultimately define the Essex Boys.
“Myth made them icons. Murder made them history.”
Book Three Requital
Then came Requital, the settling of scores, the long memory of men who never forget. In a world where law was a rumour and justice a luxury, it crept on silent feet, carrying guns and dead eyes.
In the third instalment of the Complete Story of the Essex Boys series, daily life within the firm is laid bare where violence was currency and loyalty a lie. Read about Dodgy Dave Courtney’s failed plot to murder O’Mahoney, the senseless killing of Kevin Whittaker and the sordid tales of child abuse up until now left festering in the shadows.
Drug importations that promised fortunes but rotted into greed. Bitter fallouts over a dud cannabis importation by Mick Steele and his henchman Jack Whomes. The ecstasy deaths of Kevin Jones and Leah Betts, and the in-fighting and chaos that followed. The Blundells. The death threats. The storm gathering in Essex.
Branded “Big Bad Bernie” by Essex Police, O’Mahoney fought for survival whilst Steele and Whomes plotted the murders of Tucker, Tate, and Rolfe. But survival carried a heavy price, in a world where betrayal was routine and 8death never far away.
This is not the gangster fairytale the pretenders like to sell. It is the definitive truth, warts and all.
In the Essex underworld, loyalty was a lie, greed was King, and every man’s fate was written in blood.
