DECEMBER 2021 77Massey. But as Michael Corleone
observes in The Godfather Part II, “If
history has taught us anything, it is
that you can kill anyone.”
Around 7 a.m., as Kinsella’s six
American bulldogs ran off-leash, his
girlfriend heard the squeaking sound
of bicycle brakes. She spun around and
saw a man on a mountain bike—tall,
slim and athletic, wearing a black
snood, a ball cap and a neon high-
visibility jacket over all-black clothing.
Then she heard a poof. And another.
Kinsella fell face-first to the
ground. He’d been shot twice in the
back, one of the bullets piercing his
spine. As his girlfriend f led, jumping
a fence and sprinting toward a nearby
highway, she heard more gunshots.
The assailant cycled closer to
Kinsella, stood over him and fired
twice into the back of his head. “It
was like a film,” Kinsella’s girlfriend
would later say. “He wanted to finish
what he was doing.”
And then Scouse’s assassin ped-
aled away.I
T DIDN’T TAKE a genius to link t he
killings of the gangland Godfather
and his longtime Salford Lads associate, three years apart,
in strikingly similar fashion. But gut feelings don’t get con-
victions. And as Manchester barrister Paul Greaney (who
eventually led the case against Massey’s killer) reminds us:
“T here’s histor ica lly been a code of silence in Sa lford.” Ga ng
spats are settled in the streets. Police needed to “prove [the]
case without eyewitness evidence or people who [knew]
what happened and why—with scientific evidence, or evi-
dence showing the movements of the defendants.”
At first, all they had was a hunch.
Mark Fellows’s allegiance to the Anti-A Team was well
known to authorities. He became a person of interest when
he was shot in the butt shortly after Massey’s murder. But
he was never taken into custody. His rap sheet was that of
a low-level criminal: By age 38 he’d been convicted five
times for offenses ranging from robbery to unlicensed
possession of ammunition. Nothing, though, that would
suggest assassin.
With a blocky chin and a lithe runner’s build, Fellows
looked more like an accountant than a hit man. The Salford
native seemed to live a quiet life. He wore a colostomy bag
from a childhood illness, and he was finicky about his hygiene
and health. He had two young children and worked overnight
shifts as a sous chef, preparing sauces for a manufacturer
of chilled and frozen foods. He was also an avid distance
runner, timing his outings with a Garmin Forerunner 10Y
EARS PASSED. OFFICIALLY, in the criminal jus-
tice system, Massey’s murder remained unsolved.
Street justice, meanwhile, kept coming. A hit squad was
dispatched to Spain to assassinate Carroll; the operation
fa iled only when police ra ided a n apa r t ment in Ma rbella,
seizing knives, a loaded pistol, a bat and a weighted vest,
which, according to news repor ts, was to be used in sink ing
Carroll’s body in the Mediterranean. Authorities arrested
several men in the plot, including Britton, the A Team
leader, but he was eventually released. Carroll got away.
Salford, still, was silent. If there was a route to solving
Massey’s murder, it would be an exceptional one. But no
one had ever considered this possibility: What if the whole
damn thing happened again? And what if, this time, the
killer was a bit less cautious in covering his tracks?
An hour after sunrise on May 5, 2018, John Kinsella
set out from his home, halfway between Manchester and
Liverpool, for a morning walk with his pregnant girlfriend.
Massey’s old friend was a martial arts expert, and, when
a bit of muscle was needed, he was the A Team’s man. Key
to his lore was an alleged incident in ’01, when he was
said to have helped future English national team captain
Steven Gerrard out of a messy love triangle involving a
gangster known as the Psycho. Once Kinsella stepped in
on the soccer star’s behalf, the Psycho stood down. Scouse
was feared, seemingly untouchable, just like his old friend“Raves were made for violent young
criminals,” writes Walsh. “Older
heavies were not interested; they didn’t
understand the scene at all.