Four vigilantes stoned a man to death in ‘biblical

Four vigilantes stoned a man to death in ‘biblical’ fashion and then cremated him in his own car, the Old Bailey heard today.

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The gang pelted Andrew Burke, 27, with stones and bricks by the busy railway tracks at Clapham Junction ‘in an act of private vengeance’ for a murder he did not even carry out, said Michael Worsley, QC, prosecuting.

The mob then bundled victim ‘Titch’ Burke into the boot of his own car and drove him to a remote location.

The accused killers, Marcus Johnson, 23, Kevin Mantack, 30, Courtney Needham, 28, and Daniel Sinclair, 20, then set light to the vehicle which exploded when the fuel tanks caught fire.

Mr Worsley said that the four men had undertaken ‘the Old Testament-style’ act of private vengeance because they believed Mr Burke was responsible for the murder of another man, Alexander Ero, 30.

‘They were wrong in that because someone else had in fact killed the man Ero.

Burke did not,’ Mr Worsley said.

A few days after Mr Ero’s death, on June 15 last year, the four accused men and Mr Burke ended up near the railway tracks at Clapham Junction station.

‘The defendants were parties to the killing in order to take private vengeance upon him.

‘Burke in fact was stoned to death.

It sounds biblical, Old Testament, doesn’t it, that a person should be killed in that way, but that in fact is what happened to Burke,’ Mr Worsley said.

‘Later that same night his dead body was put in the boot of a car, a VW Polo, and driven to the vicinity of Blackheath, south London.

‘A can of petrol was put in the car and it was set alight.

The result, not unnaturally, was the car exploded.

‘The dead body of Burke was found in the boot of the car.

It could be identified by the fingerprints.

‘He had not died in the explosion.

He was already dead before he was put in the boot.

He had died from stoning to death, beside the London to Brighton railway line,’ Mr Worsley said.

Many of the meetings between the accused men to arrange the killing were held in Birmingham and Wolverhampton – where Mr Ero had lived with his girlfriend Dorothy Harrison.

Johnson, of (152) Fawcett Close, Battersea, Mantack, of (51) College Drive, Manchester, Needham, of (88) Chatsworth Tower, Bell Barn Road, Leebank, Birmingham, and Sinclair, of (22) Albert Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, all deny the murder of Mr Burke on June 20 last year.

The trial continues.

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note: Alexander Ero was stabbed at a flat in Compton House, the Surrey Lane Estate, Battersea, South London on 15 June 1999.

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addstone.