Woman's quest to clear friend of 2007 Romford murder

Mark ‘Ozzy’ Osborne was branded a drugs baron by the tabloids in 2009, when he was convicted of organising the murder of his friend Mark Tredinnick in Noak Hill, Romford.

But a childhood friend has branded the case against him “ridiculous”, saying the prosecution’s star witness was a con-artist who used his inconsistent testimony as leverage to avoid deportation.

NHS worker Julie Major says she has also obtained bombshell new evidence, in the form of a secret recording, which further undermines the prosecution case.

She is so convinced of Ozzy’s innocence that his case has inspired her to become a lawyer and fight other miscarriages of justice. She is now two years into a law degree.

“They made out that he was some big-time drug dealer,” she said. “He had £5 in his bank account. There was no evidence at all that he was a drug dealer.”

Julie used to live in the flat above Ozzy when he was a little boy. They had lost touch by the time he was tried for murder. She only found out in recent years that he was in prison - and is now devoted to getting him out (Image: Charles Thomson)

The Murder

Ozzy is one of three men convicted of murdering Mr Tredinnick, who was shot dead in a country lane in June 2007 as his terrified partner and four-year-old son watched helplessly from their car.

The other two convicted killers are Ozzy’s brother Tony and his friend Wayne Collins.

But Ozzy was already in prison at the time of Mr Tredinnick’s murder, serving a sentence for a fight with a doorman.

He doesn’t dispute the other two men’s involvement, but insists he played no part.

Ozzy claims to have received a phone call from someone on the outside telling him that Mr Tredinnick had been killed and that Tony and Wayne had done it.

Mr Tredinnick had been a drugs runner for Ozzy’s drug-dealer brother Tony.

Suspecting Mr Tredinnick of double-crossing him, Tony lured him to Benskins Lane with a phone call offering work. There, Collins emerged from the bushes in a balaclava and shot him.

But within days, Ozzy was also being considered as a suspect.

The reason, says Julie, is that Ozzy’s cellmate had approached a prison guard and offered to provide information implicating him in the killing.

'Ozzy' Osbourne has been in prison on a life sentence for Mark Tredinnick's murder since his mid-20s. He is now in his early 40s (Image: Julie Major)

Inconsistent Story

The cellmate claimed he had overheard a phone call between Ozzy and Tony on May 30, 2007 – two days before the killing – in which Ozzy discussed paying £10,000 for Mr Treddinick’s murder.

But, says Julie, Ozzy and Tony were pretty much estranged, barely speaking to one another, and Ozzy didn’t have £10,000.

Phone records showed the two brothers had not spoken on May 30, nor on any occasion for at least a month leading up to Mr Tredinnick’s killing.

The cellmate’s story in tatters, neither he nor the authorities ever advanced this version of events again, she said.

But the cellmate then told a new story, this time claiming he had overheard Ozzy receive a call from Wayne, not Tony, which came after the killing, rather than before it.

The cellmate claimed to have heard Wayne tell Ozzy: “I stuck ten in him.”

Ozzy has always denied this, but at trial the prosecution claimed Mr Tredinnick had been shot ten times, so there was no way the cellmate could have known this information unless he genuinely heard it from the killer.

This did not implicate Ozzy in the murder: being told about a crime after it has happened is very different from helping to plan it.

But the night before the shooting, there was a seven-minute phone call between Ozzy and Wayne’s phone numbers. The authorities argued this was the planning of the hit.

Julie, however, says the prosecution case simply does not add up.

Julie has re-established her friendship with Ozzy since discovering what had happened to him and has even visited him in prison (Image: Julie Major)

The Timeline

According to Mr Tredinnick’s girlfriend, the killers had already tried to lure him out to Benskins Lane once before, around 24 hours before they eventually succeeded.

On May 31, she told police, Tony rang Mr Tredinnick and asked to meet him “about some work” – but Mr Tredinnick didn’t go because he already had plans with friends.

Phone records not only confirm this call, says Julie, but place Tony and Wayne near Benskins Lane as it was made.

This all occurred around five hours before the phone call between Ozzy and Wayne – and phone records proved was the first time they had spoken in a month.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Julie.

“If they had got the victim to the scene that evening as planned, before that phone call, [Ozzy] could not and would not have been implicated in the crime.”

“Six Shots”

Another problem with the prosecution’s case, says Julie, is that Mr Tredinnick was not actually shot ten times.

She alleges that the authorities ignored overwhelming evidence that seven shots were fired, instead relying on ambiguous pathology findings to try to prop up the cellmate’s story about ten gunshots.

At trial, the prosecution cited a post-mortem report describing “nine wound tracks” – which are the paths taken by bullets through a body.

Julie has now referred Ozzy’s case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), citing scientific research published since his trial which says wound tracks are an unreliable way of calculating how many times somebody has been shot, as bullets can ricochet around inside the body.

Julie has submitted an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the only body with the power to send Ozzy back to the Court of Appeal, based on updated science and new secret recordings (Image: Charles Thomson)

“All of the evidence actually shows he was shot six times,” Julie said.

Mr Tredinnick’s girlfriend wrote in her police statement that the gun went off “about six times”.

Another witness heard “six or seven loud bangs”.

Police officer Michael Hartley, called to the scene, wrote: “I was told that a male had been shot six times."

Search records show that police recovered six spent bullets and one unspent round, apparently the result of a misfire by the gun.

Forensic gun expert Michael Vaughan wrote in his statement: “In my opinion the fired material recovered from the victim and the scene accounted for six gunshots.”

But at trial, the authorities took the one misfire and added it to nine “wound tracks”, instead of six recovered casings.

In his summing up, the judge told the jury: “The post-mortem examination indicates nine wound tracks, indicating that there may have been up to nine bullets fired into the body of Mark Tredinnick. There was one misfired bullet. That would make ten.”

“Habitual offender”

Case files reveal that the cellmate who birthed the story about ten shots was a career criminal who used his claims about Ozzy as leverage to avoid deportation.

A Somalian immigrant, Home Office records described him as a “habitual offender” with 12 aliases, eight different dates of birth and no evidence of lawful entry into the country.

He was in prison on a public protection sentence for GBH, which meant he could not be paroled without special permission.

With prior convictions for ABH and robbery with a firearm, he had just learned that far from planning to parole him, the government had instigated deportation proceedings.

Julie has joined protests over people being convicted of murder based on joint enterprise. Mark Osbourne was jailed for life over a murder committed in Romford while he was locked up in prison (Image: Julie Major)

Records disclosed to the defence show that as soon as he started claiming to have heard phone calls incriminating Ozzy, the cellmate demanded parole, saying he would only testify if set free.

“He said that as long as in custody he would not be coming to court,” one police record said. “He said that if released he would come to court and give evidence.”

His deportation was abandoned. He was released into witness protection and an immigration tribunal was postponed until after Ozzy’s trial, so he “could receive the full benefit” of his testimony.

Arrested for assault and probation breaches while in witness protection, he proved so troublesome that the protection unit refused to look after him anymore, telling police he was their problem.

They suffered his antics, according to one officer’s notes, because otherwise: “I do not have a witness for a murder trial. I would rather explain my actions and have him as a witness.”

According to Julie, the witness remained in the country for years after the trial, meaning his deportation was indeed abandoned – although he has since returned to Somalia.

A Killer’s Boast?

There was one more piece of evidence argued to implicate Ozzy.

Mr Tredinnick’s girlfriend told police that she heard the shooter say: “That’s from Mark.”

The authorities said that was a reference to Mark ‘Ozzy’ Osborne.

But, Julie points out, in the very same statement, the girlfriend doubted her own memory, adding: “I can’t remember if he said it now.”

“The victim’s own name was Mark,” said Julie. “So the shooter could have actually said something like, ‘That’s for you, Mark’.

“Besides, nobody called Mark Osborne ‘Mark’. His name on the street was Ozzy. Everybody called him Ozzy, including Mark Tredinnick.

“Even on Tredinnick’s phone, he was saved as Ozzy. If he was behind it, they would have said, ‘That’s from Ozzy’.”

Ozzy was convicted unanimously after a trial at the Old Bailey in 2009 - but jurors took much longer to convict him than the other two defendants. They only did so after a judge advised them on the evidence without Ozzy's lawyers present, says Julie

New Evidence

The jury convicted Tony and Wayne days earlier than Ozzy, says Julie.

Indicating that they were split over Ozzy, jurors asked for the prosecution and defence cases regarding Ozzy to be read back to them.

This was done in the absence of Ozzy’s lawyers.

Although the jury eventually delivered a unanimous guilty verdict, several jurors refused to come back into court to see it delivered, which Julie feels indicates they were uncomfortable with it.

As part of her reinvestigation of the case, she has obtained covert recordings of key players in the case, which have been submitted to the CCRC.

She would not talk about them publicly in detail, but said they included a recording of somebody involved in the case admitting that Ozzy knew “nothing whatsoever” about the planned killing.

She submitted her application almost two years ago, she said, and has been assured a decision is due within weeks.

If she is successful in helping Ozzy, she will turn her attention to other cases.

“I’ve always been interested in the law,” she said. “I’ve done this as a layperson but my aim is to get qualified and help wrongfully convicted people.”

The CPS declined to comment on any of the alleged shortcomings in the case identified by Julie.

The Met Police did not respond to a request for comment.