Under The Radar : Episode 476

Welcome to Always True Crime, a podcast network bringing you gripping real-life stories that you won't be able to stop thinking about. Discover your next true crime obsession at AlwaysTrueCrime.com. Hello and welcome to episode 476 of the UK True Crime Podcasts from the Northwest of England. I'm Adam. Thank you so much for joining me today for the last episode of 2025. Clearly the news that the Kings of Leon are on tour next year has cast a shadow over 2026 for me personally, but I have to be brave and move on. I would of course like to thank you so much for listening to this podcast in 2025 and for your support, and to wish you and your family a wonderful 2026. And I would ask that if you get a moment, please do review this podcast that Apple podcasts or any other podcast app, as it will really help more listeners find it next year. Okay, so with that said, let's set some context for today's story with our guest a month and year game. You ready? And number two in the UK music charts at the top of the US charts was Vampire from Olivia Rodrigo. In Australia, and number three in the album charts was Travis Scott with Utopia. In the news this month, Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, effectively declared itself bankrupt after stopping all non-essential spending. American that 70s show actor Danny Masterson was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison after a jury convict him of two rapes which took place in 2003. The comeback of dirty den Watts played by Leslie Grantham and his denders was screened. 14 years after the character was supposedly killed off. And in UK cinemas, the two most popular films this month were the Equalizer 3 and a Haunting and Venice. So did you get the month in year? It was September 2023. After they story isn't like the TV, it doesn't start with a police chase, a moment of violence, flashing blue lights or battering rams. It starts with a landscape. The kind of landscape that most of us just drive through in automatic without ever really seeing. Stretching from the edges of Liverpool to the Welsh border, the Mersey Cheshire Corridor is a patchwork of everything the Northwest is known for. That farmland cut by hedgerows, half abandoned industrial estates, quiet commuter towns, old red brick terraces and mile after mile of motorway. To the north you've got the docks, cranes, the stacked containers, the distant metallic clatter of freight being moved. To the south the green rises a Cheshire plain, dotted with livery yards, caravan parks, and farms that look peaceful while sitting just minutes on the A-55 and M-56, ideal cover for the movement of goods that nobody wants to talk about. And in between there are service stations, perched on windswept junctions, laybys that see more activity at 2am than at lunchtime, like the very best watched El Saunas, and distribution yards where white fans come and go without ever drawing attention. It's a logistical heartland, a place to move things quickly, quietly, efficiently. It's perfect for supermarkets, perfect for transport, and perfect for drugs. As story today begins as the major drug cases I've covered often do, quietly. It was a still morning in the north west of England. That kind of pale grey British dawn, where everything looks a bit washed out. Two egg entries were silhouetted against the colourless sky, lorries hummed in the distance, and the wind carried that faint chemical smell of fuel. You know how it is, right? In the mercy Cheshire region, police officers were already at their desks when the call came through. It was routine intelligence at first, the sort of stuff they get every day, little more than threads. That threads properly followed can become ropes, and then ropes of enough weight on them can drag in entire criminal networks down, and this story is about one of those ropes. It ends with the CPS announcing the largest heroin and cocaine seizure ever handled by its mercy Cheshire team. It begins with four men, with dreams of making money, setting miles apart, none of them walking, none of them touching drugs directly, or convince that their distance from the product kept them safe. As we know from many similar stories we have heard, it absolutely doesn't. There is, as you know, no glamour when you study the photographs of Britain's mid-tier organised crime groups. There's no film, it's sheen, no carefully cultivated menace. The faces of the four men involved in this case, Guy Remington, Luke Hurst, Thomas Smith and Morgan Towner, are the faces you had passed on the street without looking twice. Remington aged 48 from Heriford, he wears a slightly pinched expression of a man who's watched every penny for decades. He grew up in the kind of rural belts where opportunity could be scarce, and where the line between legitimate logistics work and criminal transport economy has always been thin. In the images eventually released by police, he stands almost stiffly, his jaws set, a man who you can see disliked being photographed even before his arrest. Then her stage 37 from Deesite, he looks younger than his years, but he carries that heavy restless energy of someone used to looking over his shoulder. He's got a strong frame, he's quick-eyed, the sort of man who thrives on movement, on connecting people who should never meet, a real facilitator. And Thomas Smith, then Thomas Smith 41 from Liverpool, he's broader, he's harsher in his expression. When Smith stares into the custody camera lens, he looks neither remorseful nor aggressive, just calculating, as if he's running odds in his head. And then there is Morgan Towner age 47 from Leatherhead in Surrey. In the photographs he appears clean, cut, and assuming, the type of man who might run a building firm or a mid-level office, but the CPS, they said otherwise. Towner, they told us, was deeply involved in distribution logistics, part of the chain that moved millions of pounds' worth of heroin, and cocaine across the UK. Make no mistake, this was a big business, and here we have four men, four distinct roles, none of them touching the drugs personally, but each absolutely critical to a supply pipeline that stretched across borders and into UK communities. Into the communities where you and I live, and the success, was based on secrecy. To understand properly how these four men became central to this case, we need to understand a bit about the UK drugs landscape at the time. By the early 2020s COVID type, drug poisoning deaths in England and Wales had reached the highest levels its records began, according to the Office for National Statistics. Terror in and morphine remained among the most frequently mentioned substances on death certificates, and cocaine deaths had risen for 10 consecutive years, hitting record highs. At the same time the county lines networks would read about so often, and often pay no attention to, were embedding themselves into rural towns, coastal communities and small villages. England contested drugs markets, in places that hadn't seen this kind of activity before. Terror in that reaches the UK tends to start its journey in Afghanistan, traveling along the Balkan route through Turkey and Southeast Europe, before entering Western Europe. By the time it reaches Britain, a single kilogram can command tens of thousands of pounds on the wholesale market, and far more once it is being cut with garbage and sold at street level. Cocaine follows different pathways, shipments leave Latin America, and move either three West Africa, or through the European hubs such as Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands, for entering the UK via the major port such as Felix Stowe, Seth Hansen and Liverpool. New Zealand's operations expanded rapidly from 2014, creating what has been described as continual, unchecked market growth, and it was into this high demand, high profit environment that four men, Remington, Hearst, Smith and Towner, believed, like so many others, that they could operate unseen, and make big profits for themselves. In this case the drugs didn't arrive in a shipping container, at a deep sea port. They came through the channel Tunnel, one of the busiest freight routes in Europe, hit it in professionally constructed secret compartments, inside an otherwise unremarkable, lorry trailer. Every year more than a million lorries passed through the tunnel between Kale and Folkston. Border Force officers have long warned that the constant flow of HDVs makes it a prime target for organised crime groups; high volume, tight timetables, and a mixture of UK and EU registered holiest that makes concealment easier. Between May and September 2023, investigators from the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit and partner forces, watched as the same trailer, made nine trips to Europe via the Eurotunnel. Each time it returned to the UK and headed not for a bustling city, but for a quiet farm track in D-side North Wales. The farm was called Turlus Gork, land linked to Luke Hearst. It's a place that it first glance that like countless others across the North Wales countryside, a scattering of low agricultural buildings, where the beasts and gates, opened fields stretching towards the foot of the Calawidian hills. It's the kind of rural space where a single vehicle arriving or leaving hardly raises any attention, and where a large trailer rolling up the track wouldn't look out of place to anyone passing by. It was really quiet there, it was isolated. Along an even farm road led from the main lane to the outbuildings, the sort of track where tires crunch loudly on gravel, but the only people watching and listening are sheep in the surrounding fields. Rural Wales offer something that most organised crime groups crave, privacy. No neighbours overlook in the yard, no foot traffic, no street lighting, to illuminate midnight movements, and that was the whole point. Turlus Gork gave the operation space, time and cover. There, away from prying eyes, the gear would be unloaded, the drugs repackaged, and prepared for onward distribution. Some consignments left in the hands of Liverpool based dealer Thomas Smith, others went south with Morgan Towner. They were concealed in a van adapted with a hidden compartment, designed to defeat the casual roadside search he might expect a face. Guy Remington made nine separate trips between May and September 2023, each time he used the same tactic. Driving into mainland Europe with an empty trailer, returning through the tunnel, with the drugs concealed in hidden cavities, then heading straight for the farm in north Wales. I wonder how he felt on those journeys, the first time he must be nervous, but after that did he gain confidence? I wonder. Meanwhile the officers bided their time, nine runs, nine returns, each trip strengthened the evidential picture for them, the same trailer, the same patterns of movement, the same farm, and by mid-September 2023, they were ready, because drugs don't move themselves. The next phase of the investigation unfolded quietly. The north-west regional organised crime unit, working alongside the north-wise police and other regional forces, built a clear picture of the network's movements. Surveillance teams tracked phones, vehicles, storage yards and meeting places, aware that just one slip would give away the investigation, and what a merge was a pattern. At the very centre was Remington, the man behind the wheel. He was the one making the urotunnel crossings, bringing the classic assignments from Europe and driving them to the farm. This provided the land, the farm, the local cover, and the farm became the hub, the place to unload the hidden compartment in the trailer, and to break down the shipment into parcels for supply. Smith, the class-aid drugs dealer from Liverpool, was one of the key customers. He took assignments from the farm for distribution through his own network of suppliers across Mersey side and beyond, and from there they'd have supplied their own suppliers. And Towner, he took the drugs from the farm to the south of England, Surrey and the wider southeast. None of the four were ever photographed handling drugs. None ever walked into the port, but the phone calls and meetings, and the financial movements painted a picture of the coordinated world-structured operation, a professional operation, a puzzle built from hundreds of pieces. Police officers sat in unmarked cars on damped verges, the windscreen wipers thudding back and forth. They watched headlights rise and fall on the A-55, they followed the glow of brake lights along country lanes that wound towards Terrillus Gough. They looked early morning tractor movements, dog walkers, delivery vans, and crucially, the comings and goings of unfamiliar vehicles that never seemed to stay for very long. Most of the time, it was what officers who've worked on surveillance operations Tellus makes up the bulk of the job, not the exciting glamorous stuff we watch on TV. It's the hours of nothing. Engines idling, tea cooling and paper cups, the sound of rain on car roofs. Then suddenly something happened. A trailer reversing into a farm yard at odd hours. A van arriving empty and leaving heavy. A driver pausing at a lay-by, just long enough to make a quick phone call that pinned a mask already linked to another suspect. And over the months that surveillance grew into evidence. Officers saw that Remington rarely used the same routine for long. But the network around him was less disciplined. Vehicles linked to Smith were picked up repeatedly on the same route between Mersey Sider North Wales. Towner's trip South followed familiar patterns. These men weren't shadowy car-tiled figures. They were mid-level operators, embedded in the UK's expanding supply chain. They were capable, they were cautious, but they weren't untouchable. And on the 18th of September 2023, Remington left the UK again, making another run through the Euro Tun. Investigators believed by this point that he would return in possession of yet another consignment of class A drugs. So on the 20th of September 2023, when he drove back to Turlis Gog and began unloading his trailer, the police made them move. The raid on the farm was sudden and overwhelming. Officers flooded into the yard as Remington worked at the trailer as he had many times before. He was arrested on the spot. Nearby, in a taxi not far from the farm, Luke Hurst was also detained. Despite the buildings and the vehicles on site, officers recovered herring in cocaine with a potential street value of more than 64 million pounds. The hall that would later be described as the UK's largest seizure of class A drugs ever prosecuted by the CPS Mersey Cheshire. The whole operation happened blown wide open. In the weeks that followed, investigators moved on the rest of the core group. Thomas Smith was arrested at a house in Hyton and Liverpool on the 18th of October 2023. Three days later, Towner was arrested at a home in Leatherhead in Surrey. Four arrests, four men in cells, and a multimillion-pound drugs conspiracy now fully exposed. But a case like this is really built on one big breakthrough. It's the accumulation of dozens of smaller ones. That tell us Goc officers see mobile phones as well as drugs. On these devices, and on phones recovered from Smith and Towner, they found messages and call logs, showing the high level of organisation and planning behind the operation. Trips were discussed, movements coordinated, and payments arranged. These were no amateurs. Cell site analysis placed the men's handsets repeatedly at the same key locations. The alarm, meeting parts on main roads, and in Remington's case, around the Euro Tunnel Terminal. The drugs themselves were analysed. The purity levels were high, consistent with importation rather than low level acquisition. The quantity linked back to the repeated trailer journeys to and from Europe. And financial investigation, too, added another layer to the investigation. Several costs had explained cash, and there was spending inconsistent with the clad incomes. It formed a shadow balance sheet, documenting the profits of the operation. Each man's role became clear as still, Remington the importer, Hurst, the farm-based facilitator, Smith, the Liverpool wholesaler, Towner, the Southern Korea, and Distributor. The CPS built a clear-layed prosecution rooted in documents, surveillance, and digital evidence. None of the four could plausibly explain their involvement away, not separately and not together. Have you spent much time in court? I don't mean in the dock, I mean observing. I have, I'm fascinated, allow for a pop-in for a couple of hours, on a random weekday afternoon. I might experience as the evening-large trials, some courtrooms feel unusually tense. They almost feel heavy with the knowledge that years have worked, and lives impacted far beyond the defendants, all hang on the outcome, where nothing of course is guaranteed. At Chestercrane Court, the prosecution outlined the conspiracy in meticulous detail. The nine U-a-tunnel trips, the concealed compartment in Remington's trailer, the role of the farm as a distribution hub, and the onwards supply networks, and the sheer scale of the drugs involved, millions of pounds of heroin and cocaine, enough to have a measurable effect on the streets of multiple UK cities. The defence solicitors for it got to trial did what they would argue is their professional job. They pointed out that none of the men were filmed physically, handing a key lab cocaine. They argued that some meetings were innocent, proximity didn't prove conspiracy, that text messages could be misinterpreted. But the evidence hit was too strong. The pattern of movements, the searches at the farm, the vans, the phones, the messages, the drugs, layer after layer, the CPS dismantled every single line of defence, so that on the 2nd of November 2023, all four men pleaded guilty at Chestercrane Court. Remington admitted conspiracy to important supply, Lasse drugs, her smith and towner admitted conspiracy to supply Lasse drugs. Smith also admitted possessing MDMA, with intent to supply, and possessing cannabis. So there would be no trial. When the four defendants returned to Chestercrane Court for sentencing on the 21st of March 2024, they looked smaller somehow, their faces at drain, their shoulders seemed drawn inward almost. The judge addressed each man in turn, outlining their roles in a conspiracy that has funneled huge quantities of heroin and cocaine into the UK. Remington has sentenced to 18 years in prison for conspiracy to import and supply Lasse drugs. Thomas Smith received 18 years for his role in the plot. Luke Hurst, 12 years, for conspiracy to supply Lasse drugs. And Morgan Towner, he got 7 years in the slammer for conspiracy. The senior crown prosecutor, summed it up outside court she said. This was a slick operation, carried out with precision and planning. It is possibly the last thing you can imagine happening at a farm in rural North Wales, but that was the key. The rural location provided privacy for the group, so I unload the huge quantities of heroin and cocaine stashed in a hide in the trailer. The nearby A-55 and Motoy Network allowed careers to collect and then be on their way to distribute the drugs for armored supply all over the country. And this wasn't the end of the story. The decide farmed the Uri-Tunner crossings and the 64 million hole formed the core of a wider investigation, Operation Falcon, as we know, these law enforcement types, they love their names, don't they, for operations. In November 2024, 7 more men were sentenced in North Wales at Mold Crown Court, filling to fences, including careers and regional supplies from Liverpool, South Yorkshire and London. The broader operation had uncovered the importation of more than two tonnes of Lasse drugs, with a potential street value of over 250 million pounds. Taken together, sentences in Operation Falcon now totalled more than 100 years of imprisonment. As we hear on this podcast, heroin devastates the communities it touches. Cocaine, it fuels violence, exploitation, fraud and a tangled web of harm. In Mersey's side, Liverpool, Chesha and the rural towns that run between them. Addiction linked deaths remain among the highest in the country. County lines operations, let's make no mistake about it. They pull vulnerable children away from their families, criminal debt, insolaves users and leads to other crimes. When the CPS announced this case, they emphasised the prevented harm. The drugs seized never reached users. Never reached kids groomed to deal. Never sparked the disputes that we see become shootings. It's impossible, I think, for us to measure the real harm avoided. But when investigators looked at the bricks of heroin and cocaine stacked in the evidence room, hundreds of individual packages, it wasn't hard to imagine the alternative. So what do you make of what we've heard today? Let's take the first big question, the war on drugs. Many of us believe it's been well and truly lost, and even with these made in custody, others will just take their place. I wonder what you think. But if we compare it to this case, today as you listen to this podcast, the four main men reming to inherit Smith and Towner, sitting separate prisons, no shared stories, no criminal brotherhood. Just four men who's quite confident they'd been to the heart of police operation, they never saw coming. And somewhere in a lot of evidence-faults, the packages seized from that shipping container, sitting marked crates. Their journey endpoint, not the streets of the UK, but destruction, under control conditions. When drugs cases come before the courts, we usually only see the headline. A single number, the Kilos sees the street value, the year is handed down. But those headlines flatten what is in reality of vast and painstaking process. Behind every operation like this are years of hard work, officers pouring over cell-site maps in windowless rooms, analysts matching phone pings to movements on grainy CCTV, surveillance teams winning long, boring hours in parked cars, border officers checking paperwork that doesn't look quite right, and prosecutors building cases brick by brick until the picture they believe is undeniable. Much of that work is invisible that it has to be. Organized crime thrives on silence and distance, investigators must work in the same shadows to bring it down. This case was no different, it was just standard, wasn't it? For ordinary looking men, faces you could pass in a supermarket queue, no gangland mythology, no flashy violence, no dramatic shootouts. Just a quiet, disciplined criminal enterprise that believed it could operate beneath the radar, making them all very wealthy, and one seizure that proved otherwise. In the end of the valley of operations like this isn't measured only in the drugs taken off the streets, as I said before the harm never happens. The overdoses that don't occur, the county line's debts, not imposed on children, the violence never sparked over turf or unpaid cash, the families who never learn that their loved one has been found in an alleyway or a hostile floor. It's impossible I think to quantify absence, the tragedies that never came to pass, but that's where the real weight of this case sits. Thank you so much for joining me for this final episode of the UK True Crime Podcast for 2025. And to ensure you get every episode ever free, loads of other exclusive content and immediate access to 99 foreign-experience episodes, 100 by the end of this week, please a join me at Patreon. There are incredibly over 875 of us there now, and there's always a huge thanks to all my sports at Patreon, but especially the new members of our community this week, that is Trish, David James, Jay Trauer, Tanya Jo and Marie Duxbury and Kayla Everett. Thank you so much for your support, which is just so much appreciated. And why don't you join our community today at patreon.com/uktru crime. And to discuss this episode and any other aspect of UK True Crime, please join the UK True Crime Facebook group. There are over 96,000 of us, we talk true crime, 24/7, and we're currently looking for moderators if you'd like to join the team. It's a safe welcoming place, please come and join us. If you get a moment, please do take a listen to the other podcast I do with Stuart, the host of the British Murders podcast, which we release as a podcast and on YouTube every Wednesday, it's called the True Crime Catchup. Tomorrow we will be making our crime predictions for 2026. Spoiler alert, I wouldn't put any money on any of our predictions. So that is all for me for another week, so until we speak again on Tuesday, once again, let me wish you a very happy new year and a huge thank you for all your support in 2025. Until next time, please do take it easy and despite all the others and as we both know, it's always the others. Stay cast, cheerio for now. Want more true crime? This podcast and loads more are part of the Always True Crime Network. It's packed with box sets to binge and twisted tails you won't find anywhere else. Find your next podcast obsession at AlwaysTrueCrime.com