{"id":144410,"date":"2018-06-21T14:30:04","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T14:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/john-goldfinger-palmer-death-killer-used-spyhole\/"},"modified":"2018-06-21T14:30:04","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T14:30:04","slug":"john-goldfinger-palmer-death-killer-used-spyhole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/john-goldfinger-palmer-death-killer-used-spyhole\/","title":{"rendered":"John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer death: ‘Killer used spyhole’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"JohnImage copyright PA
Image caption John "Goldfinger" Palmer was jailed in 2001 for a \u00a320m timeshare fraud <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A notorious conman shot dead in his garden may have been watched by his killer through a fence spyhole before his death, police have said.<\/p>\n

John "Goldfinger" Palmer, 65, once described as Britain's richest criminal, was shot dead in the garden of his Essex home on 24 June 2015.<\/p>\n

Photographs of the hole in the fence around his home been released.<\/p>\n

A reward to help catch the killer has been doubled to \u00a3100,000 by his family nearly three years after his death.<\/p>\n

Palmer - whose nickname derives from his connection to the 1983 \u00a325m Brink's-Mat gold bullion robbery - was jailed in 2001 for a \u00a320m timeshare fraud.<\/p>\n

Image copyright Essex Police
Image caption Detectives believe Palmer's killer may have used this hole in the fence to spy on his movements in the days before his death <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Image copyright Essex Police
Image caption Detectives believe the killer climbed the fence and shot Palmer three times while he was standing, and again when he was on the ground <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Palmer was shot six times by a killer who entered the garden over the fence at his home in South Weald, near Brentwood.<\/p>\n

Essex Police said the killing had "all the hallmarks" of a professional hit.<\/p>\n

Detectives believe the hole in the garden fence suggests the killer may have been watching Palmer in the days before his death.<\/p>\n

Image copyright Essex Police
Image caption Police found five of the bullets used to kill Palmer. A ballistics expert said the killer used a .32 calibre silenced revolver <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His partner Christina Ketley said: "It haunts us every day to think that whoever was responsible was clearly watching John, stalking him like an animal before brutally and callously ending his life."<\/p>\n

Detectives have recovered five of the six bullets used to kill him. <\/p>\n

Roger Critchell, director of operations at the charity Crimestoppers, said: "We understand that people are not always willing to go to the police so we would urge them to contact Crimestoppers with 100% anonymity."<\/p>\n

Image caption Palmer's partner Christina Ketley said he was shot in cold blood while pottering around the garden <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bullion from the Brink's-Mat robbery was melted down in a shed in the grounds of Palmer's country house at Lansdown, near Bath.<\/p>\n

However, he denied knowing the gold was stolen and was acquitted in 1987. <\/p>\n

The former scrap metal dealer from Olton, near Birmingham, started his criminal career young - selling paraffin off the back of a lorry after leaving school at 15, unable to read or write.<\/p>\n

His criminal activities netted him an estimated fortune of \u00a3300m, but justice eventually caught up with him when he was jailed in 2001 for a massive timeshare fraud in Tenerife.<\/p>\n

At the time of his death he was due to stand trial in Spain on charges of fraud, firearm possession and money laundering.<\/p>\n

It was later revealed he had been under police surveillance since 2007.<\/p>\n

Then, in September 2016, the BBC discovered an operation codenamed Alpine had been gathering intelligence on him from RAF Spadeadam in Cumbria since 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright PAImage caption John "Goldfinger" Palmer was jailed in 2001 for a \u00a320m timeshare fraud A notorious conman shot dead in his garden may have been watched by his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}