'Assassination kit' gang sold guns to underworld

60 years for crooks who supplied West Midland criminals

- SOPHIE ROBINSON News Reporter

A “RUTHLESS” gang which made and sold “assassination kits” to the West Midlands criminal underworld has been jailed for a total of more than 60 years.

Gary Hardy, 62, sold the kits which were made in the garden of co-conspirator 64-year-old Ronald Knowles, who acquired blank firing handguns and ammunition which he converted into viable weapons.

The kits were stocked with a handgun, silencer, magazine and ammunition wrapped in a latex glove, and police said the converted firearms had been seized in eight locations across the country - most in the West Midlands.

At least 33 guns were made in Knowles’s factory.

Accomplice Steven Houston, 65, supplied the weapons to criminals, including 23-year-old Jason Hill - a drug dealer who was convicted of murder last year.

Hardy, of The Birches, Ravenshead, Nottinghamshire, received a sentence of 23 years, while Knowles, of Milton Avenue, Alfreton, Derbyshire, was handed a 13-and-a-half year sentence.

Houston, of Breach Oak Lane, Corley, near Coventry, was given 25 years in prison.