'Assassination kit' gang sold guns to underworld

60 YEARS FOR RUTHLESS 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.

Sentencing Hardy, Knowles and Houston, at Nottingham Crown Court, Judge Mark Watson told them: “You were in business together. You brought your own set of skills and contacts to the enterprise.

“Each of you contributed in different but important ways. This was a large scale and highly sophisticated enterprise which involved a large number of weapons.”

The judge said the operation dated from at least November 2022.