It is understood he hid on the Costa Del Sol and police intelligence suggests he was paying the Russians to protect him on the Mediterranean coast while a huge manhunt was under way in Manchester.
he was paying Russian gangsters to protect him after he fled to Spain during his 42 days on the run.
It is understood he hid on the Costa Del Sol and police intelligence suggests he was paying the Russians to protect him on the Mediterranean coast while a huge manhunt was under way in Manchester
He was also in phone contact with serious Salford gangsters.
He returned to Manchester, not because he missed his family as he suggested, but because he simply ran out of money and could no longer pay the mobsters to keep him in hiding, according to the intelligence.
Police suspect Cregan escaped England to Northern Ireland before heading south over the border to the Irish republic and then by sea to mainland Spain when he went on the run.
First he fled to Leeds where he spent 12 days holed up in an apartment in the city centre. None of the other residents realised there was a killer in their midst. Later, Cregan and his associates travelled south and spent time ‘chillin’’ in Herne Bay, near Dover. Again, no-one spotted him.
Meanwhile, back in Manchester, police were involved in some of the 60 armed raids they carried out in a vain search for the fugitive. They also put up a £50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and issued a series of public appeals.
He managed to escape the law for so long with the help of a network of criminal friends, and because of the fear he had created thanks to a summer of bloodshed.
The masked Cregan had coolly walked into Droylsden’s Cotton Tree pub on May 25 last year and shot dead amateur boxer and fellow criminal Mark Short, 23.
Cregan had wanted to kill his great rival David Short, 46, Mark’s father, but his main target was in the toilet. When Short Snr returned from the toilet, he cradled his dying son in his arms. Cregan also shot three other members of the Short clan, Ryan Pridding, Michael Belcher and John Collins.
He celebrated the assassination with friends by flying business class to Thailand for a holiday at a luxury resort on the paradise island of Koh Samui.
Among the trips he enjoyed was a day out at a gun club, with Cregan posing for pictures with his weapon. When he stepped off the return flight into Manchester, detectives were waiting and arrested him on suspicion of murder.
He said nothing during interview and was released on bail pending further enquiries.
Cregan had been due to answer bail in the middle of August but when scientific tests implicated him, detectives brought forward their plans and tried to arrest him and others on August 7. DNA and gunshot residue evidence suggested Cregan had been at a house in Hollingworth, Tameside, where Cregan and others had cleaned up after the murder and after torching the Ford Focus getaway car.
While police managed to arrest others, Cregan was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t at his mum’s house in Droylsden, nor at any other address linked to him. Police didn’t know that, at that point, Cregan was enjoying a trip to the Lakes.
With his girlfriend Georgia Merriman, son and mother Anita, he had booked into a hotel in Bowness overlooking Lake Windermere when his accomplices were being arrested in Manchester. He soon found out and fled to Plas Coch, a resort on Anglesey, north Wales.
Cregan layed low before murdering his great rival David Short, who is said to have threatened to take his revenge for his son’s killing by raping and murdering Cregan’s son and sister.
Cregan couldn’t go home so instead went to a friend’s house in Newton Heath, where he watched the Olympics as he made preparations for the murder of David Short.
With his accomplices in The Cotton Tree murder now charged he organised a hire van which he would use for the murder. On the morning of August 10, Cregan and his friend Anthony Wilkinson, who is also said to have owed Short Snr £20,000, gunned down their target at his home in Folkestone Road East in Clayton.
They had staked out Droylsden Cemetery where he would visit his son’s grave three times each day but changed their plans when he failed to show.
David Short had been loading furniture from his car when he was attacked. Cregan and Wilkinson chased him through the house, shooting at him. Trying to get away, he collapsed behind a gate in an alley where more shots were fired into him.
Cregan finished the job by lobbing a grenade at his victim.
Later that day police named Cregan for the first time and issued a picture of the one-eyed fugitive. He fled to Failsworth then Bradford and then on to Leeds, where he, Wilkinson and their getaway driver Jermaine Ward spent 12 days holed up in a one-bed apartment.
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