ONCE rated as among the five hardest men in London, Billy Isaac had links to the Kray twins and the Adams family crime syndicate.
The former heavyweight boxer and 6ft 4in hulking brute was dubbed the ‘Bullet Man’ and had a reputation as an underworld hardman.
Niall Duffy – The Sun DublinBilly Isaac was dubbed the ‘Bullet Man’ and had a reputation as an underworld hardman[/caption]
Hulton Archive – GettyHe had links to the Kray twins and the Adams family crime syndicate[/caption]
Born in Denton, Greater Manchester, the close friend of Ricky Hatton looked set to forge a successful boxing career but retired after just two professional fights.
He turned his fists to enforcing in gangland Manchester and London and even organised security at the East End funeral of Ronnie Kray.
Isaac picked up convictions for various assaults before coming to criminal prominence in 1995 when businesswoman Pat Hayes, 46, was shot twice in the head as she slept at her home in Denton.
He was accused of carrying out the shooting on the orders of his mother Rita who stood to inherit Hayes’ bungalow and several properties they owned together in Florida.
But he was acquitted of murder while Mrs Isaacs was acquitted of arranging the murder after a key witness undermined the case.
The mother and son later moved into the dead woman’s home.
Isaac, who had a boxing bulldog tattoo on his left arm, was then named at the Old Bailey in 2000 as an associate of the Adams crime family during the trial of a corrupt CPS clerk who took a bribe to leak confidential information.
He was said to have met an intermediary of the clerk at Heston Services on the M4 during the summer of 1998 and was given sensitive documents about inquiries into the Adams family.
In 2001 he was arrested and charged again over two serious assaults, one in which a barber was forced to watch his face being slashed with a Bowie hunting knife and the beating at of a man at a pub which left the victim with a multiple fractures and a punctured lung.
During the police investigation, a man decapitated himself by tying a rope around a lamp-post and the other end around his neck before getting into his Citroen Saxa and driving away, ripping off his own head.
MEN MediaIn September 2013 Isaac was found dead in the mansion[/caption]
One GBH trial was opened but the case collapsed after a detectives was accused in court of lying.
The officer was subsequently exonerated of any wrongdoing after an official inquiry but the other trial also folded.
In 2006 Isaacs, who ran security firm 24:7, was jailed for three years after detectives found four bullets for a Smith and Wesson revolver hidden in a white sock inside his luxury Jaguar.
Bullet proof vests were also recovered.
Following his release from jail he moved to a secluded gated property near Cork in the Republic of Ireland after he inherited it from his father.
But in September 2013 he was found dead in the mansion, dubbed Ratsville, with his head wedged behind a bath.
A month before his death, Isaacs was sentenced to five months in jail but was freed pending appeal after he was convicted of assaulting a waitress at a restaurant in west Cork.
It is believed Isaac had been locked out of his house and had tried to climb in through a window into the bathroom.
He was found dead by a workman with tests showing he had suffered positional asphyxia.
Isaac’s resting place in Manchester was then ransacked twice in the hope of finding expensive jewellery hidden among his remains.
He had been buried in the same plot as his mother in his native Manchester.
His remains were exhumed and the burial plot secured.
Men SyndicationHis resting place in Manchester was then ransacked twice[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
