Tommy "Top Cat" Comerford went from working as a dockland lorry driver to becoming an international drugs supplier A crime godfather who went from working as a dockland lorry driver to becoming one of the first to establish an international drugs network flaunted his wealth at boxing dinners and the Grand National . Tommy Comerford, known as Tacker and Top Cat, was one of the first Liverpool men to recognise the international criminal opportunities access to the docks could yield. Born in 1933 and growing up in Vauxhall during and post WWII, Comerford started out as a lorry driver before becoming involved in one of the city's most famous ever bank robberies .
Upon his release from prison, he abandoned robbery and became involved in the drug trade, forming the 'Liverpool Mafia' - a group who used corrupt port officials and were protected by dirty police. By the 1980s he was one of not just the city's, but the UK's, most major criminals, leading an extravagant lifestyle off the back of his drug empire that stretched across the world . However, his lifestyle didn't go unnoticed, with various investigations resulting in him spending over 30 years in prison.
Comerford died at the age of 70 in 2003 following a battle with liver cancer . As part of a weekly series about the area's criminal history, the ECHO has looked back at the life of Comerford, from growing up in the city's north end to expanding his business through drug smuggling routes that stretched from South America to Asia. A contemporary of Comerford told the ECHO he began his criminal career working as a lorry driver on the docklands.
They previously said: "Tommy used his position as a lorry driver to take chances . He moved stuff around and made a few quid. But Tommy usually came in after other people had organised the theft.
" It was also rumoured that Comerford and his associates were involved in chasing the Krays out of Liverpool in the 1960s when the twins attempted to expand. However, Comerford's expansion from petty crime into more serious involvement came in 1969 with the Water Street bank job that was written into Liverpool folklore. Like a scene from a classic British crime film , a gang of north end crooks spent a Bank Holiday weekend in August 1969 tunnelling into a bank.
The experienced crew then used thermal lances to break open a safe and made off with over £160,000. The crew might have got away with the staggering haul if it wasn't for an extraordinary stroke of luck. It emerged police, lawyers and members of the underworld used to watch boxing matches at the Adelphi.
One night one of the most famous criminal QCs of his time was talking to a Detective Inspector and offered him a cigarette from a very nice looking case. The Detective Inspector recognised the case as one stolen from the bank. The QC had been given it as a gift by his client Comerford.
' In December 1970, Comerford was convicted of burglary and sentenced to ten years in prison. The sentencing judge told him: "You were a party to a raid on a bank in the heart of this city, so successful that over £140,000 in money and over £20,000 in property was stolen. "The greater bulk of that is still missing.
This was top level, professional, organised crime, carried out with the most modern, sophisticated, equipment with all the planning and precision of a commando raid." The court did not establish the exact role played by Comerford in the bank job. After his release from prison several years later, Comerford abandoned robbery and became involved in the drug trade .
He recruited a gang which included four dockers to pick up a consignment of cannabis from North Africa. But Merseyside Drugs Squad and customs discovered the plot, staked out the docks and rounded up Comerford and his team. Comerford called a daily "press conference'' for reporters during each day of his trial at Liverpool Crown court.
When asked what kind of sentence he thought was likely he said: "I've had a word with the judge and told him that there's no way that I am going to accept a community service order.'' He was jailed for seven years but his sentence was reduced to four on appeal. Following his release Comerford continued to build international contacts.
He was also a flamboyant presence on the city's party circuit. Clad in expensive suits and with an expensive watch on his wrist, he was a regular at boxing dinners and the Grand National, where he nonchalantly flashed his wads of cash. However, despite his busy social life and penchant for expensive foreign holidays, he presented a different story to the local council and the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) office.
He was awarded a council flat in Belle Vale and received regular benefit payments . At one point he even managed to secure a grant to do up the flat. At the same time he was living in an expensive bungalow in Gateacre and flying with his wife to New York to embark on a luxury cruise costing nearly £5,000.
This lifestyle attracted attention, however, and Comerford and his cronies were put under heavy police surveillance. Following a motorbike chase, one of Comerford's dealers was arrested and, when given the option of rotting in prison or turning informant, decided to cooperate with the authorities. As part of an operation codenamed 'Eagle', the dealer led the police to an entry in the telephone directory which was in the name of 'The Hawk.
' The address was Comerford's council flat in Lee Vale Road. It then emerged that Comerford had used the flat to act as the headquarters of his drugs' business . The £27 per week rent was paid for by the DHSS.
Incredibly it emerged that Comerford had used the flat to supply US soldiers based in West Germany with vast quantities of drugs. The dealer told police his boss was about to fly in to Heathrow Airport from Stuttgart. After walking through 'nothing to declare' he and an accomplice were arrested and found with a suitcase containing half a kilo of heroin.
Behind the façade of a middle aged, unemployed man was a flamboyant criminal in constant pursuit of the good life. Comerford was sentenced to the maximum 14-year term and, as he was being led to the cells, he turned to the judge and said: "Merry Christmas, your honour.'' Following his release, Comerford fell right back into the criminal world and again was arrested in connection with a drug swoop that yielded a haul of almost 10kg of cocaine hydrochloride worth £800,000 .
Customs officers who seized the haul followed the trail from Ecuador to Felixstowe and onto Birmingham . Undercover customs officers managed to make contact with Comerford and arranged to meet him at Birmingham's Hyatt Regency hotel. During the sting, in which officers pretended to be drug dealers, Comerford was arrested.
He was jailed for 10 years in November 1996. In April 2003, five months before his death, he was arrested after police stopped and searched a car he was travelling in with a group of friends. A stash of heroin, with a street value of £10,000, was found in a container under one of the seats.
He was charged with intent to supply but died before the case was settled. A month after his death, police were granted £25,000 seized from his home following his March 2003 arrest. However, this was contested by family members who requested to have the money returned Following his death, the late lawyer and former ECHO columnist Rex Makin , who defended Comerford, said: "He was the most charming criminal I have ever known.
His career as a criminal on Merseyside was more colourful than any other in the last half century." Around the same time as Comerford's prison sentence in the mid-1980s, notorious drug trafficker Curtis Warren, who would go on to become Interpol's "Target One", began expanding his own empire . Peter Walsh, a distinguished true crime author who went on to co-write Warren's biography, previously told the ECHO : "In a way it started with Comerford, and moved on to Warren.
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