Posted by The enforcer tasked with rooting out informants, threatened and tortured a teen for 17 days before shooting him twice in the head
RETIRED property developer Frank Cowley’s comfortable detached home in a quiet Surrey village was an ideal place to live out his dotage.
Friendly West End boasts bowls and badminton get togethers and a social club where members can enjoy draft beers at £3 a pint, just 25 miles south west of London.
The informant, circled, tipped off British intelligence about the IRA’s activities
Yet portly Frank, then 77 and in ill health, liked to keep himself to himself in his rented four-bedroom £800,000 property flanked by high hedges.
Then, on February 16, 2023, the calm in this genteel corner of the Home Counties, not far from Woking, was shattered.
Four unmarked police cars screeched to a halt outside Frank’s house and armed cops swarmed around the property.
The pensioner had suffered a stroke and alerted emergency services. But why the gun-toting officers?
The owner of Frank’s house Simon Meaney tried to find out by quizzing the elderly man’s son.
The landlord revealed: “He said his dad had become confused and dialled 999 by accident.
“Then he sat on the sofa, turned on the telly and just wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“I remember coming home and saying to my wife, ‘I don’t believe a word of what I’ve been told’.”
Simon’s suspicions were well founded. Frank was no kindly retiree.
His real name was Freddie Scappaticci, a one-time IRA godfather with a sadistic taste for torture and murder plus a conviction for possessing animal porn.
Who Watches the Watchers? 