A 16-year-old shot dead and a mum killed as she slept, yet 20 years on the prime suspect remains at large

Liam Kelly was just 16 when he was approached by two men as he got out of a friend's car and shot dead.

The teenager, who lived on Upper Parliament Street in Toxteth, was gunned down in the early hours of June 19, 2004 on nearby Grafton Street. Twenty years on the prime suspect - Kevin Parle - continues to evade the authorities. Parle was questioned in connection with the murder but was released on bail.

And the following year, the privately educated man fled the UK after masked gunmen burst into a house and shot young mum Lucy Hargreaves dead. Parle is suspected of being the gunman who targeted not just Liam, but also one of the men involved in Lucy's death 14-months later. But despite an intense manhunt that has seen him become one of the National Crime Agency's (NCA) most wanted fugitives, the 6ft 5in career criminal has yet to be brought to justice.

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As part of the ECHO's bi-weekly series looking into the threat of organised crime in the region, we have taken a closer look at Parle's suspected involvement in the two murders and the investigation into his whereabouts.

The events of June 19, 2004

Liam was ambushed as he got out of a friend's silver Vauxhall Astra on Grafton Street and was hit by a bullet to the chest and another to his right arm. It's believed that Parle was the one who pulled the trigger as part of a dispute between Liam and a man called Anthony Campbell, who the 16-year-old allegedly owed a £200 debt to.

In the hours before the shooting, Liam was frustrated with the debt and drove round to Campbell's aunt's house and threw a bicycle through a front window. The incident is said to have incensed his rivals and led them to setting up the shooting. Parle is believed to have been shot at close range by a masked man carrying a double-barrelled shotgun.

The teenager staggered to a neighbour's house and collapsed, however the chest wound he had suffered proved fatal and he died in the early hours of June 19. After the killing, several people, including Parle, were arrested in connection with the murder. Despite Parle failing to answer his bail, Campbell and co-conspirator Peter Sinclair were hauled before the courts in connection with the shooting.

Campbell pleaded guilty to arranging the murder and was handed a life sentence with a minimum term of more than two decades, while Sinclair admitted assisting an offender, namely Parle, the alleged gunman. It was heard how Sinclair accepted helping Parle between June 18 and 24 by disposing of two mobile phones and kept look-out while he burned clothing which may have contained incriminating evidence.

A trial was also told he drove the murder suspect to the house of Hannah Morgan and then back to Liverpool to recover Parle's car and waited for him while it was parked in Eastham, Wirral. Sinclair was jailed for eight years, while a then 20-year-old woman also admitted perverting the court of justice by giving a false witness statement to police.

In 2014 - 10 years on from Liam's murder - detectives issued a £20,000 reward for information leading to Parle's capture. A Merseyside Police Matrix officer said at the time: “Liam's mother Mary in particular has suffered immense anguish in losing her son in such a violent and premature way.

"Tragically she has been denied the opportunity to see her boy grow up into a man and perhaps have a family himself. When Liam was murdered, Mary made a heartfelt plea directly to his friends and associates where she begged them to tell the police anything that might help us bring his killers to justice."

14 months later - mum Lucy Hargreaves shot dead as she slept

Fourteen months after the murder of Liam, mum Lucy, 22, was shot dead as she slept on the sofa of her home on Lambourne Road, Walton, when three masked men burst in. She was shot three times with a sawn-off shotgun before the remorseless killers doused her duvet in petrol and set her body and the house alight.

The flames quickly engulfed her house, forcing her boyfriend Gary Campbell, who was asleep upstairs at the time, and their two-year-old daughter to escape through a bedroom window. Gary then ran back into the house in an attempt to save Lucy, but it was too late - the 22-year-old had been killed instantly by the gunshots to her stomach and head.

It was a botched and heinous crime with the killers instead after Gary, whom they blamed for a hit-and-run which killed four year-old Kevin Downes in Huyton in August 1993. Recalling the events to the ECHO, Gary said: "I went round the front, didn't know what to do, and tried to go back in and get Lucy. I couldn't handle the flames, I was melting.

"I tried to go through the front door but I couldn't so I smashed the glass and went through the window and grabbed her off the couch. I couldn't get in the front door because of the flames, I was black and I was burning. I couldn't really see, so had to get through the front window, smashed it through, and feel with my hands... I had to pick her up, and get her out."

Gary denied being present in the vehicle which killed young Kevin Downes, claiming to have left the car just moments before the fatal crash. Driver Adam Ellis, just 14-years-old, received a 12 month sentence, causing a huge outcry on Merseyside at the time.

Gangsters Tony Downes, Kevin's older brother, and Kirk Bradley went on trial for Lucy's murder in 2007, but were acquitted midway through the case after a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to proceed. The pair later received life sentences for their roles in a gang war.

Sightings of Parle in the years that followed

Following Parle's disappearance, a number of sightings have been reported. The popular-held view was that Parle was lying low in Spain after fleeing the UK authorities. However eyewitness accounts and detailed descriptions of brief incidents have indicated he could have been, at different times, in Europe and Asia.

Parle, nicknamed Hemp, is said to be well-educated, used to be smartly dressed and had links when younger to Mossley Hill. There have been claimed sightings of Parle in the Canary Islands, Asia, and many eyewitness accounts of him on the Costa Blanca in Spain. Other claims have been made of the Liverpudlian regularly visiting a cannabis café and also being with a group of women allegedly snorting coke in a bar's toilets, prompting Parle to square up to a barman who wanted to throw them out, it was said.

Both those sightings are claimed to have happened in Albir, a small beach resort sandwiched between Altea and Benidorm on the northern coast. He is also said to have spent a whole summer in hiding at Mi Sol Holiday Park in Torrevieja in 2006.

Former Scotland Yard detective Peter Bleksley has dedicated much of his time in recent years to finding Parle. He in recent years has dispelled rumours that Parle is in fact dead and has challenged the criminal underworld to prove it. Previous suggestions include that Parle was killed by criminals in London after ‘robbing drug dealers’ or that he was murdered - and his remains buried or placed in the sea - while on the run in Spain.

Of the claims, Mr Bleksley said: “There is no continual, credible thread that runs through any of this that would make me believe that he’s dead." In terms of sightings, he added the eyewitness accounts amounted to "irrefutable" evidence Parle at least escaped Liverpool and made it to the south of that country.

Mr Bleksley also previously reported that tip offs suggest Parle has provided security for a major gang. That outfit is described as a drugs network with access to vast sums of money.

A former colleague of Parle’s at a Liverpool garage described him as “mad as a box of frogs” and said he was “streetwise” and “hung around with some dodgy people in south Liverpool” - but that he did not believe he was capable of the crimes he had been linked to.

£20,000 reward for information that leads to Kevin Parle's arrest and conviction

But Howard Rubbery, of Merseyside Police's Major Crime Unit, previously told the ECHO: "We remain committed to finding justice for the families of 16-year-old Liam Kelly, who was fatally shot as he got out of a friend’s car in Dingle on June 19 2004, and Lucy Hargreaves, who tragically lost her life at the age of 22, when she was shot in her home in Walton on August 3 2005.

"Kevin Parle is wanted by Merseyside Police for both these murders. He remains outstanding and the force is offering a £20,000 reward for information that leads to his arrest and conviction. Parle is still believed to be living outside the United Kingdom and police enquiries continue to be conducted in both the UK and abroad.

"Parle is described as white, 6ft 5ins tall and of broad build. He has blue eyes and a 1-inch scar on the left side of his head. He has been known to have cropped ginger hair but his hair colour or style may have changed over time. I know over the years people move away and loyalties change and I would call on those people, who could have crucial information, do the right thing and come forward to us, or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

"I'd like to reassure them that there are special measures that we can put in place to protect witnesses in serious cases such as this. Someone, somewhere can help us find justice for both of these victims, whose lives were callously cut short, and their families."

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