Gangster's body exhumed after two raids by grave robbers

The body of a gangster who worked for Britain’s most infamous crime family has been exhumed by police after his grave was desecrated twice in a week.

Billy Isaac’s resting place is thought to have been dug up by grave robbers who were hoping to find expensive jewellery hidden among his remains.

The former boxer, who was an enforcer for the infamous Adams family in London, had been buried in the same plot as his mother in his native Manchester. Isaac died age 45 in 2013 after an accident at his remote mansion in the Irish Republic.

During his criminal career, Isaac had organised security at the East End funeral of Ronnie Kray and was cleared in 1997 of carrying out the “professional” killing of a Manchester businesswoman.

Greater Manchester police said on Tuesday that they were linking two suspected raids on his grave at Blackley cemetery on 28 June and 4 July.

His family insisted that he had been buried with nothing of financial value, but his remains have been now exhumed and the burial plot secured.

DI Claire Moss from Greater Manchester police said: “We believe that this incident was targeted to this specific plot.

“This is a despicable act, and it has caused the family an enormous amount of anguish and grief in finding out that their loved one’s grave has twice been disturbed in what is meant to be a place of rest.

“The motivation for this incident is unclear at this stage of the investigation, but the family want to make it known that their loved one was not buried with any items of monetary value.”

Isaac came to criminal prominence in 1995 when the businesswoman Pat Hayes, 46, was shot twice in the head as she slept at her home in Denton, Greater Manchester.

Isaac, who had previous convictions for assault, was accused of carrying out the shooting on the orders of his mother, Rita, 67, who stood to inherit Hayes’s bungalow and several properties they owned together in Florida. But he was acquitted of murder and his mother was acquitted of arranging murder after a key witness undermined the case. Mother and son later moved into the dead woman’s home.

After the acquittal, Isaac was brought to trial a further four times for gangland-related violence, but on each occasion the trials folded amid legal argument.

In 2006 Isaac, who ran a security firm, was jailed for three years after detectives found four bullets for a Smith & Wesson revolver hidden in a white sock inside his Jaguar. Bulletproof vests were also recovered.

He moved to a gated property, called Ratsville, near Cork, after his release.