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The author is Jamie Doward, a editor, who writes different type of articles for the website, the guardian. I like how once I tap on the author's name, I can easily find all the articles the author made and it's ordered by the newest and oldest. The author stated where all the images he used is from and the information he got it from. He made sure to give credit where he got his qoutes from. It's not timely becuase it was made the time, the news were big about Gavin going to jail. it's not bias because all of the articles mainly talks about the trial and the murder and it doesn't have any of the Author's own opinions about the murder.

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The website is well writen by the author, Jamie Doward, a editor. The author gives a well writen background about Gravin right in the beginning of the paragraph. Mainly about about his sport background. I like how it gives many many information about the murder. He stated where he got his data and information from. It looks and sounds very usefull link to use.

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avin Renaldo Grant had potential. An aspiring professional footballer, he was never going to give Cristiano Ronaldo competition, but he possessed, in the words of one fan site, "lightning pace and tricky wing play".

A journeyman footballer who could play as a striker or winger, Grant started his career in 2005 with his local non-league club, Tooting and Mitcham in south London, scoring 10 goals in 16 matches - an impressive haul that attracted interest from clubs in higher divisions. Between 2005 and 2010, he had spells with Millwall, Wycombe Wanderers, Gillingham and, at the end of last season, was turning out for Bradford in League Two.

"He's got bags of potential and he's a good finisher," said Peter Taylor, who managed Grant at Wycombe and Bradford. "He's got an eye for goal, he's quick, he's an athlete and he will get better."

Taylor's words, spoken in 2008, sound hollow now. Grant's attempt to escape the drug-fuelled violence of the London estate where he grew up for the glamorous world of professional football ended last week when he was jailed at the Old Bailey for a minimum of 25 years, convicted with two others for the murder of his former friend, Leon "Playboy" Labastide, in May 2004.

The trial, the culmination of a six-year investigation by Operation Trident, the Metropolitan police unit that investigates black-on-black killings, heard how Grant, now 26, Gareth Downie, 25, and Damian Williams, 32, had orchestrated an execution-style killing, one of a series of tit-for-tat shootings in the Stonebridge Park estate in Brent, north-west London, in the 1990s.

Once an intimidating fortress of tower blocks, Stonebridge supplied the labour to a giant industrial estate, home to employers including Wall's, the ice-cream maker. But as the firms moved out, unemployment soared. Stonebridge became home to large migrant populations and assumed a reputation among Trident officers as a "hot spot".

Stonebridge looms large in the story of Grant's descent from promising athlete to killer. A lawless, no-go area of poorly lit alleyways and concrete walls, it was the perfect breeding ground for crime. The estate became enmeshed in a turf war fought between gangs battling to control the supply and distribution of crack cocaine. The violence was so bad that in 1995 John Major, then prime minister, cancelled a speech he was due to give there over fears of being shot.

"There were always problems between Stonebridge and the [nearby] Church End estate," said Detective Inspector Steve Horsley, who led the investigation into Labastide's murder. "You couldn't go from one estate to the other because different gangs ran it." Gangs from neighbouring Kensal Green and Wembley were also vying for control, while Jamaican Yardie gangsters overseeing the importation of the crack into the UK were never far away.

In August 2005, Rohan "Chunky" Chung, a Yardie drugs importer, tied up a stepfather and two sisters in their flat on the estate and shot them in the head. Chung was furious that the sisters' brother, one of his "mules", had disappeared with 4kg of his cocaine.

Today Stonebridge's towers are gone, replaced by award-winning low-rise housing, interspersed with communal areas, trees and street lights - a committed attempt to "design out" crime. A Stirling prize-nominated children's centre is a visual testimony to the area's £225m renaissance. Crime is down dramatically. Prostitutes, junkies and guns are no longer ubiquitous. Much is down to the success of Trident working in conjunction with local police and the community. When Grant and those involved in the revenge attacks were arrested, shootings on the estate plunged by 50%, according to some reports. These days Stonebridge is regularly held up around the world as a success story when it comes to transforming problem estates.

"The area is transformed beyond belief," said Chinyere Ugwu, who has lived on the estate for 13 years and is managing director of Hillside Housing Trust, which runs Stonebridge. "The residents are actively involved in the community and are running things for themselves."

But Grant's trial shone a light on the days when Stonebridge was notorious. As the prosecution suggested at the start of the trial, it was "more the law of the jungle than the law of civilised England". Grant, though, had a better chance than some of avoiding being sucked into its gang culture. An impressive athlete in his early teens, he signed schoolboy terms with Watford when he was 14. Money, fame and girls beckoned. He could earn more in a week than his friends could in a year if he made it big.

But, like thousands of other hopefuls, Grant was let go by his club at 16. With no qualifications, he took a job at Tesco. But, as his trial was told, Grant was impressionable and revelled in the kinship of gang culture. It was suggested that Williams's "larger personality" had been a huge influence on him. It was Williams, the Old Bailey jury heard, who convinced the other two that Labastide must have been involved in a burglary at the flat of his cousin, Romain Whyte, Grant's best friend and someone he looked up to.

Days before he was shot, Labastide, a member of a rival gang, had seen Whyte crash his motorcycle outside his house.Sensing an opportunity while Whyte was incapacitated, a gang, rumoured to be led by Labastide, raided his house and stole £20,000 of what the court heard was suspected drug money. As the gang piled into Whyte's flat, its three occupants - Whyte's girlfriend, Sabrina Edwards, his sister Melika, and a 16-year-old girl - jumped out of a first-floor window, fearing for their lives. Two of the women broke legs in the fall.

Williams was incensed. Grant, who was best friends with Whyte, was similarly furious. In the warped world of Stonebridge, they considered the fact the burglars had carried guns "disrespectful". Labastide had often eaten at Williams's mother's house. "How could he do that?" the three accomplices raged.

Urged on by Williams, Grant and Downie, armed and wearing motorcycle helmets, went looking for Labastide. They found him outside his mother's house talking on the phone to a friend and shot him six times. Grant was heard boasting about the shooting hours later.

The killing unleashed a wave of violence. Typewritten letters accused Whyte and others of killing Labastide. "YOU WILL NOT GET AWAY THE PAST WILL HAUNT YOU," they proclaimed.

Sean "Fusey" Cephinis, a friend of Labastide, was suspected of writing the letters. In a case of mistaken identity, gunmen looking to silence Cephinis killed Jahmall Moore in January 2005. Two years later Whyte and Grant were tried and acquitted of the shooting.

After the acquittal, Grant must have been hoping to turn his back on his murderous lifestyle. Stonebridge was being transformed and Grant had a fresh opportunity, too. By the time Moore died in a hail of bullets, ambushed by four gunmen while in his car, Grant had been signed by Gillingham. As the defence at last week's trial observed: "Whatever he did in the past, he had turned his life around by the time it [the murder case] was resurrected."

But the Trident officers had a theory. They had noticed the burglary at Whyte's flat and were aware that the day before it occurred Whyte had come off his motorbike in front of Labastide's house. Were the incidents connected? "We got an indication things were not quite right," Horsley recalled after questioning the three young women who had jumped from the window. He suspected they might be holding something back.

Then, in 2008, new intelligence prompted the Trident officers to reopen their files and track one of the women to the south-west of England where she admitted hearing the three men plot the murder. "She was almost relieved that someone wanted to ask her," Horsley said. "She had held it in since she was a girl of 16."

Appearing under a pseudonym, "Susan Norwich" supplied the testimony at a first trial and then a retrial in which Grant's conviction was secured. "She was a brave little girl to have done it twice," Horsley said. Her decision to testify was startling. Criminologists say it is rare for the police to receive such co-operation. Horsley agrees. "You can imagine you're a witness to a gun crime and the people who have done it are seriously bad guys. You have got to worry about your own safety, especially if you are from that community. We have to disclose names to defence and names will come out [in court], but we do our best to protect people."

Grant's conviction was a stunning success for Trident officers. In two earlier related trials they had relied on evidence from Britain's first black-on-black supergrass, Darren Mathurin, a drug dealer, whose testimonies failed to convince the juries.

As he was sent down last week Grant was seen to weep. Only months before he had been playing professional football, trying to resurrect a career that had stalled when he was 16.

"Because he hadn't made it with Watford he went back to Stonebridge and hung around with friends and family there and got into the wrong things," Horsley said. "Then after the shootings he tried to sort himself out."

But it was too late. Far too late.

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Gavin Grant: the footballer who couldn't escape his murderous past in a London drug gang

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Gavin Grant's five-year career with Millwall, Wycombe and Bradford ended when he was convicted of a 2004 shooting. The north London estate where he grew up is now transformed, but his Old Bailey trial shed light on its notorious history of gun crime

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Although the author isn't listed you could tell the website is usefully enough to use the information. The author gives credit to where they got their sources from and the pictures. The authur also gives information about the people she/he has listed such as the name and age. The time of the website is timely because it was made in the same year as the time Gavin was found guilty. It's not bias becuase the auther didn't state any of his own thoughts and opinions.

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This website gives a whole fully story about the murder. It involves the location Gavin Grant did his muder and it gives people's age and name of people the author involved. It also talks about people's opinions on Gavin.

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A professional footballer who shot dead a man on a north-west London housing estate has been jailed for life.

Former striker Gavin Grant was found guilty at the Old Bailey on Friday of murdering Leon Labastide, 21, on Harlesden's Stonebridge Park Estate.

His killing in 2004 was part of a series of "tit-for-tat" shootings, the Old Bailey heard.

Grant, 26, who played for Millwall, Wycombe Wanderers and Bradford City, must serve at least 25 years.

Gareth Downie, 25, and Damian Williams, 32, were also jailed for life and given 25-year minimum terms over the killing.

Victim 'executed'

Downie, from Markby Road, Birmingham, was found guilty of Mr Labastide's murder and Williams, from Tower Bridge Road in Southwark, was convicted of conspiring to murder him.

Sentencing the men the Recorder of London, Judge Peter Beaumont, said Mr Labastide "was executed by shooting".

In 2007 Grant, from Kenton, north London, was cleared of killing Jahmall Moore, 22, who was shot two years earlier.

But he was charged with Mr Labastide's murder when new witnesses came forward.

Speaking for Grant - who was playing for Bradford as recently as May - Nigel Rumfitt QC said: "Whatever he did in the past, he had turned his life around by the time it [the murder case] was resurrected."

During the trial jurors heard trouble flared after a burglary in which three women were terrorised and it was suspected that £20,000 in drug money was taken.

'Senseless killing'

A 16-year-old girl, who had been in the house, gave evidence under an assumed name.

Mr Labastide was rumoured to have been behind the burglary and Williams arranged for Grant and Downie to shoot him, the court was told.

In a series of shootings that followed Mr Moore was shot by Roberto Parchment in a case of mistaken identity.

Parchment, 24, who was originally convicted of Mr Moore's murder, was found guilty again following a retrial in December as a result of information provided by "supergrass" Darren Mathurin.

Speaking after Grant's conviction last week, Det Insp Steve Horsley said: "Gavin Grant thought he had got away with murder.

"He carried on his footballing career while, all along, he had blood on his hands."

In a statement Mr Labastide's mother, Diane Havill, said: "Leon was a keen footballer who shared his passion for the game with all who knew him. He loved life.

"His senseless killing by so-called friends who grew up with him has left it hard for me to understand the futility of snatching Leon's future whilst, in the same breath, destroying their own."

Grant also played for Gillingham, Stevenage, Tooting and Grays during his football career.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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Professional footballer Gavin Grant jailed for murder

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A professional footballer who shot dead a man on a north-west London housing estate has been jailed for life. Former striker Gavin Grant was found guilty at the Old Bailey on Friday of murdering Leon Labastide, 21, on Harlesden's Stonebridge Park Estate. His killing in 2004 was part of a series of "tit-for-tat" shootings, the Old Bailey heard.

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The author is Daniel Taylor is a senior football writer. The author gives credit to where they got their sources from and who took his pictures. It's not timely because this was made last year but the time he went to prison was a lot time ago. It's not bias.

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This website talks about how he got into prison for a murder and it also gives information about what people's thoughts and opinions are about him that have played with him and know him by heart.

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"The first time I knew anything was wrong, he didn't turn up for training one day. I didn't have a clue where he was. I was trying to get hold of him. One of the players had heard something and then it got back that there might be a problem. And that was him gone."

Of all the people who spent time with Gavin Grant, who nurtured his career and desperately wanted to believe in him, nobody pinned more on the player's innocence than Peter Taylor.

Taylor will always be remembered for his one-match stint as England's caretaker manager in November 2000, when he filled the void left by Kevin Keegan's resignation and named David Beckham as the team's new captain.

But almost eight years later, Taylor had taken a much less glamorous job at Wycombe Wanderers, then of League Two, and Grant was one of his first signings.

"He was a very quick forward who could score a goal," Taylor says. "He had bags of potential and a great attitude. I couldn't fault the boy, I liked him a lot."

Taylor had already signed Grant once, on loan from Millwall while managing Stevenage the previous season in what is now the National League.

Even when he knew Grant had been accused of murder, it did not stop him from signing the player for a third time in February 2010 when he became the manager of Bradford City.

Bradford's official website, welcoming the new signing, explained that Grant had missed the last year because of "personal reasons". Local paper the Bradford Telegraph & Argus repeated that line. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that a lot of people did not realise the sinister truth about why Grant had fallen off the football radar for so long.

When murder squad detectives executed a dawn raid at Grant's house 16 months earlier, three days after he had played the full 90 minutes for Wycombe in a 1-1 draw at Grimsby Town, a story was cooked up by his club to try to keep it out of the news. Wycombe explained Grant's absence as him having a cold. When team-mates started asking where he was, they were told he had a family crisis.

Many of those players knew he had already stood trial, in 2007, in relation to a gangland killing and been acquitted of a charge of conspiracy to murder.

What they did not realise was that, all the time, he was one of the prime suspects in a second murder and caught up in a "tit-for-tat" spate of killings that, according to Metropolitan Police, led to around 30 follow-up shootings in the part of London where he grew up.

The judge described it as an "execution by shooting" and ordered Grant to remain in prison until 2035 at the earliest, by which time he will be in his early 50s.

Yet the story, until now, has never been told in full.

"Gavin Grant thought he had got away with murder," detective inspector Steve Horsley said outside the court. "He carried on his football career while, all along, he had blood on his hands."

Take a walk out of Stonebridge Park train station and, directly opposite, there is a symbol of how much the place has changed since Grant was familiar with these streets.

Argenta House, the disused two-storey building that has stood here for years as a magnet for graffiti artists, is making way for a 24-storey apartment block that feels more fitting, in the eyes of the designers, planners and architects who have flooded this part of north-west London, for the new Stonebridge. The Grand Union development, creating a new canal-side neighbourhood, is already underway.

If you follow Harrow Road, using the arch of nearby Wembley Stadium as your guide, you will eventually come to Neeld Crescent, where Raheem Sterling grew up on the neighbouring St Raphael's estate.

Bridge Park, a leisure centre Sterling has been campaigning to save from closure, is on the other side of the North Circular Road.

Sterling used to play in junior football competitions at Bridge Park when he was growing up. Grant did, too. But it is also true that this community centre, opened in 1987 by Prince Charles, used to have a reputation as a place where gangs would congregate. In 2000, four men were jailed for life because of a shootout in its car park that left one man dead and was described in court as a scene from the "wild west".

These days, Stonebridge is held up around the world as a shining example of how to transform problem estates. The brutalist 1970s tower blocks have been replaced by low-rise housing interspersed with communal areas, trees and street lights to "design out" crime. The children of Stonebridge no longer have to grow up in an area synonymous with crack, guns, gangs and fear.

"Stonebridge has changed since its reputation as a no-go area," says Promise Knight, Brent Council's lead member for community safety and engagement. "The Stonebridge of the past, when we had concrete estates with dark spots, no longer exists. One of the things we have done is create what we call Stonebridge community champions - people who care about their neighbourhood."

There was a long time, however, when Stonebridge was a lawless estate infested by violent criminals. A turf war was being fought between rival gangs. Stonebridge was so notorious that, in 1995, the then-prime minister, John Major, cancelled a speech there because of fears he may be shot.

Grant was 11 at the time, at his most impressionable age, and maybe he knew little else. As the prosecution noted on the first day of his trial, Stonebridge operated by "more the law of the jungle than the law of civilised England".

Grant, though, had a better chance than some of not being sucked into the culture of gang-related violence. At the age of 14, he had signed schoolboy terms with Watford. He was released at 16 and, with no qualifications, took a job at Tesco. But he still had his dreams and Tooting & Mitcham, a semi-professional team in south London, offered an opportunity on the first rung of the football ladder.

"I knew he could make the grade," says Richard Cadette, the Tooting manager at the time. "He had a great turn of pace and he could score goals. I thought, 'This kid will do me'. And I have to say, he was a lovely, lovely kid. I never had any problems with him. He turned up for training on time, he took criticism well. If somebody had said to me he was involved in something like that - gang culture - well, you could have knocked me down with a feather."

By then, however, Grant was already leading the double life that has left him, at the age of 36, not even halfway through a prison sentence carrying a minimum tariff of 25 years.

In May 2004, his gang suspected a rival by the name of Leon Labastide was involved in stealing £20,000 of drug money from one of Grant's friends. The next day, they found Labastide, also known as "Playboy", outside his mother's house talking on the phone. Labastide, 21, was shot through the back six times by three gunmen and left for dead on the doorstep. Grant, then 19, was said in court to have been overheard boasting about the shooting hours later.

For a long time, the detectives on Operation Trident, the unit set up to deal with gun crime in London's black communities, came up against a wall of silence. It was a familiar problem in Stonebridge. Nobody dared speak out because of the threat of reprisals. So the shootings continued and a year later it was Jahmall Moore's turn to die in a blaze of bullets. Moore, a 22-year-old father-of-two, was sitting in the passenger seat of his girlfriend's car when he was ambushed by four gunmen and shot 16 times.

Grant had been playing so impressively for Tooting it was not long before Athlete1, the agency that represented him, was talking him up as "one of the hottest properties in the non-League game".

Barnsley confirmed they had been watching him. League One side Gillingham, then managed by Ronnie Jepson, took the plunge and gave Grant his first professional contract and his Football League debut in December 2005. But Millwall, just relegated from the Championship, had also been keeping tabs on him since a recommendation from Cadette and persuaded him to move back to London from the Kent club the following summer.

"He was one of those young players who had the talent to progress and become a regular in the first team," Nigel Spackman, then the Millwall manager, says. "He was pacy, he worked hard, he liked to run behind the defence and he had a good appetite for the game. He never caused any problems. He was never late, not a troublemaker. He got on with everyone, mixed in. I'd watch him and think, 'Yeah, that boy's definitely got a chance of achieving something'."

Darren Byfield, another Gillingham player, had also signed for Millwall in that window. Grant, he says, quickly endeared himself to his new team-mates. "He was one of the funniest guys I've ever met. Honestly, he was so funny. Not a practical joker, just one-liners, a very dry sense of humour."

Byfield was going out with the pop singer Jamelia at the time and had the paparazzi on his trail. He remembers one photographer, in particular, who used to wait outside his house.

"I was driving to training one day, there was a car behind me, and when I looked in my mirrors I thought, 'Oh my God, it's the guy who's been taking pictures of me'. I tried to lose him but couldn't shake him off. So I rang Gav. 'You need to help me out, Gav - when I get to the training ground, get behind me and slow him down'. Gav has come out and done it brilliantly. And this photographer has nearly killed him, nearly ran him off the road. Gav came back in. 'Darren, I'm not doing that again!'. I'm laughing just telling this story."

Was Grant ever violent? Did he create issues? Did he talk about gang life? "Never," Byfield says. "He never showed any aggression in training. Never got into any arguments. To us, he was just such a nice guy. Everybody loved Gav. He was younger than me. I remember the first night he came out with everyone on a players' night out in London. He was telling us, 'Yeah, I can drink', all that kind of stuff, and very quickly it became clear he couldn't. We had to look after him that night, make sure he got back OK."

What they did not realise at the time was that the player waking up on goalkeeper Lenny Pidgeley's sofa the following morning, nursing the hangover from hell and facing allegations of being a "lightweight", had another group of friends that operated with a different set of rules.

"I got a phone call from somebody in the hierarchy of the club to say he had been arrested," Spackman says. "I didn't really know the severity of it. Then you think, 'OK, we need to look into this and what it's all about'."

To some, it might seem inconceivable that Grant was allowed to continue playing for Millwall while on bail after being charged with conspiracy to murder. However, they made their position clear after his first appearance in court. "Gavin strenuously denies the charge," a club spokesman said. "He is not in breach of his contract and is continuing to train."

Was there any pressure on Millwall to think twice about selecting a footballer who stood accused of arranging someone's murder? Spackman does not recall that being the case and Grant also remained involved after Willie Donachie took over as manager in September 2006.

"I remember speaking to Gav about what was going on," Byfield says. "He used to plead his innocence. He'd be with me, Danny Senda, Ryan Smith, and he'd open up sometimes. He didn't go into the full story but he'd say, 'Nah, they're trying to blame me for something that's nothing to do with me'. He was a good player, working hard."

Millwall did eventually move him out on loan to non-League Grays Athletic where Grant's electronic ankle-tag, issued by the courts to prevent any risk of him going on the run, did not stop him from making an immediate impact on the pitch.

His impressive form for Grays, then managed by former Tottenham Hotspur defender Justin Edinburgh, came to an abrupt end when he vanished one weekend because of what the Essex club, using a line that would follow Grant throughout the rest of his career, described as "personal reasons". That, again, was a way of concealing a more serious truth: Grant had been arrested for breaching the curfew that had been set as part of his bail conditions. He was remanded to prison until, five months later, a jury at the Old Bailey found him not guilty.

Stonebridge was being transformed with a £250 million regeneration that meant 1,200 properties being decanted, demolished and rebuilt over a 46-acre site. Jason Roberts, the former Premier League striker who had started his career at nearby Hayes FC, was setting up a foundation, based in the heart of Stonebridge, to inspire children on the estate where had grown up.

Grant had a fresh opportunity, too. He went back to Millwall to resume his career. He returned to Grays on loan for the first half of the 2007-08 season before switching to Stevenage in February 2008 in a similar arrangement, scoring seven times for manager Taylor in 14 league games.

What he did not realise was that the officers on Operation Trident had been trying to find a "supergrass" to break the network of serious crime in Stonebridge and that, ultimately, Grant would be turned in by one of his own. His luck was about to run out.

It isn't easy to understand why Bradford City decided to go ahead with Grant's signing when the people at the top of the club knew he was on a murder charge.

City Gent, Bradford's fanzine, certainly had a lot to discuss after the news in July 2010 that Grant, and two others, had been found guilty of Labastide's murder.

Less than a fortnight earlier, another Bradford player, Jake Speight, was sent to prison for 12 weeks because of an assault conviction.

On the front cover of a subsequent edition of City Gent, a cartoon showed Taylor standing outside a prison while inmates scaled the walls to escape. Taylor had a puzzled look on his face. His speech bubble said, "Any of you lads fancy playing for Bradford City?"

When Grant had arrived in Bradford five months previously, however, not many people appeared to have questioned the wisdom of bringing him up from London, with his electronic tag, his curfew and Louis Vuitton wash bag, when a man had been shot dead and a murder trial was coming up.

"He came here and behaved himself," says Mark Lawn, then the club's joint chairman. "To be fair, he wasn't on a lot of money. We had a natter at the first meeting and then Peter offered him the wage. He took it straight away. We'd agreed to look at him for a year and then talk about whether he stayed or not.

"We'd got him on the cheap and said, 'Let's see how you do and, if it goes well, we can take it from there'. If he hadn't gone to prison, I do believe we would have offered him a new contract. He was a decent lad, certainly not a problem around the club. There was nothing in terms of his mates coming up, or anything like that. He was a fast little winger. He had something about him, could go past a player.

"We knew he was going to court but he kept saying he was not guilty. Then, all of a sudden, ping! Honestly, as he went away to court we fully expected him to come back. He said, 'I'll be back in a week'. We had no reason not to believe him. But I do remember someone coming to me midway through the trial and saying, 'There's a witness who saw him do it'. I was, like, 'What?!'. That was the first we knew about it."

Detectives had made a deal with Darren Mathurin, the getaway driver in Jahmall Moore's killing, in return for his 16-year prison sentence being halved, an arrangement approved by the director of public prosecutions. For Operation Trident, it was a turning point. They had their supergrass. Mathurin, also known as Spider, was prepared to give information about several shootings, robberies, drug deals and other gang-related crimes. He was willing to betray his friends and associates by testifying against them in court - and Grant was one of them.

More than that, a female witness, who alleged she had heard Labastide's shooting being planned, agreed to give evidence under the pseudonym of Susan Norwich in exchange for a lesser sentence on drug charges. Her decision to testify was crucial, according to the police, in securing the guilty verdict.

"It came as a huge shock," Bradford's Lawn says. "You really don't want your club being tarred with something like this. He had already been to court once before and was found not guilty. When he told us (about the next trial), he was confident, saying he hadn't done it. I believed him. Who wouldn't, after he'd been found not guilty?"

Grant's former team-mates at Wycombe were preparing for a pre-season friendly at non-League Burnham FC when they heard the news via Luke Oliver, who had left the club to sign for Bradford, initially on loan, that March.

Byfield can also remember hearing the guilty verdict. "I don't think we will ever know all the details," he says. "Sadly, there are lots of people who get sucked into gang-affiliated stuff. Your friends are getting involved in wrongdoings. You're sucked in because you'd look like the 'punk', as they'd call you, if you didn't go with them."

Wycombe had been so convinced about Grant's innocence they tried to help him get bail when he was charged with murder. Grant had just been given a pay rise, triggered after making his 11th appearance. He had made a positive impression and, to begin with, the club tried to cover up the news of his arrest.

"It was a very well-kept secret," says one senior Wycombe figure from the time. "There were even people at the top of the club who, for quite some time, didn't know the truth. It's a standing joke now among the fans. If any player is missing with a genuine injury or illness, the fans say, 'Oh yeah, remember Gavin Grant? We were told he had the flu - and never saw him again'."

Matt Bloomfield, Wycombe's longest-serving player, was interviewed by the Bucks Free Press after the real story finally emerged. "He was a nice quiet lad who came in and got on with his work," he said. "We knew he had been in trouble before, but we thought he had turned his life around. When we were told there was something up with his family, we thought that was all it was."

It was October 2008 and Wycombe paid Grant's wages in full for the rest of the month. He also received 50 per cent of his salary until Christmas. Eventually, though, it became clear he was not coming back. His contract was terminated and the players were called to a meeting to be informed their now former team-mate had been charged with murder.

"Everyone expected him to come back out," Bloomfield said. "We didn't think he could be involved. We fully expected him to play again that season."

Leon Johnson, who spent seven years at Wycombe, used to carpool to training with Grant and another player, Matt Harrold. "We'd have a laugh and a joke," Johnson says. "We had a few night outs. He was just a normal lad who liked a laugh and a joke and wanted to get on with his football.

"Then, on the morning he disappeared, I was waiting for him in my car just off the M25. My phone rang with a private number and it was his girlfriend. She said, 'Look, Gavin won't be in today, his little boy is ill'. I was like, 'Oh bloody hell, OK, I'll pass the message on to the manager'.

"I got into training and went upstairs to see 'PT' (Taylor) to tell him that Granty's boy was ill and he wasn't going to be in. The next day went by, the next day went by, and no one had heard anything from him. The club were asking me questions but I didn't have a clue where he was and his phone was off."

Johnson finally got back in touch with Grant after his team-mate was freed on bail and signed for Bradford on a pay-as-you-play basis.

"The police went up to Bradford to check out the hotel where he was staying, and whether they were going to allow him to play, because he was on some kind of house-arrest," Johnson says. "I was speaking to him regularly. 'Mate, I have no clue what is going on', he'd say. 'The police are out to get me because they put a lot of time and money into the (Moore) trial'. He was a little bit worried about that, but he was also saying, 'But they don't have a case'. He was adamant he hadn't done anything. He was confident he was going to be cleared."

Taylor, in particular, refused to give up on Grant. "Maybe Peter was guilty of wanting to see the best in everybody," one former colleague says. "Maybe, because Peter's such a nice guy himself, he didn't see the bigger picture and didn't want to believe one of his players could have committed such a crime."

Was Taylor wrong to piggyback in an alleged murderer? Russ Spence of the Bradford City Supporters' Trust, writing in City Gent, argued not. "By the law of the land, Grant was innocent until found guilty and how can you expect the Bradford City manager to make what is in effect a moral decision, which isn't part of the job description, without being in full possession of the facts?"

It is still remarkable, nonetheless, that a murder suspect could make 11 appearances for Bradford that spring while waiting to go on trial.

"That was me giving him another chance, hoping it would work out OK," Taylor tells The Athletic. "He came to me to say, 'I've got my trial, but I think I'm going to be all right'. Again, that shows how much I liked him. I had every excuse to say, 'No, I'm not bothering, you won't be able to concentrate', but I was desperate for him to have a chance.

"He was telling us he would get over this trial. He was always confident he was going to be OK. He always maintained his innocence. Nobody said to me, 'Don't take him because he's not a good boy'. He was a lovely boy. He was terrific, he was polite. So when it all happened I was totally shocked.

"Honestly, I was shocked. I'm still shocked. The dealings I had with him were first class. He wasn't a problem as a professional footballer. He couldn't have been, because there was no way I would have signed him for Stevenage and Wycombe, as well as Bradford, if he had been."

Now 68, Taylor still has the letter that Grant sent him from prison.

Grant, who refused to answer questions in his police interviews, always kept to his story that he had been set up and was doing "the nappy run" at the time of the shooting. Labastide, he said, was one of his childhood friends.

"It was a very nice letter to say that what was happening to him was not right," Taylor says. "I find it very sad that the boy has not had a football career. All the other bits and pieces, I can't talk about. I know what I think but I will keep that to myself. I just can't imagine someone being locked up for so long. It's a shame because, in my opinion, he was a good boy."

What Taylor might not appreciate is that the number of shootings in Stonebridge fell by almost half after Grant, and others, were arrested. Police say gangs had terrorised the area with their crimes and anything-goes mentality.

"It's such a sad story," Cadette says. "Sometimes, it's not about leading a double life. It's about getting involved with the wrong people and not having the right guidance, at a young age, to get out. It's a waste of life and, for Gavin, the waste of a career. But someone, ultimately, has died from violent means and we can't ever forget that."

As Grant and his co-accused were sentenced, a woman shouted from the public gallery, "It's all fixed", and "You are coming out". Yet Grant's bid for freedom was thrown out by the Court of Appeal five years later. And, however much Stonebridge might have changed, it can still be a hard-faced place.

Mathurin - now living with a new identity, outside of London, under the witness protection scheme - is the subject of a song, Are You Alone, by rapper K Koke, who grew up in Stonebridge and knew him from a young age.
You told and ratted on your co-ds/So for that you forget that you know me/You will never have a home back in Stone B/We don't condone in that, we don't condone in rats/Nah, there'll never be a home for that/You're a snitch 'cause ya speaking to them/I can't lie, can't even pretend/it's click-clack when I see you with skengz.
"Skengz" is street-slang for guns. K Koke, the first UK rapper to sign to Jay-Z's Roc Nation label, was acquitted of attempted murder in a 2011 trial relating to the shooting of a man at Harlesden station, the next stop after Stonebridge Park on the Bakerloo line into central London.

Labastide's family, meanwhile, were so frightened for their own safety, and so tortured by the memories of what had happened, they had to move away from the area.

In a statement read to the murder trial, his mother, Diane Havill, said her son "loved life and had ambitions".

It also turned out that the man gunned down on his mother's doorstep because he had "disrespected" the wrong people had a lot in common with Grant.

Labastide also loved to play football, she said, and was passionate about the sport.
Additional reporting: Richard Sutcliffe (Top photos: Getty Images/Metropolitan Police; design: Sam Richardson)
"His senseless killing by so-called friends who grew up with him has left it hard to understand the futility of snatching Leon's future away while at the same time destroying their own."

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Gavin Grant, the footballer in prison for murder

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"The first time I knew anything was wrong, he didn't turn up for training one day. I didn't have a clue where he was. I was trying to get hold of him. One of the players had heard something and then it got back that there might be a problem.