Essex Boys 2000 British crime film
Essex Boys is a 2000 British crime film. It was directed by Terry Winsor and stars Sean Bean, Alex Kingston, Tom Wilkinson, Charlie Creed-Miles and Holly Davidson.
The film is based loosely around events in December 1995 that culminated in the murders of two top drug barons and their driver in Rettendon, Essex, UK. On 6 December 1995, Patrick Tate, Craig Rolfe and Tony Tucker, three drug dealers well known to the police, were lured to Workhouse Lane, Rettendon on the pretext of a lucrative drug deal. There they were killed by shotgun blasts to the head while sitting in their Range Rover. The bodies were found the following morning. This scene and other details of the 1990s Essex and London criminal milieu are also featured in the film Rise of the Footsoldier (2007).
Two men, Jack Whomes and Michael Steele, were convicted of the murders after police informer Darren Nicholls gave evidence against his former friends at their Old Bailey trial. They have always protested their innocence.