How GMP went after Gooch gang bosses 'Piggy' and 'Cabbo' on Princess Parkway
21.01.2024 - 16:33
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
'Ageing behind bars' read the giant billboard at the side of the Princess Parkway. Below the 3ft high letters, staring out at commuters in the morning rush hour, were photos of Gooch Gang head honcho Colin 'Piggy' Joyce and his righthand man Lee 'Cabbo' Amos.
Their faces had been digitally altered to depict them as frail, grey-haired pensioners, showing how they might look when finally eligible for parole. For years the ruthless pair had dominated one of the city's deadliest gangs.
They were two of the men who turned Manchester into 'Gunchester'. But now, finally, they were behind bars - and police wanted everyone in their former south Manchester heartland to know it.
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Known as 'Piggy', Joyce grew up on turf run by the Doddington-affiliated Longsight Crew. He even attended the funeral of Orville Bell - the 17-year-old whose memory the LSC was formed in.
But after a senior gangster ordered him to pick a side, he joined their rivals in the Young Gooch Close gang alongside his childhood pal Lee 'Cabbo' Amos. Charismatic, manipulative and utterly ruthless, the pair quickly rose from teenage tearaways to feared gangland enforcers.
Taxing - stealing drugs and money - from other villains became their speciality. For the detectives investigating gun crime in south Manchester, their names kept cropping up time and time again in murder inquiries.
Described by one senior cop as 'psychopaths who shoot for fun', they were suspected of gunning down Doddington gang leader Kevin Lewis, interviewed over the fatal