The drug lord’s criminal career is “more dazzling than any other”

Tommy “Top Cat” Comerford first worked as a truck driver in the port area and then became an international drug supplier

A godfather of crime who rose from being a dockside lorry driver to being one of the first to set up an international drug network, flaunting his wealth at boxing dinners and the Grand National. Tommy Comerford, known as Tacker and Top Cat, was one of the first Liverpudlians to recognise the international criminal opportunities that access to the docks could offer.

Comerford was born in 1933 and grew up in Vauxhall during and after the Second World War. He started out as a lorry driver before becoming involved in one of the city's most famous bank robberies. After his release from prison, he gave up robbery and went into the drug trade, founding the “Liverpool Mafia” – a group that used corrupt port officials and was protected by corrupt police officers.

In the 1980s, he was not only one of the biggest criminals in the city, but also in the United Kingdom. He led an extravagant lifestyle thanks to his drug empire that spanned the globe. However, his lifestyle did not go unnoticed. Various investigations led to him spending over 30 years in prison.

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Comerford died in 2003 aged 70 following a battle with liver cancer. As part of a weekly series on the area's criminal history, the ECHO has looked back at Comerford's life, from his childhood in the north of the city to the expansion of his business through drug smuggling routes that stretched from South America to Asia.

A contemporary of Comerford told the ECHO that he began his criminal career as a lorry driver in the Docklands. He had previously said: “Tommy used his position as a lorry driver to take risks. He would transport things and earn a few pounds. But Tommy usually came along after other people had organised the theft.”

Comerford and his accomplices were also rumoured to have been involved in driving the Krays out of Liverpool in the 1960s as the twins attempted to expand. However, Comerford's expansion from petty crime to more serious activities came in 1969 with the Water Street bank robbery, which has become part of Liverpool folklore.

Like a scene from a classic British crime thriller, a gang of crooks from the north of England dig a tunnel into a bank on a bank holiday weekend in August 1969. The skilled squad then use thermal lances to crack open a safe and steal over £160,000. The gang might have gotten away with this incredible loot if it hadn't been for an extraordinary stroke of luck.

As it turned out, policemen, lawyers and members of the underworld watched boxing matches at the Adelphi. One night, one of the most famous Crown Counsels of his day was chatting to a Detective Inspector and offered him a cigarette from a very nice case. The Detective Inspector recognised the case as one that had been stolen from the bank. The Crown Counsel had been given it as a gift by his client Comerford.'

In December 1970, Comerford was sentenced to ten years in prison for burglary. The judge told him: “You were involved in a robbery of a bank in the heart of this city which was so successful that over £140,000 in cash and over £20,000 in property were stolen.”

“The majority of it is still to be determined. This was professional organised crime of the highest order, carried out with the most modern, sophisticated equipment and with the planning and precision of a commando raid.” The court did not determine Comerford's exact role in the bank robbery.

After his release from prison a few years later, Comerford gave up the robbery business and started to get involved in the drug trade. He recruited a gang, including four dock workers, to pick up a shipment of cannabis from North Africa. But the drug squad and customs authorities discovered the plan, monitored the port facilities and rounded up Comerford and his team.

Comerford called a “press conference” for journalists on each day of his trial at Liverpool Crown Court. When asked what sentence he thought was likely, he said: “I spoke to the judge and told him there was no way I was going to accept community service.” He was sentenced to seven years in prison, but his sentence was reduced to four years on appeal.

After his release, Comerford continued to make international contacts. He was also a conspicuous figure on the city's party scene. Dressed in expensive suits and with an expensive watch on his wrist, he was a regular at boxing dinners and at the Grand National, where he casually waved his wads of cash around.

Despite his active social life and penchant for expensive trips abroad, he presented himself differently to the local council and the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS). He was allocated a council flat in Belle Vale and received regular social security payments. At one point he even managed to get a grant to renovate the flat.

At the same time, he lived in an expensive bungalow in Gateacre and flew to New York with his wife to take a luxury cruise that cost almost £5,000. This lifestyle, however, attracted attention and Comerford and his cronies were closely monitored by the police.

After a motorbike chase, one of Comerford's dealers was arrested. Given the choice of rotting in prison or becoming an informant, he chose to cooperate with the authorities. In an operation code-named “Eagle,” the dealer led police to a phone book entry in the name of “The Hawk.” The address was Comerford's council flat on Lee Vale Road.

It then emerged that Comerford had been using the flat as the headquarters of his drug business. The rent of £27 a week was paid by the DHSS. Incredibly, it emerged that Comerford had been using the flat to supply large quantities of drugs to US soldiers stationed in West Germany.

The dealer told police that his boss was about to fly from Stuttgart to Heathrow Airport. After passing through “nothing to declare,” he and an accomplice were arrested and caught with a suitcase full of heroin. Behind the facade of an unemployed middle-aged man lay a flamboyant criminal in constant search of the good life.

Comerford was sentenced to the maximum term of 14 years. As he was led to his cell, he turned to the judge and said: “Merry Christmas, Your Honour.” After his release, Comerford immediately fell back into the underworld and was arrested again in connection with a drugs heist in which almost 10kg of cocaine hydrochloride, valued at £800,000, was taken.

Customs officers who seized the loot followed the trail from Ecuador to Felixstowe and then on to Birmingham. Undercover customs officers were able to make contact with Comerford and arranged to meet him at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Birmingham. During the operation, in which the officers posed as drug dealers, Comerford was arrested. In November 1996, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.

In April 2003, five months before his death, he was arrested after police stopped and searched a car he was travelling in with a group of friends. A stash of heroin with a street value of £10,000 was found in a container under one of the seats. He was charged with attempting to traffic but died before the case could be resolved.

A month after his death, police were awarded £25,000 seized from his home following his arrest in March 2003, but this was contested by family members who demanded the money be returned.

After his death, the late lawyer and former ECHO columnist Rex Makin, who defended Comerford, said: “He was the most charming criminal I have ever known. His career as a criminal in Merseyside was more colourful than any in the last half century.”

At around the same time that Comerford was jailed in the mid-1980s, notorious drug trafficker Curtis Warren, who would later become Interpol's “number one target”, was beginning to expand his own empire. Peter Walsh, a renowned author of true crime novels who later co-wrote Warren's biography, previously told the ECHO: “In some ways it started with Comerford and moved on to Warren.”