Man guilty of replica gun offences

10:27pm Wednesday 27th August 2008

A man has been found guilty of converting replica submachine guns into lethal weapons which were later used in some of Britain's most notorious crimes, including eight murders.

Grant Wilkinson, 34, of no fixed abode, adapted replica Mac-10 guns in a garden shed in Berkshire. The weapons were then distributed to criminals in London.

A jury at Reading Crown Court convicted him of a series of offences, including conspiracy to convert an imitation firearm into a firearm, conspiracy to sell or transfer firearms and ammunition, possession of a firearm with intent to enable another person to endanger life and possessing a prohibited firearm, namely a Mac-10 submachine gun.

Verdicts are yet to be reached on Wilkinson's co-defendant Gary Lewis, 38, of Bourne End, Buckinghamshire.

The court heard Wilkinson, using the name Grant Wilson, bought 90 blank-firing Mac-10s in July 2004 from a registered firearms dealer in Northolt, Middlesex, saying he needed them as props for a new James Bond film.

This seemed a plausible explanation to Guy Savage, a director at Sabre Defence Industries firearms dealership, who had provided guns for a Bond movie in the past.

Wilkinson then began adapting the guns using hi-tech equipment in two shabby garden sheds in a paddock behind The Briars, a derelict property at Three Mile Cross, near Reading, which Wilkinson took over, then began renting out to various tenants.

The adapted Mac-10s were sold on to figures in the criminal underworld, fuelling a notable rise in shootings over the coming years, the trial was told.

The court heard officers found evidence of 11 guns at The Briars and buried at another location near Wooburn Green, Buckinghamshire.

Firearms from the gun factory have been linked to 51 shooting incidents dating back to August 2004, most of them in the Greater London area, with four in Birmingham and one in Manchester.