Lidderdale heroin kitchen was part of massive trafficking plot

‘The Lidderdale Three’ were still involved in a £6m drugs plot when behind bars


 

Originally in January 2015, two of the ‘Lidderdale Three’, Halpin and Worrall, were caught mixing 2.5kg of heroin in a flat on Lidderdale road and alongside Smyth, they admitted dealing Class A drugs and were jailed for eight years each in May 2015.

However, the ‘Lidderdale Three’ continued running the operation using contraband mobile phones in their prison cells.

They were sentenced to an extra 24 years between them in prison yesterday, after it was discovered that their previous drugs factory found on Lidderdale road was part of a wider, cross country plot implicated in a trafficking an estimated 60 kilos worth of drugs.

Photo courtesy of ‘Liverpool Echo’

 

Lee Halpin, Carl Smyth, and Andrew Worrall were given an extra 8 years and 2 months, 8 years and 4 months, and 7 years and 8 months, respectively, after continuing to be involved in couriering drugs across the UK while in jail.

Other men, seven in total, were given numerous different sentences for their aid in the continuing of trafficking drugs from Merseyside outwards whilst the three men were still in jail.

Photo from the flat on Lidderdale road, courtesy of ‘Liverpool Echo’

Police discovered a secret room in the rented Smithdown flat which was used for an industrial scale operation by crawling through a tunnel found behind a washing machine.

During the trial it was announced that one of their accomplices was caught on Smithdown Road with almost a kilo of heroin at 44% purity on November 21 2015 – he had made 44 couriering trips before being caught.

Photo courtesy of ‘Liverpool Echo’

Judge Watson, sentencing the men, said that the gang and their Lidderdale operations supplied 5 groups in 3 areas around the country, and particularly Halpin, stood to gain significant financial rewards during his previous conviction.

Watson stated that Liverpool was the hub of the trafficking operation whereby the Lidderdale Road residence was used to cut the heroin to street level with adulterants.