How two violent brothers in arms killed young City lawyer with a life full of promise

Mr ap Rhys Pryce’s London was one that valued hard work and ambition, aspiration and achievement. Carty and Brown’s London revolved around the night-time streets where the isolated and vulnerable could be terrorised at knifepoint for their valuables.

All three men lived within a few streets of each other and on January 12 their very different worlds collided.

Carty and Brown, both from broken homes, were part of the Kensal Green Tribe, a gang of up to nine hoodies who marauded through Tube carriages robbing passengers. They called it “steaming”. Those who resisted were “juked”, slang for stabbing someone in the leg.

By Christmas last year the gang had carried out 40 robberies on both men and women in just one month. Over seven months they preyed on to up to 150 victims: at the peak of their activities they were responsible for up to 15 robberies a day.

One victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told for the first time how during one of the gang’s must brutal raids they stormed his carriage shouting: “Empty your pockets.” He said: “I had no intention of giving them anything. I was pushing them away. I saw one of them take a knife out and he plunged it into my left thigh. I was very frightened because a lot of blood was flowing from my leg.” The gang escaped with £50.

Another passenger said: “They began hitting me. I stood up and I got into a fight with them. I think I hit one with my pen.”

When stabbed in the thigh he handed over his wallet.

Although Brown had no previous convictions, Carty, who was expelled from school for threatening a teacher with a knife, had assaulted a policeman and been cautioned for possessing cannabis.

His penchant for violence emerged in a rap song he recorded during a youth employment programme at Hounslow college in which he brags in Jamaican patois: “Come around here and you will get bored (stabbed).”

As Mr ap Rhys Pryce walked towards his Kensal Green home at 11.30pm, Carty, who had the street name G. Rock, and Brown, nicknamed Shy, decided to prove they could live up to that threat.

Neither could have known that the lawyer was not a lucrative target; he had left his watch on the bedside table that morning, and lost his wallet abroad a few weeks earlier.

As the muggers launched their attack Mr ap Rhys Pryce struggled with them and he was stabbed in the leg. He dropped his thriller, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and turned and ran.

When they caught up with him, one or both stabbed him twice in the chest as they demanded more than just his phone.

As he collapsed, they rifled through his pockets taking travel and bank cards and a driving licence, before the lawyer shouted: “You’ve got everything.” The killers fled as their victim lay dying amid his bloodstained lists of wedding venues in Tuscany.

On hearing police sirens, Miss Eastman went outside and asked an officer at the crime-scene cordon what had happened. When told that a man had been murdered she got a photograph of her fiancé to show officers. It was then that she realised the man she was due to marry in September had bled to death. Miss Eastman, now 32, has not spoken publicly about her loss, although she said at his funeral:

“Tom, I love you. Not only for who you are and what you made of yourself but also what you made of me. You made me the happiest I have ever been.”

Mr ap Rhys Pryce was born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire. He was aged 3 when his father John, a civil servant, took the family to Somalia where he worked on a multimillion-pound sugar factory project.

They returned to Hertfordshire and, in 1980, moved to Weybridge, Surrey. By the age of 13, Mr ap Rhys Pryce was a talented violinist who won an academic and music exhibition to Marlborough College, the public school, which became a scholarship when he was 16.

With A-grades at Greek, Latin and English A levels, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, to read classics. He received a first-class degree, won a scholarship to study Indian art and its Greek influences and stayed on to continue his studies. His academic success transferred easily to the legal profession when he joined Linklaters, part of the “magic circle” of the five biggest law firms.

Four years before his murder he met Miss Eastman, a lawyer at Farrer & Co, the solicitors used by the Royal Family.

In stark contrast to the intelligence and success of their victim, Brown and Carty were to lead police to them through their own incompetence.

Within two hours of the murder, Carty called his girlfriend on the lawyer’s phone and Brown telephoned his girlfriend with an earlier victim’s handset. Telephone records led police to the girlfriends and, ultimately, the killers.

The next morning, Carty, nicknamed Armani by girlfriends impressed by his love of designer clothing, sold the lawyer’s phone at a shop just yards from the murder scene. He then swaggered into Kensal Green station and tried to use the lawyer’s travelcard.

When it was rejected he banged the ticket counter demanding it be repaired. CCTV pictures of him at the station were published in the media naming him as the prime suspect.

Even after their arrest, Carty and Brown — childhood friends once so close that they called each other “cousin” — incriminated one another.

Brown admitted robbing the lawyer but said it was Carty who wielded the knife.

Brown’s Nike trainers, stained with the lawyer’s blood, were found at Carty’s home, where he lived with his uncle, Rev Clive Carty, who had a string of convictions including sexual assault.

Carty even faked a letter, on prison notepaper, from a prisoner that claimed Brown had confessed to the murder but felt “bad” about handing his victim’s mobile telephone to Carty, who had “nothing to do with the crime”. Unaware that police would discover his street name, he signed it G. Rock.

Neither boy had a father figure in his life. Brown and his two sisters were brought up by their mother, Maureen, who worked in the Metropolitan Police catering department. He obtained a few GCSEs and completed a one-year sports course at Uxbridge College. Brown was never close to his Jamaican father, Wayne, who had six children by five women.

Carty flitted between the homes of his uncle and his grandparents.

Within a few months of the murder, Mr ap Rhys Pryce’s parents, both in their sixties, announced that, because they were devout Christians, they forgave the killers.

Estella ap Rhys Pryce said she felt the men must be “truly dark and unhappy” people whose “lives must have gone very wrong”.

Killer’s rap

‘I draw for a shank [knife]

You boys will get poked [stabbed]

We do not pet [fear] to do murders

Come round here, you’ll get bored [knifed]

That don’t work out, draw your sword [knife]

Donnel Carty