By Damon Wilkinson

Copyright manchestereveningnews

Graeme Boardman was not long out of jail and should have been keeping his head down. But when a fight broke out outside the Temple nightclub in Bolton in the summer of 1997 all hell broke loose. Boardman, who was once described by his friend and business partner Paul ‘One Punch’ Doyle as ‘Manchester’s hardest psychopath’, snapped. It’s alleged he beat up five men, biting off a finger and the cheek of one. A few days later he was arrested, questioned under caution and bailed. Fearing a return to prison, the then 35-year-old made the fateful decision to flee the country and hideout in the ‘millionaires’ playground’ of Puerto Banus on the Costa Del Sol. He was never seen again. It’s widely suspected Boardman, of Salford, was tortured and murdered by an infamous hitman on the orders of a European drugs baron he was rumoured to have crossed. His body has never been found. Boardman, a fearsome bouncer and street fighter, made his name by standing up to Paul Massey’s Salford firm during the ferocious ‘door wars’ of the 1990s . He and Doyle, a notorious former Manchester United hooligan, ran a security firm that provided doormen to clubs and pubs across Greater Manchester. But alongside the security business the pair had also moved into the drugs trade. Having forged links with wholesale growers and dealers in Amsterdam they began smuggling vast amounts of cannabis and amphetamine into the UK. Their first big deal, according to Doyle, came in 1992 and involved importing 700 kilos of drugs worth more than £1m. It was a huge amount and as such involved some major players in the European underworld. Never miss a story with the MEN’s daily Catch Up newsletter – get it in your inbox by signing up here Their contact was a British man named ‘William’, who was reputed to have links with the mafia in Yugoslavia. And for a while the arrangement proved very profitable for both sides. But then things turned sour. William and the Amsterdam mob were apparently taken for several hundred thousands’ worth of cannabis – and blamed Boardman and Doyle. Writing in The Men in Black, an account of United’s hooligan firm of the same name, Tony O’Neill says what happened next ‘has passed into underworld legend’. “A pivotal moment occurred with what became known as ‘the rip’. The criminal Mr Bigs blamed Doyle and his partner, Graeme Boardman. They threatened to kill them both if the money was not paid – but it wasn’t.” “A nightclub boss was today believed to have been murdered on the orders of one of Europe’s top drug barons,” the M.E.N. reported on September 3, 1997. “Graeme Boardman, who was manager of the Temple Club in Bolton , has vanished on Spain’s ‘Costa Del Crime’.” The article went on to describe how one of Boardman’s business partners was believed to have received a phone call from the killers ‘boasting about the murder and giving horrific details’. A senior detective said: “All the indications are that Graeme has been murdered. We are getting information from good sources.” Boardman’s boss at the Temple John Musso was shocked by reports about his death. “I honestly don’t know if this is true or not but I find it very surprising what is being said,” he told the Bolton Evening News. “He has worked at the Temple and Kiss on the front of house staff part-time during the last couple of years. When working for me he has been a good solid employee. It is very annoying when people start talking about drugs connections, we take a very strong line on that here.” Police were told the drugs boss behind the hit was originally from Rochdale but had lived in Europe for several years. He had become a legendary figure in the criminal underworld in the 1980s before he moved to Holland and then to Spain, where he ran a highly successful drugs business. A detective said: “We have received information that he has been behind several murders. He is seriously wealthy and has a home in southern Ireland.” One murder the man was suspected of carrying out was that of Oldham garage mechanic Laurence Winstanley, whose dismembered body was found in a reservoir at Ripponden in 1989 . In his autobiography Doyle, who in 2015 was jailed for 16 years for plotting to flood the north with £300m worth of heroin, cocaine, cannabis and amphetamines, writes he later heard Boardman was drugged, kidnapped and then tortured for two days before his death. “According to what I have heard since that fateful day, they instructed the madame he was staying with to drug him, then while he was passed out, some henchmen walked into the villa, bound him with chains and carted him away to a waiting William,” said Doyle. Join our Court and Crime WhatsApp group HERE “It disturbs me to think of the hell Graeme would have gone through. Sadly, by all accounts there was no quick death for Graeme. That wouldn’t have been allowed.” But the lurid tale didn’t end there. In 2022 the Mirror reported the hitman was thought to be responsible for 38 deaths across Europe. “He is nicknamed Bits and Pieces because of the way he is said to slaughter victims,” the paper reported. Echoing the claims made in Doyle’s book, the paper said the killer was rumoured to inject his victims with a ‘blood thickening chemical’ in order to prolong the agony. He was said to be the ‘go-to’ contract killer in Spain, Holland and Dubai and was wanted by the National Crime Agency, Interpol and America’s Drug Enforcement Agency. “He’s a key member of a crime syndicate and his name has been mentioned in connection with 38 murders both in the UK and abroad,” a source told the paper. “He managed to evade justice. “Either he must be providing knockout information on top-level targets or he’s a lucky man. I suspect the former.” In a statement at the time the The National Crime Agency said: “The agency does not routinely confirm or deny the identities of subjects of interest.”