ON the surface, Andrew Christopher Lamb lived an idyllic lifestyle.
A successful British businessman with extraordinary contacts such as the Moroccan royal family and the Egyptian military, he lived in a grand villa in Malta, drove a Porsche and was a luxury yacht captain.
But he was not who he claimed to be.
Drew Lamb was in fact Christopher Guest More Jnr, a killer involved in the torture and murder of Brian Waters in front of his own children in the most brutal fashion.
Police at the scene at Burnt House Farm
In 2019, a full 16 years on from those horrific events of June 2003, More’s life of opulence came crashing down around him as Cheshire Police finally caught up with the one who got away.
The wealthy upbringing and the promising career
More’s story is so extraordinary that Hollywood movie producers would reject the script for being too fanciful.
He grew up in privilege and wealth and, although not a natural academic during schooldays, he excelled as a junior sportsman – a talented swimmer who also represented Cheshire at lacrosse as a youth.
The family home at Burford Lane Farm in Lymm was more of a gated estate complete with a swimming pool where members of the More clan resided in their own separate houses.
Upon leaving school, the teenage Christopher Guest More Jnr joined the family business.
But this was no run of the mill construction firm or retail operation, because Christopher Guest More Snr was involved in the world of surveillance and intelligence gathering.
Like his dad, the son soon proved to have the skills to make a success of himself in the industry.
By his mid-20s, he had infiltrated an organised crime gang on a notorious estate in Wolverhampton and a far-right movement in Nottingham during projects working with the likes of Channel 4’s Dispatches and the BBC.
If you were to believe his own account, this was the extent of his interests in criminality.
But, in reality, he had become involved in the underworld himself – and in a big way.
Wilson and Waters
In the early 2000s, John Wilson was one of Manchester’s most notorious gangsters.
Brian Waters had contacts in the Netherlands, and would broker drug deals between Wilson and his Dutch associates.
While travelling back to the UK from Holland on one occasion in 1999, Mr Waters was stopped at a port and found to be in possession of £20,000 in cash – monies belonging to Wilson.
The pair continued heavy involvement with one another though, and Mr Waters was dealing cocaine on the mobster’s behalf by late 2002.
Around Christmas time, he was robbed of several thousands of pounds worth of drugs at gunpoint in Manchester and therefore left further indebted.
This was where More – then a stocky young man who stood at around 5ft10 in height and had short mousey brown hair – came in.
An increasingly angered Wilson, a gold-toothed man whom it was not wise to cross, instructed him to put his famed talents for surveillance to use on the Waters family.
Upon tailing Mr Waters’ son Gavin from their Nantwich home to Burnt House Farm in Tabley, he discovered the cannabis farm they had set up in secret.
The cannabis farm pictured after Mr Waters' death
Wilson, who regularly supplied More with cocaine free of charge, gave the orders for his gang to ransack the grow – stealing both the drugs and the cultivating equipment from the factory.
June 19 2003 was the strike date, the day after Mr Waters’ daughter Natalie’s 21st birthday and only three days after he and his wife Julie had returned from a near month-long visit to the Netherlands.
And More’s involvement was to continue past the reconnaissance stage.
Otis Matthews, Wilson’s right hand man, and Ashley Guishard stayed over at Burford Lane Farm the night before due to its handy location around 10 minutes’ drive from Burnt House Farm.
At roughly 4am on the Thursday morning, the trio set off for the rural site – which is now used as a commercial car workshop, situated only a stone’s throw from junction 19 of the M6 at Knutsford – in convoy with More’s distant cousin James Raven.
Burnt House Farm as it looks today
Over the following few hours they set about dismantling the cannabis farm, with More claiming to have kept watch whilst the others went about their work.
A hole in the wall More fashioned in order to keep watch
Fatally, the operation did not end there.
The brutal murder
At around midday, Suleman Razak – the stepson of Mujahid ‘Johnny’ Majid, who Mr Waters met during a spell in prison in the early 1980s and with whom he had set up the cannabis farm – arrived at Burnt House Farm to tend to the grow, which on an average week yielded drugs worth £1,000.
He was immediately ambushed by around half a dozen of Wilson’s men, who punched and kicked him to the face and demanded money.
Mr Razak was suspended upside down and lowered headfirst into a barrel which was filled up with water, electrocuted and burned with acidic plant food.
The barrel which was filled with water
A pillowcase was placed over his head and set on fire and he was attacked with an industrial staple gun before Mr Waters arrived at the scene.
The staple gun used to attack both Mr Razak and Mr Waters
After being whipped with canes with such ferocity that they snapped, he too was hung upside down by his ankles and beaten using a metal bar.
He was tied to a chair and a binbag was set alight above his head, causing the melting plastic to drip down onto him.
When Gavin and Natalie Waters appeared at the farm, Mr Waters pleaded with the attackers – who were armed with a machete and a black handgun, which later transpired to be an imitation firearm – not to hurt his children.
But they were also attacked and tied up, with his daughter having had the barrel of the gun placed in her mouth.
At the same time, two men were raiding the Waters’ family home in a search for money and valuables.
One theory advanced by the prosecution is that More was one of this pair due to his knowledge of the route between the house in Nantwich and the cannabis farm, Matthews being the other.
Otis Matthews
They kidnapped the mum from the address and drove her to Burnt House Farm, arriving at the same time as the police – who had been called under Wilson’s orders.
Mr Waters’ lifeless body was found in the milking parlour, his assailants having scarpered.
Brian Waters
A post-mortem investigation found that the 44-year-old had suffered more than 100 separate injuries – including multiple broken ribs, a fractured nose, bleeding on the brain and bruising to the heart – during the roughly three-hour ordeal.
It was a truly stark reminder of the violence that goes hand in hand with the supply of illicit drugs.
Detective inspector Kate Tomlinson, senior investigating officer in the case, said: "You really don’t come across jobs like this every day, the brutality of it is so severe that it really opens your eyes.
"We’re used to dealing with violent crime, but this really takes your breath away – it’s the stuff that television programmes are made of.
A knife found at the scene
"Brian Waters was in the drugs world, and he was associating with well-known criminals who were very well connected.
"When you run with those sorts of people, it’s a dangerous world to be in – you run those risks, and unfortunately he paid the highest price for living in that world.
"But is £20,000 really worth what went on that day?
Scenes of destruction inside the farm after the murder
"It just doesn’t feel right, and it goes to show how dangerous it is associating with these sorts of people.
"It’s possibly not just about the money, it’s about them being disrespected as well.
"I can’t imagine that £20,000 is worth killing somebody for.
"You just can’t help but feel for the family – you desperately want to do the right thing, and we have gone to the nth degree to bring this man to justice."
The treasure trove of evidence
More was able to avoid arrest at the scene, but crucially the gang inadvertently left behind a treasure trove of DNA evidence.
During the lengthy period the mob spent at the farm, they took special care to leave all their waste – whether it be the wrappings of the food and drink they had consumed or the ends of cigarettes they had smoked – in a plastic bag which they planned to take with them after leaving.
Cigarettes butts were found inside a Red Bull can in the bag
This even extended to human waste.
But the killers fled in a hurry upon the police showing up unexpectedly, and in their panic accidentally left the bag behind.
The contents were examined, and faeces inside were found to contain More’s DNA.
He had also torn a strip off an abandoned pram cover, the remainder of which Mr Razak’s blood was found on, and used it as toilet paper.
The ripped pram cover
Samples taken from a bottle of Sprite and Marlboro Light ends were a match, as was a glove found near to the main gate of the farm.
A horsebox containing the stolen £50,000 of cannabis and equipment was later discovered in the car park of the Barn Owl pub in Lymm, mere yards away from More’s home.
The horsebox
Perhaps in the knowledge of this hugely incriminating stack of evidence, he fled the country – flying to Malaga from Liverpool John Lennon Airport early on June 21 2003.
READ MORE: Watch the moment killer gangster fled the country after brutal torture murder
He was not seen on these shores again for the best part of two decades.
CCTV of More at Liverpool John Lennon Airport
Days later, Christopher Guest More Snr visited him in Spain – leaving a suitcase full of clothes with him, and returning in possession of his mobile phone.
The following month, his mum also flew out to see her son one final time before he began his new life in hiding.
Life on the run
Christopher Guest More Jnr’s movements between 2003 and 2007 are unconfirmed.
However, while giving evidence during his eventual murder trial, he claimed to have travelled to South Africa and Mozambique using a passport with his new identity of Andrew Lamb and worked driving boats.
More's passport in his false identity
A short spell in Turkey followed, before he ultimately settled in Malta four years on from Mr Waters’ death.
Here, More – or Lamb – was able to build his reputation as a successful businessman who invested in a variety of high value deals.
The delivery of cargo to Taiwan on behalf of BP, negotiations in Iran and business with the Moroccan royal family and the Egyptian military were among the dealings mentioned in court, as was an investment of 400,000 Swiss francs – equivalent to around £315,0000 – in a Libyan company.
He lived an extravagant, affluent, luxurious and cash rich lifestyle and went on to find a partner on the sun-soaked Mediterranean island.
More worked as a captain out of the exclusive Portomaso Marina, lived in a large house with a swimming pool and drove a leased white Porsche Cayenne.
Driving licences under the identity of Andrew Lamb
Years passed, and he might have wondered if he had got off scot free.
In the meantime, he watched from afar as his co-conspirators were convicted and jailed.
Wilson and Raven were found guilty of murder in 2004 in one of the first UK trials to use cell siting evidence, data showing the approximate locations of phones via masts.
James Raven
Each received a minimum of 24 years behind bars before Matthews was caged for at least 22 years in 2007 – although Guishard was acquitted.
More’s dad was even sent to prison for nine months in October 2004 for assisting his son’s escape.
He is now believed to be living in Leicestershire, with Burford Lane Farm having been sold off long ago.
Burford Lane Farm as it looks today
Key figures in bringing More to justice have confessed that tracking the investigator turned gangster was akin to ‘finding a needle in a haystack’.
A wanted poster from 2004
But the elevation of his status to one of Europe’s most wanted criminals in May 2019 acted as a springboard for his capture.
Detectives were able to gain vital intelligence as a result, although the exact nature of this has not been disclosed.
Detective superintendent Sarah Pengelly led the search for More as head of Cheshire Police’s major investigation team from early 2019 onwards.
She said: “It was a significant, dogged and determined effort.
“I was confident that getting Christopher Guest More Jnr on Europe’s most wanted list would generate some intelligence.
“It was a real game changer for us.
READ MORE: ‘You see this sort of thing in the movies’ – Three key figures in More’s capture
“What we know now is that he’d assumed the new identity of Andrew Lamb, and that made our job of trying to find him very difficult indeed.
“We didn’t know he was using that identity, and we’d put lots of effort into trying to find him living under the identity of Christopher Guest More.
“Clearly his confidence grew around being able to live untouched under that identity.
“It’s evident that he established himself as a businessman and he was living an affluent, cash rich lifestyle.
“It is a stark difference to the family of Brian Waters, who were clearly significantly impacted by his murder and have not been able to move on.
“I’m not sure how you would move on from that.”
More was arrested only four weeks after being placed onto the most wanted list in a new build apartment in Malta’s classy Swieqi district, but continued to maintain that he was Andrew Lamb during frustrating extradition proceedings which lasted nearly a year.
It was only after his fingerprints were taken that he was forced to concede his true identity.
But he continued to contest his removal back to his home country, claiming to be scared of coming across Wilson and his associates within the UK prison system – including Matthews, who was reportedly being held in HMP Manchester.
The reason for this apparent fear was also a cornerstone of his defence in the courtroom.
More alleged that his involvement with the gang was his continued role as an undercover television researcher.
Believing that Wilson was also a police informant, he befriended him in the hope of selling the story to the media.
This would have been a risky strategy indeed.
Astonishingly, he stated on the witness box that the crime boss discovered his supposed scheme on the day of the murder via Raven and ordered him to leave before Mr Razak’s arrival – conveniently limiting his involvement vastly.
A police cordon in place at Burnt House Farm
If he really was in fear of Wilson and his associates, More was hardly keeping his head down in Malta.
The investigation and the trial
Despite the successful completion of the extradition process in March 2020, the hard work was only just beginning for Cheshire Police – the passage of time adding to the complexity of their job.
Only a handful of officers who had been around for the original investigation remained a part of the force, most having retired or moved onto jobs elsewhere.
An almost completely new team were tasked with re-examining stacks of thousands of old exhibits, evidence and documents and sought out the knowledge of some of their predecessors.
A dedicated unit formed by the police and Crown Prosecution Service accounted for approximately 30 officers, lawyers and civilian staff who worked either part or full-time on the case.
An additional team of 10 were responsible for the extradition, with even more resources from the National Crime Agency and Maltese authorities involved.
By March 2021, the trial at Chester Crown Court was finally underway – with More denying murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm against Mr Waters and Mr Razak.
After a false start due to issues concerning one of the original jurors, the defendant took to the stand over the course of three days in mid-April.
When questioned by his own barrister, he seemed well spoken and reasonably convincing in his account – which he has had plenty of time to rehearse while spending 23 hours a day in his cell amid Covid-era jails.
However, once the prosecution’s cross examination began he appeared to be rattled from the very first question.
The brash and arrogant young man he had been in 2003 was coming to the fore, and there were still gaping holes in his story.
DI Tomlinson, who was present throughout the trial, said: “I thought he came across well when he was talking about his background in surveillance and investigative journalism.
“But when it came down to the actual day, his account lacked a significant amount of detail.
“When challenged, he was very evasive and he never gave any firm answers.”
Dramatically, More was handed a lifeline in court by his godfather Stephen Hayes late into proceedings.
A close personal friend of Christopher Guest More Snr and a colleague of both father and son, he claimed to have been having a drink in a wine bar with the accused at the same time the violence was being dished out.
The millionaire private detective and former copper was known as ‘Enid Blyton’ in the Greater Manchester Police of the 1960s and 1970s due to his ability to fabricate evidence against suspects, and was later convicted for corruption of a public official – although he claims to have been set up.
Faced with such a testimony, a statement which meant that the defendant could not have been present at the scene of the murder, the jury ultimately failed to reach a verdict.
It was another twist in a long and winding tale, and led to a retrial beginning the following November.
But, this time around, jurors clearly did not believe this account after hearing a stack of evidence over the course of a month.
Despite his protestations of innocence, Christopher Guest More Jnr was ultimately an eager participant in the torture and terrible violence metred out on Wilson’s behalf.
The lasting impact
Unsurprisingly, the impact of Brian Waters’ murder on his family has been significant and long lasting.
Julie, Gavin and Natalie Waters still live together.
All three still experience regular flashbacks of that awful day in 2003, while Julie suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
By all accounts, they have been living in fear for close to 20 years, reluctant to let outsiders into their tight knit unit.
Finally, they can feel that justice has been served.
It can only be hoped that Christopher Guest More Jnr being belatedly located and locked away in prison will go some way to relieving their collective anxiety.
But one question still remains.
Why would More throw away what seemed to a promising career to get involved with the likes of Wilson when he was a man who wanted for nothing, thanks to his affluent background?
DI Tomlinson theorises that he succumbed to a toxic combination of class A drugs and a yearning to impress others.
“The only thing I can think of is that his dad was successful – maybe he wanted to prove something to his dad, but then he got involved in cocaine.
“He was taking a lot of cocaine at the time, and that tends to alter people’s perceptions of how they should behave.
“Maybe that influenced his decision making.”
More might wonder what might have been today had he not been caught up in those horrific events.
Given the industrious start to his career in the television business, he may well have been a leader in his field by now and living happily in the kind of luxury he enjoyed in Malta.
But more poignantly, Waters could have been a proud granddad approaching retirement age.
The sad fact is, we will never know what might have been for him and his family.
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