The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Warwick Spinks.md at 3ed1ea5f1b2908574f8bac5aecbd0fed00f1a6e7 - disinfozone/The_Info_Web

vault backup: 2026-10-09 18:00:33

2026-10-09 18:00:33 -04:00

22 KiB

Raw Blame History

Amsterdam clubs

Davies wrote that both clubs ran a bar and offered the services of adult male prostitutes who could take customers upstairs to bedrooms.¹ He also wrote that men over 18 could legally work in Amsterdam's sex industry, and that in the late 1980s Spinks managed the Gay Palace, "where he sold alcohol and young men to tourists".⁴ Davies's 1998 article, which carries the note "Previously unpublished" and is dated October 1, 1998, places Spinks at a club called the Boys for Men Club at 44b Spuistraat, across from the Boys Club 21, and says he worked there.⁵ The 2000 article places him running the Gay Palace at number 44.¹

Davies wrote that Spinks owned flats in Amsterdam, Prague and Tenerife which he rented to tourists, and that he decided to open his own brothels on boats outside the city.⁴ He pimped boys through his own escort agency. In his Hastings flat police found two lists headed "Klantenlyst" (clients) and "Jongenlyst" (boys). The lists recorded clients by name, telephone number and sexual preference, and boys by age.⁴

The Guardian reported in 1998 that Spinks, then 34 and described as a nephew of the Olympic boxer Terry Spinks, was "unashamed of having employed male prostitutes on canal boats in Amsterdam". He told the paper: "All I was doing was running a legally licensed brothel which was controlled by the state and underwent regular checks." He said the youths were 18.⁶

The Blue Boy case

On the evening of August 2, 1993, a fourteen-year-old boy from the north east of England, called "Gary" in the press, climbed out of a toilet window of the Blue Boy club on Spuistraat and found a policeman. The Dutch police called the British Embassy in Amsterdam the next morning. The Embassy repatriated the boy and alerted Scotland Yard.⁴

He said that Spinks had earlier taken him and a friend to his flat in Hastings, given them LSD and, at knifepoint, photographed and sexually assaulted them, and that at the end of July Spinks had given him LSD again, taken him by Jetfoil from Dover to Ostend on a false identity card in the name of Michael Samuels, and sold him to the Blue Boy.⁴ The Paedophilia Unit found the photographs and the mugshot used for the false card in Spinks's flat in Hastings.⁴

Spinks was tried at Lewes Crown Court in 1995, on charges of abduction and buggery.⁴ Davies gave the month as March in the 1997 article and February in the 2000 article.¹⁴ CEOP described the convictions as numerous child sexual offences against boys, gave the sentence as seven years, and said it was reduced to five years on appeal in 1996.³ The BBC reported the same sentence and appeal year, and located the offences in Hastings.⁷ The Guardian reported in 1998 that he had served 40 months of the five-year term.⁶

Release, absconding and Prague

CEOP and the BBC both reported that Spinks was released on licence on condition that he did not leave the United Kingdom without permission. He breached the condition in 1997, was recalled to prison, and went missing.³⁷ The Guardian reported in July 1998 that he had been on the run since refusing to sign the sex offenders' register after his release from prison in Kent a year earlier, and that the Home Office confirmed he had breached the terms of his parole.⁶ Davies wrote that he absconded from a London probation hostel before the end of the five-year sentence, defrauded several credit card companies on a spending spree in the boy bars of Fuggerstrasse in Berlin, and then settled in Prague.¹ A Czech newspaper report from November 2012 said he had been released after serving more than half of the five-year term, and that British police suspected only that he had settled somewhere in Europe.⁸

The Guardian found him in Prague in July 1998 running an accommodation agency for foreign visitors called Prague Connections. Spinks said he rented rooms to "heterosexual yuppies, occasional gay couples and even policemen", that contacts in the Czech Republic had let him start a new life there with a flat and a business, and that he had also been in Moscow, Berlin, Casablanca and Johannesburg. "Never again will I return to Britain," he said. The Czech Police told the paper they were not aware of his presence in the country.⁶

The same article reported that his name had been found among details of child pornography customers in a police raid on the Amsterdam flat of Gerrit-Jan Ulrich (given in the article as "Gary Ulrich"), described as a member of the ring who had been murdered a few weeks earlier, and among the possessions of the Belgian Robbie Van Der Plancken. Spinks denied involvement. He said: "I think I've known two Robbies", one of whom "owned a business in central Amsterdam" and the other "was a Belgian guy I used to meet with in Amsterdam". He described the reported snuff movies as "a figment of police imagination" and said he had not been in Amsterdam for six years.⁶

Operation Framework

In October 1990 detectives on the old Obscene Publications Squad at Scotland Yard received reports from informants about Alan Williams trafficking boys into Amsterdam. One informant who had visited the Gay Palace said he had watched videos of boys aged eleven to fourteen being abused by masked men there.¹ Another informant, close to Williams, said he had seen Spinks selling a special video for £4,000, showing a boy he thought was eight or nine being abused and tortured by two men.¹

In 1993 a convicted drug dealer called "Frank" told Scotland Yard that Spinks had shown him, in a bar in the Canary Islands, a video in which a boy of about twelve was attacked with needles, castrated and cut open in what looked like a Dutch barn.¹⁴ After negotiations with the Dutch police, Scotland Yard set up Operation Framework and recruited an undercover officer to pose as a child abuser and befriend Spinks in England.¹ Davies wrote in 1997 that the tapes of Spinks had been secretly recorded by an undercover police officer in Holland.⁴ Told that friends had been offered a snuff film for 6,000 pounds, Spinks said: "They're not six grand," and continued: "I know, well I knew some people who were involved in making snuff movies and how they did it was, they only sold them in limited editions, made ten copies or something, ten very rich customers in America, who paid $5,000 each or something like that". He added: "which is a lot of money to watch some kids being snuffed." He went on: "I know the person who made the film. I felt sorry for this boy, it was a German boy." Asked how old, he replied: "About 13, 15. He thought he was going to make 200 guilders and ended up being dead."⁴

Davies reported that the operation ended in frustration. Spinks produced no copy of the video, and the detectives could not justify keeping the undercover officer or sending officers to Amsterdam, where they had no police powers. They arrested Spinks in Hastings on the Blue Boy charges.¹ Davies quoted Spinks telling the officer: "I know I'm a fat old queen, but I get away with it. I get away with murder."¹

A Birmingham man called "Edward", a customer of the Gay Palace, told the Network First documentary that he had seen five videos made by Spinks, Frank and Frank's partner, in which boys were abused and killed, one of them on a boat. He identified a house in Hoofddorp where, he said, some of the videos were made, and a second house where he said Spinks lived with Frank and Frank's partner. He also took police to a lake where, he said, Frank's partner had told him the bodies were dumped.⁴ Davies wrote that British and Dutch police, after examining the programme's information, decided to launch a murder inquiry, that police in London and Amsterdam confirmed Edward was a known associate of Spinks and Frank, and that Dutch police confirmed Spinks had lived at one of the houses Edward identified.⁴ Davies later reported that the Dutch police said they found no evidence to support the claims.¹

The Bristol detectives produced a further informant who said that in 1989 he had found, in a flat belonging to one of the key figures on the Amsterdam scene, a video showing a murder similar to the one described by Frank. Avon and Somerset Police had neither the funds nor the legal power to run their own inquiry in Holland.¹

Manuel Schadwald and Robbie Van Der Plancken

Manuel Schadwald, aged twelve, disappeared on July 24, 1993 in Berlin.⁵ Van Der Plancken, who had worked in the Rotterdam brothels of Lothar Glandorf, claimed in an unbroadcast section of a Dutch television interview that Manuel had been sold to Spinks in Amsterdam, and Davies reported the claim.⁵

A bar owner told Davies he thought he had once seen the boy with Spinks, and then said he could easily have been mistaken.⁵ Frank said that Spinks had hinted that a German boy named Manny had been murdered, and Frank told police of Spinks's monthly trips to Berlin, often with boys from Amsterdam.¹ The Dutch and German police later set about finding the boy, and failed. Davies wrote that Manuel Schadwald has never been found.¹

On May 2, 1998 the Algemeen Dagblad reported that the boy was thought to have reached a boys' brothel in Rotterdam through a German identified as Ludwig A. (44) and a Briton identified as Warwick S. The paper gave no surname for either man. The records found do not establish whether Warwick S. is Spinks.⁹

Prague and the name Willem

British newspapers reported that Spinks was running sex tourism packages for gay men in Prague under the alias "Willem", posing as a Dutch national.¹⁰ James Kirchick wrote in May 2013 that "Toucan Apartments", the rental service Spinks ran prior to his arrest, had registered a Facebook page on April 12 of that year, and that a friend in Prague had told him Willem had been in Prague since March.¹⁰ A Czech report from November 2012 said he had run an unofficial network of accommodation for homosexuals in flats and houses, and that he had appeared under the names Willem Van Wijk and William Spinks.⁸ CEOP listed the same aliases.³ Companies House lists a Toucan Serviced Apartments Limited, registered in Maidstone, incorporated on November 18, 2019 and dissolved on December 23, 2025. Its two directors were born in 1977 and Spinks is not among its officers. It was formed seven years after his arrest and is a different entity from the Prague rental service he ran in 2012.¹¹

The 2012 arrest, extradition and release

CEOP said that Spinks was arrested by Czech police in August 2012, following intelligence linking him to the country and cooperation with Czech police specialist units tasked with finding wanted criminals, and that the arrest followed an international investigation involving CEOP, the Metropolitan Police and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.³ The Czech police spokesman Tomáš Hulan told the press that officers had detained the wanted man on August 22 in a flat in Prague, after working through several possible addresses, and that Spinks resisted and was handcuffed after a short scuffle.⁸ According to Deník, officers of the Czech police targeted-search department, nicknamed "lovci lebek" (skull hunters), had located his residence in central Prague at the end of August.¹² The headline of Novinky.cz uses the same nickname.⁸

CEOP said Spinks was arrested at Heathrow Airport on his arrival from Prague, in a release dated November 16, 2012 that put the arrival on the previous day.³ The BBC placed the flight on Thursday, which was November 15.⁷ The Deník report said British officers collected him from Václav Havel Airport Prague under a European arrest warrant issued by British justice for breach of licence conditions.¹² CEOP and the BBC both reported that, following extradition, he would serve the 18 remaining months of his sentence.³⁷

Kirchick, who was unable to get the release date from officials, wrote that Spinks "could have been released after having served less than half of his remaining sentence".¹⁰ The Ministry of Justice told him: "We do not comment on individuals. Any convicted sex offender who breaches their licence conditions faces spending the duration of their sentence in prison."¹⁰

The 2014 Sun report and IPSO complaint

On December 6, 2014, The Sun published an article headlined "MP 'was at snuff film lad's murder'".¹³ As summarised by IPSO, the article said informants had told police that an unnamed Member of Parliament was present at a "vice club" when a boy sold for sex died after being tortured, and that the MP had gone to Amsterdam for sex with boys "supplied by paedo fixer Warwick Spinks". The article quoted a source saying "Spinks knew the MP and arranged a tour to Amsterdam. While there he went to the Blue Boy bar, where Spinks was running a brothel." It also said police were re-examining files on Spinks amid claims that he was a regular visitor to Elm Guest House. A later passage of the IPSO summary gives the boy's death as suffocation.¹³

Spinks complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. He said he had not run a brothel in Amsterdam called Blue Boy, although he had run other brothels, that he had never given an MP a tour of Amsterdam, that he was not a suspect, and that he had never visited the guest house, which had closed while he was still at school. He also said he had been wrongly convicted and "framed for political and homophobic reasons".¹³

The Sun said that the police had refused to confirm or deny the allegations at the time. It said the 1995 trial judge had accepted the evidence of the boy who said he had been sold, and had said he "had no doubt that the boy spoke the truth". The paper offered to amend the online article to include Spinks's denial, and IPSO welcomed the offer.¹³ The committee did not uphold the complaint. Its ruling of April 28, 2015 found that the paper had been entitled to report the conviction, and recorded that Spinks "maintains that he was wrongly convicted".¹³

Footnotes

Nick Davies, "Paedophilia is easy 2: how a paedophile murder inquiry fell apart," The Guardian, November 27, 2000, https://www.nickdavies.net/2000/11/27/paedophilia-is-easy-2-how-a-paedophile-murder-inquiry-fell-apart/ ↩︎
Companies House, company 02676915, Magic Moments (Mail Order) Limited, Brighton, incorporated January 13, 1992 (SIC 47910), officers page, https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02676915/officers (six officers and five resignations listed; the 1992 first director and secretary resigned February 11, 2013; Spinks does not appear). ↩︎
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, "Child sexual offender who went on the run for 15 years is now back behind bars," press release, November 16, 2012, Wayback Machine capture of January 30, 2013 of the ceop.police.uk Media Centre, 2012 press releases, https://web.archive.org/web/20130130112106/http://ceop.police.uk/Media-Centre/Press-releases/2012/ ↩︎
Nick Davies, "A paedophile ring in Amsterdam," The Guardian, April 5, 1997, https://www.nickdavies.net/1997/04/05/a-paedophile-ring-in-amsterdam/. ↩︎
Nick Davies, "Paedophile networks traffick young boys across Europe," dated October 1, 1998 and marked "Previously unpublished," https://www.nickdavies.net/1998/10/01/paedophile-network-trafficks-young-boys-across-europe/ ↩︎
Kate Connolly and Owen Bowcott, "Fugitive Briton linked to Dutch child porn hits at 'witch-hunt' from Prague refuge," The Guardian, July 31, 1998, page 15. ↩︎
BBC News, "Warwick Spinks arrest: Child sex attacker back in prison," November 16, 2012, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20355257 ("Warwick Spinks, 48, was arrested at Heathrow after being flown from Prague on Thursday"; image caption: "Warwick Spinks was convicted in 1995 of offences committed in Hastings"). ↩︎
Novinky.cz, "Uprchlého britského pedofila zatkli čeští lovci lebek, provozoval v ČR ubytovnu," November 16, 2012, https://www.novinky.cz/clanek/zahranicni-evropa-uprchleho-britskeho-pedofila-zatkli-cesti-lovci-lebek-provozoval-v-cr-ubytovnu-172991 Original: "Hledaného muže zadrželi dvaadvacátého srpna v bytě [...] v Praze" [The wanted man was detained on the twenty-second of August in a flat [...] in Prague]; "provozoval neoficiální síť ubytování pro homosexuály v podobě bytů a domů" [he ran an unofficial network of accommodation for homosexuals in the form of flats and houses]; "Vystupoval například jako Willem Van Wijk a William Spinks" [He appeared, for example, as Willem Van Wijk and William Spinks]; "Nicméně jeho agresivita mu nebyla nic platná a po krátké šarvátce skončil s pouty na rukou" [However his aggression was of no use to him and after a short scuffle he ended up in handcuffs]. The headline's "lovci lebek" is the nickname of the Czech police targeted-search detectives, as Deník explains. ↩︎
Algemeen Dagblad, "Politie onderzoekt 'politieschandaal'," May 2, 1998, Delpher KBPERS01:003153002:mpeg21:a00051, https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=KBPERS01:003153002:mpeg21:a00051 Original: "Vermoed wordt dat de scholier daar terecht is gekomen via de Duitser Ludwig A. (44) en de Brit Warwick S." [It is suspected that the schoolboy ended up there via the German Ludwig A. (44) and the Briton Warwick S.], following "Diverse getuigen hebben hem kort daarna gezien in het jongensbordeel van Lothar G. en Henk S." [Several witnesses saw him shortly afterwards in the boys' brothel of Lothar G. and Henk S.]. ↩︎
James Kirchick, "The British paedophile who's still on the run," The Spectator, May 24, 2013, https://spectator.com/article/the-british-paedophile-who-s-still-on-the-run/ ↩︎
Companies House, company 12319297, Toucan Serviced Apartments Ltd, Maidstone, incorporated November 18, 2019, dissolved December 23, 2025, officers page, https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12319297/officers ↩︎
Milan Holakovský, "Chlípný Brit sloužil v Praze homosexuálům. Domů se vrátil v poutech," Deník (Praha), November 18, 2012, https://prazsky.denik.cz/krimi/chlipny-brit-slouzil-v-praze-homosexualum-domu-se-vratil-v-poutech/ Original: "detektivové, jimž se přezdívá lovci lebek - kriminalisté z oddělení cíleného pátrání" [detectives nicknamed skull hunters, officers of the targeted search department]; "Ti prý jeho bydliště v širším centru Prahy vypátrali již na konci srpna" [They reportedly traced his residence in the wider centre of Prague as early as the end of August]; "Česká strana tak naplnila evropský zatýkací rozkaz, vydaný britskou justicí pro porušení podmínek podmínečného propuštění z věznice" [The Czech side thereby executed a European arrest warrant issued by British justice for breach of the conditions of release on licence from prison]; "Po odsezení více než poloviny pětiletého trestu byl propuštěn na podmínku" [After serving more than half of the five-year sentence he was released on licence]; "britská policie pouze tušila, že se usadil někde v Evropě" [British police only suspected that he had settled somewhere in Europe]. ↩︎
Independent Press Standards Organisation, ruling 02292-14, Spinks v The Sun, published April 28, 2015, https://www.ipso.co.uk/rulings/02292-14/ ↩︎

22 KiB Raw Blame History