A former army sergeant supplied feuding gangs with assassination kits and other weapons linked to a murder, four attempted murders and an armed robbery.
Paul Alexander, 53, charged £1,500 for the kits, which came in hard, plastic cases similar to those for DIY power tools. Each contained a handgun, silencer and three or four magazines with up to eleven rounds in them. Detectives believe that guns he sold in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and the East Midlands will be linked to crimes for years to come.
After leaving the Army in 1992, where he had an exemplary record with the Royal Artillery, Alexander visited South America, Canada, the US, Pakistan and Europe using some 33 aliases. These included fictional surnames such as Bauer, from the television series 24, and Bourne, from the Matt Damon films. He also changed his surname by deed poll to Hunter-Mann. Born Paul Daintry in Bury, Lancashire, he was identified during the investigation into the 2007 murder of Rhys Jones, the Liverpool schoolboy shot by a gang member, Sean Mercer. Police seized several firearms which had traces of Alexander’s DNA, though it took until September last year for officers to track him to a remote rented property at Bardfield Saling, Essex.
He was arrested in a joint operation between the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and Essex Police in which 28 guns and rifles were recovered. The barn where he worked contained 12,000 gun parts and he had 26 guns on order.

Mick Layton, the Soca deputy director, said: “The guns and ammunition supplied by Paul Alexander are being linked to numerous shootings in the UK. Put simply, he was dealing in death.”
Alexander bought imitation and antique guns and converted them at his property. He took on the home with a £9,000 deposit in cash and paid £3,800 a month to stay there despite having had no proper job since leaving the Army.
Officers found that between March 2007 and his arrest almost £130,000 in cash was deposited into accounts belonging to him, his wife and a stepdaughter.
At Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday Alexander admitted charges including possessing a firearm and ammunition with intent to endanger life and converting an imitation firearm. He will be sentenced in November after psychiatric reports and faces life.
The killing kits
• From the outside the hard plastic cases looked as if they held DIY tools, but they were filled with everything that a killer would need to commit murder
• Paul Alexander would drive to the North West to deliver them to rival gangs in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, picking up £1,500 for each pack: a gun, silencer and ammunition
• Each component was packaged in foam, below, to protect it during transport.
• At Alexander’s gun factory police found filled cases and rifles stacked against a wall
• Mick Layton, deputy director of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, said that the investigation had provided valuable intelligence: “Our message to Alexander’s criminal associates is stark — be worried, this hasn’t ended here”