It was 8pm on a Saturday night.
John ‘Benji’ Stanley and his mate Neville ‘Tito’ Gunning were queuing for food in Alvino’s Pattie and Dumpling Shop in Moss Side. Outside in the street a silver car pulled up.
A gunman in a camouflage jacket and balaclava jumped out and fired through the glass front door of the shop. His first shot missed the teenage boys, so he walked inside and shot Benji in the chest at close range with a pump action shotgun.
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The 14-year-old died a short time later in hospital. He was the youngest person to be shot dead in Manchester.
More than 30 years later his killer has never been caught. Adopted at 22-months old, Benji lived just 100 yards away from where he was gunned down in a terrace house on Cadogan Street.
Well-liked among his friends, he was said to be ‘potty’ about music, liked to babysit and had to be in bed by 9pm every night. Speaking three days after her son’s death, Benji’s mum Denise Stanley told the Manchester Evening News: “I’m blaming myself in a way for being so strict with him and holding him back from what he wanted. I just thought if I kept a chain on him I would not be faced with the problems a hundred other mothers have with their children.”
So why was this innocent schoolboy gunned down? In the days that followed speculation about the motives for Benji’s killing ran riot.
Detectives originally worked on the theory he was executed in a row over a stolen £900 mountain bike. Speaking in the days after the killing Det Chief Insp Ron Astles said: “It would be quite incredible if a 14-year-old boy was killed over such a petty issue.
“Anyone who can cold-bloodedly murder a defenceless boy while he is lying on the floor has no place in society.”
Then the focus of the investigation changed. Detectives now believed it was a case of mistaken identity. And initially at least the police investigation seemed to be making good progress.
The local community came forward with a large amount of information, including the names of eight suspects, all said to be drug dealers, several of whom were known to carry guns.
One man was even said to have bragged about killing Benji in a Hulme nightclub. As the nation’s media descended on Moss Side, mothers marched for peace and religious leaders pleaded with the community to let his death be the last.
Hundreds of people attended Benji’s funeral at Holy Name Church, where community leader Hartley Hanley appealed to the people of Moss Side to come forward with information.
He said: “Somebody in our community knows something. I ask them to search their conscience. By remaining silent they are supporting evil and murder.”
Police arrested more than 10 people in connection with the murder – including notorious gang members – but no one was ever charged and the case remains unsolved. In 2011, the M.E.N. named a man who could have been the intended target – Winston Brownlow – a convicted drug dealer who shared a resemblance to Benji.
Police sources confirmed that intelligence suggested the real target was Brownlow, who was jailed for seven years in 1997 after admitting conspiracy to supply cocaine.
Speaking in 2011, Denise Stanley, then 70, told of the agony of waiting for justice to be served. She said: “My boy was innocent. He was a good boy. He shouldn’t have been shot dead that day.”
Denise described how she was washing her hair in the bathroom of her home on nearby Cadogan Street when she heard shots ring out.
She said: “I slammed the window shut and said to myself, ‘ooh, somebody’s had it again’.”
Shortly after, a friend came to her house and said she should go to the shops. She wrapped her hair in a towel and walked there – thinking Benji had been in trouble with a shopkeeper.
When she arrived, a policeman told her she should sit in his car. She was taken to a police station and told her son was dead.
Denise said: “Lots of people loved him. He was a little ray of sunshine. It seems to have all gone dark now.
“Life isn’t the same any more. It’s been hard. People say time heals but it doesn’t.
“I remember the Sunday after it happened and people from Moss Side came to see me and asked how I was, but I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know what I was talking about.
“I remember saying, ‘you all have to go now, I’ve got to get my son’s tea ready’. People were telling me they knew how I felt. They didn’t know how it felt. I’d just lost my baby. He was my life.”
