Harold Oakley

Little Hulton, Salford, in the early hours of 27 November 1991.

Somebody kicks in the door of a ground-floor council flat on Wildbrook Grove and fires a shotgun twice. Neighbours watch a masked man walk away with the gun at his side, and one of them hears him laugh.

Harold Oakley, known to everyone as Hadge, was thirty-seven, a joiner by trade and a father of two. To the police he was the estate's main dealer in cannabis and amphetamines. To his sisters he was the man who gave the local children money.

Detectives interviewed more than a thousand people, a reward went unclaimed, and the house was set alight fifteen times before it was pulled down. The officer in charge always believed the killer was local, because he left on foot.

Thirty-five years on, with a £50,000 reward now on offer, this is the story of a murder on an estate that the police were certain knew the answer.

Another one of those cases where somebody knows something, but nobody has come forward. And yet again I find myself asking why.

It would be easy enough to imply that the answer is fear – but with the police ruling out a drug baron connection, fear of who?

I’m not going to judge Hadge for selling weed and amphetamines. He seems to have stayed away from the really dangerous stuff, and making a living in Salford in the early 90s was not easy. I am a bit judgy when it comes to the attack on the man on Cleggs Lane – but without knowing the back story to that I should hold my tongue. Overall Hadge sounds like a friendly, popular man who always had time for people. Nobody deserves to be murdered – nor did Hadge.