As well as Richard Burrows, right, several other people are facing arrest or imprisonment when the law catches up with them (Pictures: NCA/Andrew Price/View Finder Pictures)
Earlier this week, 80-year-old Richard Burrows was led out from Heathrow Airport in handcuffs.
For police, it was the end of a decades-long effort to pin down the suspect.
In December 1997, he had failed to attend Chester Crown Court to face trial over the alleged sexual abuse of children between 1969 and 1971.
Burrows, reportedly a former scoutmaster, had been a mainstay on the UK’s ‘most wanted’ list ever since.
Detective Inspector Eleanor Atkinson of Cheshire Police said his arrest was ‘the beginning of closure for all those involved’, and that it marked ‘a significant step forward in this case’.
At Cheshire Crown Court on Tuesday afternoon, Burrows was remanded in custody ahead of a hearing on June 21, with a provisional trial date set for January 13 next year.
While he was one of the longest occupants of the ‘most wanted’ list, there are several names still on there who have been sought by police for many years. Here are some of them.
Timur Mehmet
Mehmet was found by journalists in Northern Cyprus in 2012 (Picture: National Crime Agency)
Mehmet was a prominent member of a gang that operated a large-scale VAT fraud operation, ultimately scamming the UK government out of £25 million.
He failed to appear for his trial in October 2007 and ended up being sentenced to eight years in prison in his absence.
In 2012, he was tracked down by Sky News to a villa in Northern Cyprus – which does not have an extradition treaty with the UK.
He told the journalists that he was ‘trying to do a deal to return to the UK’, but remains on the National Crime Agency’s ‘most wanted’ list to this day.
Allan Foster
As well as alleged murder, Foster is wanted for suspected drugs smuggling and theft (Picture: National Crime Agency)
Foster is accused of ‘executing’ father-of-seven David ‘Noddy’ Rice at a seafront car park in South Shields, Tyne and Wear, on May 24, 2006.
Several of Foster’s associates – including driver Derek Blackburn, corrupt police officer John Jones, and Steven Betts, who admitted luring Mr Rice to the scene – were jailed in the years following the incident.
He is known to use the alias Shaun Michael Wilkinson, and has links to the Canary Islands and Majorca.
Christakis Philippou
Philippou is also known as Christakis Chrysostomou (Picture: National Crime Agency)
Philippou and his co-conspirators made millions of pounds by setting up 26 ‘front’ travel companies to sell holidays at prices so low they were impossible to compete with.
They would then pull the rug out from under their hopeful customers by shutting down the firms before they set off for their trip.
Between 2004 and 2006, an estimated 20,000 people were caught out by the fraud.
Philippou, the mastermind behind the crime, was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2008, but is now on the NCA’s ‘most wanted’ list.
Kevin Parle
Parle has the nickname ‘Hemp’, according to the NCA (Picture: National Crime Agency)
Parle is accused of being the man who pulled the trigger when 16-year-old Liam Kelly was shot dead with a double-barrel shotgun on a Liverpool street in 2004.
He is also a suspect in the 2005 death of Lucy Hargreaves, who was shot twice – in the head and chest – by masked men when they broke into her home before setting it on fire.
A £20,000 reward is on offer for anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest of Parle, who stands 6ft 6in tall.
John Barton
(Picture: National Crime Agency)
Barton, originally from Caunton in Nottinghamshire, planned to smuggle £10 million of heroin into the UK between 1999 and 2000.
The law caught up with him soon afterwards, and in 2003 he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
However, he was already on the run after a judge allowed him to travel to Amsterdam to discuss his defence with his solicitor – and he promptly vanished.
The NCA says he is believed to have links to the town of Fuengirola, between Malaga and Marbella on Spain’s Costa Del Sol.
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