Viv Graham murder 30 years on: Shot doorman's fiancée's message to killers
The dad-of-four was was shot in Wallsend on New Year's Eve 1993, but who pulled the trigger remains a mystery
by Sophie Doughty · ChronicleLiveIt has now been 30 years since the unsolved murder of Viv Graham, who was gunned down in Wallsend on New Year's Eve 1993.
Five years ago his fiancée Anna Connelly issued a passionate plea to his killers, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of his death.
Dad-of-four Viv was blasted three times with a shotgun after leaving a pub on Wallsend High Street. After being left bleeding in the street, the well-known security boss was able to drag himself 30 yards up the street to get help.
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But when his partner Anna arrived at North Tyneside General Hospital that night medics told her there had been nothing they could do to save Viv's life.
The murder sparked a huge manhunt, but to this day no-one has ever been brought to justice. The shooting remains one of the North East's most notorious unsolved crimes. And Viv's life and death have since been the subject of numerous books and documentaries.
But the events of 30 years ago, which have since become part of Tyneside folklore, left nothing but a legacy of pain, heartache and unanswered questions for those who loved Viv. Anna previously issued an impassioned plea to the killers to hand themselves in.
She said: "I always want to say to them: 'Now you are getting old yourself and you have got away with it for so long when your time comes you will face it. To just wipe a life out and look back all these years on and know you have got away with it.'
"Their lives can't be ok. Their consciences must have been preying on them all this time. They will get their judgement day. I wonder if they are sitting there now with their grandchildren and thinking; 'I took that life out'."
Superfit Viv was just 34 when he was killed. The former amateur boxer had earned a fearsome reputation while working as a doorman in and around Newcastle and he went of to run a security empire which offered protection to licensed premises, mainly in Newcastle's East End and Wallsend.
Viv's record included a three-year prison term for leading an attack on another bouncer, Stuart Wilson, at the former Hobo’s nightclub in Newcastle’s Bath Lane. But his supporters claimed he was effectively keeping drugs off the streets, and made some powerful enemies as a result.
On the night Viv was killed he and Anna had been planning to go out for the night to celebrate Viv's birthday, which had been three days earlier. Viv left his partner of 10 years getting ready at the home they shared in Walkerville saying he had to go to Wallsend to check on the Queen's Head Pub, at around 6pm.
Viv then called Anna and told her he had received a phone call telling him he was going to be shot. Soon after he was blasted three times at point blank range with a Magnum handgun in the legs and chest, as he sat in his car outside the pub.
Anna was told her fiancé had been shot and raced to the hospital, arriving before they had brought Viv in. But at 10pm doctors told her there was nothing they could do to save him.
"It's just flew by. I still go through every movement of that night in my head," she said. "It did eat away at me constantly for a while and for a while all I ever wanted was revenge.
"I couldn't sleep for it, and I couldn't get it off my mind. That went on for about eight years. I wanted to see revenge."
But Anna says that with the help of a priest and her family she managed to find some peace and a way to get on with her life. Although she will always want to know why Viv was killed.
"Nothing was worth that," she said. "Viv wasn't an angel, but who is an angel."
On New Year's Eve each year, Anna has shunned celebrations to spend time with her family and remember Viv.
"I have never celebrated New Year since," she said. "It's never going to be a night of celebration for us."
Viv would have turned 60 in 2019, and Anna says she often tries to imagine what he would have been like as an older man.
"I always think about what he would be like now," she said. "I think he would have been exactly the same but with grey hair. I think he would be a big strong lad, just with grey hair. He would still be training. It's really strange to think of him turning 60."
Viv's death was believed to be a contract killing. Detectives probing the killing interviewed more than 1,000 people visited 500 homes and took hundreds of statements were taken.
Viv's family offered a £100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of his killers, but even that was not enough to break the wall of silence. And even an apparent confession from killer and supergrass Lee Shaun Watson during a separate court case came to nothing.
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