A double-murder in Balham, south London, had all the hallmarks of a contract killing. But was it a contract killing that went wrong?
Michael McCormack, 59, director of an indexing company, and John Ogden, 34, his works manager, were shot on Friday, October 21st, 1994, by a lone gunman who had been waiting for them in a sandwich bar while they were having a pub lunch. He shot them both in the back of the head with a .45 Colt and then ran to a D-reg Vauxhall Cavalier which was later found burned out in Streatham. The car had been bought in a false name for £1,500 cash from a family in nearby Catford.
Neither victim had underworld connections, which left the police considering the view that their killings were a case of mistaken identity and that the killer had confused one of them for a target in the long-running drug territory war which had raged over south London in the previous years.