The £200,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the man who killed Olivia Pratt-Korbel was never claimed, Crimestoppers has revealed.
The independent charity put up the cash offering, the biggest in its 35-year history, after its founder Lord Ashcroft matched a £100,000 sum provided by an anonymous businessman. However the murder of nine-year-old Olivia, shot dead in her own home on Kingsheath Avenue, Dovecot, on August 22 last year, generated a wealth of information from people who were not motivated by financial gain.
Through a combination of a massive police investigation, the bravery of a key witness and a deluge of community information drug-dealer Thomas Cashman, 35, was convicted of Olivia's murder in March and jailed for life with a minimum term of 42 years at Manchester Crown Court.
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But speaking to the ECHO, the charity's chief executive Mark Hallas said the reward was never touched – a situation that is extremely common.
He said: "Very, very rarely do we pay out. Not because we make it difficult for people or we don't want to, it's because we find 99, 98% of the time people want to do things for the right reasons.
"People want to get it off their chests, it's been something that has been troubling them for a long time normally and they want to unburden themselves. And once they've done it – pressed send or put the phone down – that's over, I'm out of here now."
The charity's director of operations, former Metropolitan Police head of homicide and major crimes Mick Duthie, worked alongside regional manager for the north west, Gary Murray, to provide a visible presence in Dovecot at the time of the shooting – making clear to people that what they tell Crimestoppers remains anonymous forever.
Mr Duthie said his 30 years of experience in the Met meant he could empathise with what the murder inquiry team, led by Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Baker, were going through.
He said: "Having run the murder command in London, and having run my own murder team for six years, I know what the SIO is going through, I know probably what the family liaison officer; the challenges they face. I understand the pressure that the chief officer team is facing.
"I understand the need for more information to come in and we're just one tool in their toolbox they can use, and we can maybe leverage some more information from somebody who wants to do the right thing but doesn't have the confidence in the police or maybe wants a few quid. That's where our rewards can help."
Mr Duthie said getting out into the community in Dovecot was vital. He said: "We know we're only a small part of it, but in this case we were quite a significant help."
For the staff in the Crimestoppers contact centre, the response after the Olivia case dwarfed anything that had come before. The charity does around 30 unsolved murder appeals with enhanced cash rewards of up to £20,000 per year, and Mr Duthie said each would generate around a dozen contacts from the public.
After Olivia was killed, the phone lines lit up. The contact centre rapidly received more than 100 tip-offs, which were passed on to the investigation team up in Liverpool.
Mr Murray said the jailing of Cashman sends a powerful message, as some locals told him and the police they were convinced "you will never catch them".
He said: "A lot of people, whether it's Merseyside or Greater Manchester or other parts of the country, know criminal activity is taking place, they know who is involved. But what turns them from somebody who sees and knows, to somebody who does something about it?
"Really, some of that is out of self-interest; they don't want it to affect them or their family, but trying to make them look at the wider community, actually there's no point saying 'oh the police are doing nothing' if they're not prepared to do something.
"So it's really trying to get our message across that we are there to help them do it, and they don't have to get involved, but they're doing the right thing and they're making their communities safer."
Cashman, known locally as a hitman, was lying in wait to ambush local criminal Joseph Nee for reasons that remain unclear. The killer almost had his man after opening fire on Nee with a Glock self-loading pistol as he walked down Kingsheath Avenue at 10pm that night.
As Nee lay wounded on the ground and Cashman stood over him, the brutal execution seemed to have been successful. However, Cashman's weapon appeared to malfunction, giving Nee the chance to scramble to his feet and run.
Tragically for Olivia, the desperate Nee saw that her mum, Cheryl Korbel, had stepped outside her front door to see what was going on, giving him a chance to barge inside. Another haunting piece of misfortune was that Cashman had brought a back-up weapon, a .38 calibre revolver, which he used to blindly fire a shot through the Korbel family's front door.
Cheryl was struck in the wrist before the round hit Olivia, who had jumped out of bed and hid behind her mum after hearing loud bangs. She was rushed to nearby Alder Hey Children's Hospital by two armed response police officers, but there was nothing medics could do for her.
After he was locked up, the ECHO revealed that in 2016 Cashman had been arrested and questioned over the murder of 31-year-old Karl Bradley, who was shot dead on March 22, 2013, in what became known as "the body in the snow" murder.
Mr Bradley had been shot the previous night on Penshaw Close, West Derby, and his body was found in the snow in the rear garden of a property the following day. Police had actually attended the scene after reports shots had been fired at around 11pm on that night, although officers did not find Mr Bradley's body or realise anyone had been wounded.
Cashman, then 27, was released without charge after his arrest.
He recently appealed the length of his sentence at the Court of Appeal in London, but his application was tossed out by a panel of senior judges.
Anyone with information on crime can contact Crimestoppers-uk.org and fill in their secure anonymous online form here. The charity’s UK Contact Centre is open 24/7 on freephone 0800 555 111 where you can speak to one of their specially trained call agents.
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