Paul Massey’s daughter has vowed to find answers for her murdered father
16:30, 07 Sep 2025Updated 16:33, 07 Sep 2025
Kelly Massey at her father Paul’s graveside in Salford.
The campaigning daughter of Salford ‘Mr Big’ Paul Massey has vowed to find answers for her murdered father and insisted her family has been criminalised because of his criminal past.
Last month, it was confirmed a full coronial investigation would be carried out into the death following a decade-long campaign by Massey’s family. A full inquest – examining the circumstances leading to Massey’s assassination and alleged police failures to protect him from threats on his life – will be held next year.
Senior coroner Timothy Brennand said the inquiry would look into whether there were any ‘acts or omissions on the part of the state in responding to any identified real and immediate risk to life’, and, if so, the consequences.
Massey received at least five so-called ‘Osman’ threat-to-life warnings from police during his life – from 2009 up until the weeks before assassin Mark Fellows blasted him to death with an Uzi sub-machine on the doorstep of his home in Clifton in July 2015.
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It came at the height of a vicious war between a Salford gang known as the A-Team – whose members considered Massey a mentor and elder – and a rival faction, the Anti A-Team.
Massey’s final ‘Osman’ warning was delivered to his home in May 2015, eight weeks before his death. It was posted through the letter box.
Paul Massey(Image: MEN Media)
His family believes officers should have made efforts to deliver it personally. They say he would never have gone to a funfair with his grandkids two weeks later if he knew of the threat.
A 2017 internal investigation by GMP cleared two officers who delivered the warning, the Manchester Evening News has previously reported.
The officers said nobody answered the door and Massey’s partner, when they informed her they had a threat to life warning for him, shouted from a window for them to post it through the letterbox ‘with the rest of them’. After his death, police found the document and Massey’s fingerprints on it.
A statement by Massey’s daughter Kelly on behalf of the family repeated many allegations she had made during a series of pre-inquest review hearings.
In the statement, she said: “The coroner’s Investigation has been the most difficult experience of my life. Losing my father to murder was devastating, but the trauma has been prolonged by over ten years of unanswered questions and failings by Greater Manchester Police (GMP).
“Mark Fellows was sentenced to a whole life order on 17th January 2019 for my father’s murder. That should have been the point at which I could begin to rebuild my life. Instead, GMP’s lack of transparency, and their attempts to cover up the threat-to-life warning, forced me into a long and painful fight for the truth.
Mark Fellows(Image: PA)
“Rather than supporting me as a victim, GMP made me feel like a criminal because of who my father was. This treatment denied me the reassurance and peace of mind that justice should provide.
“My pursuit of answers has come at a great personal cost. The strain destroyed my 24-year relationship and caused me to lose my home, business, income, and stability. Despite this, I continued because I could not abandon my father’s memory.
“The impact of GMP’s failures will remain with me and my family for life. I have lost trust in the very institution that should have protected us. What I seek now is acknowledgment, accountability, and the truth that has been denied for far too long.
“Losing my father to murder was the most painful and life-changing event I have ever faced. I thought nothing could hurt more. But for over ten years, fighting GMP for answers about their failings has been soul-destroying, leaving me unable to move on. Their cover-up of the threat-to-life warning and refusal to acknowledge mistakes made it impossible to heal.
Paul Massey and his daughter, Kelly Massey(Image: Kelly Massey)
“My father raised me with morals, respect, and strength. He taught us right from wrong and inspired us to stand on our own feet. He cared deeply for his community and even ran for Mayor of Salford because he wanted to make a difference. That was the real man he was — and he is deeply missed.
“The only comfort I carry is knowing that I never gave up on him. No matter the outcome, I hope my dad is proud of me.”
During a preliminary hearing last month, Anna Morris KC, representing Massey’s family, asked GMP to provide details of the intelligence which prompted his threat to life notices.
She insisted an inquest was required as there has never been an independent review of what measures the force took to protect him. GMP has already provided the court a dossier of contacts Massey had with police.
Police potentially breached Massey’s ‘article 2’ right to life under the Human Rights Act 1998, claimed the KC, who questioned what steps the force had taken ‘to stop these threats materialising’.
The coroner said it was a matter if ‘profound regret’ GMP had not provided information requested by the family about the nature of the threats to Massey 10 years after his death. He said any comment that Massey ‘lived by the sword and died by the sword’ was ‘not how any court should approach this matter’.
Jonathan Dixey KC, representing GMP, said the force held ‘a lot of material’ about the case and had ‘sought to provide what’s been asked for’. The force denied the service of the final ‘Osman’ warning was ‘sub-optimal’, he said.
In 1999, Massey was jailed for 14 years for a stabbing. The vicious attack came as he was being followed by a film crew round the city’s nightclubs for a documentary that was never released.
His victim, a member of a stag party visiting a club on Whitworth Street, was stabbed in the groin after confronting and headbutting Massey for smashing the window of their minibus. Suffering a severed artery he only survived thanks to the skill of a surgeon, who was called away from a black-tie dinner that night.
Massey fled to Amsterdam, but was extradited to the UK to face justice. When he came out of prison, he retained a fearsome reputation in Manchester’s gangland.
The trial of Massey’s killer Mark ‘The Iceman’ Fellows revealed police handed Massey formal ‘threat to life’ warnings in April 2009, September 2011, February 2013, and March 2015. The last one was issued as Mark Fellows was plotting his murder.
Massey was hit by a hail of bullets almost as soon as he stepped out of his silver 5 series BMW, at 7.27pm on July 26, 2015. Badly wounded, the Sunday night bottle of Bacardi he had bought at his local Bargain Booze smashed across his driveway as the carrier bag dropped from his hand.
He staggered backwards and fell, rendered helpless by terrible injuries to his foot. He tried to dive for cover behind his bins, tried to fend off the bullets from a gunman who was dressed head-to-toe in combat gear, and attempted to scramble away from him.
The assassin followed, standing over his target as he pulled the trigger of an Uzi a second time. Fellows was generally thought to be a gangland ‘nobody’ before murdering a man famously dubbed Salford’s ‘Mr Big’ by a local councillor.