Drugs offender Robert Briggs-Price fined after taking mobile phone calls from killer Michael O'Brien

A convicted drugs offender has been fined by a court for receiving mobile phone calls from a killer in prison.

Robert Briggs-Price appeared at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court charged with receiving calls from Michael O’Brien who was jailed for life in 2004 for the murder of Marvyn Bradshaw.

O’Brien killed Bradshaw, an associate of the notorious Gunn family of Nottingham, in 2003.

Crime boss Colin Gunn was jailed for life in 2006 for conspiring to murder O’Brien’s mother, Mrs Joan Stirland, and stepfather, Mr John Stirland, in Lincolnshire. They were killed in 2004.

Briggs-Price, 59, of Sleaford Road, Coddington, pleaded guilty to receiving calls from O’Brien, who he befriended while they were both in prison.

The offence is contrary to the Prison Act 1952.

Magistrates fined Briggs-Price £200 and ordered him to pay £105 costs.

O’Brien was at HMP Channings Wood in Newton Abbot, Devon, when he called Briggs-Price between October and November 2012 on mobile phones smuggled into the prison.

The court heard that the calls were made to Briggs-Price on phones used by several prisoners and were found after a police investigation.

The prosecutor, Mrs Anne-Marie Pierrepont, said: “He received phone calls from Michael O’Brien on several occasions which he knew were being made from a mobile phone.”

She told the court the police believed mobile phones in prisons caused a serious risk of crimes being organised from inside jails.

Amanda Parker, defending, said Briggs-Price met O’Brien when they were both serving sentences in HMP Belmarsh.

She said: “Mr Briggs-Price offered psychological support to him because Mr O’Brien felt there were death threats made against him and felt there were people who wanted to do him harm.

“Mr Briggs-Price, being somewhat older, offered him a shoulder to cry on and chatted to him.”

Amanda Parker said Briggs-Price did not know that he was breaking the law when he received the calls, and was permitted by the Prison Service to be in contact with O’Brien.

She said Briggs-Price was sorry he had fallen foul of the law.

Briggs-Price served more than half of a 17-year sentence he received in 2003 for conspiring to bring millions of pounds-worth of heroin into the UK.

He planned to bring in 100 kilos of the drug from the Netherlands for a £10m profit.

Briggs-Price also later admitted conspiring to cheat the Inland Revenue by smuggling cigarettes, receiving a concurrent sentence of 4½ years.