A HITMAN has spoken out about how he was ordered to inject two dancers with cyanide during a male strip show in Blackpool.
The assassin nicknamed “Strawberry” was offered $50k – around £38,000 – to plunge needles into leaders of the Adonis strip troupe as they cavorted with frenzied females during a show.
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‘Just stick it in’
Strawberry trekked with the poison from Los Angeles to carry out the murder for hire on the orders of Steve Banerjee – the multimillionaire founder of the Chippendales.
Ruthless Banerjee felt rival act Adonis, set up by his ex employees Read Scot and Steve White, were a “step too far” as competition.
For the first time, Strawberry reveals how he changed his mind minutes before the hit – and instead spilled all to the FBI.
Strawberry explained how Banerjee’s fixer Ray Colon handed him cyanide and syringes, telling him: “Just stick in there [the bottle], suck some of it out, have it in your hand and when you are in the crowd just toot [inject], just walk away and they are dead.”
Middle man Ray Colon urged his friend: “Man you have got to do this. There is big money in this.”
$25k per kill
The exclusive insight is part of A&E Network’s upcoming Secrets of the Chippendales Murders documentary.
Strawberry explained how he was scared to turn down the request to kill in Blackpool.
He said: “If I hadn’t accepted Ray’s offer I might have ended up in the flower bed at his house, because then you become a liability.”
Without “asking any questions” the construction worker Strawberry collected the cyanide from Colon’s garage , agreeing to a $25k per kill deal.
Strawberry said he “wasn’t nervous about bringing cyanide on the plane because it was in my luggage.
‘I ditched the cyanide’
“And 30 years ago you could’ve had 10 guns in there and they didn’t seemed like they gave a sh**,” he added.
Recalling his trip to northern England, Strawberry said he worried more about how it was cold and “I only had short sleeve shirts, no coat. And the food sucked and the girls were not any better.”
However with the kill night at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool approaching, he saw sense: “I was afraid of getting busted. I thought this ain’t worth a damn. I am getting out of here.
“That is when I ditched the cyanide and the syringes.
“I entertained the thought of going to the English police but I thought they would throw my a**e in jail or the nut house.
“So I thought I gotta go back to the States where they speak the real English that I speak.”
Hitman turned informant
Strawberry flew to Vegas to tell the FBI his story, fearing that Colon would kill him if he returned home in July 1991.
Agents then corroborated Strawberry’s claims in a wiretapped call with Colon.
Colon confirmed his orders during the call: “Yeah it will work” and even urged Strawberry to go further: “you could even put a little Draino (bleach) in there if you want.”
An FBI swoop on Colon’s garage found enough cyanide to kill 2,500 humans – which he claimed was for gophers.
Plea deal
At first telling “the government to s**k my d**k, Colon realised he would serve 30 years jail time so agreed to a plea deal explaining the real mastermind behind the kill.
Colon confessed Banerjee ordered the Adonis hits and also the murder of Nick De Noia, his own business partner and Chippendales’ co-creator, four years earlier.
De Noia was killed by a hitman ordered by Banerjee in his office in New York in 1987.
Colon’s confessions led to the FBI re-opening the NYPD’s unsolved murder case.
Banerjee, struggling with cocaine addiction felt above the law after evading justice for De Noia’s death, and pushed Colon to murder Adonis.
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‘I need something taken care of’
Banerjee told Colon: “England didn’t allow guns…..inject them with the cyanide. Just a tad of cyanide is going to kill you.”
The new series features previously unseen video of Colon explaining how “close friend and confidante” Bannerjee ordered the hit by saying: “I need something taken care of“.
Banerjee handed Colon $500 for the gun, before he and a drug addict hitman named Louie flew to NYC for the hit.
Banerjee killed himself in his jail cell in LA.
A&E Network’s four-part documentary event Secrets of the Chippendales Murders begins in the US on March 14 at 10pm ET/PT.
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