Public Schoolboy Turned Gangster Gets 30+ for Murder

A former public schoolboy who fantasied about being a gangster has been jailed for 30 years for shooting dead a rival outside a London prison.

Rupert Ross, 30, disguised himself as a lawyer and shot Darcy Austin-Bruce five times outside Wandsworth jail in May 2009 after getting involved in the drug trade.

Ross, who went to private £30,000-a-year Dulwhich College and whose family include a Cambridge academic and a barrister, had fallen out with former friend Austin-Bruce over drugs.

He had noted in his diary that he was "living a gangster lifestyle, making good money and living a fast life."

He added that it was "hectic, lots of wars over drugs and money, one or two shootouts."

After shooting dead Austin-Bruce, 20, in an attack of "breathtaking audacity," he escaped on a moped driven by his accomplice Leon De St Aubin, of Chelsea.

Both were sentenced Thursday for at least 30 years after been found guilty of murder.

After receiving a tipoff that that Austin-Bruce would be visiting Wansdworth, both men wore suits to disguise themselves as lawyers.

Ross then approached his victim and shot him five times in broad daylight. Ross shot him three times in the back, once in the stomach and once in the throat before fleeing the scene with De St Aubin.

Crispin Aylett, QC, prosecuting, said it was a murder of "breathtaking audacity." "To anyone who noticed him, the smartly dressed man must have looked like a lawyer making a legal visit to a client in the prison. However, he was wearing a crash helmet. This was, in the most literal sense, an inside job. The killers had been tipped off by someone inside the prison."

"These men believed that they could get away with killing a man in broad daylight as revenge for a petty argument," Acting Detective Chief Inspector Brian Lucas said after the case.

"I believe that they had lost sight of reality and now face the consequences of their sad and violent choices."