Solicitor Poser Gets 30 Years for Murder

(Posted on 11/11/11)

Rupert Ross was sentenced to 30 years in prison after he dressed and presented himself as a solicitor to gain access to an enemy and then shot and killed that enemy outside a London prison. The 30 year old man had been in the crosshairs of police at least half of his life before he, in what was called "breathtaking audacity", shot and killed a 20 year old man, Darcy Austin Bruce, outside Wandsworth prison.

He wasn’t alone, though. Ross and another man, who was friends with both Ross and the victim, made their plans to seek out the Austin-Bruce in order to settle a drug debt and beliefs that Austin Bruce was behind other attacks. Both Ross and his accomplice, Leon D St. Aubin, who worked at one time as a firefighter in London, believed Austin Bruce would be paying a visit to the prison on a particular day in 2009. They managed to get their hands on business suits like a solicitor would be wearing in hopes of fooling everyone long enough to get close to Austin Bruce. They succeeded and shot the victim five times, including once in the stomach and once in the throat.

The problems began when De St Aubin and Ross were told that a recent attack on a car they were traveling in was on the order of Austin Bruce.  Once they realized their intended target would be visiting the prison, they hatched the plan to don the wardrobes of what solicitors would be wearing, suits, ties, etc., to visit their clients. As Crispin Aylett, the prosecutor in the case said, "To anyone who noticed, 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…" The judge, when passing down the sentence, said the duo carried out their "meticulously planned and well prepared execution of a man…who had become your enemy".

The solicitor representing Ross pointed the devastation of drug addiction, especially for someone who’s mother did everything she could to break her son from the "grip of drugs." As he was preparing to wrap his case, he said, "This will blight his life and his family’s lives." Ross had written at one time that he wanted the "gangsta lifestyle". He has it now.

Photograph: Metropolitan police/PA