Undercover cop reveals notorious Midlands drug gang nearly executed him at Northampton park

Recent Google searches in Northampton have spiked regarding a criminal gang known as 'The Burger Bar Boys.' But who are they, and what’s the story behind this infamous gang?

The Burger Bar Boys dominated Birmingham’s street scene for over two decades, playing a major role in the deaths of many young victims. They trafficked semi-automatic firearms and pushed the city’s gun crime problem into national headlines.

A chilling account of the gang’s activities is shared by Neil Woods, a former undercover police officer, in Shaun Attwood's True Crime Podcast. Woods talks in-depth about his work infiltrating the midlands gang and how he came close to losing his life at The Racecourse in Northampton during the mid-2010s.

"It was a burger bar where they used to meet in Birmingham. They had a rival gang, the Johnson Crew—famous rivals. That rivalry has led to a very high-profile double murder of two women, Charmaine Harris and Letisha Shakespeare, who were machine-gunned in the street," says Woods.

Shakespeare, 17, from Northampton, and Harris, 18, from Birmingham, were both murdered in 2003. "They thought they were someone else. They thought they were connected to the Johnson Crew and needed murdering," Woods explains.

By the time Woods was called in, the Burger Bar Boys had taken control of the drug supply in Northampton. He said: “The way they had taken over Northampton is a classic story. Northampton Police had some success against their local dealers and the big gang from the big city stepped in and took over. The gap in the marketplace. It’s just the way business works, isn’t it? So they took over Northampton and that’s when I got called in."

Woods speaks about his undercover work in Northampton. He said: "They persuaded me to do it (despite being apprehensive) because these are even more vicious than the last lot. They are using rape as punishment and reputation building. It was just unbound brutality."

While the gang members weren’t necessarily hands-on, they controlled the wholesale drug trade in the town. Woods explains: "They weren’t necessarily hands-on. They were mostly wholesale [drug dealing] for the town. And there were six of them running the business, I had to work really hard to get an introduction to them directly. So what I did is, I picked on two people who were a couple—a man and a woman. They were both problematic heroin users. She was really good at selling the big issues from 8am outside the Marks and Spencers in Northampton. And he was quite a good shoplifter."

Woods continues: "I started to wear a camera to get evidence on them, I think it was for at least a week. One morning one of them said, 'Why do we always end up meeting you here?' So I thought, there's a little bit of suspicion here, there's something going on. So the next morning I thought, ‘Do I wear the camera, do I not?’, and I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to.’"

Instead, Woods met five members of the Burger Bar Boys and got into a vehicle with them. He said: "They drove me to the edge of The Racecourse. They took me to one of the dead-end roads nearby and took me to the edge of the park, amongst the trees. One of them lifted his shirt up and showed me a gun tucked into his trackie top and he says, 'Right, strip, you're police, we know you are, where have you come from?' And they made me strip naked in the day on the edge of The Racecourse, and I was very, very happy I had not worn that camera that day. Very happy indeed. I was almost smiling because it was terrifying but it could have been a lot worse."

When asked if he thought they would have shot him, Woods is certain: "I think they would have definitely shot me. I think they would have not thought about the long-term circumstances. I think they would be quite sure they could have got away with it."

Despite several raids and arrests, the gang’s influence in Northampton remained strong. "The [police] intel guy we called two weeks later, he says, 'Woody, we managed to interrupt the heroin and crack cocaine supply in Northampton for a full two hours.' Two hours. Two hours before there was another [drug dealer's] phone number on the street. You can imagine the Johnson Crew in Birmingham hearing the Burger’s were raided in Northampton, they would have been thinking, 'Yes, fantastic, put the call in, get an extra load of stuff in now, we're going to make a killing. We'll take over that market. Thank you the police.’"

Despite many members being jailed, the Burger Bar Boys still exist. In 2022, six men connected to the gang faced banning orders after a violent altercation at a Birmingham bar. Last summer, detectives were investigating the daylight shooting of a suspected Burger Bar member. And a news report this winter revealed that Birmingham is home to several “extremely violent” splinter gangs linked to the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew.

Since retiring, Neil Woods has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after 14 years of undercover work. He now advocates for the end of the 'War on Drugs.'

To watch the full interview, click here.