Gangland enforcer sentenced to life imprisonment after acid attack and plots to blind victims

Jonathan Gordon, 34, was jailed today at Liverpool Crown Court, with Judge David Aubrey telling him he must serve a minimum of 24 years and eight months.

When he is eventually released he will spend his life on parole.

Describing Gordon’s acid attack as a “truly wicked act of barbarity,” the judge told him: “You have reached the depths of inhumanity.”

Gordon, who charged £6,000 to commit an acid attack and £10,000 to blind someone, took instructions from the unidentified boss of an organised crime group (OCG) on encrypted communications platform EncroChat.

On 14 April, 2019 he nearly permanently blinded his first victim by throwing a container of acid in his face.

Gordon lay in wait for the victim who emerged from his home on Milton Street, St Helens, to get a charger from his car.

The man managed to get back inside his house and doused his face with water, but he was blinded.

He regained partial vision in one eye months later, after extensive medical treatment, and identified Gordon at an identity parade – but said his “health and recovery teeter on a knife edge”.

In a victim impact statement, he said: “My skin felt like jelly. As I washed my face it felt as if my skin was falling off my face. My eyes and skin continued to burn and I was in agony.”

Speaking of the devastation on his life, the victim said he was “left in a world of darkness, depression and dependency”.

He said: “I thought first about my family. They needed me, but I couldn’t support them in the state I was.

“I worried that I would forget my children’s faces. I thought about the fact they would age and their faces would change, but I would only ever know them as children.

“I accepted I would never be the father they deserved. I’d never be able to drive them anywhere. I’d never be able to see them play their football matches.

“I’d never see their school play. They would bring me painting and drawings home from school and I would pretend I could see the picture in front of me."

Gordon planned a second acid attack on a man in Blackpool – with his paymaster declaring the victim “needs a good litre on him” – and a third attack on a man in Warrington.

The Blackpool attack was cancelled because it was scheduled during the first lockdown when the roads were empty and the men were worried about police spotting their stolen car.

On April 7, 2020 Gordon, who is from Kirkdale but of no fixed abode, instructed Dylan Johnston, 27, and Stephen Wissett, 28, to drive a stolen Ford Fiesta to Birtles Road, Warrington, and throw acid on a man who lived at the property.

Spotting the house had CCTV, they abandoned the attack and decided to return the next day in disguise.

But the next day, while in Liverpool, the three men were approached by police officers. Gordon, Johnston and Wissett ran away, but the car was seized and the attack prevented.

Forensic examination found Wissett’s DNA on a Lucozade bottle, the steering wheel and a pair of gloves. Johnston’s DNA was on another pair of gloves.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) launched Operation Venetic as UK law enforcement’s response to EncroChat being taken down in 2020

Messages showed Gordon was taking instructions from the unidentified crime boss, who was undeterred by the failed bid on April 7 and wanted Gordon to go back and “double the dose” and “cook” the intended victim with acid.

NCA investigators – working with Merseyside Police, Cheshire Police and the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit - discovered through EncroChat messages that a hand grenade had been left in the garden of the house in Warrington and arranged for the bomb squad to conduct a controlled explosion on April 14

The OCG paused the acid attack, but Gordon still discussed it, telling his boss: “He getting blinded, bro.”

EncroChat messages also showed Gordon had a street gun fight on January 24, 2020. His mobile phone was on Wilburn Street, Liverpool, around midnight, and he sent his boss a message saying he “let off a clip in the street”.

Messages also showed Gordon was involved in another gun fight on May 25, 2020. At 11.45pm a man approached Gordon on an e-bike and they exchanged fire, with a bullet from Gordon’s Grand Power handgun going through the bedroom window of an elderly couple’s house on Carisbrooke Road, Liverpool.

In the aftermath Gordon told his boss on EncroChat that he had lost his Grand Power – and sent him an image of a newspaper story about the shooting. His hand was visible in the picture and a fingerprint expert who compared the palm said it was Gordon’s.

Gordon was also involved in a plot to shoot a property on Reaper Close, Warrington, on March 20, 2020.

He and accomplice Dylan Johnston, 27, organised a team to blast the windows of the house in a drive-by shooting. Phone records showed the two men calling each other in the minutes afterwards.

The bullets came from the same gun used in the Wilburn Street shooting and Judge Aubrey said he was satisfied Johnston pulled the trigger.

Gordon and Johnston were found guilty by a jury at Liverpool Crown Court.

Wissett, of Ellesmere Port but no fixed abode, had admitted conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm, as he was part of the team planning to throw acid in the face of the target in Warrington.

Johnston has been jailed for 18 years and Wissett for 12 years and six months.