WHILE John “Goldfinger”; Palmer frantically burned documents in his secluded garden on June 24, 2015, he had no idea his executioner was watching.
The silent assassin had spent at least 24 hours casing the cottage in South Weald, Essex, watching Brink’s-Mat gang member Palmer through a hole in the fence.
When he struck, he leapt over the barrier and took six shots with a .32 silenced revolver.
Palmer, who had previously been jailed for timeshare fraud, staggered a few yards before collapsing. His body was later found by his son James, 28.
But when paramedics and police arrived, they believed he had died of natural causes due to complications from recent gallbladder surgery.
It was not until the post-mortem more than a week later that they discovered he had been shot six times.
By then, forensic clues at the scene had been lost for ever — leaving detectives with an uphill struggle.
But now, a 66-year-old Estonian assassin nicknamed The Butcher has emerged as a “subject of interest”;.
At first glance, Imre Arakas looks more like a holy man than a hitman.
But he is suspected of carrying out dozens of contract murders — and is currently serving a ten-year sentence for murder in Lithuania.
He is known to have come to the UK two weeks before Palmer, 65, was assassinated — though there is no record of him leaving.
Detectives investigating Palmer’s murder have been liaising with Lithuanian authorities through Interpol.
Arakas, who is in poor health, is not due to complete his current sentence until January 2033.
One theory is that he was contracted to carry out the execution through Ireland’s Kinahan crime cartel on behalf of one of Palmer’s former timeshare associates.
Arakas was a top shooter for the Kinahan syndicate — whose head Christy Snr and sons Daniel and Christopher are based in Dubai — after first meeting them in Spain around 15 years ago.
In 2017 he was arrested in Dublin over a plot to execute a Kinahan rival, for which he was jailed for six years before being extradited to Lithuania in January 2023.
In December 2023 while being held in a top-security prison awaiting trial in Lithuania, Arakas denied knowing Daniel Kinahan personally and denied being a contract killer.
He said: “I should not be known as The Butcher. I am not involved in organised crime.”;
Essex detectives began investigating Arakas over Palmer’s murder following a tip-off that he had been hired to kill him through the Kinahans, who deny being involved in criminality.
The police’s interest was heightened after it was established that Arakas had come to the UK shortly before Palmer was executed and may have left using a false passport.
A source said: “Arakas has not been given official suspect status but is a definite subject of interest.”;
Stalking targets
Detectives say a Spanish fraud trial in which Palmer was due to be a defendant was the strongest motive for his murder.
His former right-hand man Richard Cashman was among eight defendants who eventually stood trial in Madrid.
Cashman, 59, was given a two-year sentence in 2019 after being convicted of timeshare fraud and money laundering in Tenerife, where he worked for Palmer.
In 2017, businessman and poker player Cashman, originally from Teesside, was quizzed under caution over Palmer’s murder, but no further action was taken against him.
Det Supt Stephen Jennings, leading the Essex inquiry into Palmer’s murder, said the Spanish fraud trial “is very, very key”;.
He added there had been false speculation Palmer was looking to cut a deal with prosecutors to avoid jail.
In 2001, Palmer was given an eight-year sentence at the Old Bailey for timeshare fraud, and the Spanish case focused on him continuing to run his empire from his prison cell at Long Lartin jail in Worcestershire.
Spanish cops bugged conversations between Palmer and his timeshare team in the Canaries, and fraud charges were brought against him, his partner Christina Ketley, Cashman and seven others in May 2015 — a month before he was murdered. In the event, Ms Ketley gave evidence against Cashman and others.
Police suspicions about Arakas’s potential involvement in Palmer’s murder have been fuelled by the fact that the execution fits in with his known methods of stalking targets in advance before striking.
At the time, a number of motives were explored, including Palmer’s role in melting down the three tonnes of gold bullion stolen in the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery.
I should not be known as The Butcher. I am not involved in organised crime.
Arakas
After going on the run, Palmer, who was still married to wife Marnie but living with partner Christina when he died, was eventually brought to trial in 1987 for handling the gold.
He was acquitted after claiming he did not realise the bullion had been stolen. Palmer then went on to build a timeshare empire in Tenerife, using hard-sell tactics and intimidation.
He amassed a £300million fortune, placing him as joint 165th richest person in Britain on the 1996 Sunday Times Rich List.
Born on December 1, 1958, hitman Arakas had grown up in the Estonian capital Tallinn while it was under Soviet occupation.
While still a teenager, he gained a reputation as a prolific car thief as well as a freedom fighter.
When he was 20, Arakas was arrested for stealing 13 handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammo from a Tallinn shooting club.
It is believed the weapons were going to be used in attacks on pro-Soviet officials. Arakas escaped from a court and spent almost three months on the run before being captured.
He was subsequently jailed for 15 years and served ten of them in a Soviet military prison. On his release, he joined the Estonian Defence League and carried out subversive attacks on Russian officials.
Arakas was also in a gang called the Weekend Warriors, who fought rival gangs, and in the mid-1990s he graduated to become an enforcer for an Estonian crime group involved in a feud with the Russian mafia.
An Estonian police report at the time described him as an “excellent marksman”; and noted that he was suspected of murder, manslaughter, drug trafficking, prostitution rackets and gun and economic crimes.
In 1997 he was convicted of handling illegal guns and given probation. The same year he moved his family to Spain. In 1998 a would-be assassin tracked him down to Marbella and seriously wounded him.
As a member of an Estonian crime group on the Costa del Sol he forged a reputation as a gun for hire.
He still made trips home to Estonia, and was jailed for a short stint again in January 2012 for handling guns. As well as his criminal activities, he also claimed to be an actor and wrestler.
In 2016, Arakas carried out two gangland shootings in Lithuania. In July that year he shot Gija Zabachidze with a gun equipped with a silencer, but the target survived.
Then in the December he assassinated mixed martial arts fighter Remigijus Morkevicius in front of his partner, a Lithuanian pop star.
£100,000 reward
Arakas’s eventual downfall came in 2017 when he was arrested by Irish police for plotting to kill gangster James “Mago”; Gately, a member of the Kinahans’ rival Hutch gang.
A wig, an encrypted Blackberry phone and around £1,000 of euros and sterling were found by police when they arrested Arakas at the home of a Kinahan associate.
Arakas had been paid around £50,000 in euros and eventually admitted conspiracy to kill after he suffered a stroke behind bars.
After serving his six-year sentence, Arakas was extradited to Lithuania to face murder charges and was jailed in January this year, expressing his regret for the shootings.
Photographs showed him looking wizened, with long grey hair and a beard and wearing a skull cap — a far cry from the brutally sharp looks he had in his heyday as a hitman.
Irish Sun crime editor Stephen Breen interviewed Arakas in a video call in December 2023 while he was awaiting trial in Lithuania.
Arakas told Stephen — who has a bestselling book, Kinahan Assassins, with fellow Irish Sun crime reporter John Hand — that he had only gone to Ireland for a camping holiday.
But Essex Police believe differently, and are hopeful that a £100,000 reward offered by Ms Ketley and Palmer’s family through Crimestoppers may yet provide a breakthrough in the father-of-four’s murder.
Det Supt Jennings said: “I have no doubts it was a professional kill. I am hoping someone will come forward and provide that vital clue. We know that the key to solving Mr Palmer’s murder lies within the underworld.”;
An Essex Police spokesman said: “As with any unsolved murder, our investigation into the murder of John Palmer remains open.
“We have and continue to have correspondence with varying European countries.
“There are, however, legal limitations in terms of what enquiries we can conduct.”;
-  Anyone with information about John Palmer’s murder can contact Essex Police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
