In the early hours of Saturday, November 9th, 2002, Theresa Pamela Jacobs, a thirty-three-year-old mother of three from Bulwell, stepped out of The Drum nightclub on Ilkeston Road in Radford, Nottingham, England. Moments later, as the club was closing and dozens of people milled about on the normally busy city street near Radford Boulevard, she was shot once in the back of the head at point-blank range.
The killer, described only as a man wearing a hooded garment, fled on foot along Ilkeston Road. Theresa was rushed by ambulance to the Queen’s Medical Centre, where she was pronounced dead. She had been with a male friend at the time. Approximately forty people were outside the venue, yet only a handful came forward as witnesses.
Police immediately classified the killing as a deliberate, execution-style hit. Detectives from Nottinghamshire Police, speaking under the banner of Operation Stealth, a major initiative launched that summer to combat drug-related gun crime in the city, stated that Theresa was the intended target in the ongoing battle for control of the lucrative hard-drugs trade.
Theresa Jacobs, also known as Tina James or sometimes referred to in reports as Terrisia or Teressa Jacobs, lived on Courtleet Way in Bulwell. Later accounts described her as a crack cocaine dealer operating within Nottingham’s volatile drug networks.
The murder took place against a backdrop of escalating gang violence in areas such as Radford, St Ann’s and The Meadows, where rival groups, including so-called Yardie-linked networks and local factions like the Playboy Posse and Waterfront Gang, were increasingly settling disputes with firearms.
Just days later, on November 13th, 2002, thirty-three-year-old Aston Alfonzo Bola of Beechdale Road, Beechdale, Nottingham, was charged with Theresa Jacobs’ murder. He appeared in Nottingham magistrates’ court and later denied the charge at a hearing. However, the case against him collapsed when the Crown Prosecution Service offered no evidence at trial.
More than twenty-three years later, no one has been convicted of Theresa Jacobs’ murder.
Crime Immemorial 