Peter's Story
PETER WYNN is the kind of bloke you never think you’re going to meet but when you do it’s a revelation.
His is a story of transformation, of how a boy from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ grew up into a drug taker, drinker and feared villain – before God intervened. It’s a story that will shock and inspire in equal measure.
It all begins in Toxteth, Liverpool, in the late 1960s, where Peter is one of six children. He says: “My father left my mother on her own with six of us. He was an alcoholic. He came in and out of our lives in holidays, leaving my mum with bits of money and carrying on drinking.
“We were out of control. I played truant, stole, got involved with gangs. Some of the people I was involved with went on to be notorious gangsters in Liverpool.
“When I was first arrested, at the age of 10 for robbery, it was with Curtis Warren [notorious Liverpool gangster]. His dad wasn’t around either – all of us in the gangs had been left to run riot ourselves.”
Spending six years in care – “my mum thought it would be a cure, that everything would be okay” – between the ages of nine and 15, Peter’s life continues on its downward spiral. Mixing with still more soon-to-be gangsters who common sense prevents us from naming here, he “went through schools, stealing and robbing, and becoming more destructive and more violent.
“Would I say care was a positive experience? No. It was a negative experience. “
Things get worse. Leaving school at 16, Peter finds work as a scaffolder but two years later takes redundancy. He has continued to be involved in Liverpool’s burgeoning gang scene and by now, the crimes are getting more serious.
“In our area there were prostitutes and we would rob their clients and rob wagons. I got nicked for that, robbing a prostitute’s client, and got three years.
“I came out when I was 20. I started buying and selling knock-off property, smoking dope and selling dope. Then I started snorting cocaine and heroin and smoking heroin. “
Years pass. Peter finds himself in prison again, this time for driving under the influence, where his life begins to change – this time for the better. Not that he knows it at the time.
“I heard on the grapevine that there were these Christian people from Stockport who came in and if you went and spoke to them they got you out of prison but you had to go into rehab at a place called Chatterton Hay for three months. I asked to see them.
“I said I thought I could get off drugs, but what I really wanted was to fool them and get back on the street. This big guy said we have one golden rule about giving thanks to Jesus each day. When I got there I wouldn’t do that, but they said I could still stay. I was there for six months. It rehabilitated me from drugs. I did not think I met God, but it did put the seed in my head.”
While he’s at Chatterton Hay, Peter gets a call from his brother. There’s work available on the club scene down in Brighton. Peter’s a big chap, he knows how to handle himself - he’d make a great bouncer. He goes.
Slowly but surely, things start to change again. Peter’s not on drugs any more, but he’s “started binge drinking.
“We started getting lads down from Liverpool and doing bits of crime - we would charge them a few bob - and we started allowing people to sell drugs in the clubs for a share of the profits.
“We started having conflict with other Scouse doormen. We had one straightener [a fight between two gangs to settle a dispute] and one guy pulled a shotgun out and aimed it at me. My brother knocked the gun and it hit the wall.”
After another three months inside for drink driving, Peter comes out to find that there is a contract out on his life.
“My first day out of prison, I went straight into this guy’s boozer [the man who had put out the contract] and knocked him out. All his mates were in the back, and they did a job on me, with hammers and everything. They nearly killed me. “
After another prison term - this time for affray – Peter’s out again, only this time things are about to get very dark indeed.
“My sister and my brother in law came down to Brighton. They had gone out for a drink so later on I went out to try to find them.
“I went into one pub and ended up taking a knife from these kids in the toilet. It was the first time I had carried any kind of weapon.
“I carried on drinking. I went to this club where I used to be on the door and this bouncer said you’re not getting in the club. I said I am. He knocked me out.
“The knife fell out of the pocket in the jacket and as I came round there was my sister getting jumped on by the bouncers. As I grabbed the knife this guy came towards me as if he was going to hit me. I hit him in the side and he just bounced off me. “
Peter pleads guilty to manslaughter, but is sent down for murder. This is the part where his story starts to get better.
A lady he has never met writes to him before and after his trial, insistent that Peter is a man of God, and that he is to look out for the Alpha Course and do it.
“I did an Alpha Course at the Garth Prison in Preston. Nicky Gumbel’s team came in. The ninth week was holy spirit week. I said, please Lord Jesus come into my life and change my life.
”My whole body went hot, from my shoulders to my toes and I said I have had every drug in the world but I don’t want none of that. I jumped off the chair.”
Despite his terrifying encounter with the holy spirit, Peter’s faith deepens. An intervention by a probation officer who is a born again Christian helps him make it into HMP Grendon: “The hardest and best thing I have ever done in my life.
”It was full of the most notorious criminals you can ever think of. Every day you shared what you had done in your life. There were paedophiles, arsonists, armed robbers. It was very difficult for me. I used to beat these people up – but I couldn’t judge them any more after I read the Bible.
”This prison was based on Buddhism but I brought my Bible and I went through two years of it. I went in with 16 others and I was the only one who came out.”
Another prison – this time Preston – and another Alpha Course rolls into view: “ Week nine comes. I feel the ground rumble again, come right up through my feet and up to my hips and I jump back off the chair again.
“I said I don’t want none of it. It scared the life out of me. The pastor said, believe me, I have been all over the world and I haven’t had that experience and you have had it twice.
“Two weeks later he told me he had had a dream that I would evangelise on the streets of Toxteth.”
Two years pass. Peter’s moved again – this time to The Wode in Yorkshire – and “everyone’s on crack, heroin, and I am right in the middle of all this and I can’t cope.
”The vicar says there is a group of people who come in every four months, they are old people but old Christians. They come in on zimmer frames.
“They ask if anyone is having problems. I say I am! I have served 12 years of a life sentence, I have killed a man, I am a bit sceptical of the holy spirit and they are crying.
”They all walk over to me and as they get hold of me I feel this heat of the holy spirit go right through my feet again, right through my whole body. I just burst out crying and as I looked down there was a pool of tears on the floor. I cried for three days solid.
”I said I am staying there now, I am going to let the holy spirit come into my body. I stayed in the chair and my life was changed." |
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