JOEL Andem – the leader of the notorious Joel Andem gang – came to national prominence in 2000 after the abduction and murder of gas station operator Sylvia Edwards in August of that year.

However, Andem, who will celebrate his 41st birthday on August 17 – considered old for a gang leader – has had more than two decades of involvement in crimes – larceny, extortion, robbery, kidnappings, gun running and contract killings.

Andem, also known as “Bald Head” and “Lean Head”, and who was described by the police as a semi-literate, grew up with his mother, sisters and a brother in the tough communities of Eleven Miles in Bull Bay, St Andrew and Back Bush in East Kingston.

His first brush with the law was in June 1983 when he was convicted for larceny in the Half-Way-Tree Criminal Court and was given a six-month suspended sentence. Seven years later, in May 1990, Andem was back before the court.

This time for illegal possession of firearm, robbery with aggravation and wounding with intent.

He was sentenced to a total of 42 years, but was released in August 1998 on parole. But soon he was back to his old ways – a life of crime.

A police officer who was assigned to a special unit of the Flying Squad that was set up to hunt for Andem told the Observer in a March 2002 interview that Andem directed members of the “Gideon Warriors”, as the gang was named, while he was incarcerated at the General Penitentiary, a maximum security prison in Kingston.

The gang, the police said, included Andem’s former prison colleagues who operated mainly in the Kintyre area of Papine, St Andrew.

The Andem gang, up to March 2002, was said to be responsible for 20 murders. They included:

. Sylvia Edwards, the gas station operator who was abducted and later murdered and buried in a shallow grave after family members failed to pay a $200,000 ransom;

. Edwards’ brother-in-law, Everett Edwards, who was shot dead across the road from her gas station on Hagley Park Road in Kingston, in November 2001, a day before he was scheduled to testify at the preliminary inquiry of three men held for the murder of the gas station operator;

. Pearl Brascoe, an Eastern St Andrew People’s National Party activist, who was shot dead in November 2000 after being branded as a police informer. His body was dumped in a water tank in August Town; and

. District Constable James Thomas, who was shot dead in Kintyre in November 2000 while he was on his way to work at the Papine Police Station. His body was thrown in the Hope River.

It was, however, the high-profile murder of Sylvia Edwards that prompted police to forge a special team in the Flying Squad to hunt Andem and his fellow gangsters. A $100,000 bounty was also placed on his head.

But up to yesterday, the closest the police got to the six-foot Andem, also linked to several extortion rackets in Kingston, was during a raid at his Rawley Hill Gully ‘camp’, about seven kilometres from Papine.

Andem escaped during the police operation. But the lawmen seized a video cassette that had scenes with Andem and members of his gang partying and brandishing firearms.

There was also a section where the gangsters tortured a stolen cow before killing the animal. Also seized in the raid was a notebook with the names of several people, including politicians and journalists, whom the gang had planned to killed. The names of those on the list were not released by the police.

Andem was described as a cold-blooded murderer who would kill members of his own gang whom he no longer trusted.

“.He would kill you if he looks at you and doesn’t like you,” the police officer told the Observer in the March 2002 interview.