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Even by the standards of turn of the century gangland Manchester , Tommy Pitt' s brutality and propensity for violence set him apart.

Described by a judge as an 'infinitely cruel' man who was 'obsessed with his own importance', kidnap, torture and murder was his preferred way of doing business. But having been schooled in south Manchester's gangs from an early age, crime was the only life he knew.

He'd served time in a young offenders institution, been a gunman while barely out of junior school and as a young teen in the early 90s, he'd worked the notorious open-air drugs bazaar on the Alexandra Park estate. On the face of it his background made him textbook gangbanger material.

But the ruthless Pitt had something most of his criminal peers didn't - a lust for venge

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