Drug bosses have placed a £250,000 bounty on Olivia Pratt-Korbel‘s killer amid fears that he will ‘grass’ fellow gang members to lighten his sentence, it has emerged.
Thomas Cashman, 34, shot Olivia through her mother’s hand last August at their home in Dovecot, Liverpool. He had been aiming at drug dealer Joseph Nee, 36.
Cashman, who has reportedly been linked to three other unsolved murders, faces life imprisonment when he is sentenced tomorrow for Olivia’s death.
A gang insider told The Sun that a bounty to ‘silence him’ was issued and has already been circulating in the north and around jails. The source added that there are several people ‘who will not think twice about carrying it out’.
Drug bosses have placed a £250,000 bounty on murderer Thomas Cashman, 34, (pictured). He shot and killed nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel last August
Cashman is facing decades behind bars for killing nine-year-old schoolgirl Olivia (pictured)
News of the bounty was publicised via encrypted messaging app Telegram, the source explained.
Those who ordered the hit are understood to worry that Cashman will turn over information about gang executions and unsolved murders in an attempt to improve the terms of his imprisonment.
There is concern his testimony would cause a ‘world of pain’ for several big organised crime bosses who ‘do not want their activities being looked at.’
‘He has nothing to lose — he is cornered,’ the source told The Sun. ‘There’s lifers who will be mixing with him in months and years to come who will not think twice about carrying it out.’
The insider added that Cashman ‘knows everything there is to know about organised crime, drugs and violence’ in Merseyside.
The convicted killer claimed in court that he was only a cannabis dealer, but was allegedly known as a hitman who ‘thought nothing of putting a bullet in someone’.
Gang bosses issued a £250,000 bounty to ‘silence him’ amid fears that Cashman (pictured in a court sketch on Thursday after the verdicts were read) will ‘grass’ fellow criminals. News of the bounty has already been circulating in the north and around jails
Cashman is facing decades behind bars for killing nine-year-old schoolgirl Olivia (pictured)
Cashman killed Olivia and injured her mother Cheryl Korbel, 46, as he chased convicted drug dealer Nee into their home on August 22 last year.
He had tried to carry out the hit job on Nee while he was walking home from a friend’s house, but his gun jammed and Cashman’s target fled, barging into Olivia’s home in a bid to save himself.
Even though Cashman had murdered nine-year-old Olivia and failed to kill Nee, he reportedly demanded half of his £100,000 hitman fee.
Cashman was given the order to kill Nee because he owed a crime family a drugs debt, a source previously told The Sun.
They said: ‘Cashman has no heart. Everyone knew that Olivia had been fatally wounded but he didn’t seem to care, despite being a dad himself.’
The youngster’s devastated family cried tears of relief on Thursday when the jury at Manchester Crown Court unanimously convicted him of Olivia’s murder.
The career criminal was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Nee, as well wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm to Olivia’s mother.
He was also convicted of two counts of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
Terrifying CCTV footage showed a gun-wielding Cashman (in blue) hunting his intended target, Joseph Nee (in red)
The footage was released by Merseyside Police following Thursday’s verdict. Thomas Cashman (referred to as TC) can be heard shooting at his intended target
Pictured: A bullet hole in the front door of Olivia Pratt-Korbel’s family home, where the schoolgirl died inside
Cashman, a father-of-two, insisted that around the time of the shooting he had been at a friend’s house where he counted £10,000 in cash and smoked a spliff.
During his evidence, he told the court: ‘I’m not a killer, I’m a dad.’
But a woman who had a fling with Cashman told the jury he came to her house after the shooting, where he changed his clothes and she heard him say he had ‘done Joey’.
Giving evidence from behind a screen, Cashman’s former lover said she ‘ruined her life’ to help put the killer away.
She described how drug dealer Cashman had jumped over back gardens to seek refuge at her home on the night of August 22 last year.
After realising he had killed nine-year-old Olivia, she had reported the man she had been ‘infatuated’ with to the police – putting her own life on the line in the process.
Cashman insisted that around the time of the shooting he had been at a friend’s house where he counted £10,000 in cash and smoked a spliff. Pictured: An artist impression of Thomas Cashman giving evidence at Manchester Crown Court during his trial
Nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel was killed during the botched hit job on a convicted dealer
As the star witness at Cashman’s 18-day murder trial, she had to provide humiliating and tawdry details about the couple’s affair, including the size of Cashman’s genitalia.
Having become pivotal to Cashman’s conviction, she is said to have faced more threats than any witness Merseyside Police have ever dealt with.
Cashman, who is facing decades behind bars, told the court she was a ‘woman scorned’ and accused her of lying because she wanted to ‘ruin’ his life.
His ex has since been granted a lifetime of anonymity under the witness protection scheme and is believed to have been moved out of Liverpool.
