ERSKINE Durrant (Buck) Burrows was a throwaway child who spent a lifetime trying to fill the emotional void in the centre of his life with surrogate families. He found one stand-in father in the Commissioner of Bermuda's Police Force then replaced him with implacable para-militaries who manipulated the Prospect janitor into assassinating his one-time friend and embarking on what turned into a year-long killing and robbery spree.

Militant members of the Black Beret Cadre Burrows' transformed the shy loner who was Commissioner George Duckett's improbable friend and sidekick into a dogma-spouting gunman who shot his friend in cold blood and then went on a trigger-happy rampage that claimed four other lives and terrorised the Bermuda community in 1972 and 1973.

"Buck was the perfect ? no, make that the plusperfect ? patsy, a low-rent Manchurian Candidate who the Black Berets groomed to be, first, their agent in place at Police Headquarters in Prospect and then their remote-controlled assassin," says a former Bermuda Cabinet Minister familiar with the tragic story.

"If 'Buck' Burrows' path never crossed that of the Black Berets, he'd still be pushing a broom at Prospect and probably would never have killed a fly.

"I remember when he confessed to robbing the Bank of Bermuda and the Piggly Wiggly in '74 and he was led out of the courtroom shouting and these other leftist slogans. Christ, 'Buck' Burrows didn't know Fidel Castro from castor oil ? but he was the ultimate empty vessel, one the militants in the Black Berets filled with their poison, with their revolutionary propaganda, and he was so lonely, so desperate for acceptance, that he swallowed all this stuff without objection.

"They styled him as 'Commander in Chief of All Anti-Colonial Forces in Bermuda' and the poor guy never realised he was in charge of an army of one; himself. The Berets were setting him up to do the dirty work they in fact themselves were too cowardly to carry out.

"You have to recognise that the handful of militants in the Black Beret ? the real hardcore types ? were criminals masquerading as revolutionaries, manipulative and cowardly thugs. They exploited the naivete of the Black Beret mainstream who were, by and large, a bunch of teenagers and college students caught up in the revolutionary spirit of the times ? this was the late 1960s, early 1970s, remember, when young people really believed they were going to change the world and when every other kid had a poster of Che Guevara on their wall and Chairman Mao-Tse Tung'son their bedside table."

The Black Beret Cadre was founded by the late John Hilton Bassett out of the rump of the former Progressive Labour Party Youth Wing following a Black Power conference held in Bermuda in 1969. Believing the PLP was moving too slowly and too cautiously to bring about political and economic reform in Bermuda, they took their lead from the firebrand Black Panther Party in America and its black nationalist agenda.

"There were probably never more than 150 members of the Black Berets at its zenith and most of them were focussed on trying to raise cultural awareness among black Bermudians ?-trying to make them more conscious of their heritage and history and so better prepared to face the future in an island that was going through some very rapid social and economic changes," said the retired politician.

"But there were a handful of members who wanted to form a Black Panther-type 'self-defence organisation' behind the front of the Black Beret Cadre ? really just a front for criminality and strong-arm tactics.

"They'd sit and read books like ? a popular how-to manual for the aspiring urban guerrilla ? and collections of Fidel Castro's speeches and tracts like Eldridge Cleaver's andFrantz Fanon's and spout passages from these books to try and give their activities a veneer of intellectual respectability.

"They had some half-assed guru in Canada, a lecturer at Carleton University in Ottawa which was then a hotbed of militant, leftist agitation, who they used to consult with. He flew in and out of Bermuda and they visited him in Canada. Interestingly, most of the weapons used by 'Buck' Burrows, which had been supplied to him by the Cadre militants, were stolen during a break-in at a store in Antigonish, Nova Scotia and then smuggled into Bermuda."

"But make no mistake about it ? these were gangsters first, radicals second. At one time the militants wanted to send one of their members to Cuba for training at one of Castro's para-military schools ? at the time there were kids from all over Europe, South America and Asia being trained by Castro so they could go back home and stir up trouble along the lines of his Cuban revolution. But the Berets could never figure out a way to get one of their people into Cuba.

"While the mainstream of the Berets were adamantly against drug use in the black community, at the self-same time the militants worked very closely with the individual who at that time was the largest drug pusher in Bermuda: The organised drug trade was in its infancy in those days and I suppose they provided muscle and protection for him when he needed it.

"And at the same time they provided a constant distraction that kept the Police focused on rather than the pushers he was operating ? the Berets were highly conspicuous, wandering around in their trademark berets, military-type camouflage jackets and paratrooper boots, wearing these huge sunglasses like they were refugees from the .

"Ironically, it was this same drug pusher who ultimately provided the police with 'Buck's' name in late '73 ? after Buck had gone completely off the rails and started shooting up everything in sight. The heat came down like you wouldn't believe and this guy's drug business came to a complete halt. The only way to get the business up and running again was to finger 'Buck' to the cops. So he did. That's how they broke the case ? that's how they tied 'Buck' to the assassinations and the armed robberies.

"But I'm getting ahead of myself. At the time the drug pusher thought it would make sense to forge an alliance of convenience with the hardcore cases in the Black Berets in about 1970, it must have made sense. The Berets were publicity conscious and they were always getting into trouble ? spitting on tourists, marching on Parliament, burning the British flag on the steps of City Hall, occupying the dining room at the Mid Ocean Club and organising a string of mini-riots that kept breaking out in the late '60s and early '70s in and around Hamilton.

"It was pretty pennyante stuff, really, but the Police had their hands full with these guys and the authorities overreacted and put a few of them away in Casemates on charges of sedition ? trying to incite a revolution.

"That was in 1971. And while the Berets were in Casemates, they met 'Buck' Burrows ? who was serving a sentence for a series of crimes I honestly don't think he committed."

son of a single mother who died when he was just 12 years old, Erskine Burrows never knew his father. He spent just six years in school, at Central and West Pembroke. After his mother's death, he was for a time brought up by older sisters but then became a ward of the Lady Cubitt Compassionate Association and lived at The Haven and The Sunshine League.

From the age of 13, Burrows held a number of jobs including caddying at Ocean View Golf Course, working at two soft drink factories and, for a number of years in the early 1970s, serving as a civilian employee at Police Headquarters, Prospect.

His position was terminated after he repeatedly did not show up for work in July, 1973.

He had a record of convictions dating back to 1960 when he stole two cigarette lighters.

From then he was convicted and sentenced on various charges of stealing, burglary, removal, escaping from lawful custody, robbery and assault.

He had spent almost ten of his 29 years in prison at the time of his arrest on October 18, 1973.

At the time of his arrest in October, 1973 Burrows used the nicknames "Buck", "Dipper", "The Cuba Kid" and "Cuba". He had only adopted "The Cuba Kid" and "Cuba" as after his release from Casemates in September, 1971 when the Black Berets began to indoctrinate him and shape him into their one-man guerrilla force.

Despite his extensive record, Burrows was popular with the police officers who so often arrested him in the 1960s for relatively minor crimes. In fact, some veteran officers recall that Burrows actually to be arrested because he had come to regard the Police as a type of substitute family ("We were the only people who paid any attention to him," says one former policeman, "and most of us liked him. I suppose in 'Buck's' mind attention from us was better than no attention whatsoever."). The Police considered him to be a likeable and non-violent individual; lonely and friendless.

So Burrows was eventually taken on as a trusty at Prospect, given a room to live in at a Police barracks and the Police Force became the family he never had.

Aside from his custodial duties at Police Headquarters, Burrows was sufficiently trusted to make extra money doing everything from washing officers' private cars to babysitting their children.

He quickly became a special favourite of Commissioner George Duckett, who arrived on the island in 1969 after serving in Nigeria and Jamaica. Burrows became a fixture at Duckett's home, "Bleak House", on North Shore, performing routine maintenance chores and, more often than not, listening attentively as Commissioner Duckett regaled him with stories about police work in Africa and the Caribbean.

It was while working as a janitor at Police Headquarters that Burrows had been convicted of a series of break-ins at Police officers' homes in Prospect and served a term at Casemates after a confession was beaten out of him.

Two rogue policemen conducted what some former officers still refer to as "an interrogation by night-stick" on the short, slightly-built janitor in a broom closet located beneath the main staircase in the Police Headquarters building.

Burrows came into contact with doctrinaire members of the small, militant wing of the Black Beret Cadre while incarcerated.

"What I am convinced happened is that, at that moment of time, and probably quite accidentally, the small ring of BBC leaders . . . suddenly realised that fate had put a new weapon in their hands in the form of (this) easily impressed and not very bright young criminal," said former Governor Sir Edwin Leather after Burrows was arrested.

"Burrows' body and spirit were both grievously wounded and his faith in the institution that had become his extended family was completely shattered," says one former senior police officer. "He became a willing convert to the Black Power movement and absorbed the revolutionary fodder the Berets inculcated him with both in Casemates and after his release. They became his new surrogate family but, of course, they also abandoned him in the end ? they let him take the fall for the crimes they had planned."

The Black Berets recruited Burrows as a spy and while he was in prison, recognising his immense potential value to their revolutionary cause ? Commissioner Duckett had, after all, organised for Burrows to take part in a Casemates day-release programme and work at "Bleak House" while he was serving his sentence and offered him his job back when he got out of prison.

"Duckett didn't believe 'Buck' was guilty of the break-ins," said the retired officer, "but the Berets played on the fact that 'Buck's' so-called 'friend' hadn't been able to prevent what had happened, hadn't been able to stop him being beaten up and going to jail. They planted the seeds of doubt in his head, they confused him, they made him feel that Duckett ? as Commissioner of Police ? was ultimately responsible for what had happened to him, that he was in fact the living embodiment of the oppression and unhappiness 'Buck' had endured all of his life.

"They tried to dehumanise Duckett in Burrows' head ? to turn him into a symbol of Colonial oppression. But I don't think they ever completely succeeded. 'Buck' able to depersonalise (former Governor Sir Richard) Sharples (who he assassinated in March, 1973) ? read his confession, which is 14 pages long and full of asides about him being an extension of the 'wicked colonialist system'. You won't find any such attempts at self-justification in the Duckett confession ? which is just two pages of bare-bones facts."

murderous betrayal of his former friend probably weighed on his mind for the rest of his life and may have been the impetus for him to embrace Christianity in 1975 and confess to most of his crimes ("He never admitted the double-homicide that took place at the Shopping Centre," says the retired officer, "because those murders came about while 'Buck' was committing an armed robbery to pay off his gambling debts; the money wasn't going to be used to finance any real or imaginary revolutionary. Those were cold blooded killings which no amount of political window dressing could validate or rationalise. And he knew it.")

"Duckett and 'Buck' were a real-life says the retired officer. "People still find it hard to believe that big, bluff, hell-raising George Duckett and quiet, timid Buck Burrows were friends but they were.

"It wasn't a case of master and minion, not at all. Duckett genuinely liked Buck and Buck liked and respected Duckett. It was an attraction of opposites, I suppose.

"Duckett had very little time for Prospect politics and knew that many of the officers who tried to insinuate themselves into his good graces were simply trying to curry favour with the boss.

"I suppose he found Buck, who was the original innocent abroad, a genuinely refreshing change ? someone who liked him for his personality; someone who laughed at his jokes because he thought they were funny not because he was trying to toady to him; someone who didn't want anything from him other than his companionship.

"And you have to recognise that Buck was something of a lifelong follower in search of a leader. He thought he'd found that in Duckett ? this larger-than-life man who was charismatic, outspoken and tough became his his mentor, his protector, his benefactor ? in very many ways his father figure. "

"And it's no coincidence the Berets got him to start his killing spree by shooting his one-time friend. This wasn't just a homicide it was a symbolic patricide ? there could be no coming back, no backing out from his 'mission', after he had killed his surrogate father. They believed absolutely would be possible after that. And, of course, it was."