“You know how New Jersey has the Sopranos? Well Halifax has the Kneževićs.” “Untouchable” is how Sgt Cawood describes Halifax gangsters the Kneževićs, the Yorkshire-Central/Eastern European (possibly Croatian) family whose criminal enterprises keep Catherine and her police colleagues busy in the Calder Valley. They’re drug dealers and people traffickers whose shadowy hand runs the local underworld. Everybody knows who’s behind their crimes, but nobody can link any evidence to them, and potential witnesses are too terrified by threats of violence and death to speak up.
2014: Ashley Cowgill, Darius Knežević and Gary Kokovski
With good reason. In Series 1, we saw one of the Kneževićs’ employees shot dead by them despite being in police protection. Local drug dealer Ashley Cowgill had been arrested for colluding in the kidnap and ransom of Ann Gallagher, the daughter of wealthy local businessman Nev Gallagher. Ashley and his accomplice Kevin Weatherill had planned the kidnapping as an easy payday, not intending anybody to get hurt, but then Ashley made the grave error of involving Happy Valley villain Tommy Lee Royce, an associate of the Kneževićs recently released from an eight-year prison sentence on drug charges. Royce murdered a police officer, savagely beat Catherine, drugged and raped Ann, and stabbed his accomplice Lewis to death. This is the first we’ve heard of Gary Kokovski’s murder on Happy Valley, and timeline-wise, it took place in April 2014, just after Tommy Lee Royce’s release from prison, before he got involved in Ann’s kidnap. Kokovski’s corpse is a boon for Yorkshire police, who might finally have something concrete (excuse the pun) to pin on Darius Knežević. They just need the cooperation of prisoner Tommy Lee Royce, who was present at the murder, to take Darius down. Surprise surprise, Royce won’t cooperate, and instead names the Kneževićs Oldham rival Chris Oxley as Gary’s murderer. It’s possible that Royce made a deal with the Kneževićs to spare his life (Darius ordered his murder in prison when Kokovski’s body was discovered) in exchange for naming Oxley.
2016: Aurelia, Ilinka, Goran Dragović and the Sex-Trafficking Ring
Putting bodies in reservoirs is by no means the extent of the Kneževićs’ crimes. As well as drug-dealing, Series 2 revealed that they also operate a sex-trafficking ring (“Course it would be the Kneževićs trafficking women, that’d be right up their alley”.) When trafficking victim Ilinka Blazevic escaped to Catherine’s police station, the illegal brothel she was being forced to work at by the Kneževićs was raided. During the raid, Catherine tasered sex trafficker Goran Dragović, who was arrested but later released on bail, which was paid for by his employers the Kneževićs. They didn’t help Dragović out of the goodness of their hearts, but in order to kill him to stop him from incriminating them. His hanged body was discovered by a nun in a local park, staged to look like a suicide, but it was clear that this was also the Kneževićs’ handiwork. At one point in Series 2, it looked as though the Kneževićs were behind the serial killings of sex workers. One of the victims was Aurelia Petrovic, a sex trafficking victim controlled by the Kneževićs, identified by escaped trafficking victim Ilinka. Catherine placed Ilinka with her elderly neighbour Winnie Babbage, who spoke the same language as the trafficked women. When Winnie asked why Catherine didn’t arrest the Kneževićs’, she told her, “They’re clever clever bastards. It’s one thing knowing somebody’s done something, it’s a different kettle of fish having the evidence to arrest them for it.” Happy Valley Series 3 airs on Sundays at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.
