Morgan family:
'Only judicial review will get to truth' (C4 News)
Their calls for an inquiry followed a meeting with representatives from Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service to discuss the findings of a review into the last (and fifth) investigation into what remains one of the Metropolitan Police's most notorious unsolved murders.
The most recent investigation collapsed last March, undermined by police failures to disclose documents to the defence and key "supergrass" witnesses who were found to be unreliable.
"We are not going to leave it alone,'' said Isobel Hulsmann, whose son Daniel was found with an axe embedded in his skull in a south London car park in March 1987.
On the handling of the subsequent investigations, the 84-year-old from Hay-on-Wye told Channel 4 News that the family have been "treated shabbily" and have "been battling against enormous odds'".
BBC:
The brother of the murdered private investigator Daniel Morgan says he has "zero hope" of anyone ever standing trial for the killing.
His comments follow a new report which blamed the collapse of a trial of three men charged with the murder on failures by police and prosecution.
...The new report was conducted jointly by the Crown Prosecution Service and Metropolitan Police and said four boxes were left in storage, instead of being disclosed to the defence, three of which were relevant to the trial proceedings.
This resulted in the collapse of a trial at the old Bailey last year.
The report also said several "supergrass" witnesses were not properly handled.
Five investigations have failed to find Mr Morgan's killer. There has also been an inquest into his death.
"Our objective really is to get this report out of the way," said Alistair Morgan.
"We know why the trial collapsed and the only surprise for us was how little there was in a report that had taken 15 months to compile."
What much of the reportage around this misses out is that the nature of the material that was not disclosed to the defence included a whole load of stuff accrued by the Met's CIB3 unit, which had a brief to investigate cops suspected of corruption.
The preferred methodology of these 'Untouchables' was to get 'supergrasses' - either career criminals or known corrupt officers - to roll over and name as many names as possible through prolonged periods of debriefing, much of it improperly recorded or entirely unrecorded. Interviews did not take place under caution, even when criminal offences had been admitted by supergrasses, and no lawyers were present. So you can see, there's something of reason there why the Met would not want to fully disclose...
In addition, these cops who supposedly hunted down bent cops were only interested in a certain kind of bent cop; so-called 'noble cause corruption' (that's old-fashioned fit-ups to you and me, whereby evidence would be planted on a suspect if none actually existed) was off limits.
Similarly, whilst these crusaders had a real bee in their bonnet about particular units (like Rigg Approach Flying Squad in East London) or nicks, they strangely appeared to have blind spots for the likes of Tower Bridge and Brixton, despite clear evidence of extensive networks of corruption, in both 'noble cause' and graft varieties. That many of the Untouchables themselves had served at these places is, of course, entirely coincidental.
The nature of being a copper is that you do move around with new postings, with promotions, with secondments to special squads. Certainly Detective Superintendent Chris Jarratt of the CIB Intelligence Cell (known previously as 'the Ghost Squad', a top secret intelligence-gathering unit from which the Untouchables emerged) knew quite a few of the cops - serving and retired - in what Gillard & Flynn drily call "Southern Investigation's circle of influence".
Indeed, through the Operation Nigeria bugs on Southern (which picked up on the conspiracy to plant drugs on a woman so as to put her estranged babyfather in a favourable custody position) it was also learned that there were plans to neutralise Jarratt through his close friendship with Keith Pedder, a copper with whom he worked at both Brixton and Tower Bridge. Oh, and they were both Freemasons (like many Untouchables, it seems).
All through all of this, the Untouchables straight-out denied to the Morgans the family's suspicion that Rees and Fillery were at a nexus of police criminal conspiracy - despite (i) having direct evidence of it, and (ii) discussing it at great length internally. Only the Morgan family's persistence and dogged determination for the truth has kept this going - the cops themselves wanted it shut down long ago.
Even now the Met is at pains to not investigate root corruption -
the statement released yesterday makes this explicit: "What the review was not was an investigation into allegations of corruption; nor was it intended to serve the purpose of an investigation for police disciplinary purposes."
As a footnote, let's be reminded of a few things. The report relates to the failed 'Abelard II' Morgan murder inquiry, which followed the failed 'Abelard'. That particular murder investigation was run by DCS Dave Cook, whilst at the same time CIBIC was scrabbling around in the background. Cook was unimpressed by what he learned of both the first investigation, and the Untouchables. He told the Morgan family this. Cook, of course, was the then-husband of
CrimeWatch cop Jacqui Hames; both were put under surveillance by the
News Of The World, whom you may recall were customers for Southern Investigations' work product, and whose senior reporter/part-time police station interpreter Alex Marunchak had excellent connections with numerous 'colourful' serving & former police officers.
Finally, a quick rollcall...
- Untouchables boss Roy Clark - ended up a Deputy Assistant Commissioner before moving over the the newly formed Independent Police Complaints Commission(!) as its first Director of Investigations before moving on to a similar role at HM Customs & Revenue
- Commander Andy "Wandering Hands" Hayman (Keith Vaz's "dodgy geezer") was in charge of CIB3 from 1999-2002 before becoming Norfolk Chief Const and then returning to the Met as Assitant Commissioner, and then a cushy job as a NewsInt columnist
- John Yates ("of the Yard", latterly Butcher of Bahrain) was a Detective Superintendent at CIB3 and was subsequently made Assistant Commissioner
- Chris Jarratt was also a Det Supt at CIB3
- Assistant Commissioner Mike Todd (later the dead Manc top cop), Det Supt Bob Quick, failed Lawrence investigator Cuddly Commander (later DAC) John Grieve, Det Ch Supt Roger Gaspar, DAC Barbara Wilding,... A few familiar names there, right?
