Whoever attacked Daniel Morgan in the car park of a south London pub on a March night 24 years ago intended to silence him for ever. The axe used to kill him struck with such force it was left embedded to the haft in the dead man's face, its handle covered with sticking plaster to hide traces of fingerprints.
Morgan's brutal and efficient killing was like something out of a Raymond Chandler novel, but his life as a private detective had been a little more prosaic than that of the fictional gumshoe Philip Marlowe.
The bulk of his work at Southern Investigations, the small south London private detective agency he set up with a partner, involved him acting as a bailiff or utilising his particular talent for remembering car registration plates and telephone numbers.
Private detectives make enemies, and according to associates Morgan, 37 when he died, was not the most tactful. He was also known to be a womaniser and was said to have had at least one affair. But it was not a grudge held by a jealous husband that transformed the case into one of the most notorious in the recent history of Scotland Yard: it was the stench of police corruption that has hung over the case and refused to lift for 24 years.
As Scotland Yard surveys the tatters of the Morgan case the picture has become not clearer but more opaque. There is fresh evidence of misconduct, dishonesty and deceit by Yard officers, with some of the detectives engaged in finding the truth accused of crossing the line themselves.
Among those surveying the wreckage is Acting deputy commissioner John Yates, the man who supervised the latest investigation into the Morgan murder and promised the dead man's family he would bring the case to court.
Morgan's brother Alastair and his elderly mother believed, with credible evidence to draw on, that he was killed because he was about to expose a network of corrupt police who were involved in widespread criminality and used Southern Investigations as a conduit for drugs and money. Morgan's business partner, Jonathan Rees, counted many officers as friends. One of his specialities was to use his "friends" in the force to provide information which he sold to tabloid newspapers.
Rees was cleared of murder on Friday alongside his brothers-in-law, Glenn and Garry Vian. A criminal associate, Jimmy Cook, was cleared at an earlier hearing. A fifth man, a former police detective from Catford, Sid Fillery, who moonlighted at Southern Investigations, was cleared at an earlier hearing of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Four police inquiries had failed to bring anyone to justice, only fuelling the allegations of cover-up. The case was mentioned in the House of Commons amid calls for a judicial review and four commissioners have come and gone while the controversy dragged on.
Over the two decades, the investigations kept coming back to a number of the same suspects.
Fillery was involved in the original failed murder inquiry and interviewed Rees under caution, taking possession of key incriminating files from the premises of Southern Investigations, according to MP Roger Williams, who raised the case under parliamentary privilege in 2004. A year after Morgan's killing, Fillery left the Met on medical grounds and took the dead man's place as a partner at Southern Investigations.
For two decades, however, all five suspects have denied any involvement in the killing. All except Fillery were held for nearly two years in custody awaiting trial. It emerged in legal argument that more than 40 other people had motives to kill Morgan, but they were never subjected to the same level of investigation.
Golden Lion meeting
Morgan's murder took place outside the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham on Tuesday 10 March 1987. That evening he had gone to the pub for a meeting with Rees to discuss an issue which was testing the men's increasingly fraught relationship. Rees had claimed that while transporting £18,000 for Belmont Car Auctions, one of Southern Investigations' clients, along with at least one moonlighting police officer, he had been robbed of the cash. Morgan and Belmont Car Auctions suspected this was a fabrication and Rees and his associates had taken the money.
Whatever was said in the Golden Lion that night is not known. But when Rees left the pub at 8.55pm he called out goodbye as if nothing unusual had passed between the men.
A few minutes later Morgan also left, but he did not get far. At 9.30pm his body was discovered lying next to his BMW with an axe protruding at right angles from his face. There were two packets of crisps in his hand and his suit trousers had been ripped.
During the first murder inquiry Fillery failed to reveal his connections with Rees and the agency. Years later Sir Ian Blair, as Met commissioner, admitted the inquiry had been "compromised".
In the ensuing years there were several attempts to gather evidence as the Met fought off increasingly vociferous claims that police corruption was the reason no one had been brought to justice for Morgan's murder. At least three surveillance operations were staged into Southern Investigations, and the defendants, including an operation in which Scotland Yard bought the house next to Glenn Vian's in Orchard Road, Croydon, as a base for their work.
The surveillance did uncover more about Southern Investigations' relationship with corrupt police officers and tabloid newspapers, but nothing to clearly incriminate the men in the murder. One operation was brought to an untimely end when police heard Rees outlining a plot to plant cocaine on an innocent woman in order that her estranged husband could get custody of their child in divorce proceedings.
Anti-corruption officers decided they had to move in. Rees was arrested, charged and received a six-year jail term, increased to seven on appeal, for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. But despite finding more evidence of the sleazy activities of the agency, police were no closer to proving who killed Morgan.
In 2005 a fifth murder inquiry was set up from a secret location away from Scotland Yard under the supervision of Yates, who had vowed to get to the bottom of "one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the Met police service".
Leading the inquiry was Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook, a tenacious maverick who believes that all murders can be solved if you look for the right opportunities. Reporting directly to Yates, Cook eventually believed he had found these opportunities within the criminal underworld, where associates, relatives and enemies of the suspects were persuaded 20 years on, with offers of reduced sentences, protection and new identities, to talk about who murdered Daniel Morgan.
It was a high-risk strategy. The witnesses on whom Cook built his case included career criminals. He would be asking a jury to believe men who made a living out of lies and deceit.
Supergrasses
The most significant "supergrass" witness, a 50-year-old man, was described in court as a man with a serious personality disorder and a history of offending which included the large-scale supply of drugs, armed robbery, blackmail, firearms offences, violence against women and conspiracy to murder.
Sources close to the investigating team say the main supergrass volunteered key information about the killing, saying he had been offered a substantial sum to kill Morgan. He agreed to testify as a supergrass or "assisting offender" under the Serious and Organised Crime and Policing Act 2005 – the first time the Met had used the legislation, which was introduced to formalise the use of criminals as witnesses and reduce the risk of corruption.
One important change in the legislation was the requirement that investigating officers hand supergrasses over to an independent team of debriefers whose job it was to handle the witnesses. In the debriefing, the supergrasses have to admit all their past offences and be honest about their lives.
The main supergrass admitted a string of serious offences and voluntarily handed over £80,000 of his criminal earnings. But, the court heard, the informant was not honest about everything. He lied about the death of his father – who was very much alive – and he lied about serving in the Falklands with the Royal Navy, and with the US navy during the American invasion of Panama, all of which went to the heart of his honesty as a witness.
In October 2008 a senior officer at the Yard wrote a memo detailing his concerns about the apparent corruption of the main supergrass as a witness, claiming that the sterile corridor between the investigating team and informant had been breached, and officers had tried to coach him.
An urgent meeting was held between Yates and another senior officer at 7.40am on 2 October2008 to discuss the memo, which was marked "confidential, not for copying". Yates asked for the memo's allegations to be investigated. They went to the heart of the integrity of the Morgan operation, with the memo warning that the contact between the detectives on the murder team and the supergrass witness could compromise the whole operation and be seen as abuse of process.
But the internal inquiry initiated by Yates lasted only a few hours, the court heard. By 4.30pm that day the memo was marked NFA (no further action.) Cook, the head of the murder inquiry team, was asked by a member of Yates's team about contacts with the main supergrass. When he categorically denied any the matter was closed.
Shortly afterwards, under a pseudonym, the informant admitted 20 serious offences and asked for 31 more to be taken into consideration. His 25-year sentence was reduced to three as a result of his co-operation in the Morgan inquiry.
At the same sentencing hearing, Cook was asked by the judge whether he had uncovered any material which contradicted or undermined the supergrass's account to him.
He replied: "No."
During legal argument in the Morgan case at the Old Bailey, Cook was cautioned by the judge before being accused by a defence lawyer of committing perjury with this reply.
Defence teams said that he had "bags of material" to show the informant was not being honest about his testimony in the Morgan case.
A further internal report revealing that the supergrass had spent his time in a police safe house drinking excessive quantities of alcohol with his girlfriend revealed more details about his unsuitability, the defence said.
The evidence about his unreliability and the suggestion of police misconduct led to him being dropped as a witness by the judge in February last year.
Mr Justice Maddison, the trial judge, said his decision was partly due to the "misbehaviour" of Cook and a fellow officer.
Murder allegations
With that informant's departure there was no evidence against Fillery, who was accused of perverting the course of justice, and proceedings against him were stayed.
The second key supergrass witness recruited by Cook was Sally Ann Wood, the former girlfriend of Jimmy Cook.
Wood, who had an eight-year affair with Cook, claimed he had confessed the killing was organised by Rees, using the Vians as the muscle and himself as the driver.
But Wood raised questions about her own credibility when she made further allegations to her handlers about 12 other killings involving some of the suspects. She claimed that she had been present at one murder and had fired a shot into the dead body of one victim.
By the end of last year Wood had claimed knowledge of 30 murders, a claim that forced the homicide unit at the Yard, and detectives in Surrey and Essex, to set up specialist teams to investigate her allegations.
Over months detectives pursued her claims. Sites where she said bodies had been buried were excavated and her computer was examined.
But Wood was apparently making up much of what she was alleging. In legal argument at the Old Bailey it was claimed she had inserted the names of missing persons into the Google search engine to come up with many of her claims about the murders.
The revelation meant she could no longer be a witness of credibility. She was dropped last November and Nick Hilliard QC, prosecuting, called for the acquittal of Jimmy Cook as a result.
The only remaining supergrass of substance, James Ward, was the last to be ejected from the trial process. The 59-year-old criminal, who specialised in the large scale importation of cannabis, had known Garry Vian through the criminal underworld. In 2005 the men were jailed for 17 and 14 years respectively for drugs offences.
It was while Ward was in prison in early 2006 that he began talking to Detective Chief Superintendent Cook and entered the assisting offender programme.
He was removed from prison to a secure unit for a debriefing, which took seven months. As part of his cleansing Ward admitted more drugs offences and was sentenced at the Old Bailey to a reduced term of four years in prison. He also had the sentence he was serving reduced to five years as a result of his co-operation in the Morgan investigation, eventually reduced to three years on appeal.
Ward claimed that Glenn Vian had told him the Morgan killing was a £20,000 hit and had referred to using an axe. He claimed Glenn had killed Morgan and that Garry referred to it as the Golden Wonder murder because Morgan was found with two bags of crisps in his hand.
But when 18 crates of evidence were suddenly discovered by the Met last year the true nature of Ward's relationship with police over nearly 30 years was exposed.
Ward had denied being a police informant, but documents in the crates revealed he had been a registered police informant since 1987 under the pseudonym Jack Baker. There was also evidence, the defence said in court, that Ward was involved in serious police corruption. Defence counsel said new material in the crates of evidence suggested he had paid £50,000 to a senior Yard officer, understood to be in the drugs squad, to get a reduced sentence. Defence teams said the Met had deliberately withheld the crates to hide Ward's corrupt relationship with officers.
David Whitehouse QC, for Glenn Vian, said: "[Ward] is a career criminal who has been able to remain active in crime by playing the informant – he has had relationships, including financial relationships with police officers. He has given information to the police, some of it true, some not true. The result is the police have been prepared to make representations to judges to seek lighter sentences when he is caught."
As the new documents uncovered layers of misconduct and corrupted relationships between Ward and the police going back to 1987, the relationship between the prosecution and the Morgan murder team dissolved into acrimony. Prosecuting counsel told the judge there were discrepancies between police accounts and their knowledge of when the crates had been found.
When the Met revealed on 7 March that they had found another four crates of evidence, the relationship reached breaking point and prosecuting counsel looked likely to withdraw. At two high-level meetings at the Yard, police and prosecutors made the decision to pull the case.
The collapse of the costly and notorious investigation leaves a backlog of unanswered questions and accusations of institutionalised dishonesty. After tens of millions of pounds in public money, those who wielded the axe against Daniel Morgan can also rest in the knowledge that they will probably never be brought to justice.
Author: Sandra Laville
Journalist
guardian.co.uk - Friday 11th March 2011.
Links and further reading:
The website set up by Daniel Morgan's family http://www.justice4daniel.org/index.htm
Two books cover the case in depth: Bent Coppers: The inside story of Scotland Yard's battle against police corruption
(Graeme McLagan) and Untouchables: Dirty Cops, Bent Justice and Racism in Scotland Yard
(Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn).'Daniel Morgan murder, 24 years, five police enquiries but no justice', Guardian, March 11, 2011.
Original pictures of the murder scene in 1987 can be found in 'Corrupt police are blamed for £50m collapse of murder case', Daily Mail, March 11, 2011.
'Murder trial collapse exposes News of the World links to police corruption', 'Jonathan Rees: private investigator who ran empire of tabloid corruption', Guardian, March 11, 2011.
'Phone Hacking Scandal: Rees obtained information using dark arts', Guardian, June 8, 2011.
'News of the World spied on detective during murder enquiry,' Telegraph, July 5, 2011
