Murdered Daniel Morgan’s family seek judicial inquiry

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'”.

The first investigation into Daniel Morgan’s murder was, by the admission of Scotland Yard, “tainted” by police corruption.

It was described by former Assistant Commissioner John Yates, in a letter to the Metropolitan Police Authority six years ago, as a “deplorable episode in the history of the Metropolitan Police service”.

One of the detectives in the initial inquiry, Sid Fillery, who was close to one of the suspects, was charged with perverting the course of justice, but was eventually acquitted. In 25 years, no one has been convicted of the murder.

Daniel’s brother Alastair has led a relentless campaign to get to the truth of what really happened to his brother and the subsequent investigations into his murder.

Utterly disillusioned with the police, however, the family remain adamant that the only course of action left to them is an independent judicial inquiry. The Home Office today would not be drawn on the prospects of such a move.

A spokeswoman told Channel 4 News: “It is deeply regrettable that Daniel Morgan’s killers have not been brought to justice and we understand the strength of feeling this case has caused.

“We will carefully consider the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service’s joint report into the case.”