Why did police spy on grieving father?

In today's episode I have an exclusive interview with John Burke-Monerville who has the unwanted distinction of being the father of three sons who were all murdered - in 1994, 2013 and 2019 - in London. But as if John's story was not tragic and shocking enough, it has emerged in recent years that he and his family were spied on for years by undercover officers. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, and welcome back to the Tel Crime Podcast. I'm Chris Summers, and this is episode nine. Today I have an astonishing story for you. And an interview with a father who has lost three sons, all murdered in separate incidents in London over the last thirty years. But what is even more shocking about this story is that the Metropolitan Police spied on him and his family for years. The man at the heart of the story is John Burke Monaville, who was born in St. Lucia and came to Britain in the 1960s, like so many young men from the Caribbean at that time. Before I play some excerpts of my interview with him, let me give you a very brief synopsis of his story and what he's going to talk about. In the early hours of New Year's Day 1987, John's son Trevor vanished after what is believed to be an altercation with officers from the notorious Stoke Newington police station in Northeast London. That night, Trevor suffered life-changing injuries, which completely altered his personality, but the police denied assaulting him. Seven years later, Trevor was murdered in North London, a crime that remains unsolved to this day. In February 2013, another son, 19-year-old Joseph, was shot by members of a gang in Hackney on a ride-out looking for members of a rival gang. Joseph's twin brother, Jonathan, and his older brother David were both wounded. None of the brothers were gang members. Nobody has been convicted of Joseph's murder. Then, in tw June 2019, his son David was stabbed to death in Barnet. Three men were convicted for that murder and jailed for life in 2020. But the family was also spied on by the police over a number of years because of the Trevor Monaville campaign, which they set up in 1987 to find out what had happened to him at the hands of Stoke Newington police. When he testified to the undercover policing inquiry in 2024, John said, The discovery that I, my family, and the campaign we set up for justice for my son was spied on by undercover police has had a significant traumatic impact on me. I recently interviewed John and his wife Linda at his solicitor's office in North London. So let's hear from John. And he starts off by talking about what he thought about the police as a young and naive man arriving in Britain. Once again, I have to apologize that the sound quality is not ideal, and my voice when I'm asking the questions is almost inaudible.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Well, my uncle I had an uncle. He was a policeman. Then I have a nephew, a cousin really. He was a policeman. There have been about two or three, three or four policemen in my family.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Was that in the situation? Yeah. Okay, well.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

But the strangest thing when I came here, I wanted to be a policeman. When I first approached, I think that was when I was about leaving school. And they said I was a bit too short at the time. And then I got on with my life.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

I then asked John to tell me what exactly happened to Trevor on New Year at the start of 1987.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Well, you know, this part of the story, to be truly accurate about that, which I believe I'm 99.9% accurate, is uh Trevor was out with two of my younger sisters, and they got to Church Street in Stoke Newton, and there was some club that they used to frequent or they go to and the two girls went inside to see what was happening in the place it was how lively it is, and uh when they come out Trevor was gone. And uh after we couldn't find a young man, he's a young man who's close to his family. We search and search and search and search nothing from the family, nothing from friends. I personally walk into Stockminton Police Station and report he was missing. The sergeant at the desk told me that uh he's a young man and uh his new year coming. Maybe he's cold. That was the word I'd never forget these words. Maybe he's cold for the night. So half believe it, but did not know if it's truly true. But what else can you accept when a man of authority tells you such a thing and you know in reality it happens? But next day you still couldn't find him. Look everywhere, so I walk in the police station again and said that he's not around. This time I walk in with a photograph of him, and they told me he was not there. What else can you do? So after a while, the searching got bigger. Wider we search and search not just myself, all the family members and friends eventually couldn't find him. Eventually we found out that uh he's at Brixton police Brixton prison Then we found out that uh police arrest him and uh beat him up soon after that we found that he was uh rushed to hospital several times. But the strangest thing, you know, this worries me because we did ask the Hummerton if they had a young man around their hospital by the neighbours, Trevor and and there was never any straight reply to either, and yet police were taking him backward and forward to the hospital.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

It was shocking when I read that he he had actually been remanded to the prison in a comatose state.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

And they later found out the hospital missed it, the fact that he had a fractured skull.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

I mean that just felt staggering.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

But it's not just only that, because after they had him in the station and uh they take him to court, before they take him to court, they dump him in the car.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

Yeah. And cover the car up until someone came to drive his car away, and he they found him unconscious in the car.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Then we moved on, and I asked him about the spying by the police on his family and the Trevor Monaville campaign in the late 80s and early 90s.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

At the time I did not know they were spying on me. I had no idea that you know, you're always suspicious, because one one day something had happened, and there was a van park across the road to my shop. And I was looking out of the window, and you could see the van shaking, but the the van is locked up. And I went to knock on the door as a little boy. Yeah? Because that's what we were saying, let's see who is in the door knock the dog on. And then I think some people come out of the van and then the van they went back in and the van drove off. You know, and we suggested at the time they were spying on us.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

He then goes on to talk about sending his twin sons, Jonathan and Joseph, to Nigeria, where their mother is from, for their education, and how they eventually returned to London.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Because at the time they had they were having fights at school, and people were offering them knife to stab people, and when this was told to us, we decided myself and my wife, we had to we had to we took them to Nigeria to visiting where their mom could come, but then we decided to leave them there for education's sake. And they spent a while in a private school there and they did very well. And we thought that truly, truly, truly, luck is coming back to us. They came back over here. The very first thing that happened to those two boys, when they came back, they came back because we promised to bring them back to the uh Olympic. They were so happy. They were going out and the first thing is that uh police picked uh stopped them, put them in a van and questioned them. Remember that? Yeah, I remember that clearly because we had to go and ask them I had to go and ask them question why.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

I then asked John's wife Linda, who's the mother of Jonathan and Joseph, about the events leading up to Joseph's death in 2013.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

And we just came back from area. They know nothing about this country, they know enough. And the police waited around to ask whatever that sent them and said, Look, these boys are not from this area. What do we do? And they just told them to light them up, just like that.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

What Linda said there, in case you didn't catch it, was that one of the attackers had told his associates to light them up, and moments later the car was hit by a hail of bullets which killed Jo Joseph. I then asked at the end of the interview whether John was hopeful about the outcome of the undercover policing inquiry. The inquiry was set up in 2016 by then Home Secretary Theresa May, after several newspapers revealed that during the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and even into the noughties, undercover officers working for the Mets Special Demonstration Squad, SDS, overstepped the mark while spying on a variety of protest groups, including the Trevor Moniville campaign.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

I hope something become of it because when police wrote to me and say it was only two lines about uh spying on the family, I accepted that as very suspicious, not wanting to believe them. So I came with the letter to Paul and Harriet, and it says only two lines. Then they invited police to come and say anything else that's there, they still insist it was just those two lines where the Metropolitan Police is concerned. Whatever we say about them, we're only touching the surface because we are not stupid people, and when we have meetings with them, they believe that they are fooling us, but we know and we feel, and it's painful what they are saying to us, knowing it's not the truth, is worse. They're not doing themselves any good.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

John was referring there to two solicitors, Paul Hamm and Harriet Wistrich from the firm Bernberg Pierce, who have worked with him for years in an effort to get to the truth. But it being me, that was not actually the last question. I wanted to ask John about a line in his evidence to the undercover policing inquiry where he said those in power, other than the police, could have been spying on him. And I wonder whether he meant MI5. This is what he said.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

At that time there was a lot going on, and uh they fully believed that uh we were involved with the wrong people. Of course, I would say yes to that because at the time of Joseph's problem, we had a lot of meetings with high-ranking officers at uh Scotland Yard at a hotel in uh uh Islington and all. And uh we made they did recording at this time and we've never seen it. When we go to Scotland Yard, they would always introduce us to high ranking officers, trident and all, they changed so many times, you know. Every time they have a meeting with us, there's another high ranking officer which will discuss things in a manner that uh you'll be wondering for years what did he mean? You know.