Case Unsolved: Daniel Morgan

In this episode I look at one of the most infamous unsolved murders in Britain in the last 40 years - the killing of private investigator Daniel Morgan (pictured). In 1987 Morgan, 37, was murdered by a mystery axeman in the car park of a south London pub. It was subsequently alleged that he had stumbled across police corruption and was about to spill the beans. In this episode I explain the history case and refer to Daniel Morgan's brother - Alastair - and investigative journalist Nick Davies, both of whom I have met. It's a fascinating story and a crime which remains unsolved.  

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Welcome back to the Turtle Crime Podcast. I'm Chris Summers and this is episode 28. Today I'm covering one of the most notorious cases in British criminal history, the murder of Daniel Morgan. It's a case which cannot be told without delving into police corruption, skullduggery at the News of the World, the Leverson Inquiry, and the world of politics. When I was a young reporter working at the Petersfield Herald, a weekly paper in a sleepy market town in Hampshire, I bumped into Daniel Morgan's younger brother, Alistair. That would have been around nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety one. He was doing some work experience at the Herald in our tiny office. It was just the three of us for a few days, me, Alistair, and my colleague Linda Daubney, who was in her late forties or early fifties and had been at the paper for many years. Alistair and I were both in our early twenties and would have had a lot in common, but Linda had already told me what had happened to his brother only a few years earlier. When I met him I immediately sensed a deep grief and a distrust of everyone oozing out of Alistair's every paw. He eventually decided not to become a journalist and later carved out a career as a professional translator, specializing, I understand, in Swedish. But Alistair has spent the last forty years campaigning along with his mother for the truth about his brother's death, and along the way he has discovered how tabloid journalism could have played a part in his death. His mother Isabel died in twenty seventeen, four years before an independent panel published a damning report into the police's investigations over the years. But let's go back to the start of the story. At around nine o'clock on the evening of the tenth of march nineteen eighty seven, private investigator Daniel Morgan left the Golden Lion Pub in Sydenham, South London after a drink with a colleague. As the thirty seven year old strolled across the car park to his vehicle, he was attacked from behind with an axe. Daniel's body, with the axe still embedded in his head, was discovered around 9.40 PM when a man drove into the car park. That man ironically worked for the BBC, although he was not a journalist. The news was broken to Daniel's wife, Iris, and their two young children, Sarah and Daniel Jr. A murder inquiry began, and the Metropolitan Police questioned Daniel's colleague and boss, Jonathan Reese, who he had been drinking with that night. Reese had an alibi of sorts. He had left the pub at the same time as Daniel, and was seen at nine thirty PM in a pub called the Beulah Spa in Crystal Palace with Paul Goodridge, who worked as a bodyguard. Rhys owned a company called Southern Investigations, which also employed Daniel. On the third of april nineteen ninety seven, six men were arrested and questioned about the murder, but the police released them, saying they didn't have enough evidence to charge any of them. It would later emerge that among the six who were arrested were Rhys and his brothers in law, Glenn and Gary Vyan. But most fascinating of all was one of those men was a man called Sid Fillery, Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery. And get this, he had been put on the murder investigation himself, until his bosses realized that he knew Reese and probably the VN brothers as well. In fact, it would later emerge that Sid Fillery had been moonlighting from the Met, working for Southern investigations which had close connections with sections of the tabloid press. In may nineteen eighty seven, a man called Brian Madgan, who knew Daniel well and used to employ employ him, told the Met he believed Daniel was trying to sell a story about police corruption. The following year an inquest was held, and Kevin Lennon, who had been an accountant for Southern investigations, gave evidence that Reese and Daniel had fallen out. He said he believed Reese was determined to have Daniel killed. At that same inquest Reese denied the accusation. Mr Lennon's evidence was slightly tarnished when it emerged he himself had been convicted of tax fraud. Later in nineteen eighty eight, Fillery left the Metropolitan Police altogether and started working full time for Southern investigations. With no sign of anyone being charged with a murder, Hampshire police were brought in to conduct a probe into the original investigation to see if they could unearth evidence of police corruption. Nothing came of it, but in february nineteen eighty nine two people were charged with a murder. They were Reese and Paul Goodridge. Remember him? The bodyguard who had been drinking with Reese in the pub in Crystal Palace shortly after the murder. Goodridge's girlfriend Jean Wisden was also charged with perverting the course of justice. But three months later, charges were dropped against all three. In march nineteen ninety, Hampshire Police produced their report. It was claimed Alistair a whitewash. It said there was no evidence to back up any of the claims against Reese or Fillery and I quote, no evidence to suggest any member of the murder investigation team took deliberate action to prevent the murder being properly detected. That was it. For a few years. Throughout the nineteen nineties, Reese and Fillery worked closely with the News of the World, carrying out investigations into celebrities and others who Rupert Murdoch's famous newspaper had chosen to target. In may nineteen ninety seven, the Labour Party won a landslide election victory, booting out the Conservatives, and Alistair Morgan's local MP, Chris Smith, suddenly became a cabinet minister. Suddenly, Alistair had a bit of political heft. Chris Smith was assured by the then Commissioner of the Met, Sir Paul Condon, that Daniel's case would be reviewed. The Met did then bug the Office of Southern Investigations, and what they picked up would send Reese to jail, but not for murder. This story within a story begins with a man called Simon James, who was desperate to get custody of his son. James came to Southern Investigations with his problem, and Reese cooked up a plan to frame Simon James' wife, Kim, a model. They would obtain large a large amount of cocaine, plant it in her car, and then tip off their friends and the police. It almost worked. But the bug uncovered the plot, and Reese, James, and Detective Constable Austin Warns were all convicted of perverting the course of justice. Reese was jailed for seven years. But the bugging operation had failed to uncover anything which incriminated Reese when it came to the Daniel Morgan murder. The police and the Morgan family were back to square one. In 2001, the Met launched a new investigation called Operation Abelard, but it got nowhere. Although Abelard was led by Detective Chief Inspector David Zinzan, the man doing most of the work was Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook, a well respected Scotsman. DCS Cook was portrayed by Robert Carlyle in the recent ITV drama The Hack. DCS Cook was, by general agreement, a straight as a die cop who was determined to get to the bottom of the case and get Daniel's killers convicted. He was also married to Jackie Haymes, a Metropolitan Police officer who doubled up as a presenter on the TV show Crimewatch UK. In June 2002, Crimewatch ran a cold case appeal by DCS Cook, seeking information from the public which might help catch Daniel's killers. A fifty thousand pound reward was offered. In August 2003, the Crown Prosecution Service told DCS Cook there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Reese, the Vianne brothers, or James Cook for the murder or any other offences. But the dogged DCS Cook was not done. He organized the bugging of Glen Vianne's home in South London and also obtained key evidence from an informant. In April 2008, Jonathan Reese, his brothers in law Glenn and Gary Vianne, and an associate James Cook were charged with Morgan's murder. While former police officer Sid Fillery was charged with perverting the course of justice, but when the trial reached the Old Bailey it hit legal problems, largely due to that informant. The murder case against Cook was thrown out first, then charges of perverting the course of justice against Sid Fillery. The saga dragged on for ages, and I remember going on going to several legal hearings at the Old Bailey throughout two thousand nine, twenty ten. Finally, in march twenty eleven, the prosecution were forced to admit defeat, and Reese and the Vianne brothers walked free. Afterwards Reese said I should never have been prosecuted. My sympathy goes out to Daniel Morgan's family, he added. You can imagine how those words sounded to the Morgan family. Alistair said My family is devastated by this news. We just put some flowers on the grave. It's just horrible, he added. The Daniel Morgan trial collapsed on Friday the eleventh of march twenty eleven, but the end was looming fast for the News of the World, the paper which had paid Jonathan Reese and Sid Fillery so much money over the years for their work on its celebrity exclusives. That same day, the eleventh of march twenty eleven, Nick Davis, an investigative journalist with a Guardian, wrote a long and detailed article about the dark arts of journalism, employed by the News of the World. In it he stated that Jonathan Reese was paid one hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year by the News of the World and quoted him as saying no one pays like the News of the World do. The News of the World or the Screws as it was universally nicknamed in Fleet Street was wobbling. And then on the fifth of july twenty eleven, Nick Davis landed the knockout blow. He published a world exclusive. The News of the World had hacked the phone of missing schoolgirl Millie Dowler. In march two thousand two, Dowler, who was thirteen, had gone missing on the way home from school in Walton on Thames. Her remains were later found and eventually serial killer Levi Belfield was arrested and convicted of her murder. But for several months in the spring of 2002, the Dowler family had hopes she was still alive, and had perhaps just run away from home. It was during that time that they learned that her voicemail messages had been listened to. It gave them false hope that maybe Millie was alive and had listened to the numerous messages they had left for her. But the person listening to the messages was actually Glenn Mulker, a private investigator like Jonathan Reese, who worked for the News of the World. Mulker specialized in hacking into phones, and he had done it on the orders of someone at the News of the World, in the hope of gleaning some tidbit about Millie Dowler, which the paper could sell as a world exclusive, like they had done so many times before, concealing the real source of their information. The Millie Dowler revelation, which Rupert Murdoch's News International Group did not deny, was just the tip of the iceberg of industrial scale phone hacking by the News of the World. Several of the paper's biggest advertisers announced they would no longer put ads in the News of the World. Suddenly Rupert Murdoch pulled the plug on what had been Britain's biggest selling newspaper, a paper that sold almost three million copies a week at the time. The edition of the tenth of july twenty eleven would be its last. It would later emerge that in the summer of 2002, shortly after Cook had appeared on Crimewatch making that fresh appeal in the Daniel Morden case, the News of the World had hired people to put Cook and his wife, Jackie Haymes, under surveillance. Jeff Mulcare had also obtained personal information about Jackie Haymes, including her police payroll number. The paper's managing director, Rebecca Brooks, would later claim the News of the World had been following up a tip-off that Haimes, a famous face from Crimewatch, was having an affair with a police officer called Cook. Clearly that was not the case as they were already married. I will leave you to speculate about why in 2002 the News of the World was carrying out surveillance on a senior police officer who was investigating Jonathan Reese, one of the paper's main editorial subcontractors. Anyway, the News of the World collapsed and Rebecca Brooks was put on trial along with Andy Coulson, the paper's former editor, who had gone to work as director of communications for the then Prime Minister, David Cameron. Brooks was acquitted of all charges, but Coulson was jailed. Cameron then put Lord Levison in charge of a public inquiry into the press. Lord Leverson I know better know as Brian Levison, who was the prosecutor in the Rose West trial, which I covered way back in the mid nineties. There were originally meant to be two phases of the Levison Inquiry. The first phase looking at the culture and ethics of the British newspaper industry, heard from alleged phone hacking victims, and took evidence about whether self regulation was working. The second phase was supposed to look at connections between the press and the police. The first phase lasted from november twenty eleven until november twenty twelve, but in january twenty seventeen, with no sign of the second phase, Daniel Morgan's family asked the then Prime Minister Theresa May to confirm that phase two would go ahead. Just an aside, the following month, february twenty seventeen, I was in the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires on holiday when I noticed a familiar face in a bar. I strolled up to him and said, Are you Nick Davis? He was. It turned out he was also on holiday there. We ended up spending a whole evening drinking beers and discussing journalism and life. Nick Davis was played by David Tennant in the ITV drama The Hack, and I think he did an excellent job of portraying Davis and his mannerisms. But back to the narrative. In twenty eighteen, Theresa May's government, which was mired in the Brexit fiasco, scrapped plans for the second phase of the Levison Inquiry. The National Union of Journalists, of which I am a member, condemned the decision. Three years later, in june twenty twenty one, the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel published a report which said the Metropolitan Police had been institutionally corrupt in its handling of the Morgan case. I'll go into a lot more detail about the panel and what it found in my Substack Totalcrime. The NUJ welcomed the panel's report and said, I quote, the National Union of Journalists believes the failure to enact part two of the Levison Inquiry means that to date the relationship between the police, politicians and the media has never been examined or publicly scrutinized. A month after the independent panel's report was published, Alistair Morgan was asked about the case at the London Assembly's Police and Crime Committee. The exhaustion and stress showed in his face as he said We've been through five investigations, one of which lasted six years, and one which I have latterly been told was not actually an investigation into my brother's murder. We've also been through an inquest, a two year high court disclosure medal, the longest pretrial hearing in British criminal history which lasted nearly two years before the collapse of the last prosecution, and then on top of that, we've had this eight year inquiry. The only way I can describe all of this is to say that the Met has colonized my life for the last three and a half decades. Five years later, people are still talking about the Daniel Morgan case and recording podcasts and writing substacks about it. When I contacted him last year, Alistair told me he was not in a position to talk about the case. So will we ever get to the truth about Daniel Morgan's murder, which took place in nineteen eighty seven, around one hundred years after the Jack Ripper murders? Or will the Sydenham axe murderer go free and unidentified just like the Whitechapel Ripper a century before?