LONDON (Reuters) – London’s police corruptly concealed failings in the investigation of the 1987 murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan, an 8-year inquiry into the handling of the case has found.
Morgan was found murdered in a pub car park in south-east London on March 10 1987, though no one has been brought to justice for the killing.
Theresa May, the then-interior minister, in 2013 described it as “one of the country’s most notorious unsolved murder cases” as she launched a panel to look at the circumstances of the murder, its background and the handling of the case over the period since 1987.
While the report by an independent panel found no fresh evidence of police involvement in the murder itself, chair of the panel, Nuala O’Loan, was scathing about how the case had been handled.
She said opportunities to gather evidence were irretrievably lost during the first investigation, while forensic work in a second investigation was described by a senior officer as “pathetic”.
“The family of Daniel Morgan has suffered grievously as a consequence of the failure to bring his murderer or murderers to justice: The unwarranted assurances which they were given, the misinformation which was put into the public domain, and the denial of failings in the investigation,” O’Loan said at a news conference.
“We believe that concealing or denying failings, for the sake of an organization’s public image is dishonesty, on the part of the organisation, for reputational benefit. This constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”
Interior minister Priti Patel said she had asked the head of the Metropolitan Police to provide a detailed response to the panel’s findings, and she would provide an update when she had received it.
“Daniel Morgan deserved far far better than this, as did his family,” Patel told lawmakers.
(Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
