Murder of Daniel Morgan
Daniel John Morgan was a British private investigator who was murdered with an axe in a pub car park in Sydenham, London, in 1987. Despite several Metropolitan Police investigations, arrests, and trial, the crime remains unsolved. An independent review into the handling of the investigation of Morgan's killing was published in 2021; it found that the Met Police had "a form of institutional corruption" which had concealed or denied failings in the case.
At the time of his death, Morgan worked for Southern Investigations, a company he had founded with his business partner Jonathan Rees. Rees was arrested in April 1987 on suspicion of murder along with Morgan's future replacement at Southern, Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery, and two brothers, Glenn and Garry Vian. All were released without charge. Over the next three decades, several additional police inquiries were conducted. In 2009 Rees, Fillery, the Vian Brothers and a builder, James Cook, appeared at the Old Bailey charged with Morgan's murder. The trial collapsed in 2011 after evidence obtained from supergrasses was deemed inadmissible by the court. Shortly after the case, the activities of Rees – as a private investigator – became the centre of allegations concerning the conduct of journalists at the now-defunct News of the World newspaper.
In 2006 Morgan's unsolved murder was described by Jennette Arnold, a former Labour Co-op politician who served as chair of the London Assembly, as a reminder of the culture of corruption and unaccountability within the Metropolitan Police. The profile of the case has been raised by investigative journalist Peter Jukes, who released a podcast and book about the murder in conjunction with Alastair Morgan, Daniel's brother.
Early life
Daniel Morgan was born on 3 November 1949 in Singapore, the son of an army officer. He grew up with an elder brother and younger sister in Monmouthshire, Wales, where he attended agricultural college in Usk before spending time in Denmark gaining experience of farming.Morgan had an exceptional memory for small details, such as car registration numbers, and in 1984 he set up a detective agency, Southern Investigations, in Thornton Heath, southern Greater London.
He married in his late twenties and moved to London, where he and his wife settled and had two children. At the time of his murder, Morgan was having an affair with a woman named Margaret Harrison, and had met her at 6:30 pm at a wine bar in Thornton Heath shortly before the murder.
Murder
On 10 March 1987, after having a drink with Jonathan Rees at the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, 37-year-old Morgan was found dead in the pub car park next to his car.DS Sid Fillery, based at Catford police station, was assigned to the case, but did not reveal to superiors that he had been working unofficially for Southern Investigations. In April 1987, six people, including Fillery and Rees, Rees' brothers-in-law Glenn and Garry Vian, and two Metropolitan Police officers, were arrested on suspicion of murder. All were eventually released without charge.
At the inquest into Morgan's death in April 1988, it was alleged that Rees, after disagreements with Morgan, told Kevin Lennon that officers at Catford police station who were friends of his were either going to murder Morgan or would arrange it, and that Fillery would replace Morgan as Rees's partner. When asked, Rees denied murdering Morgan. Fillery, who had retired from the Metropolitan Police on medical grounds and joined Southern Investigations as Rees's business partner, was alleged by witnesses to have tampered with evidence and attempted to interfere with witnesses during the inquiry.
In the summer of 1987, DC Alan "Taffy" Holmes, an acquaintance of Morgan, was found to have died by suicide under mysterious circumstances. Morgan and Holmes had allegedly collaborated on unveiling police corruption. This was discounted by the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel report. DC Derek Haslam claimed to be one of Morgan's sources for this allegation, but was discounted as a serial fantasist by Baroness O'Loan.
The murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and subsequent reports on police conduct brought further insight into ongoing police corruption in south-east London.
Police investigations
In the years following Morgan's death, four police inquiries were conducted. There were allegations of police corruption, drug trafficking and robbery.Morgan One Investigation
During an initial Metropolitan Police inquiry, Rees and Fillery were questioned, but both denied involvement in the murder.Hampshire/Police Complaints Authority Investigation
After an inquiry by Hampshire police in 1988, Rees and another man were charged with the murder, but the charges were dropped because of a lack of evidence. The Hampshire inquiry's 1989 report to the Police Complaints Authority stated that "no evidence whatsoever" had been found of police involvement in the murder.Operation Nigeria/Two Bridges
In 1998, the Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Roy Clark, secretly conducted an intelligence-gathering operation with potential links to the murder, during which Southern Investigations' office was bugged by a known police informant.In December 2000, Rees was found guilty of conspiring to plant cocaine on an innocent woman to discredit her in a child custody battle, and sentenced to seven years imprisonment for attempting to pervert the course of justice. When the Morgan family called for disclosure of the 1989 Hampshire police report, Clark imposed very restrictive conditions.
Abelard One/Morgan Two Investigation
In the fourth inquiry, which took place from 2002–2003, a suspect's car and Glenn Vian's house were bugged and conversations recorded. As a result of the inquiry, the Metropolitan Police obtained evidence that linked a number of individuals to the murder, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided that the evidence was insufficient to prosecute anyone.Abelard Two Investigation
After the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair declared that the first police inquiry involving Fillery was "compromised", a secret fifth inquiry began.Detective Superintendent David Cook was appointed to head an inquiry to review the evidence. Cook described the murder as "one of the worst-kept secrets in south-east London", claiming that "a whole cabal of people" knew the identity of at least some of those involved. He said that efforts had been made to blacken Morgan's character, and dismissed claims that Morgan might have been killed after an affair with a client or because of an involvement with Colombian drug dealers. He identified the main suspects as "white Anglo-Saxons".
Morgan's brother Alastair, who had been critical of police inaction and incompetence, expressed confidence in Cook. In 2006, Jennette Arnold, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and Alastair Morgan's London Assembly constituency representative, described the unsolved murder as "a reminder of the old police culture of corruption and unaccountability" in London. Bugs were installed at Glenn Vian's home. Police arrested Rees and Fillery once again, along with Glenn and Garry Vian, and a builder named James Cook, all on suspicion of murder, as well as a serving police officer suspected of leaking information. Fillery was arrested on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Alastair Morgan described it as a "massive step forward".
Collapse of trial
In 2009 the trial of Rees, Fillery, the Vian brothers and Cook began at the Old Bailey. In February 2010, the trial judge dismissed a key supergrass witness and a stay of prosecution was ordered in Fillery's case. In November 2010, a second supergrass witness was dismissed, James Cook was discharged, and in January 2011, a third supergrass witness was dismissed, after accusations that police had failed to disclose that he was a registered police informant.In March 2011, Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer abandoned the case. Rees and his former brothers-in-law were acquitted, because the prosecution were unable to guarantee the defendants' right to a fair trial. Charges against Fillery and another had already been dropped. The case had not reached the stage of considering whether the defendants had murdered Morgan but was still dealing with preliminary issues. The judge, Mr Justice Maddison, mentioned the case's vastness and complexity, involving some of the longest legal argument submitted in a trial in the English criminal courts. While he considered that the prosecution had been "principled" and "right" to drop the case, the judge observed that the police had had "ample grounds to justify the arrest and prosecution of the defendants".
In the course of the five inquiries, some 750,000 documents associated with the case, most of them not computerised, had been assembled. Some of these related to evidence provided by the criminal "supergrasses" that the defence claimed was too unreliable to be put to a jury. In March 2011, four additional crates of material not disclosed to the defence were found. This followed earlier problems with crates of documents being mislaid and discovered by chance. Nicholas Hilliard QC, appearing for the CPS, acknowledged the police could not be relied upon to ensure access to documents that the defence might require and the prosecution was fatally undermined as a result.
The Metropolitan Police's senior homicide officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell, apologised to the family, acknowledging the impact on the case of police corruption in the past. "This current investigation has identified, ever more clearly, how the initial inquiry failed the family and wider public. It is quite apparent that police corruption was a debilitating factor in that investigation."
While indicating a satisfactory relationship with the police officers present, Morgan's family condemned the way police and the Crown Prosecution Service had investigated the case and their failure to bring anyone to trial. For much of the family's 24-year-long campaign for justice, they had encountered "stubborn obstruction and worse at the highest levels of the Metropolitan Police", an impotent police complaints system and "inertia or worse" on the part of successive governments.