Daniel Morgan’s 37 years of life offered little hint of how important his death would prove.
Morgan was a private detective who co-owned a small south London agency, Southern Investigations, and his gruesome murder is still unsolved. He was found with an axe embedded in his head in a south London pub car park on 10 March 1987.
The murderers knew what they were doing. Two sticky plaster strips were wrapped around the axe handle to stop fingerprint evidence being left behind.
In the three decades since, the victim’s brother, Alastair, has fought to get the killers convicted. He is intent on blowing open what he claims is a cover-up. Gradually, the murder and the alleged shielding of the guilty have moved from being a fringe issue to one touching the core of national life, bringing the attention of senior politicians with it.
Today, the fallout from the attack on Morgan outside the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham menaces Rupert Murdoch’s multibillion-pound bid to gain control of Sky. It dogs Scotland Yard’s reputation on dealing with corruption. And it poses fundamental questions about British justice.
Alastair Morgan spent years battling the Metropolitan police after their initial flawed investigation into his brother’s death. “I’ve been in the wilderness. It has been horribly frustrating and painful for decades,” he said.
After a fresh investigation the Met announced in 2007 that the motive for the murder was probably that Morgan “was about to expose a south London drugs network possibly involving corrupt police officers”.
But to Alastair, that conclusion is far from the end of the story. As well as the police, he says, the role of Murdoch’s media empire needs to be examined: a witness told detectives Morgan was in discussions with the News of the World (NoW) to sell a story about police corruption shortly before his death.
The Labour MP Tom Watson told parliament in 2012 that the witness named the NoW executive Morgan was allegedly negotiating with.
In his statement, Bryan Madagan said: “Daniel Morgan had told me he was about to sell a story to a newspaper. I can now confirm that I believe this paper to be the News of the World as Daniel Morgan’s contact was an Alex Marunchak.”
Marunchak was a longstanding star player at NoW, rising from crime correspondent to executive.
Madagan also told police Morgan was discussing a £40,000 fee for the corruption story.
The witness, who knew Morgan and his business partner, Jonathan Rees, who was a suspect in the murder, added: “I believe that Daniel would [have] told many people of this plan to sell his story as he was the sort of person who would not be able to keep quiet about such a deal. I thought at the time this was a mistake and very unwise.”
He added: “I felt that the story was about police corruption and his business as a private investigator.”
The claims surrounding the NoW, closed by Murdoch because of the phone-hacking scandal, are central to demands that the government hold a second Leveson inquiry into media ethics, focusing on police and media corruption. The government announced so-called Leveson 2 in the wake of the phone-hacking revelations.
But it is thought to have changed its mind about Leveson 2 and is holding a consultation about whether it should go ahead. Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, told the Guardian a proper investigation was needed into the Morgan case to examine “if someone ordered his killing”.
After Morgan’s death, and under Rees, Southern became a go-to place for the NoW, which at one time paid it £150,000 a year for getting confidential information. Rees allegedly had a network of officers who would sell him confidential information. For the NoW, and other papers which used his services, it was gold, and too useful to give up: even after he was convicted for trying to frame a woman, Rees was reemployed by the paper.
Police concerns about Southern and its links to corrupt officers led it to bug its office and send in an undercover operative, Derek Haslam. Among the information he passed to his handlers was that the NoW investigations editor Mazher Mahmood had worked on stories with suspects linked to the Morgan murder case. One was Rees; another was Sid Fillery, a former Met detective who worked for Southern after Morgan’s killing.
Alistair Morgan points to small details he says strengthen the case for Leveson 2. For instance, the NoW executives Maranchak and Greg Miskiw set up a business which records show was registered at the same address as Southern.
Marunchak has denied any wrongdoing. News UK, the company owning Murdoch’s British newspapers, declined to comment about its actions, or those of people working for it, including Marunchak, Miskiw, and Mahmood.
The last investigation into the murder ended in 2011, with those accused walking free after the case against them collapsed. This year they sued the Met claiming malicious prosecution and protesting their innocence. Rees and his brothers-in-law, Glenn and Garry Vian, lost their case in February. The Met told the hearing that Rees paid Glenn Vian to carry out the killing, and that Vian struck two blows with the axe.
Fillery, against whom charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice were dropped, won part of his claim for damages because the only witness against him was deemed unreliable and had been mishandled by the detective leading the case.
Concerns around the Morgan case led Theresa May, while she was home secretary, to order an inquiry into the corruption claims. Its report is expected in September.
The panel is believed to be investigating another death for potential links to the Morgan murder. Four months after Morgan’s killing, in July 1987, DC Alan Holmes was found shot dead in his garden in what was officially declared a suicide. Some in policing are no longer confident of that conclusion. One police source says they believe Holmes had told Morgan of the conspiracy involving corrupt officers and criminals to import drugs into the UK.
Alastair Morgan says Leveson 2 is needed, and that the panel set up by the government will not be enough: “I feel sure that at the end of this there will be outstanding questions, that require judicial powers to explore.”
Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, who believes his personal details were hacked by Murdoch journalists, backs this demand, as does Labour’s current high command. Watson said: “It is unlikely that Daniel’s family will ever know if someone ordered his killing, and if so on what grounds, until the complex web of relationships between the Met and the press is fully explored. That is exactly what the second part of the Leveson inquiry was set up to do and it must now take place without further delay.”
The Met is not actively looking for Morgan’s killers. “There are currently no active lines of investigation being explored whilst the Daniel Morgan independent panel carries out its work,” a spokesperson said. One officer is assigned to helping the inquiry.
As to the motive for the killing, the Met now says the claim that Morgan was killed because he was trying to sell a story about corruption is one theory it is examining.
Assistant commissioner Martin Hewitt appealed for anyone with information to come forward and said: “The Met’s re-investigation into Daniel Morgan’s murder identified, ever more clearly, how the initial inquiry failed the family and wider public. We publicly stated that it is quite apparent that police corruption was a factor in that first investigation. This is wholly unacceptable.”
Opinions differ about how much has been proved about Alastair Morgan’s most serious claims. But after decades in the wilderness, he has an audience. One past prime minister and the current one are listening, and one of the most powerful businessmen in the world is watching.
Alastair Morgan said: “I had a duty to my brother, to my family and to society not to give up. What has emerged has vindicated me. It is worryingly corrupt, in ways that are subtle, but very powerful.”
