The policeman who came to prominence running the cash for honours inquiry has
recommended charges in one of Scotland Yard’s most notorious unsolved cases.
Assistant Commissioner John Yates has passed a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that
delves deep into a history of Metropolitan police corruption entangled with the 1987 axe murder of
Daniel Morgan, a private detective.
Yates is understood to have recommended charges of conspiracy against five men. The officer’s file
on cash for honours is already under consideration by the CPS after an unprecedented investigation,
which included Yates interviewing the prime minister.
It covers one of the darkest chapters in Scotland Yard’s history and touches on corruption cases
going back two decades. Sources say the practices alleged in the report make the television series
Life on Mars “look like a nativity play”.
One of the men against whom charges have been recommended is understood to be a retired police
detective.
Morgan was murdered in March 1987 at the age of 37. An assailant embedded an axe in his skull as he
approached his car in the Golden Lion pub car park in Sydenham, south London. Masking tape had been
wound around the axe handle to conceal fingerprints.
Morgan's brother Alastair and his 79-year-old mother Isobel Hulsman have led a long campaign for
justice but believe they have been thwarted by the Yard’s refusal to accept that it had a corruption
problem.
Alastair said last week: “We have always believed Daniel was murdered because he was about to expose
police corruption. We want the whole truth to come out so that we can move on with our lives.”
The Met now accepts that Morgan was about to expose police involvement in a cocaine distribution
network in southeast London. A trial is likely to embarrass senior officers who repeatedly assured a
succession of Home Secretaries that allegations of police corruption were unfounded.
In total, there have been five inquiries into the murder, costing millions of pounds. The fourth
one, between 2002 and 2003, failed to convince the CPS that there was sufficient evidence to
prosecute. Morgan’s family lobbied the Metropolitan Police Authority for an explanation and a new
inquiry.
As a result, in 2005 the authority ordered Sir Ian Blair, the Met commissioner, to report on his
force’s handling of the case. Blair admitted the original inquiry had been “compromised” and asked
Yates to compile a fresh report, which the authority initially rejected as inadequate.
However, the breakthrough is understood to have come with the emergence of two “super-grasses” who
are now in the witness protection programme.
