It sounds like the plot of a particularly seedy and outrageous whodunit but the 1987 murder of PI Daniel Morgan remains one of Britain's most notorious unsolved crimes. Two years ago, journalist Peter Jukes created Untold, a podcast about this murder that has been downloaded more than eight million times. He has also released a book of the same name. Peter joined Sean O'Rourke to shed light on this shady crime ahead of his talk on Friday 24th as part of the Festival of Politics.
"Daniel was particularly concerned about police corruption in South East London at that time which now historically we see was quite extensive…. (he) began to investigate what he believed to be a corrupt network of police officers working with drug dealers. He was talking to newspapers, trying to sell this story or blow the whistle on this scandal and he was axed to death after meeting his partner Jonathon Rees at the pub."
Daniel and his partner Jonathon had run the private investigation company Southern Investigations together but had had a falling out. Jonathon emerged as the main suspect. From the start, there were discrepancies in the investigation. Police said it was a mugging gone wrong but Daniel's brother arrived on the scene and insisted it was an assassination. One of the senior officers involved was a close associate of Jonathan's and a year after the murder, this same officer took over Daniel's role in the company. Combine that with missing files and dodgy behaviour and Peter says you have a very compelling story indeed.
"Having worked on the book and the podcast, there's something much bigger there… involving, in the allegations we've seen and they're extensive, hundreds of millions of pound of cocaine being brought into the UK overseen by senior Met officers and customs officials."
Southern Investigations went on to become major players in the media scene and elsewhere.
"You've private detective company with a suspected involvement in the murder of its former owner. You'd imagine everybody would run away from this company, it's got a slightly bad reputation. No. For the next thirty years, Southern Investigations became the centre of all the dark arts, the one-stop-shop if you wanted medical records or police checks if you wanted a place burgled, bugged and eventually hacked… This created this unique condition in Fleet St in that they were hired by the News of the World extensively for 20 years… Then they were hired by the Mirror group and really most journalists worked with Southern Investigations or their competitors."
The twisted tale becomes more and more complicated as you probe more deeply into its murky depths, no wonder it has been fodder for such a successful podcast. Police corruption is cited as the reason that no one was ever brought to justice for the crime and Peter says the more you probe, the wider the implications of this cover-up are.
Click here to listen to the interview in full.
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