The official inquiry into the murder of Daniel Morgan has hit new delays and will now not report until next year – 31 years after the private detective was murdered, allegedly as he was about to expose police corruption, the Guardian has learned.
Morgan, 37, was a private detective who co-owned a small south London agency, Southern Investigations. He was found with an axe embedded in his head in a south London pub car park on 10 March 1987.
No one has ever been convicted of the murder, although the Morgan family and police are sure who the prime suspects are.
The inquiry was announced in May 2013 by the then home secretary Theresa May. May said she was appalled by the suffering of Morgan’s family as they fought for justice and to expose former officers in the Metropolitan police, as well as journalists in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and their links with suspects.
The Morgan family say the Met has been delaying the inquiry and has been too slow to hand over documents relating to the case. The Met says it has already handed over 1m documents.
The murder has modern-day implications involving former employees of the now defunct News of the World newspaper. Some say the case shows the need for a new Leveson inquiry into police and media corruption.
The campaign for justice has been led by Daniel’s brother, Alastair Morgan, who said: “This is Britain, this is the way things are here. If you ever confront corruption it takes a lifetime to deal with it, as we have seen before with the police.
“There has been delay after delay, you become inured to it. We were told by the [then] home secretary the process would take a year.”
The first murder investigation was mired in corruption, with one detective replacing Morgan in his role at Southern Investigations, where he worked alongside one of the prime suspects.
That former detective went on to work with the News of the World on its stories and one of the prime suspects received hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Murdoch paper for information.
After a fresh criminal 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”.
Morgan said he would fight on: “How can I give up at this point? I’ve got no choice, I’m not walking away.”
An inquiry spokesperson said: “Providing no further relevant documentation or evidence is received in 2018, beyond what is currently expected, the panel hopes to complete drafting its report in 2018 before submitting it to the home secretary in 2019.
“A number of events occurred during 2016-2017, including the hearing at the start of 2017 of a civil action by [former suspects for the murder] against the Metropolitan police service.
“A trial was held and findings made by the court and, as a consequence, additional documentation was received by the panel during 2017, which then had to be considered in depth. The panel is also now considering a large volume of material which is being incrementally provided to the panel during 2018.”
The Met said it was cooperating with the inquiry: “The Metropolitan police service has worked closely with the Home Office and the Daniel Morgan independent panel to create a mechanism that allowed for the exceptional and full disclosure to the panel, to enable them to achieve their aim of shining a light on the circumstances of this case and to introduce safeguards around disclosure of the material.
“It has been an extremely complex process for many reasons, including the volume and nature of the material involved, and the fact there was no statutory framework to govern the disclosure process.
“The MPS continues to provide its fullest possible support to the work of [the panel], who have had access to over one million pages of information.”
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 said they believe Holmes had told Morgan of the conspiracy involving corrupt officers and criminals to import drugs into the UK.