 On the 10th of March 1987 the private detective Daniel Morgan was found murdered with an axe to the head in a pub car park in South London. He was a co-director of Southern Investigations where he and his business partner Jonathan Reese made a living passing on stories to Fleet Street. And despite the brutal and deeply distressing circumstances of his death, five police investigations and numerous charges against suspects no one has ever been convicted of Daniel's murder. The Metropolitan Police have admitted that the first investigation into Daniel's murder was mired in corruption and in a very bizarre turn of events one of the senior investigating officers was arrested on suspicion of involvement only to be freed and to replace Daniel Morgan as co-director of Southern Investigations. And what's more, connections between Southern Investigations and Murdoch-owned media have come under intense scrutiny. So this was Daniel Morgan's business partner and one-time suspect Jonathan Reese. He went on to carry out a lot of work for the news of the world supplying illegally obtained information about people in the public eye who was paid £150,000 a year to do so. So according to the Byline Times Southern Investigations became a one-stop shop for the dark arts of the press after Daniel's murder including computer hacking, surveillance, bugs, bribing cops for information and perloining classified documents. Dave Cook was another senior investigating officer on the case and he alleged that he and his wife were placed under surveillance by the news of the world to try and intimidate them and undermine the investigation. And a witness told detectives that Daniel Morgan around the time of his murder was involved in discussions with the news of the world to sell a story about police corruption and that this could have been a motive for the crime. Jonathan Reese's main point of contact at the news of the world was Alex Maranchak and he was once the Sunday tabloids star crime reporter and he then became an executive. Now he and Jonathan Reese and everybody else deny any wrongdoing when it comes to the murder. But the case touches on high-level police corruption, billionaire press barons and even the Laverson inquiry. And a panel which was originally convened by Theresa May will publish its report next Tuesday after having been beset by numerous delays. Joining me today to discuss all of this and more is Alistair Morgan who's Daniel's brother and the co-author of Untold Daniel Morgan Murder Exposed. Alistair thank you so much for joining us this evening. Hello Ash no pleasure. We really appreciate your time and we should say for those who are unfamiliar with the case we will do our best to explain some of the key points in this interview but there's a lot of detail. So for the full picture please make sure that you read Daniel's book Untold or listen to the podcast form of it and subscribe to the channel as well. We rely on your support to do our work so to keep up with our content just hit the subscribe button there on YouTube. So can we start with some of the basics Alistair? What do we know for sure about what happened to Daniel? Well that he was he had arranged a meeting at the place where he was murdered or he had agreed to meet his partner at the place where he was murdered on the night he was murdered and it only emerged sometime later that he had also been there the night before. This was a place that he never normally visited and that he'd visited the night before but we didn't find that out until probably weeks into the first investigation because the people who met him I think one of whom was a serving police officer on the squad didn't tell his colleagues that they met Daniel there the night before. So all of the indications are that he was set up at that place for the purpose of killing him and there was an investigation which you mentioned you've mentioned certain important details already Ash so I won't go over those but anyway many years later the then acting commissioner of the Metropolitan Police a man called Tim Godwin admitted in person in front of the Metropolitan Police Authority which was a governing body for the police at the GLA at the time that the first investigation had been tainted by corruption and that the powers that be had not faced up to this corruption for a very long time I think those were his words. Now this was in 2011 that Tim Godwin said this and it was refreshing to hear from the senior police officer that there had been corruption and I've already been shouting about that for 25 years you know but eventually they did agree that there had been corruption first inquired but I said at the same time I felt that the corruption had extended much further than that. So in terms of why I pressed that that's really it had gone on over several inquiries there had been what I would describe as suspicious activities in all of the inquiries whether by piece or outside the squad but inside the police let's speak or the news of the world. I want to come to the corruption in just a second because there's obviously so much and when I was looking through the reports of what had gone on it just seemed completely egregious to me but leaving that aside for just one second there have been lots of different motives which have been suggested for Daniel's murder one being a business dispute another being that he was about to sell a story which revealed police corruption involvement in drug dealing others sort of suggesting a tale of of jealousy could you just run through some of the big main theories about what happened? Those that you mentioned there right all of them it could be all of these things right I there are certain things I know or at least I'm perfectly satisfied in my own mind that I know the identities of the people who conspire to murder my brother I can't name them but I'm quite certain that I know who they are after following five investigations you know really closely as closely as I could then sorry Ash I'm kind of losing my thread here now she could help me back onto the onto the what you want again sorry about that don't don't worry about it don't worry about it one bit so I want to move on a little bit so about the motivations yeah that the motivations well I think for the for what I can only kind of deduce a certain amount from the way the police have lied for so long in this case you know I mean in the way they've been double dealing on lying for so long on so many things I can only I mean there were allegations of police involvement in the murder we can't get away from that and I have to say that I find them entirely plausible I can say nothing other than I will not say anything more than that however that you know hiding that if you like you know that's my my interpretation of the way police have been handling it you know on the one hand you have very very serious allegations on the other hand you have multiple multiple faulty or corrupt or inadequate or whatever you like to call it investigations you know and you think well how do you square up these two things and you know I mean I'm you know I can only that they will show me more you know a whole lot more detailed facts about how the police handle this case I will become privy to that eventually when I've read a volume as thick as my calf almost I'm sure it's 1200 pages you know a vast of the volume of information and dealing with a lot of complicated issues but what I am at least very hopeful of is that that that we will get to know the anatomy of the corruption the individual decision makers who did this when was that done etc etc etc and then make our own this is what the public will be given and the public are free to draw their own inferences or you know I mean there will be black certainly be black areas in the in the report or dark areas should we say where witnesses did chose not to speak to the panel or the panel thought it would not be worthwhile possibly speaking to certain people so put me in your shoes for a second so when did it become clear to you that the police investigation wasn't going as it ought to because I suppose lots of people would feel quite trusting that the police would do a good job with a murder they would get to the bottom of it and you could expect a basic degree of honesty when was it apparent that that wasn't happening well I felt unease about how what I was saying I went up to London the very the same morning that I learned of my brother's murder Daniel was murdered about nine o'clock in 9 30 in the evening and I found out about probably about five o'clock the next morning after which I very quickly made my way up to London and you know I was my mother you know just going back to my mother my mother told me this because she'd been contacted as Daniel was next to kin by her by the Metropolitan Police and they wouldn't tell her how he had done they only told her that he was dead but they wouldn't tell her what had happened to him and yet you know it was pretty damned obvious what had happened to him you know I mean if he's lying in the pub car park with an axe embedded in his skull to the depth of the brainstem then you know it's pretty obvious that he's been murdered and so the fact that they wouldn't tell me that was enough well that that was the first indication that hey why are they doing this and then I was interviewed by I went straight to the police because I had certain ideas or you know I thought this is a possible reason it was I can't go into it for legal reasons here I worked but I felt that they just weren't listening you know that they I mean the first interview I had I just learned that morning that my brother had been savagely murdered and I went into the police station at Sydenham where the incident room was and the first question that police asked me when I went in there I said I'm Daniel's brother I'd like to talk to the people on the team on the motor school I was introduced to a police officer and the first thing he did was he looked at me like this and he goes and what were you doing last night that was yeah that was the the first interaction I had with the police of my brother's murder that was that was what I called you know and you had to approach them you had to be the one to approach them saying I want to talk to you I wanted to help them I went there because I had certain ideas about the possible motive for my brother's murder and the people around the relationships he had with certain individuals in his close environment if you like and that was a reaction I thought and I mean it was incredibly exasperating humiliating irritating upsetting you know all of those things within the first you know so I felt immediately there I that I I wasn't welcome there in a sense you know I mean I they didn't want my help but I didn't leave them up you know I went back again the next night and I spoke to another officer and and then certain things happened an attempt was made to get me out of London by bringing up my sister-in-law's home telling the police I was getting in the way of the investigation and then I and then and then I found out a little while afterwards who had sent that message and then I just knew you know I knew that things were going very badly very badly wrong but this is Britain right and this is what I always say you know I mean if you if you if you've got serious concerns about the police and you go along to your to anybody well that's how it was with me then and started talking about that and it was like people were aghast you know that you can imagine that kind of thing oh you know it was another a different world to a certain extent right in in terms of public perception but now I see the same kind of how shall I put it bad manners right putting it no worse than bad manners from the British state and it's just well you know well let's let's move on to something which I think goes a bit further than bad manners because this was one of the details that really shocked me and it was that you have Sid Fillory who was originally a senior investigating officer on the case he was he wasn't the senior investigating but he was investigating he was a sergeant on the case a sergeant and a sergeant is a very central figure on a on a on any investigation you know he's controlling the troops on the ground if you actually see what I mean he's in a position of authority and significant power on a murder investigation so how did he go from that central position of authority as you describe it to then becoming co-director of Daniel's private investigations firm what was the process that happened there well I mean it was astonishing let's say you know we were absolutely blown away by watching this circus going on you know it was it was well it was shocking I laugh now at the you know grossness of it in a way and the stupidity of it and all the rest of it but the arrogance you know the all those things but that's what we got and it didn't matter who we talked to or who we complained about or who and I mean I've been unable to give you details in in certain instances hitherto ash right but you know people I would could speak to and join all of the dots together and say look at this this is it's crazy for them to say you know I mean you're going to let this kind of stuff go on you know no go please please tell us exemplary investigation you know this kind of huffy hoity toity English um conviction that nothing can possibly be wrong you know that kind of uh less the mentality of people that you were dealing with and I mean it was it was it was upsetting to say the least but you know you can't you can't make people react or you can't make them see if they don't want to or if there are reasons why they don't want to knowledge I mean one of the things that's astonishing about this case is that there have been five police investigations and during one of these investigations in 2008 five people I think were face charges there were four suspects in terms of the conspiracy to murder and there was subsidiary I think being charged with perverting the course of justice now all of these charges then collapsed um none of them resulted in convictions how how and why did that happen was it because the evidence they were being charged on was flimsy or was there something else going on in terms of the reliability of the testimony uh that secured those charges in the first place well I mean these are very difficult questions for me to answer I mean I do know that that it was an agonizing the pre-trial hearings went on for two and a half of two years you know we were told by the police in the beginning that they expected the defense to mount an abuse of process defense in the pre-trial and that the police expected to see that off in about three weeks so this is what we've told but as the case evolved and all of the previous corruption and competence and mixtures of these elements were all brought before the court the defendants were all saying well look it's all corrupt this is corrupt that's corrupt everything's corrupt blah blah you know and uh because the police had admitted corruption then uh everything was corrupt you know so that the way it had been handled from very beginning was was a deeply disturbing and be you know I mean it what it did was it virtually ensured that no future corruption or any future any future prosecution would be extremely difficult I mean I think active steps were taken early on to make sure that that would be the case you know this is my own view of it you know so I just want to move on a little bit to the involvement of the press because as I said earlier in the introduction this is a case which touches on almost every aspect of public life in this country so I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the role that the news of the world had in the investigations into Daniel's murder well I mean I think at this point I need to correct a small detail of what you said early on and that was that Daniel and his partner made a living when they were you know when Daniel was alive made a living from selling stories to the press well I don't know how far Jonathan Reese might have done that at that time I mean this is what Pam has been looked into but that was certainly not Daniel's MO if you like he was a private investigator he investigated car ringing gangs and insurance frauds and this kind of thing that was what he did he I think through his partner he came into contact with a lot of police officers now my brother was never a fan of the police you know he he he came into contact with them looked quite a lot but I remember him saying to me very shortly before he was killed in his office he I was with him alone in his office at the time in Thornton Heath and he said to me the the discussion went round to came around to him and he said to me he went up to the window he looked out of the window and I can see he was chewing his lower lip which he did when he was stressed you know it was like a stress thing when he used to do and I said what's the matter Dan and he said Alistair they're all over the place down here this is what he was talking about corruption right he said Alistair they are all over the place down here and then he complained on the Sunday before his murder to some colleagues or friends in the Aston Heath no the Austin Healy Club because his hobby was restoring old sports to old classic cars you know that's what he's relaxation you know and he complained he told them about he was that he was worried about corruption I won't go into detail but he was worried about his partner and then he came back on the Sunday before he was murdered I think no that this was the Sunday before he was murdered at the car club on the Thursday the preceding Thursday he'd come home parked his car and there was an old lady who they had an old lady neighbor and they used to look after her cats or something she went away that kind of thing right and he said oh hello Doris or something he was getting out of his car and she was in the garden or something he said hello Doris how are you and she you know the conversation short conversation he said you'll never guess what I found out today Doris he said and he said all police and bastards was what he said and then you know he was dead a couple of days later dead you know I mean and then of course the allegations of police involvement I had nothing to do you know I didn't make those allegations even though early on I began to suspect this right I'd begun to suspect this very early on in the first investigation and of course that is a very scary feeling you know you think god what do I you know what do I got my screen what what where am I here you know how did I hear and that's but that's what it was you know so one of the one of the people we've mentioned is Jonathan Reese who was his business partner and by the time of Daniel's murder it the relationship had broken down it was very adversarial it seems just to familiarize our audience with Jonathan Reese let's talk about him a little bit more in the in the year 2000 Jonathan Reese was found guilty of conspiring to plant cocaine on an innocent woman in order to discredit her in a child custody battle he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for attempting to pervert the course of justice but then after his release he was hired by the then editor of the news of the world Andy Coulson Andy Coulson you might know went on to become the director of communications in Downing Street under David Cameron and so using a network of corrupt police officers Reese's role was to obtain information on public figures such as confidential data from bank accounts telephone records car registration details and computers and in the year tooth 2011 Andy Coulson ended up having to resign over the phone hacking scandal and he was then arrested by the Metropolitan Police he was jailed for 18 months for his role in phone hacking so what I want to ask you is do you think that these links between police corruption top journalists and then the very highest levels of politics have been why successive governments have been so ineffective in a tackling the worst practices of the tabloid press and be driving the investigation into your brother's death forward and securing some kind of resolution for it well this is a huge question isn't it you know I'm hoping the panel will provide more shed more light on that and obviously it looms large you know for anyone I mean the tentacles of this case creep everywhere and it's you know I mean I in the beginning I knew something really terrible and bad was going on but you know over the years as I've learned more about who is involved here either tangentially or whatever you know it just looks uglier and more insanitary is probably the right word for it I mean so this panel the Daniel Morgan panel was set up by Theresa May way back in 2013 why do you think it's taken eight years for the report to see the light of day well I mean I can I it's very difficult for me to go to detail here because I don't know there are some things that I know that I can't legitimately talk about but my perception has been that the Metropolitan Police have used every possible means of delaying making it harder you know for this panel to complete its work that's been my own experience and indeed at one point I had to go to the mayor's office for crime policing and say to them look I mean please help us we are you know we've come to it the police are blocking the way here and they will not make relevant decisions they will not they're blocking the progress in this panel will you help us and I think we know a sharp letter was written possibly and some questions asked and then miraculously the barriers kind of disappeared on that particular case on that particular instance but I mean it's I'm sure that this has been going you know I can only speculate but I mean I do know of an absence I cannot yet talk about but it's yeah undoubtedly the police have delayed the progress in this report well pretty Patel has had it sitting on her desk for a few weeks now and the panel expected that would be published within one working day of her getting it so her reason for the delay was that it had to be vetted for reasons of national security do you buy that explanation now first of all the panel is led by a very experienced person in the form of Baroness Nullo alone who's led who was the police ombudsman in North Ireland and conducted an inquiry into the Omaha bombings over there and I mean national security would be something that she would naturally be pretty o-fay with with her background in a kind of dangerous place like Northern Ireland and first of all is that then the fact that the panel has independent legal advice right it has a QC to whom it can go and say well we want to know about the legality of this and that or what's your take on this what's your view on this you know and thirdly the the the fact that the government that they were using the government's best known legal firm in terms of public inquiries the government has there's a legal firm called Field Fisher who handled huge or have handled large numbers of public inquiries and they are also advisers to you know the panel that they can go to them for advice and the idea that national security or article two that is the right to life in the European Convention on Human Rights as article two it means that you know they have to be cautious about endangering anyone by what they write in their report you know and that those in fact the police had five senior officers working on it for 10 days or something looking or looking for this sort of fault you know potential fault and you know and I mean I don't think Pretty Patel is even a lawyer so I mean I don't know where she's getting these sort of bizarre views or and I mean what she's done the way she's handled this intervening at the last minute you know and and then not seeming to have any idea what she's been doing while she's it just arouses further suspicion you know you can't it's unavoidable you think well I'm now my biggest concern now is that people other than those who are legally entitled to see the report now may be looking at it you know it may be in their hands I don't know and she invites this kind of suspicion through her cack-handed actions I mean you've also been going through this process for you know 34 years now and one of the things that really struck me is is what that must do to you in terms of your faith in institutions so from your perspective what do you think the report has to cover in order for it to have credibility in your eyes um it has to cover all of the issues that we've been talking about in a coherent and probing and questioning and you know scrutinizing way um it's huge this report is as you know as I say so 1200 page report and we're being asked you know just as a by the by now we're being asked to get to a certain venue at a early ish on the morning of the 15th you know well I had sort of a couple of hours briefing and maybe an hour or two to look at the report this vast report yeah and then be expected to comment on it in a relatively coherent way before the press that same day you know and I mean we're currently trying to negotiate better you know more time for us to absorb what's being said there but uh I don't think we haven't had much uh uh you know like hey give us a publish it a couple of hours later in parliament and give us a couple more hours to you know to look at it and absorb what they what what it says to it to a to the degree that you can in such a short space of time you know but I think they're they don't seem to be very kind of helpful they never be you know this British I mean apart from ordering this inquiry um the British state has been a pain in the neck you know most of the time for the for those these 34 years I mean I suppose it's a same story played out with Hillsborough or grief everything the Lawrence family got put through um in the investigation of Stephen Lawrence's murder one thing that I really want to say is that there's a lot of love and support for you Alastair in the chat from our viewers this evening and one of the things that um I know people have been wanting to ask is how can they help in the family's ongoing campaign to secure justice for your brother well I mean if they if they feel engaged enough to I mean there are so many ways they can engage on social media they can engage by say ringing their MP or writing to their MP and wanting to say look you know uh you should be looking hard at this you know keep patelle on you know pretty patelle on on you know on her toes with what she's been doing here because you know what I've seen is this you know miasma of suspicion and the develop all around these institutions and they just is not a healthy environment it's not an environment that I want to be in the world to think of as being the way my home country operates you know it's a very uncomfortable and unpleasant feeling you know the sooner I feel more happy about what's going on here you know it's like what is and a lot of other people too the sooner that we feel more at ease and more confident in our government and our institutions the better it can't come sooner Well Alistair thank you so much for joining us this evening and as I said this is a huge case it touches on practically every facet of public life from government the police to the press and if you want to find out more about this story and I really encourage you to find out more as we said before make sure to read Alistair's book Untold or listen to the podcast form the report is due to come out next Tuesday the 15th of June so keep an eye out for that as well I'm sure we'll be covering it on Tiskey Sour please let us know your thoughts in the comments below we will be talking about this as I said again next week once the report is released thank you so much for joining us this evening thank you Alistair goodbye thank you very much bye