AN AXE murder trial involving claims of police corruption collapsed yesterday exactly 24 years after the horrific crime.
The fresh probe into a private detective’s execution ended in fiasco when the prosecution offered no evidence against the defendants.
An axe was embedded to the hilt in Daniel Morgan’s face after he uncovered an alleged drugs network of “bent” Scotland Yard officers.
But yesterday Glenn Vian, 50, was cleared of murder, along with brother Garry, 52, and Daniel’s business partner Jonathan Rees, 56.Ex-detective Sid Fillery, involved in the original inquiry, had already been cleared of perverting justice after months of legal argument at the Old Bailey.
Police have carried out five separate inquiries costing £30million into the brutal murder in Sydenham, South London, in March 1987.
The latest case revolved around three supergrasses whose evidence was discredited. One, Gary Eaton, claimed he had turned down £50,000 to carry out the hit but watched as Glenn Vian allegedly attacked Daniel, 37, with an axe in the Golden Lion pub car park. His evidence was ruled inadmissible after a professor had dismissed him as a “psychopath”.
The ruling led to the acquittal of former detective Fillery, 64, of Great Yarmouth.
Businessman James Cook, 56, of Tadworth, Surrey, was cleared of murder after it emerged another witness had a “significant depressive illness”. And when doubts were raised over the third, murder charges were dropped against the three remaining defendants, Glenn Vian, of no fixed address, Garry Vian, of South Croydon, Surrey, and Rees, of Weybridge, Surrey.
Daniel’s brother Alastair, 62, later demanded a full judicial inquiry.
He said: “My family has done everything possible to secure justice and expose police corruption.
“The criminal justice system is not fit for purpose.”
Det Chief Supt Hamish Campbell said after the case collapsed: “It is quite apparent that police corruption was a debilitating factor in the initial investigation. This was wholly unacceptable. Significant changes have occurred since that time.”
Laurie Hanna, Daily Mirror 12/03/2011
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