Yahoo Finance Daniel Morgan murder: who are the key figures linked to scandal
Here we take a look at some of the key figures and most high-profile names linked to the Morgan murder scandal.
Jonathan Rees
Rees was Morgan’s former business partner. With Morgan, he set up Southern Investigations, a detective agency, in 1984, and was the last person known to have seen Morgan alive.
Rees was charged with Morgan’s murder in 1989 and 2008 but the case against him was abandoned on both occasions by prosecutors. He denies the murder and subsequently won civil damages from the Metropolitan police for malicious prosecution in 2019.
After the collapse of the second charge against him in 2011, it was revealed that Southern Investigations had earned £150,000 a year from the News of the World for supplying illegally obtained information on various figures.
Sidney Fillery
Sidney Fillery is a former Met police officer, who was assigned to the murder case in 1987.
Based out of Catford station, Fillery allegedly did not disclose that before Morgan’s murder he had been moonlighting at Southern Investigations. In the late 1980s, Fillery joined the detective agency as replacement partner.
Fillery was charged with perverting the course of justice in 2008. The case collapsed in 2011 along with the murder charges.
Alex Marunchak
Alex Marunchak was the star crime writer at the News of the World, who became an executive. He was the main point of contact at the newspaper for Rees and Fillery.
It was alleged that Marunchak commissioned surveillance on a senior police detective investigating Morgan’s murder in order to “subvert” the detective’s investigation. He denies any wrongdoing.
Lord Stevens
Lord Stevens was the commissioner of the Met from 2000 until 2005.
As deputy commissioner, Stevens authorised a listening device in the offices of Rees’s detective agency in the late 90s.
During the Leveson inquiry into press standards, Stevens was asked whether he was aware during the time that he was deputy commissioner or commissioner that the News of the World was extensively using Southern Investigations, which became Law & Commercial, to obtain information about police officers illegally. Stevens said he was not.
Stevens was criticised in the Morgan panel’s report for becoming a columnist for the News of the World after he retired from the force.
Andy Hayman
Hayman is former assistant commissioner for specialist operations at the Met, the highest-ranking officer responsible for counter-terrorism in the UK. Hayman was responsible for the investigation into the 7 July 2005 London bombings.
Hayman worked within the Met’s directorate of professional standards (DPS), the department responsible for complaints and corruption, from 2000 to 2002.
When he retired he took up a job as a columnist, contributing to the Times.
Hayman oversaw Scotland Yard’s original 2006 investigation into phone hacking at fellow News International title the News of the World.
The Morgan report found that given his senior operational responsibilities when serving with the Met, Hayman must have been aware that phone hacking was a serious matter and that parts of the press were recipients of confidential information being supplied.
David Cook
Det Ch Supt David Cook supervised the fifth and final investigation into the murder of Morgan.
The charges brought against Rees and others collapsed in 2011 because it emerged Cook had coached two so-called “supergrass” witnesses, upon which the prosecution relied.
