The family of a private investigator murdered in London in 1987 are to meet with representatives of the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service to discuss a collapsed prosecution relating to his death.
Daniel Morgan was found dead from an axe wound in a pub car park in Sydenham, south London. His family says that he was investigating police corruption at the time of his death.
Five people have been arrested in connection with his death, but none has been convicted.
Prosecution against three men accused of killing Morgan collapsed in March 2011 after the CPS said it could not guarantee a fair trial. The family says that it was informed by the CPS at this point that there was no prospect of any further attempt at investigation or at prosecution.
The Acting Commissioner of Scotland Yard Tim Godwin apologised to Morgan’s family for failing to bring the people responsible for the murder to justice. “The Metropolitan Police Service has accepted that police corruption in the original investigation was a significant factor in this failure,” Godwin said.
Naomi Vanover sits inside her Shelby home each day and listens for a familiar sound.
The clicking of a key turning the front-door lock.
It’s a comforting sound she hasn’t heard in two months.
Her boyfriend, Joseph Durant “Danny” Moses, would unlock the front door when he visited her each day. They had been together for 13 years.
Moses was found shot to death inside his Kings Mountain home on March 3. Police continue looking for suspects in the killing, but that’s not enough for Vanover.
“I want them to find out who done it,” Vanover said, her voice shaking with emotion. “I want to know why (the killer) did this.”
Earlier this year he was approached by documentary maker Alexander Korobko, a Russian living in the UK, to carry out a polygraph (lie-detector) test on Andrey Lugovoy.
The ex-KGB agent is accused of poisoning Mr Litvinenko in London in 2006 with a highly radioactive substance called polonium-210.
Mr Burgess, 67, said: “Murder is quite a good subject for a polygraph because it’s a nice black and white crime. A person knows whether they killed someone or not, there are no grey areas.”
Mr Burgess, who studied polygraphy in the USA and is a founder member of the British Polygraph Association, flew to Moscow with his son Tristam on April 23, but they were not told who the subject was until shortly before the test.
“It was a bit nerve-racking not knowing who we were going to meet,” Mr Burgess said.
“I didn’t know the name straight away but once he told me about the case I knew it very well.”
As a new security guard patrolled the parking lot at Victory Way Assembly Church of God in Christ in Detroit this morning, the son of the 84-year-old guard who was shot and killed there last Wednesday offered parishioners a message of faith and perseverance.
“It’s a tragedy that something like this would happen,” Anthony Lewis, 51, the youngest son of Joseph Lewis, said from the podium. “But I had to come to the church today that he gave his life for. It’s not your fault my father was shot. He was doing what he loved. He did it because he loved you.”
Joseph Lewis died Wednesday after being confronted by two men in the church parking lot, on Tireman between Livernois and I-96, as he guarded cars during the evening Bible study.
The Detroit Police Department is still investigating Lewis’ death, and no arrests have been made, spokeswoman Sgt. Eren Stephens said today.
Anthony Lewis said his father was a Korean War veteran who had been awarded a Bronze Star and guarded churches across the city for more than 55 years. Dedicated to his family, Joseph Lewis instilled a sense of perseverance in his two sons and daughter, Anthony Lewis said.
A Buddhist monk from Thailand was found bludgeoned to death inside a temple in Grand Bay today — and investigators immediately arrested his fellow monk on a murder charge.
Members of the Wat Buddharaksa Temple, mostly Thai and Laotian immigrants, gathered in mourning and disbelief as Mobile County Sheriff’s deputies combed the worship grounds, including a monk house, for evidence this afternoon.
Chaiwat Moleechate, 45, the temple’s leader, was beaten to death around 10 a.m. today, according to the Sheriff’s Office, although it was unclear exactly what weapon was used.
Sgt. Paul Burch said investigators found one witness to the altercation, and they were in the process of finding a Laotian interpreter to help interview the witness.
Vern Phdsamay, 32, a monk who lived at the temple, was arrested and charged with murder, according to Burch.
Burch said that Phdsamay is known among other congregants for refusing to speak.
The brother of murdered private detective Daniel Morgan has spoken of his hope that the imminent release of a report into the case will provide fresh impetus in the push for a judicial review.
Alistair Morgan hopes a joint review by the Metropolitan Police and CPS into the way investigations into Daniel’s murder collapsed will force Home Secretary Theresa May to launch a judicial review into the handling of the case.
The report will be released on May 21.
Alastair said: “The Home Secretary knows this is serious but she said this should be investigated by the police.
“We’ve had the police on this for 25 years and look what an appalling mess this case is in.
“She said they’re keeping the possibility of a judicial review open and they need to see this report from the CPS and Met first.\
Meet Gordon Cramer. He’s what you’d call a private international crime investigator.
He’s not with Interpol. He’s not with ASIO or the CIA. He’s actually with Facebook.
The former police detective is one of a handful of members of a private Facebook group, scattered around the globe, investigating one of Australia’s most intriguing unsolved murders.
“We are in contact probably three or four times a week – more if necessary – and it’s usually in the early hours of the morning or late at night due to international time differences,” the Coast resident said.
In what is another use of international social networks, Mr Cramer “friended” experts in the USA, Canada and Australia, who are skilled in code analysis, deep research, police investigations, and genealogy. Together they are analysing the evidence in the case of a mystery body found on a South Australian beach in 1948.
Longtime Alachua County sheriff’s investigator and private detective Danny Pascucci, who helped solve several high-profile cases, including the murders of five college students in 1990, died Wednesday at age 70.
Law enforcement officers and attorneys remembered Pascucci as a thorough detective who specialized in forensic evidence and had a personality that could get confessions out of suspects.
“He was a great guy. He had a heart of gold and was as fiery as his hair was red,” State Attorney Bill Cervone said. “He did a great job. He had a way of getting to defendants so that they would actually come clean with him. He made a lot of cases by just handling people the right way. Even defendants in the most loathsome of cases he would handle in an appropriate way so that he would get the information he needed.”
Pascucci, who had cancer, began working for ASO in 1978 and retired in 1997.
Maj. LeGran Hewitt, who worked as a detective with Pascucci, said he helped solve several high-profile homicides, including the Gainesville students murders — the slayings of five UF and Santa Fe Community College students in August 1990.
Hundreds turned out Tuesday morning for the funeral service of two brothers who were shot and killed in southwest Bakersfield last month while trying to apprehend a convict who’d skipped bail.
Zachary and Brandon Sims worked for their father’s business, Bad Dog Bail Bonds. Daniel Ortiz, one of the attendees of the funeral, said he’d previously worked for Bad Dog and had fond memories of the brothers.
Ortiz knew Brandon, 23, better than Zachary, 26, because Zachary was only recently honorably discharged after serving five years in the U.S. Navy. Ortiz said Brandon and his father, Vince Sims, were best friends and Brandon wanted to be just like his dad.
“Brandon wanted to do everything his dad did, only do it better,” Ortiz said with a laugh.
He called the brothers’ deaths a tragedy felt around the country, and said he was personally stunned when he heard the news.
Stephanie McNeil is frustrated that five years have passed, and she still doesn’t know what happened to her brother, St. Charles resident John Spira.
So she recently hired a private investigator, Matthew Hale, of the Naperville-based Illinois Investigative Solutions Inc., to look into his disappearance.
“There needs to be more investigation,” McNeil said. “I don’t know what he will find, but I hope he solves the case.”
McNeil said she believes her brother was murdered. Spira, 45, last was seen Feb. 23, 2007, at Universal Cable Construction near West Chicago, which Spira co-owned.
“I’m hoping he can find out who did this and where John is at,” McNeil said.
Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe said the force was considering a mass screening programme among the spy’s colleagues at the Secret Intelligence Service.
But he stressed that without an official suspect in the case, they could not compel anyone to take part in a DNA screening programme.
Last week the coroner at Mr Williams’ inquest said the 31-year-old, whose naked, decomposing remains were found in a locked sports holdall, had probably been killed unlawfully by a mystery third party.
Dr Fiona Wilcox also raised the prospect that another spy may have been involved in his death, remarking that it was a “legitimate line of inquiry” for police.
Asked if he expected MI6 personnel to co-operate in the investigation, Mr Hogan-Howe said: “It’s called the law.”
The crime scene tape was still up Monday afternoon. On the other side, the house was crawling with deputies and forensics agents. They dug in the yard, checked dirt mounds, opened a shed behind the house. But they hadn’t found a trace of the woman whose boyfriend shot himself Sunday night, three weeks after she disappeared.
Linda V. Losacano’s family last heard from her on April 14. Then she stopped picking up the phone and returning their calls. They called Pasco deputies, who went to the house at 27154 Raven Brook Road, where she lived with Timothy Dean Arnold and their 5-year-old daughter, Kylie.
Deputies stopped by the home twice over the weekend — about 12:30 p.m. Saturday and about 1:30 a.m. Sunday — and got no answer. They returned Sunday evening and forced their way in.
Kylie came out of a room into a hallway, unharmed. Then deputies heard muffled gunshots from another room.
Deputies whisked the child outside and called the SWAT team, which surrounded the home for about two hours. About 9:17 p.m. the team entered the home and found Arnold, 48, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
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