Case closed for Stephen, but I pray this isn’t the end

HAD he not been stabbed to death by racist thugs at a bus stop on April 22, 1993, Stephen Lawrence would now be 45 years old. This talented teenager would probably have kids and a career. He might have been an architect: aged 18, that was his dream.

How heartbreaking, then, that after 27 years, the Metropolitan Police this week broke the news to Stephen’s parents, Doreen and neville, that the investigation into his murder has become ‘inactive’, sputtering to a halt even though only two of the five or six- strong gang that killed him are in prison.

neither Doreen — now Baroness Lawrence after her tireless work fighting racism — nor neville will ever give up hope that all their son’s killers will face justice.

And yet despite the devastating news, Stephen’s brutal murder has had a far-reaching legacy. The bungled police operation that followed will never be repeated.

it was a shameful episode in British life — that these thugs could murder without conscience or consequence. Two, it’s true, were finally sent to prison in 2012 after a truly courageous campaign by this newspaper.

Stephen’s death made us all look long and hard into our own hearts.

How could a young man who embodied the best of being British be stabbed to death on our streets and his killers roam free? But there was another, sadder legacy. As neville told the Mail’s David Jones this week in a heartbreaking interview, from the moment their son died, he never again touched his wife, nor did she wish to touch him.

Their marriage and their family died that night, too.

it is sadly not uncommon in the circumstances.

Ralph and Denise Bulger also separated not long after the appalling murder of their two-year- old son, James, in 1993.

nor could Sara and Michael Payne face the future together after their daughter, Sarah, eight, was abducted and killed seven years later.

So much suffering, so much injustice. The failure to bring all of Stephen’s killers to justice remains a terrible stain on this nation’s conscience. i pray that this gentle, kind lad, who cared more for others than himself, is at rest, just as i pray that his parents find peace.

Yet, whatever the Metropolitan Police says, and however much it parades its new inclusive diversity, it should not give up.

The case may be closed, but i hope this is not the end of the story.