SUICIDE or SLAIN?
Revealed after 18 years
The remarkable story of a London gangster shot dead on a Scottish road. Secret report said it was suicide but now his son claims it was murder
It was a lonely place to die. At the bottom of an embankment beside a bleak stretch of the A96 in Aberdeenshire, the man’s body lay undiscovered beneath a blanket of snow for nearly a week.
He had a gunshot wound to the head and nearby was the weapon that had killed him.
The grim discovery in February 2001 sparked an investigation shrouded in secrecy that touched upon the police in both England and Scotland, and involved some of the most feared gangsters in the UK.
Detectives at Grampian CID would eventually conclude the man had driven his 2.9- litre red Ford Scorpio nearly 600 miles from his home in East London to Cairnie, Aberdeenshire, and had taken his own life.
But it is only now The Sunday Post can reveal the full story – and
‘ It was never suicide. There’s no way he would have done that
the explosive claims from his family that he would never have taken his own life.
A secret report by police intelligence revealed the dead man was John Donovan, a 37-year-old gangster said to be involved in delivering cocaine from London to Scotland and who had close links to a notorious underworld crime syndicate.
But he was also, according to those closest to him, a happy family man who would never have contemplated suicide.
A cherished family photograph shows him beaming for the camera alongside his beloved wife Deana, who described her time with him as the “best time of my life”.
Do no van’ s steps on Lee Armstrong said this week his family had always been convinced he had been murdered.
The 36- year- old, of Tower Hamlets, East London, said: “John was like a father to me.
“I was 18 when he died and him and my mum had been together for nine years, so we were very close. He was a great guy.
“He was well respected and I really looked up to him.
“I was devastated when he died. We knew back then he had been killed.
“It was never suicide. John was not the sort of person to do that. There’s no way he would have done that. He enjoyed life.
“There was no malice in John. He was just him. He was a very nice person and his family meant everything to him.”
Another family source added: “It’s never been thought that he took his own life. I don’t think Deana ever thought that. “Nobody believed it.” But Donovan was associated with some of the most hardened criminals in Britain in the run-up to his death.
A secret Metropolitan Police intelligence report called Operation Tiberius featured both his name and death and revealed he was connected to a notorious crime gang, who at the time ruled the underworld in London’s east end.
It stated that Donovan was involved in taking consignments of cocaine from London to Scotland with a violent gangland enforcer who was “believed to have ready access to firearms” and who was later shot in an assassination bid.
The top-secret document, which also detailed the corrupt links
between the Met and organised criminals, was drawn up in 2002 and an unredacted copy was published online earlier this year.
And, crucially, it stated that, while detectives at Grampian CID were investigating Donovan’s death, they were unaware he was on the radar of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Intelligence Section (SIS).
The first officers on the scene on Friday, February 9, 2001, had been alerted after Donovan’s car had been left in a layby for several days.
The red Ford Scorpio Ultima saloon, registration P366 CJB, was parked facing south, towards Aberdeen, beside a deserted stretch of dual carriageway.
On the other side of the road, 100 yards from the car and at the bottom of a treacherously steep slope, lay the bloodied body.
A sawn- off shotgun was found nearby. It proved to be untraceable and had not been used for any other shootings.
There was no note and there were no fingerprints on the gun, not even Donovan’s.
One former senior officer at Grampian Police said the wintry weather at the time wiped out any forensic evidence at the scene.
The ex-detective said: “My recollection is that there was absolutely no evidence, physical or forensic.
“It had been wild, seriously wild. The conditions were so bad on that slope we were doing risk assessments to let people down. We even had to get the mountain rescue team in to get the body out.”
Appeals were made in local newspapers about three vehicles – a silver saloon, a red VW Golf and a blue Rover – sighted at different times in the layby near Donovan’s car.
Police were also puzzled by the dead man’s last movements. At the time police said he had been reported missing from his home the weekend before his body was found, and they were baffled by the remote location more than 40 miles north of Aberdeen.
Detectives froom Grampian CID also travelled tot London, where they found Donoovan’s widow to be “upset but quite pleasant”.
They went to a gym connected to the crime gang anda spoke to manlso agement, and almanlso interviewed the underworld enfoorcer who had been llinked to Donovaan.
The Operatioon Tiberius report sstated Scottish liiaison was handled by a detective coonstable at the Met and Grampian offficers “remain unaest wware of SIS intereunaest in these matters”.
It went on: “It is understood that Grampian CID eventuallye wrote off the incident as a suicide.”
There is little furtherf mention of Donovan in the report,r though one throwawayt commentcomm states he “was shots dead near Aberdeen”.
For those who worked on the casec at Grampian Police, it still rankles krankles due to a number of unknowns but they still feel it was suicide due to the lack of any evidence to say ootherwise.
The former Grampian detective tdetective involved with the probe into Donovan’s death said they had been aware of an organised crime link but hhad believed he was a “gofer”.
Donovan was not known to police ffor dealing cocaine in the north-east of Scotland, and the drug itself was still uncommon there in 2001 compared pcompared to substances like heroin.
But the ex-officer said all theories would have been exhausted and no evidence had been found to point to his death being murder.
He said: “If he’s had domestic iissues, if he’s getting grief because he’s due someone a heap of dosh or lost drugs or whatever, yeah, maybe he did just kill himself and where better to do it?
“His mate was shot coming out of his house. Are they going to chase him (Donovan) to the back of beyond? Nah.
“There was just no evidence to even suggest there was a murder. There wasn’t any evidence and if there isn’t that then there’s nothing you can do. You have nothing to investigate.”