‘THE GUY WHO HAD BEEN THERE FOR ME THROUGH THICK AND THIN WAS GONE’
Brother of murdered detective remembers the call that ‘changed my life’
THE brother of murdered Welshman Daniel Morgan has described the moment he discovered his sibling had been killed.
The private detective was found dead in 1987 in a south London car park having received an axe blow to the head.
Thirty years and five police inquiries later no one has been brought to justice for one of the longest unsolved murders on Scotland Yard’s books.
Now, in a new book – Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder Exposed – Daniel’s brother Alastair has recounted taking the call that “changed my life”.
The news came when he was staying with his grandmother.
The phone rang and he sat up on the camp bed in her sitting room.
“I peered at my watch and wondered who would telephone an 84-year-old woman at 6.30 in the morning,” the translator, who lives in London, said.
“I opened the door to the small hallway, picked up the phone and heard my mother’s voice.” “Dan’s dead,” she said. “I got a call from the Metropolitan Police a couple of hours ago.
“The officer who rang would only tell me: ‘Your son is dead.’”
But the officer could not tell them how he had died.
“He just said he didn’t have any more information. And that was that.”
Daniel was 37, healthy and had no history of illness.
He had been threatened and attacked in the course of his work. That was par for the course.
His mum told him he needed to get to London to see Daniel’s wife Iris and their children.
“They were bringing up two young children in south London,” Alastair said. “Sarah was aged five and Daniel, who was only three, called me ‘Uncle Wallister’. I’d stayed with them only a month before while Dan was away on business.”
His mother rushed from her home near Crickhowell in the Brecon Beacons. Before he left for London Alastair wanted to call Daniel’s business partner, Jonathan Rees.
“Daniel and I had a business meeting arranged last night in a pub in Sydenham,” Rees said. “Do you know Sydenham?” “No,” said Alastair. “It’s a rough sort of place,” Rees said. “Lots of druggies and that sort of thing.”
That was the moment he knew Dan had been murdered. Rees said they had arranged to meet “a third party” that didn’t show up.
“My car was parked in front of the pub, in the street,” Rees said.
“Daniel had parked in the car park behind the pub. I left Daniel finishing his drink and drove home.
“The police came to my house around midnight. They told me Dan- iel had been mugged. Fatally mugged. I think he was battered to death,” he said.
Alastair said: “I hired a cab for the two-hour drive to London, and watched the traffic float by.
“I felt disorientated, detached, like I was outside myself, just a spectator of the life passing by outside.
“The brother I’d shared a room with for 15 years, the guy who’d been there for me through thick and thin, was gone.
“I’d never again pick up a phone and call him, argue with him, share a joke.”
He added: “I pictured him in a pair of khaki shorts, with his thin right leg and different sized sandals – he’d been born with a club foot.
“His hands were dirty from messing around with a car battery. He rubbed his nose with the back of one hand and left a smear.
“We were standing at the top of the steps outside our house in Llanfrechfa, Cwmbran. I broke down again.”
Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder Exposed is out now priced £14.99 from Blink Publishing.