Killers must give the rest up – dad
LONDON: They have cheated justice for nearly 19 years.
But the rest of the Stephen Lawrence killer gang were warned yesterday that they would not get away with murder.
Jailing Gary Dobson and David Norris for the “terrible and evil crime which scarred the conscience of the nation”, Mr Justice Colman Treacy dramatically ordered Scotland Yard to hunt down the “three or four” killers still at large.
Police, he declared, should not “close the file” on the case.
His forthright comments were backed by Stephen’s parents, Neville and Doreen, and prompted the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to pledge that the remaining suspects “should not rest easily in their beds”.
Significantly, police have already received a number of calls about Stephen’s murder since Tuesday’s convictions.
The trio of men long suspected of joining Dobson and Norris in the “racist and thuggish” South London murder in April 1993 are brothers Neil and Jamie Acourt, and Luke Knight.
Their names were handed to police within days of Stephen’s murder and all five were named by the Daily Mail as killers in 1997 and challenged to sue if the newspaper was wrong. They never did.
Outside the Old Bailey court yesterday, Neville Lawrence said he hoped Dobson and Norris would “give up the rest of the people”.
“One of my greatest hopes is that these people have now realised that they have been found out and they are now going to go and lie down in their beds and think that they were the ones who were responsible for the death of my son,” he said.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard HoganHowe said detectives would go after the remaining suspects.
He urged people to come forward with information which might prompt new charges.
The new phase of the marathon Lawrence investigation is expected to focus on the Acourt brothers and Knight, who were in hiding last night after apparently fleeing their homes. It could also include a renewed attempt to identify a possible sixth gang member.
Police plan to meet next week to assess where the case stands.
Dobson, 36, and Norris, 35, were convicted on Tuesday of the racist murder of Stephen. Dobson, who is already serving a five-year sentence for drugdealing, was sentenced to at least 15 years and two months.
Norris was given a minimum of 14 years and three months for what the judge described as a “terrible and evil crime”. – Daily Mail