Love you Karen... I mean Sharon
Ex-cop called mistress by wife’s name in bed
THEY were not the circumstances in which he expected a misplaced word would be taken down and used in evidence against him.
But when a former top policeman accidentally called his mistress by his wife’s name as they were naked in bed, it triggered a chain of events that ended up in court.
Darin Birmingham, 60, blurted out ‘Karen’ as he was about to have sex with his lover, 49-year-old Sharon Murphy.
Realising the retired Scotland Yard officer would never leave his wife, Miss Murphy ended the tenyear relationship and said she didn’t want to see him again.
But the former Met sergeant, who won 23 commendations during his 30-year career, tried to woo her back. He even sent his former mistress 36 emails while on holiday with his wife, the Sun reported.
Miss Murphy complained about him to police and he appeared before magistrates on a harassment charge.
He was cleared when the court ruled his advances were simply
‘He was on top of me, naked’
part of the couple’s emotionally intense affair. Mr Birmingham and Miss Murphy, an antisocial behaviour officer for Croydon Council, met during a raid on a crack cocaine den in south London in 2009. The relationship endured for a decade before Mr Birmingham’s slip of the tongue, Croydon magistrates heard.
‘That was that. All I could see was him on top of me, naked, calling me “Karen”,’ Miss Murphy said.
Mr Birmingham, from Hailsham, East Sussex, said his appeals to Miss Murphy were ‘not meant to upset her or be oppressive’.
Dismissing the charge, presiding magistrate Keith Sillitoe told the couple: ‘There has been a long and fractious cycle of emotions between you for nearly ten years.’
Mr Birmingham began his career in Tooting, south-west London, as part of the local crime squad before a promotion to detective constable. In 2008, he masterminded Operation Aries in Croydon to break up organised criminals who dealt in extortion and drugs.
He also launched a successful 2012 sting operation on eastern European fraud gangs operating on Westminster Bridge. Plainclothes officers who had been waiting on a double- decker bus pounced on the scammers.
Following his retirement in 2013, he has been outspoken about the need to crack down on gangs.