I FEAR SABOTEURS IN THE MET DIDN’T WANT ME TO CATCH STEPHEN’S KILLERS

After the Mail’s historic front page, he was the detective who finally nailed two of Stephen Lawrence’s murderers. But in a devastating new book, he says he was driven out of the force for his pains

FOr Me, it was like being let loose in a sweet shop. An old police station was closing down and I’d volunteered to have a look at their old files. One room after another was filled with boxes full of ‘ongoing’ cases. But it was the final room that drew my attention, piled high with cartons labelled Operation Fishpool: 540 of them. In the recesses of Deptford Police Station in South London, I’d stumbled across the acres of paperwork generated by the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

It was then 13 years since the black teenager had been brutally stabbed to death at a bus stop. Despite a sizeable murder team, the initial investigation had failed to nail a single suspect — and his parents, Doreen and Neville Lawrence, had protested bitterly.

Since then, there’d been ten further police investigations into Stephen’s murder, all with increasing budgets — and all with exactly the same result. But what turned the case truly toxic for the Met was an inquiry, led by Sir William Macpherson, who not only tore into them for their slipshod work but accused the entire force of being ‘institutionally racist’.

At the time he released this thunderbolt, I was a detective sergeant working at Scotland Yard. As the news came through, I saw the Met’s Assistant Commissioner, Ian Johnston, bury his head in his hands. ‘It’s all gone horribly wrong,’ he said.

How had such a balls-up ever been allowed to happen? Why hadn’t anyone been charged? And why were the files just gathering dust?

I made an appointment to see Commander Cressida Dick, my boss, and told her I wanted to take on Operation Fishpool. ‘Seriously?’ she asked. ‘Yes, ma’am. I’d like to have a crack at solving the Stephen Lawrence murder.’

Commander Dick was delighted, but not everyone shared her view. The murder squad, SCD1, hated the case because it showed them in a bad light, and even my chief superintendent was dead against me taking it on.

Plenty of others tried to discourage me. ‘Why?’ I asked them all. ‘A young boy died in 1993, and we failed him.’

One person after another responded with the same question: ‘What makes you think you won’t fail him, too? There’s no point letting it ruin your career, like it has everyone else’s.’

One policeman warned me: ‘ The family are a nightmare. They won’t give you the time of day. Doreen Lawrence wouldn’t even let the original investigation have access to her son’s school records. So much for wanting the killers caught.’

Others criticised the Lawrences for ‘slagging us off’ in the media.

I began to wonder if I’d taken on more than I could chew, and my heart sank further after watching an old police presentation which confirmed that Doreen had indeed forbidden access to Stephen’s school records.

WHere to begin? My first port of call was Holmes, a computer system developed by the Met for big cases. In theory, every piece of evidence relating to Stephen’s murder, every action and every order, should have been logged in. But it hadn’t. Crucial information hadn’t been input correctly.

Just one small example: a lot of people interviewed after the murder had used the word ‘juck’ — which is slang for stabbing someone. There were probably 40 recorded statements containing ‘juck’, but the word didn’t appear once in Holmes.

Not only that, but a lot of rubbish had been added, presumably because somebody needed to look busy.

My team would need to start again at the beginning, inputting every single scrap in the 540 boxes. It would take at least two years. When I told Cressida Dick, she blew out her cheeks. ‘ Whatever it takes, Clive. But do me a favour: don’t let the Met look any worse.’

So I immersed myself in the files. Armed with a flask and a sandwich, I’d go every day to Well Hall road in eltham, the scene of the murder. Then I’d sit there reading the files on a bench across the road.

By chance, the third file I opened contained a startling revelation. right there, in black and white, was the fact that Mrs Doreen Lawrence had given permission for the Met to see Stephen’s school records.

The more I read, the more I despaired. Contrary to what I’d been told, it was crystal-clear that there was nothing she wouldn’t have done to help us in the pursuit of her son’s killers. every aspect of the original investigation, I concluded, would need to be re-checked. ON APrIL 22, 1993, Stephen and his friend Duwayne Brooks had been waiting for a bus home. It was just gone 10.30 pm when a gang of five or six white youths spotted them.

As Duwayne ran off, 18-year-old Stephen stood his ground and was stabbed twice. His last words before he died were: ‘What is wrong with me?’

When Inspector Steven Groves arrived in response to a 999 call, he jumped to the conclusion that Stephen’s injuries were the result of a fight with Duwayne. As the Macpherson report concluded in 1999: ‘[Groves] would not have been similarly dismissive if the two young men involved had been white.’

Groves didn’t even ask Duwayne in which direction the alleged killers had gone. rather than launch a manhunt, he went off to a nearby pub to look for witnesses.

It was midnight before 40 men and women, plus dogs, were let loose on the area. What potential evidence could have been lost, disposed of or washed away in that time?

Within 24 hours, the police had had numerous calls identifying the suspects. Five names kept cropping up: Jamie Acourt, Neil Acourt, Luke Knight, Gary Dobson and David Norris, the son of an established local gang boss.

Not a bad steer. But the police decided not to pick them up, or even to search their homes. Why? Locals claimed it was because Norris’s father had police officers on his payroll.

As it was, the inspector in charge of the investigation was exonerated by Macpherson. But that still doesn’t explain why, instead of being interviewed, the suspects were simply placed under police surveillance — three whole days after the murder.

Now, in any murder case, there’s a review after six weeks to check the i nvestigation i s up to scratch. Stephen’s case was no different. Chief Superintendent roderick Barker was asked to check it — and he found everything top-notch.

The Met would stand by that review for years. Whenever there was criticism, from the Lawrences or anyone, they’d say: ‘No, we did everything we could have done. Look, it says so here.’

Detective Superintendent Brian Weeden took over the investigation into Stephen’s death on April 26. But he didn’t arrest the suspects until May 7, claiming new information had come to light. The truth? The only thing that had changed was that they’d had two weeks to dispose of any evidence and to work on alibis.

Sadly, none of the witnesses was able to identify the suspects in identity parades. By 1996, after yet another investigation, the Lawrences had l ost all f aith and launched a private prosecution against three of the men: Luke Knight, Neil Acourt and Gary Dobson. But Duwayne’s testimony was judged too weak, and the judge pulled the plug on the trial.

All three men were freed. In the eyes of the law, as it had stood for centuries, the double jeopardy rule meant they could never again be tried for the same crime.

ON February 14, 1997, the Daily Mail splashed photos of the five original suspects on the front page, naming them as Stephen’s killers and challenging them to sue. No one did.

Over the next decade, there were eight more investigations and an inquest into Stephen’s death.

The only positive was that David Blunkett, as Home Secretary, changed the law on double jeopardy, allowing a suspect to be retried for the same crime — provided there was ‘new and compelling evidence’.

As I sat there reading all this on my bench, I decided to go back to the start. So, co- opting two policemen, I painstakingly restaged the actual murder, timing every provable action. This took six hours and led to a revelation. It had not been — as everyone described it — a ‘ brief ’ attack. It had taken between 30 seconds and a minute, which is unusually long for a stabbing.

This was a massive breakthrough, because I now realised the attack had al most certainly left more forensic evidence than we’d discovered so far.

The Government’s independent forensic division, Forensic Science Services (FSS), had carried out hundreds of thousands of scans on the suspects’ clothing and belongings in the search for Stephen’s blood. Nothing was found.

They’d also scoured Stephen’s outer clothes for fibres from his attackers. Again, zilch. However, they hadn’t looked for fibres on the suspects from Stephen’s clothes.

I decided to hire a fresh pair of eyes — a different firm of forensic experts.

No one at the Met had ever done this before, and I had calls from all sorts of people telling me that I couldn’t do it. There was even a plea (more of an order, really) from the Home Office.

But, to their credit, the Met did eventually give the go-ahead to hire LGC Forensics, based in Oxford.

I’d like to say the handover from one forensics outfit to another went