The alleged conspirators in the unsolved murder of Daniel Morgan have been named in court, nearly 30 years after the private detective was found dead with an axe embedded in his head in a pub car park.

The high court heard allegations from lawyers acting for the Metropolitan police that Glenn Vian struck two fatal blows with the axe having been paid to carry out the killing by Jonathan Rees, an investigator who was Morgan’s business partner.



Rees carried out extensive work as an private eye for the News of the World, and earned up to £150,000 a year for the tabloid by providing it with information and stories, despite claims of him having links to police officers suspected of corruption.



Morgan was killed in 1987 and no one has ever been convicted over his death, one of the UK’s most notorious unsolved crimes. The court heard that Morgan was investigating the drugs trade and was killed because he knew too much.

Rees, Vian and others were tried for murder but the case collapsed in 2011. A civil case has allowed the allegations to be aired in public again. Rees and three other men charged at the time are suing the Metropolitan police, alleging officers were so determined to get them that its pursuit was malicious.

Morgan’s family believe the government should hold the second part of the Leveson inquiry into police and media relationships, believing it would help to shed light on their concerns that he was killed to stop him revealing corruption involving police officers and criminals. The government decision is expected later this year on whether Leveson II will take place.

The Met is defending the claim and said there was ample reason to suspect the men of murder. Jeremy Johnson QC, acting for the Met commissioner, said several witnesses who were close to the suspects had given the same description of the conspiracy to kill and silence Morgan.

Johnson told the high court: “The evidence gathered by the police included multiple accounts from various of the claimants’ associates to the effect that Jonathan Rees wanted Daniel Morgan dead, that he had paid his brothers in law, Glenn and Garry Vian, to carry out the murder, that Jimmy Cook was the getaway driver, and Sidney Fillery knew about the murder.”

Fillery was a former Met officer and took Morgan’s place as Rees’s business partner after Morgan’s death. Johnson said an “insidious web of corrupt police officers” was active in south London in the 1980s and 1990s and that some suspected of involvement were also involved in Morgan’s murder.

Johnson told the court the murder and the alleged corruption in shielding the killers had “shocked the conscience of the nation” and that while she was home secretary Theresa May had ordered a panel of inquiry into the corruption claims. It is currently investigating, with its report due out later this year.

Morgan, 37, was a partner in a notorious private detective agency called Southern Investigations. The News of the World and other media used it, and police suspected that it was involved with corrupt officers selling information.

Morgan was killed outside the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south London, on 10 March 1987. Johnson told the high court that one witness claimed Vian had bragged about the fatal attack and said: “Done him straight in the head with an axe. He should have been wearing a crash helmet.”

The suspects were subjected to bugging, and one recording captured Rees revealing he could use his corrupt police contacts to access top secret information, including whether police on the Morgan inquiry were monitoring him and any of the other suspects.

The investigation that collapsed in 2011 was led by DCS David Cook. Lawyers for the men suing the Met attacked his ethics, and Nicholas Bowen QC said Cook may have been driven to see Rees and the others convicted because he “became convinced and resentful that Rees and Southern Investigations had fixed up a surveillance operation of his own activities with the active cooperation of the News of the World”.

The case against Rees and the other men who faced murder charges collapsed mainly because it relied on a series of informants whose testimony was ruled as inadmissible. The judge criticised Cook during the trial for mishandling a crucial supergrass witness. In the end prosecutors decided to offer no evidence.

Bowen told the court: “The impropriety is not limited to the former DCS Cook. The Met police attitude to this case from the beginning was blinkered and a mindset developed which propelled the various investigations towards the goal of seeking the conviction of our clients irrespective of the fact there was no credible evidence against them.”

Police relied on “dodgy, desperate criminals” and “the prosecution was brought without reasonable cause and maliciously”, he said.

Cook will not give evidence in the civil proceedings, the high court heard. It was claimed he passed documents about the case and the corruption involved to a Sun journalist at the time.



The case before Mr Justice Mitting continues.