In a series of dawn arrests, a number of serving and retired officers were pulled in for questioning. Following a six-year investigation, eight retired officers were in the dock charged with perverting the course of justice. A trial of four other officers was due to begin the following year. Graham Mouncher, Richard Powell, Thomas Page, Michael Daniels, Paul Jennings, Paul Stephen, Peter Greenwood and John Seaford denied conspiring to pervert the course of justice. In addition Mouncher denied lying under oath in court. Facing perjury charges were two civilian witnesses from the original trial, Violet Perriam, whose statement had put John Actie near 7 James Street on the night of the murder, and the discredited supergrass Ian Massey who claimed Tony Paris had confessed to him. All pleaded not guilty. The prosecution alleged the detectives had "manipulated, moulded and even completely fabricated" evidence, that they had acted "corruptly together and with other police officers to manufacture a case against the five men". "The police had moved away from investigating a murder and they were instead busy trying to implicate people in that murder, people who were actually completely innocent of that murder," the jury was told. Despite the fact that Gafoor insisted he acted alone and had never met any of the five men originally accused of the murder, the police's defence would not have it - they were involved, they alleged.

Under the law of court privilege which protected the defence from being sued for defamation by the innocent men, their theory was that there were two attacks - Gafoor had stabbed Lynette but not fatally and then somehow the five happened upon the scene and took over. It did not seem to matter that they had been acquitted, Lynette's real murderer convicted, that not a single shred of evidence, forensic or otherwise linked any of the men to the murder scene or that they had received public and written apologies from two chief constables. The surviving members of the Cardiff Five were called as witnesses - John Actie, Tony Paris and Stephen Miller.

Perhaps most shockingly of all in the 30-year saga, they were effectively put on trial a second time during intense and prolonged cross-examination and without any defence. "It was happening all over again," Tony Paris says. "I was called as a witness and thought I'd be there for a few hours and then go home. "Four days I was there. We were being accused and tried all over again." During cross-examination John Actie said: "You keep accusing me of being there. I was acquitted. It is them who fitted me up… I wasn't there… It seems like I am on trial." Then in December 2011 after five months of evidence, the £30m trial collapsed in dramatic and controversial circumstances. It had become clear as the trial progressed that the process of disclosure was failing. Disclosure is the production and sharing by the prosecution of documents relevant to the case. This includes any information that either undermines the prosecution's case or potentially assists the defendants in their case. After several warnings by the judge, the prosecution was given one last chance, a litmus test, to prove they had handled the paper work correctly. But copies of a crucial set of four files required to prove the prosecution's competence regarding disclosure of material could not be found.

Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Coutts

The judge heard evidence alleging proof that one of the files had been destroyed on the orders of the officer leading the police corruption investigation Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Coutts. Following five months of evidence, the judge announced that a fair trial could not be guaranteed and abandoned the trial. All defendants were declared not guilty.

Then in an extraordinary twist, the missing files were found seven weeks later in a cardboard box with other documents relating to the case in the offices of the police corruption investigation team. Calls for a full public inquiry into what went wrong were resisted. Instead the then Home Secretary Theresa May ordered an independent review led by Richard Horwell QC. Its conclusions were published in July last year.

Horwell QC described the Cardiff Three convictions as "one of the worst miscarriages of justice in our criminal justice system". On the disclosure issues which led to the collapse of the police corruption trial, he said there had been errors amounting to "an embarrassment on a national scale". But, he went on, "suspicion that the trial collapsed due to yet further police corruption has not been supported by the evidence". "It is human failings that brought about the collapse of the trial, not wickedness," he concluded. Despite criticism that South Wales Police was put in charge of investigating its own officers, it is widely acknowledged that Chris Coutts led a competent and efficient investigation in bringing the retired officers to court. But the handling of the disclosure, a complex task involving around one million pages of evidence, was wholly incompetent. "The prosecution had predicted there would be an attack on disclosure," says journalist and author Satish Sekar, who has closely followed the case since 1991 and written three books about it.

Satish Sekar

"If you've predicted that how do you get caught with your pants down like that? Absolutely ludicrous." "What stands about the Cardiff Five," he adds, "is that it's very rare for so much to go wrong in the one case. "Aspects of it you'll find in virtually every single miscarriage of justice. What is rare is that it all happened in the one case." In 2015 the eight exonerated police officers sued South Wales Police for damages. They lost the case.

To say John Actie is bitter is an understatement. His relationship with the police, he says, is as fractious as ever and he has made numerous complaints about harassment. "My life has been ruined by what the police did," he says. "I have been attacked, had people come up and call me a murderer when I'm out. I've been sent cards on Valentine's Day saying 'remember the 14th'. This will not leave me until I'm in my grave. "My family has suffered, all our families have suffered. Our one chance of closure and they lose some papers?" Speaking in 1990s, Yusef Abdullahi, who undertook an 18-month speaking tour on miscarriages of justice after his release, during which he met high-profile figures such as U2 front man and philanthropist Bono, told how he had collapsed from nervous exhaustion and woke up in a psychiatric bed.

"I was there for several months and people keep telling me to take it easier," he said. "But the whole situation had got to me. I mean one minute I was in jail, the next I'm sitting eating with Bono. "Until it happens to you, no one can have any idea what it's like to be convicted for a murder you didn't commit. "We've been really messed up by what we've been though. We needed counselling but no one offered us any help. It did my head in." He did live to see Lynette's killer jailed but died of a burst ulcer in January 2011, aged 49. Ronnie Actie died in 2007 from deep vein thrombosis also aged 49. He had been virtually living in a garden shed.

"Why the police wanted me off the streets for the rest of my life? I don't know," he said in an interview with BBC Wales. "I'd love to know all those reasons. One day they'll come out." Tony Paris has a theory. "The police thought the community was hiding something but people aren't talking," he says. "So, this is my opinion, they thought 'we'll take him and him and him'… All of us apart from Miller were from big docks families. If anybody knows anything, now they've got to talk to get these guys out.

"The entire legal system, not just the police, were involved in what happened to us. "It changed my life. I went from being an extrovert in clubs and pubs to an introvert where I don't go out. I try to hide it when I do go out, but then I withdraw because I'm scared. I don't trust people. "I try to find suitable words to put my feelings across. But when you think about it, there is no word, there is no word in the dictionary in any language that you can find to truly put across how you feel, it's unspeakable." The case, estimated to have cost South Wales Police in excess of £100m, scarred the reputation of a police force which had four other recent miscarriages of justice on its record. The so-called Cardiff Newsagent Three were wrongly convicted for the murder of newsagent Phillip Saunders. They spent 11 years in jail before being released. After serving seven years for murder, the Darvell brothers were freed by the Court of Appeal in 1992 after it heard claims that detectives doctored confession statements and notes and suppressed scientific evidence.

The following year Jonathan Jones was found to have been wrongly convicted of the murder of his in-laws Harry and Megan Tooze at their south Wales farm. Annette Hewins' conviction was quashed in 1999. She had been serving a 13-year sentence for arson with intent to endanger life following the death of 21-year-old Diane Jones and her daughters Shauna, two, and Sarah-Jane, 13 months. Police accepted in 2006 she had no part in the murders. She died last year aged 51. But it is without doubt the Lynette White murder inquiry that stands out as South Wales Police's, if not the UK's, most notorious case. Eligible for parole since March 2016, the prospect that Jeffrey Gafoor could be freed at any time is not an easy one for Lynette White's family or for those branded with his crime for so long. On the 30th anniversary of Lynette's murder there are calls for a change in the law so criminals who knowingly allow miscarriages of justice to unfold before they are convicted, can be dealt with more severely. "There certainly were questions raised in a number of places about whether the sentence was proportionate to the nature of the crime and the fact that several innocent people spent time in prison as a result of Gafoor not coming forward and not admitting the case at an earlier stage," says South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Alun Michael.

South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Alun Michael

"I can't answer those questions but I think they are legitimate questions and it's a challenge to the criminal justice system to ensure that all factors can be taken into account in the sentencing process in future." But a stain remains on South Wales Police which, says newly installed Chief Constable Matt Jukes, has served to forge a determination for change. Speaking on the anniversary of Lynette White's murder, he says: "The learning we've taken from the murder of Lynette White and the original investigation has led us to review many other historic cases and has led to convictions in several of those. "So, the case itself has driven a change in the organisation and brought about justice for other victims.

South Wales Police Chief Constable Matt Jukes

"For young officers today and many members of the community this case is something that they're aware of in the history of the organisation. "It has truly deep resonances for all those affected by it and it's somewhat now in the DNA of the force I've got to say. "Our determination not to fail in this way again steels my resolve every day to make sure our investigations are of the highest quality, professionally, technically, ethically, that they can possibly be. "So I don't think even though this is an event that took place 30 years ago, it will leave the psyche of this organisation and its leadership for another generation." On the surface at least the untidy past of Cardiff's docklands has been successfully swept away, transformed into the trendy waterfront vision conceived in the late 1980s replete with serviced apartments, bars and restaurants. It is also home to the Welsh Assembly's Senedd.

7 James Street (end building on right) close to the Wales Millennium Centre

Now a smart rental above a vaping shop, 7 James Street is a stone's throw from the city's Millennium Centre, a thriving venue for opera, theatre and visiting West End shows. Once the beating heart of one of the world's most famous docks, its procession of stately buildings of ship brokers and chandlers and its exotically decorated shop fronts, is no more. The street is a ghost of its former self. The vestiges of the old Tiger Bay community are now a minority within Butetown, says Neil Sinclair, an author of three books on the history of the area. He witnessed the corrosive effect the Lynette White murder inquiry had on the community, one from which it has never fully recovered.

"Our general feeling as a community is that over the decades they wanted to eradicate us from Welsh memory and almost succeeded except for the fact that I've written down our history." "But," Neil adds, "our ancestors, they didn't live in vain and they're going to come out, their ghosts are going to rise and our proud history will be given the recognition it deserves." The surviving men caught up in one of the biggest scandals in recent history, never regained the peace they had taken for granted before being branded with the stigma of what happened at 7 James Street on St Valentine's Day 1988.

Immediately on being freed from jail, Tony Paris had said: "They wanted anybody for that murder. They thought we were anybodies but we were somebodies." He may well have been speaking for the entire community of Butetown, and for Lynette White, who had been dehumanised for so long as "the Cardiff prostitute". The case continues to haunt Stephen Miller who has experienced depression, anxiety and agoraphobia not to mention his regret at not being there to protect the woman he said he loved very much.

"She's helped me, she's the one that's kept me strong," he said of Lynette. "When I think about the case I think about her. Because this is all about her, it's not about us, it's about her." Had she lived Lynette White would have celebrated her 50th birthday last July. She had lost her way but might well have in time, like countless other troubled 20 year olds, reached a point of maturity and confidence to turn it all around. Her appalling death meant she would never get the chance.