Essex Boys case failings: Probe a investigation ‘mired in corruption’ | UK | News | EUROtoday

A brand new investigation into each side of the “blinkered” homicide case took a crew of ex-Scotland Yard detectives 4 years to finish.

Drug sellers Pat Tate, 37, Tony Tucker, 38, and Craig Rolfe, 26, have been discovered shot useless in a Range Rover on a farm observe in Rettendon, Essex, on the morning of December 7, 1995.

In 1998, Michael Steele, now 77, and Jack Whomes, 58, have been discovered responsible of the murders however each protest their innocence.

The prosecution case relied closely on supergrass Darren Nicholls’ declare to have been their get-away driver.

Now, for the primary time, a 132-page file despatched to the Criminal Case Review Commission has highlighted a key assertion made by a senior Essex Police detective.

He revealed that he was knowledgeable of the murders by a drug squad officer at 6.30am on December 7 – 90 minutes earlier than the 999 name by farmers.

Declaring the case has a “stench of corruption” about it, former Met Police DCI Dave McKelvey mentioned: “We know Tate and Tucker were under surveillance by Essex Police yet remarkably this anomaly [the statement] was never investigated further.” Other claims within the report embrace that an undercover officer was drunk throughout a telephone name on a failed sting operation.

Fellow officers “destroyed” or “stole” recordings of that telephone name, plus others made by Steele, it claims.

Mr McKelvey mentioned: “We had access to the defence case files but also interviewed about 30 former and serving officers with knowledge of the case and corruption investigations, and about 30 other non-police witnesses.

“I’m convinced of a major miscarriage of justice. The investigation was blinkered from the outset and failed to properly investigate an earlier, credible motive for the murders from a man who claimed to be the getaway driver for a named assassin, four months before Nicholls did.”

The defence requested Mr McKelvey’s non-public investigation agency TM Eye to independently overview the case in 2019 however it was not commissioned or paid.

The murders featured within the 2000 movie Essex Boys, starring Sean Bean.

Whomes was launched from jail in 2021 and Steele’s parole listening to is about to renew. Essex Police mentioned: “This case has been back before the Court of Appeal twice, in 1999 and 2006. Both appeals were rejected.”