Who Killed Daniel Morgan Book Review

Title: Who Killed Daniel Morgan?

Author: Peter Jukes and Alastair Morgan

Year: 2018

Genre: True Crime, History

Who Killed Daniel Morgan? Chronicles the five failed investigations into the murder of Daniel Morgan, a private investigator who was killed with an axe in a pub car park in 1987. It was selected by my local bookshop for their True Crime book club read of the month and I was completely unaware of the case before reading it.

On the evening of the 10th March 1987, private investigator Daniel Morgan was killed with an axe to the head outside a pub car park.

30 years on since this book was published (and now 38 years), the murder remains unsolved, despite five failed police investigations and a public inquiry (which at the time of the books release was still ongoing). It is one of the most investigated murders in British history.

Intrinsically connected to a murky relationship between the police and the press, Daniel’s death can even be linked to the phone hacking scandal that closed the News of the World in 2011. As the book goes on to describe on the blurb: 

“A lawless and twisted timeline of bugging, bribing and bent cops leads you to the body of Daniel – but not the truth of how he died. Justice is hidden in a web of corruption and cover-ups not only in the press, but at the heart of the Met Police itself. Written by Daniel’s brother Alastair with investigative journalist Peter Jukes, Who Killed Daniel Morgan? uncovers fresh revelations, new evidence and the latest findings of ‘one of the most disgraceful episodes in the entire history of the Metropolitan Police Service’ (an Assistant Commissioner of the Met).”

Thoughts

As I mentioned at beginning of the post, I hadn’t heard of the Daniel Morgan case as it occurred a few years before I was born and though there has been investigations of it throughout my life, as this book goes into it wasn’t a story I was familiar with.

I was very familiar with the story around the News of the World and the phone hacking scandal in 2011 as it was a huge story in the UK as the News of the World was certainly one of the most well known newspapers in the country at the time so I was intrigued to find out how this story connected to events that happened over 20 years later.

What you get with this book is a dark, murky and sordid story that seems stranger than fiction, let alone it being a true story.

The story is told in two halves with the heart of the story coming from Alastair Morgan, the brother who lost a sibling in the most dreadful of circumstances and his plight to try to bring his brothers killers to justice but constantly hitting brick walls as the police, the media and changing governments all impede the investigations into his murder, indeed the different ways in which the investigations go wrong is staggering and astonishing to behold and you wonder how Alastair and Daniel’s family have had the strength to carry on, even with just living every day, not just fighting for justice for Daniel.

On the other side, we also have sections written by Peter Jukes, a journalist who explores the case in the wider context of what was happening between the police and the media and their changing relationship during the 1990s and 2000s as corrupt police and unscrupulous journalists used illegal methods in a race to the bottom to sell more newspapers.

I found this to be very fascinating as it explored the ripple effect of the murder of one man but how it allowed a culture of corruption and greed to fester for over two decades afterwards before it was discovered.

As a British person it did indeed make you question the country you live in when the government, the police and the media all had a role in bending and shifting the narrative around this case. Also the link between the two events isn’t in any way tenuous which is shocking to read about.

Parts of the story and the cover-ups I also felt had parallels to the Post Office Horizon scandal which has been another big story in the UK the last few years.

For people who aren’t in the UK this is an ongoing story where hundreds of sub-postmasters throughout the UK were charged with theft or false accounting at their Post Office branches, when the fault was actually caused by a bug in the companies accounting software Horizon, a bug which the Post Office eventually knew about and yet continued to cover up. It has only recently occurred that the sub-postmasters have had their criminal convictions quashed, with some passing away in the interim. Although many are still awaiting compensation for the money the Post Office effectively stole from them under these charges (many sub-postmasters were ordered to pay the “missing” money back when being sentenced, often going into debt and losing their homes to do so). The parallels for me was again the government, the media and another institution, this time the Post Office working together for a long period of time to cover up this mistake.

For a true story that covers this length of time and the amount of failed investigations, there are a lot of people involved so the book is at times hard to follow, although they have tried to give you a list of people in each of the three sections which does help. However it is still an important story and even if you don’t pick up exactly who did what the gist of the events is still easy to follow. I did also find quite a few typos here and there in my edition, which I don’t usually mention but they were there which I was surprised about as it is a published book, not a self-published indie release.

However for a thought-provoking read of one of Britain’s most shocking murders, which also opens a can of worms that makes you question everything then this is definitely a book that’s worth a read. If you have read this book, let me know in the comments down below what your thoughts are.