Out-of-control police promised murder ‘witness’ £20,000

The judgment was damning. Quashing the convictions of five men serving life for the brutal murder of footballer Kevin Nunes, the Court of Appeal said the case was one of the worst examples of police misconduct it had ever seen.

Lord Justice Hooper cited documents showing Staffordshire police had tainted the evidence of the main prosecution witness, a career criminal named Simeon Taylor, by promising him a £20,000 reward long before the trial.

Astonishingly, they had concealed the fact that while he was living under constant police protection, Taylor had been allowed to take drugs; and that two officers had used a safe house where Taylor was staying to conduct an extramarital affair; and that by falsifying documents, officers had sought to cover up a theft of money by Taylor from police minders.

Not only did senior officers know that members of an elite CID unit had compromised the case, they failed to disclose an explosive internal inquiry that revealed the unit’s unprofessional behaviour to the murder trial.

The judge concluded that the report suggested the ‘honesty and integrity’ of Taylor’s handlers was ‘open to question’, while their ‘documentation could not be trusted’. If it had been given to defence lawyers – as it should have been – the outcome might have been different.

‘This is a very bad case of non-disclosure,’ he concluded. ‘It is to be hoped that the appropriate measures will be taken against those responsible for what appears to us to be a serious perversion of the course of justice.’

Lord Justice Hooper cited documents showing Staffordshire police had tainted the evidence of the main prosecution witness, a career criminal named Simeon Taylor, by promising him a £20,000 reward long before the trial

Yet five years after he wrote those words, not one police officer has been held ‘responsible’ at all – despite a three-year inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) at a cost of £8 million, which uncovered further scandals – including evidence that police paid rail fares for ‘escorts’ who had threesomes with Taylor at a safe house.

In the wake of the botched murder case, three senior Staffordshire officers who were involved in it were promoted to the rank of chief constable: Jane Sawyers in Staffordshire, Suzette Davenport in Gloucestershire and Adrian Lee in Northamptonshire.

All have now retired, while Ms Sawyers and Ms Davenport were given policing’s most coveted award, the Queen’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service.

Furthermore, an investigation by The Mail on Sunday can reveal that:

• An IPCC investigation report, some of it seen by this newspaper, recommended that Sawyers, Lee and Davenport should all face multiple disciplinary charges of gross misconduct. A redacted version of the report is to be published this week.

• Sawyers, Lee and Davenport all deny any responsibility, claiming the IPCC inquiry, led by the former Chief Constable of Derbyshire, Mick Creedon, was ‘flawed’ – so triggering a furious, ongoing row at the top of British policing.

• Creedon and the IPCC still fiercely stand by his report, which runs to 7,000 pages. However, the police and crime commissioners in the forces led by Sawyers, Lee and Davenport refused to charge them – a decision the IPCC ultimately accepted. Neither they nor a further 11 officers also accused of misconduct have faced disciplinary tribunals.

And the damning dossier putting police in the dock 

Former Derbyshire chief constable Mick Creedon (pictured) produced the damning report

A three-year investigation for the Independent Police Complaints Commission led by former Derbyshire chief constable Mick Creedon, left, produced a damning report, partly seen by the MoS, saying three fellow chiefs including newly retired Staffordshire boss Jane Sawyers, right, had a ‘case to answer’ on multiple counts of ‘gross misconduct’ over the Nunes case.

Creedon claimed she ‘failed to investigate’ a whistleblower’s corruption allegations and failed to disclose an earlier inquiry report to murder trial lawyers. She and the other chiefs contest Creedon’s conclusions. 

Police and crime commissioners decided that they should not face disciplinary tribunals – leaving no one accountable for the murder case collapse. 

• Despite refusing to discipline anyone, Staffordshire police last month settled civil lawsuits with two of the men acquitted on appeal of the Nunes murder, paying them £200,000 in damages. The men’s lawyers claimed in a document filed at court that Sawyers was guilty of ‘misfeasance in a public office’ – citing the same allegations contained in the IPCC report.

• The Staffordshire force – described by critics as being ‘out of control’ following previous Mail on Sunday investigations – faces two further civil cases: one from the other three men cleared on appeal of the Nunes killing and the second by Nunes’s teenage son. At the time of his murder, Nunes’s girlfriend, Leanne Williams, was five months pregnant with him. A recent psychological report says the saga has had a devastating impact on his mental health and education.

Kevin Nunes’s blood-soaked remains were found on a lane near Wolverhampton on September 19, 2002. He had apparently been kidnapped, savagely beaten and finished off with shots from two separate handguns.

Later, police would suggest that Nunes, 20, was a drug dealer, and had fallen foul of his drug gang killers. But he had no convictions and his family insist he was devoted to football: he had trained with the semi-professional Staffordshire Rangers and had been on the books of Tottenham Hotspur.

For three years, the police made little progress in the murder inquiry. Then, according to the IPCC report, Simeon Taylor, a career criminal serving time for an unrelated offence, boasted to another inmate that he had helped ‘do the footballer’. The other prisoner told detectives. Approached by police, Taylor told officers that after Nunes was abducted, he had driven him and two of the alleged killers, Adam Joof and Antonio Christie, to the site of the murder and witnessed the attack.

Taylor could have been charged with murder. Instead, he was taken into ‘protective custody’ by Staffordshire’s Sensitive Policing Unit (SPU), and moved round a series of luxury hotels and safe houses. Twice he was taken on free holidays to South Africa.

Kevin Nunes’s blood-soaked remains were found on a lane near Wolverhampton on September 19, 2002. He had apparently been kidnapped, savagely beaten and finished off with shots from two separate handguns

Joof, Christie, Michael Osbourne, Owen Crooks and Levi Walker – who was already serving life for murdering soldier Narel Sharpe in 2004 – were charged with the murder. Taylor was the central prosecution witness at the trial and, under cross-examination, denied being promised any reward or other inducements. In January 2008, the five were convicted and sentenced to life, with minimum terms of between 25 and 28 years.

In 2009, a year after the trial, a friend of Taylor taped a phone call from him, in which Taylor said he had lied. His retraction prompted the Court of Appeal to ask Mick Creedon to conduct a preliminary inquiry. As he started to dig, he discovered that serious concerns about Taylor’s handling by the SPU had been known to senior officers long before the murder trial – but not disclosed.

Towards the end of 2005, the SPU had acquired a new boss, Detective Inspector Joe Anderson. He soon became appalled by what he found. One of the officers handling Taylor was making fraudulent expenses claims. Documents showed that Taylor had stolen £320 from police funds. He was going out drinking with officers and being allowed to take drugs. All of this was being covered up – apparently because someone had decided that Taylor had to give evidence at the murder trial ‘at all costs’.

Anderson also learnt of the extra-marital affair between two officers. He wasn’t worried about his colleagues’ morals, but he had serious concerns about the relationship’s effect on the trial. One of the pair was part of Taylor’s protection team and in that role was not supposed to know anything about the developing case. But the protection officer’s girlfriend had a central role in the murder inquiry and access to its documents. Anderson feared Taylor would hear about evidence of which he had no direct knowledge and repeat it in court, destroying his credibility.

On October 11, 2006, Anderson took his complaints to Sawyers who was then a superintendent and head of Staffordshire’s Professional Standards Department.

For three years, the police made little progress in the murder inquiry. Then, according to the IPCC report, Simeon Taylor, a career criminal serving time for an unrelated offence, boasted to another inmate that he had helped ‘do the footballer’

Anderson told the MoS: ‘I expected her to log a formal record, and to launch an investigation.’

Sawyers consulted her superiors, Davenport and Lee, then both assistant chief constables. The force decided that instead of a formal inquiry, it would conduct a looser ‘Management Review’, to be led by Superintendent Joe Costello.

In a letter to the IPCC earlier this year, Sawyers agreed she contributed to the drafting of its terms of reference. She was not directly involved in the review’s conduct. She said she did not commission the review nor was she asked about the decision.

A formal inquiry would have been recorded on the force computer system, and almost certainly disclosed at the trial. But Costello’s report, delivered in February 2007, existed only on paper. According to the IPCC, Creedon’s team found just one copy, inside a safe in the Professional Standards Department office. Its contents, along with the failure to disclose it at the trial, caused the collapse of the murder case. The devastating consequences were first described in the second paragraph of a 31-page memo dated March 6, 2012, to the Court of Appeal from the Crown Prosecution Service and prosecution counsel Richard Whittam QC.

It said: ‘For the reasons set out in this note, the CPS does not seek to uphold the convictions in this case, nor does it apply for any defendant to be retried.’

The full text of Costello’s report remains secret. But excerpts quoted in the prosecution memo confirmed the suspicions first raised by SPU boss Anderson: Taylor’s theft and drug-taking; the ‘totally unprofessional’ affair between the two officers; examples of evidence given by Taylor that he should not have known about; the view he had to testify ‘at all costs’.

Worse, despite the repeated denials from Taylor and officers at the trial, there was ‘clearly an understanding’ at the SPU that Taylor would be paid a £20,000 reward. Taylor had been ‘given assurances by staff from the Major Investigation Department he would receive the money in return for giving evidence,’ said the memo.

A formal inquiry would have been recorded on the force computer system, and almost certainly disclosed at the trial. But Costello’s report, delivered in February 2007, existed only on paper

In its judgment, the court congratulated Anderson ‘for his willingness to come forward and reveal that justice had not been done’. By this time he had left the police after being transferred to a ‘non-job’.

He went to an employment tribunal, saying he was victimised as a whistleblower, and in 2009 accepted undisclosed damages. However, others connected to the Nunes case were being promoted, including Sawyers, Lee and Davenport.

In 2011, six months before the appeal, Creedon was asked by the IPCC to extend his inquiry. He led a team of 16 detectives and focused on who was to blame and how the corruption identified by Anderson had not been disclosed to the trial.

His report concluded that all three of his fellow chief constables had a ‘case to answer’ for multiple counts of gross misconduct.

Creedon’s main allegations against Sawyers were that she ‘failed to ensure the allegations contained within the management review were properly investigated and failed to ensure the review was disclosed… [to] the CPS and Counsel for all parties.’ He claimed that Davenport also failed to ensure that the allegations by SPU boss Anderson were properly investigated, or to ensure that the Costello report was disclosed.

He also found she had a case to answer for failing to ensure Taylor was properly handled and for continuing to have him protected even after he was ‘arrested for drugs offences’ and ‘concerned in an offence under the Theft Act’.

Creedon’s recommendations against Lee also concerned Taylor’s handling and the failure to disclose the report. All three chiefs vehemently rejected his findings, saying the report lacked fairness and balance.

Sawyers told the MoS that Anderson’s allegations amounted at worst to ‘unprofessional’, not ‘corrupt’ conduct. She said she believed she had taken notes herself, but ‘I did not keep those notes. I wish I had.’

Lee did not respond to requests for comment last week. Davenport refused to give any details, but attacked Creedon in general terms, saying his report was ‘flawed from the start’. Sawyers accepted that Staffordshire police were responsible for failings of disclosure but when it came to deciding who was to blame, she claimed Creedon ‘set out with a mindset and tried to prove it, rather than conducting an objective search for the truth’.

She also disputed Anderson’s version of events. Anderson still insists he told her everything about what was wrong with his SPU unit and his story is supported by his police pocket notebook.

Sawyers told the MoS that Anderson’s allegations amounted at worst to ‘unprofessional’, not ‘corrupt’ conduct. She said she believed she had taken notes herself, but ‘I did not keep those notes. I wish I had.’

According to the IPCC, after Costello finished his ‘review’, Davenport wrote a note in February 2007 saying she had ‘forwarded it’ to Sawyers ‘for her sight’, and discussed the report’s recommendations with her. But Sawyers said last week she could not be blamed for mishandling Costello’s report because she never read it, adding that Creedon had been unable to prove that she did. In any event, it was not her responsibility to disclose it to the murder trial.

By the time Creedon delivered his report in late 2014, Sawyers was already Staffordshire’s acting chief constable. Now Matthew Ellis, the county’s Police and Crime Commissioner and his counterparts in Gloucestershire and Northants had to decide whether to accept the IPCC’s findings and bring disciplinary charges against their own chief constables.

All three refused, saying that, in their view, none of them had a case to answer for gross misconduct.

In June 2015, the IPCC wrote asking them again to charge their chiefs. Again they refused.

The same week, Staffordshire commissioner Ellis confirmed Sawyers as chief constable, saying ‘it is clear to me she has all the attributes needed’. No one else was shortlisted for the job.

Finally, in March 2016 the IPCC gave in. It does have powers to force commissioners to hold disciplinary tribunals, but decided

not to use them. The IPCC said it was ‘common ground there were significant failures within Staffordshire police’, and a ‘difference of opinion’ whether Sawyers should have launched a formal investigation in 2006 and whether she should have disclosed the review to the murder trial.

However, it was also ‘common ground’ there was ‘no evidence’ she was directly involved in a ‘cover-up or wilful omission’.

It accepted Ellis’s assessment that there was no specific duty on Sawyers personally to ensure that the report was disclosed. It accepted similar arguments on behalf of Lee and Davenport.

Meanwhile, Staffordshire police spent tens of thousands of pounds fighting lawsuits from Walker and Christie, two of those convicted for the Nunes murder. On July 28 the force paid Christie £150,000. Because he was still serving life for another murder, Walker got only £50,000.

Ellis insisted he had chosen Sawyers as chief because she represented ‘stability’. He denied that, having done so, there was any conflict in having to decide whether she should face disciplinary charges.

He confirmed that the appeal, IPCC inquiry and associated legal actions had cost £8 million, and found it ‘abominable’ that no one had been held to account. But he was not prepared to ‘make Jane Sawyers the scapegoat. This was not a case of gross misconduct, but corporate dysfunction’.

In February, Sawyers wrote to the IPCC saying Creedon’s report should not be published in its original form because it was unfair, inaccurate and defamatory. She wrote that she had ‘no case to answer’ for gross misconduct.

Mick Creedon, who retired in May, said: ‘I look forward to the publication of the report. I stand by it. The tragedy here is that no one has been held to account for the murder of a young man. For the Nunes family, there can be no closure.’

And so it seems. Leanne said: ‘It wasn’t the fault of the police that Kevin was murdered. But they poured salt in the wound.

‘Before the trial, they covered up their corruption. Now it feels like they’ve covered up the cover-up.’