Duncan Hanrahan

Duncan Hanrahan  (policeman)
Born	1956 Cork, Eire
Former Metropolitan Police detective who became a middle-man between corrupt police and the criminal underworld

Duncan Mark Hanrahan (born 1956/1958, Cork, Ireland) is a former Metropolitan Police detective who plays a role in the Daniel Morgan murder investigation. Having set up a private investigation firm, he became a middle-man between corrupt police and the criminal underworld until his arrest in 1997. He then became the first police supergrass, though was convicted for multiple offences in 1999.

Police career

Hanrahan joined the Metropolitan Police in 1977 and became a detective in 1981. Over the next fourteen years, he would be based in south London, including Norbury police station. His last position in the police was as a Detective Sergeant at Kennington Police Station. He would leave the police in September 1991, having been on sick pay for the previous year. His early retirement was on the grounds of ill-health, having sustained an injury while responding to a robbery..

On police corruption

Hanrahan was interviewed for the Gillard & Flynn book Untouchables. There he told them that he joined the police because he simply 'fancied nicking people', and was not interested in helping people or society. The authors wrote: 'it really matters to Hanrahan that no one thinks he took backhanders for blowing out operations while he was in police. He sees himself more as a corrupter of police officers, and less as a corrupt cop.' He claimed that he never accepted money for doing anything while he was with the police, but did carry out favours. His membership of the Freemasons also played an important role for him, a way to meet influential people who provided 'a column of mutual support'.

He put the change in his outlook down to the death of his one month old daughter in 1985. Following her death, his first marriage broke down and he started drinking heavily. It was also around this time that he was transferred to Norbury police station, where he encountered another Freemason, Jonathan Rees (see below) and recognised him as a key player worth knowing.

Another person Hanrahan became associated with was Commander Ray Adams. Over many years a network of corrupt police had built up around criminal figures in south London. This web, now popularised as a 'firm within a firm', ties in not only with the Daniel Morgan murder but other major events such as the Brinks-MAT robbery and the murder of Stephen Lawrence, as is explained below. Adams was a key figure in this web, particularly through his association with major criminal figure Kenneth Noye.

According to Derek Haslam (see below), by 1988 when the pair were both at Norbury police station, Hanrahan was passing on information to Adams. Hanrahan's relationship with Adams was sufficient for the latter to attend Hanrahan's second wedding in 1992, after Hanrahan had retired from the police.

Daniel Morgan murder (1987)

• Main article: Daniel Morgan murder.

Belmont Car Auctions robbery

In 1986, Southern Investigations, a detective company run by private investigators Jonathan Rees and Daniel Morgan and based in Thornton Heath, was involved in providing security to Belmont Car Auctions. This included using serving police officers who were moonlighting without authorisation. However, Rees was apparently robbed of £18,000 of Belmont's takings when on his way to the bank - he had taken it home as the night safe it was to be deposited in had been glued shut.

The police investigation was led by DC Duncan Hanrahan, who had been the duty night officer when Rees reported the robbery. However, it was noted that Hanrahan's investigation was less than thorough - he did not interview neighbours who may have witnessed the robbery, and he visited Rees, who claimed to have been sprayed with something noxious during the robbery, in hospital in what would have been only an informal meeting. Nobody was ever caught. Hanrahan would later tell the Daniel Morgan Inquest that at the time he felt it was either an 'inside job' or Rees had been set-up.

Others also raised questions over the robbery - neither the car auctioneers nor Morgan believed Rees. Belmont wanted Southern Investigations to pay the money back, and the robbery also formed the backdrop to a quarrel between the business partners. After Daniel Morgan was found murdered a year later in 1987, it was postulated that a disagrement over Southern Investigation repaying Belmont from its own funds could have been a reason for his death; though another motive could have been to do with Morgan seeking to expose police corruption.

Investigation of Jonathan Rees

Rees became the a prime suspect for Morgan's murder, though he was never convicted. The investigation was hampered by on-going police corruption - two serving officers, Sid Fillery and Alec Leighton, would meet up with Rees in the immediate aftermath of the murder and both would play leading roles in subsequent events. Fillery had been one of the police officers moonlighting as security for Belmont Car Auctions on behalf of Southern Investigations, and would subsequently take Daniel Morgan's place as partner in the latter company; while Leighton would go on to work with both Hanrahan and Southern Investigations.

The lead investigating officer, Det. Supt. Douglas Campbell, decided to run a separate operation to the murder inquiry. Possibly without official sanction from the internal anti-corruption unit, the Complaints Investigation Bureau (CIB), Campbell asked Hanrahan to get close to Rees to see if he could learn more. According to Gillard & Flynn, Hanrahan was suspected of knowing more about the murder than he let on, and to clear his name had volunteered for the job of approaching Rees undercover and reporting back pub conversations.

Hanrahan had socialised with Morgan and Jonathan Rees for about two years previously. He was also in the Freemasons with Rees, and served at the Norbury police station (just next to Thornton Heath in the Croydon borough) where Rees was connected well to discuss using it to fit Morgan up on a false drink-driving charge. According to his account to the 1988 inquest into the murder, Hanrahan said he had posed as a friend of Rees, who had confided to him that he was out to harm the reputation of the investigating officers, Campbell and Det. Insp. Alan Jones. In particular, Rees wanted Jones to be fitted up for something he did not do, whether planting drugs in Jones' car or spreading allegations that the officer was having an affair. (Something Rees denied.) Hanrahan also told the inquest that Rees had stated to him that though he was in a position to provide leads to the police over Morgan's murder, he did not do so as he was angry with the way he was being treated by the murder investigation following Sid Fillery being taken off the case.

When asked by the coroner 'You were a plant, a double agent?', Hanrahan responded: 'In a way, yes sir'. When evidence of Hanrahan's role in this came out, he was subsequently nicked-named "double agent Dunk". However, it has been questioned how genuine his double-agent role ever was, given the subsequent close association between Rees and Hanrahan. After the inquest, Hanrahan moonlighted on behalf of Rees, to watch staff suspected of stealing in a Croydon nightclub. Alec Leighton would also state that Hanrahan provided statements on behalf of Rees in the latter's unsuccessful claim against the police, statements very much at odds with those he gave to the Daniel Morgan investigation team, according to Alec Leighton

Crossing paths with Derek Haslam

It is of note that Hanrahan's career would overlap with that of DC Derek Haslam, another player in the saga of police corruption around Adams and Southern Investigations. Haslam had played a key role in exposing another part of the web of corruption around Adams, this time relating to Alan "Taffy" Holmes.

In early 1988, Haslam, who by then was talking to anti-corruption unit CIB2, was reassigned to Norbury police station, where Hanrahan was also based. He would later tell CIB2 that Hanrahan was passing on information to Adams. While working there, he would find a written death threat placed on his desk in the police station.

Private investigation career

Southern Investigations

On leaving the police, Hanrahan set up his own business, though according to his later accounts this was not a successful venture and he fell into financial difficulty. On 11 March 1991, prior to him leaving the police, he established Eurocare Contract Services Ltd, of which he is the sole director.

Having maintained contacts with the police and with the criminal underworld, he began to build up a business as a middleman between the two. Speaking to Gillard & Flynn, he says:

I don't want my kids to think that what I did was really cool. At the time I thought it was the business. We were taking the piss out of the system. We were earning a few quid here and there. But when you look back at it, we were slags. We were the people we in the police would have called slags. We were the villains. I don't like that and I don't find it easy to live with. But that is what I was.

By the start of 1992 Hanrahan is associated on jobs with Rees & co in Southern Investigations.

A long standing client of Southern Investigations was News of the World journalist / editor Alex Marunchak, with whom Hanrahan appears to have had his own relationship. He gives Gillard & Flynn an account where he had acted as a middleman between Marunchak and a police officer willing to sell information from the investigation into the apparent disappearance of dominatrix Lindi St Clair. However, when the story appeared in the Mail on Sunday instead, Marunchak denied that he had been their source. Hanrahan and Marunchak fell out as a result, though the latter did eventually pay Hanrahan.

According to Hanrahan, he got his own back when he stopped the News of the World acquiring an exclusive in relation to Liberal Party leader Paddy Ashdown. While at the offices of Southern Investigations, Hanrahan overheard plans to purchase divorce case documents stolen from the Ashdown's solicitors, which the company was working to acquire on behalf of News of the World. Still aggrieved with Marunchak, Hanrahan scuppered the deal by telling Ray Adams, who in turn told City of London police. Hanrahan was registered as an informant, and the person brokering the sale of the documents arrested. Ashdown, having become aware that the Press now knew about the documents' existence, then went public on a five month affair with his secretary, leading to The Sun 's infamous 6 February 1992 headline 'It's Paddy Pantsdown'. However, this does not add up, because, while the Ashdown story broke in February 1992, the disappearance of Lindy St Clair did not happen until February 1993.

8 June 1993, Hanrahan became Company Secretary for SMMC Services Ltd, a company founded a month earlier by Sid Fillery, but that was wound up in July 1994.

The closeness of Hanrahan to Southern Investigation circles becomes apparent in December 1993, when Rees, Fillery, Alec Leighton and he share a table at the annual Christmas meal of the 'Brothers in Law' luncheon club. The club was made up of serving and retired police officers who were also freemasons, and based in the borough of Croydon.

In another incident while Leighton was still a serving police officer, he had allowed Southern Investigations to use his force car, fitted with police radios, for security work. The wrongful use of Leighton's car was discovered when the security guard who had been driving it was arrested. A story was provided that, too drunk to drive home, Leighton had given his car keys to Hanrahan, who then passed them onto the Southern Investigations security guard.

Hanrahan Associates Ltd (1994-1997)

Ray Adams would also introduce him to another ex-Metropolitan Police detective, Martin King. Along with others, Hanrahan and King would establish Hanrahan Associates Ltd in June 1994.

King, who had retired from the police in 1971, was a wealthy businessman with a house in Mayfair but little in the way of obvious income. He was a known associate of criminal defence solicitor Michael Relton - who had been jailed for his role in laundering money from the Brinks-MAT robbery in 1988 and whom had links with corrupt police and leading underworld figures. A number of years later Hanrahan was recorded in prison, talking of the corrupt relationship between Adams and King (see below); Hanrahan also names King as a person with extensive connections in the south east London criminal underworld.

When Hanrahan and King were arrested for corruption in 1997, it was initially presented that Hanrahan was King's errand boy, sent to find police officers willing to be bribed. However, it would later emerge that between 1994 and 1997 Hanrahan was as much involved in police corruption and criminal activity. According to Untouchables:

Hanrahan had something King's friends needed: an ability to identify which serving police officers were approachable to sort out a bit of bail or maybe lose some case papers. Together they were a formidable partnership.

Initially, Hanrahan Associates was run out of Alec Leighton's converted garage. Leighton, who had known Hanrahan from when they had taken a CID course together at Hendon Police College, was another of the officers in the web of corruption that impacted on the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation, and had been suspended from police in 1993 (he would resign in July 1996). At first he worked for Hanrahan and co, though he apparently became disillusioned and left over the fact that despite getting good clients, Hanrahan was 'always looking for an angle to exploit an investigation and bleed it dry for money, by fair means or foul. It was usually foul.' Leighton would go on to found his own private investigation company Mayfayre Associates.

When Leighton and Hanrahan parted ways, Hanrahan Associates took a Marble Arch addresses. Hanrahan continued to do freelance work for Southern Investigations, while pursuing his own interests, which revolved around corrupting serving officers. Much of this work was done at The Victory in Thornton Heath & The Prince Frederick in Bromley, two pubs where he would meet with detectives from the Croydon borough drugs squad and the South East Regional Crime Squad office at East Dulwich; at these meetings he would hand over cash in plastic bags to serving officers in return for favours.

Corruption of police

Attempted corruption of DCI Peter Elcock

King and Hanrahan's business began unravelling in 1997. When needing access to police materials for their various deals, they approached DCI Peter Elcock, whose name came from an officer in the same Freemason lodge as Hanrahan. Elcock, a ranking officer in the Complaints Investigation Bureau (CIB), was second in command of its area office ('area complaints unit'), based at Norbury police station.

In February 1997, Hanrahan made a phone-call to the other officer, on the pretence that his wife, a still serving police constable, was keen to join Elcock's unit and he was looking for advice from the officer. Elcock, who did not know Hanrahan directly, suspected something was amiss and told his superior officer, Det. Supt. Tom Smith - who recognised Hanrahan as a name of someone operating on the fringes of the criminal underworld and connected to the Daniel Morgan murder. After discussions, it was agreed that the meeting should go ahead in what was dubbed Operation Eden.

For the next three months, Elcock recorded conversations with Hanrahan and King. The initial meeting in February was between Hanrahan and Elcock at Luigi's restaurant in Dulwich; which for the most part they reminisced about former colleagues. Only at the end of the lunch did Hanrahan bring up a client in some trouble with police and asked if Elcock could get a look at the papers for someone up on car fraud. Elcock responded that the best route was if a complaint was made to CIB, but accepted £1,000 from Hanrahan in the carpark.

The next meeting also included King, who Elcock only vaguely remembered from King's time in the force, some 26 years previously. Once the contact was established, King took over dealings with, Hanrahan dropping out of the picture for the most part. At King's request, Elcock registered him as an informant to facilitate the collection of a reward of £10,000 for the return of a stolen Henry Moore statue. Elcock collected the statue from King's home. In another case, King paid Elcock £7,500 for sabotaging a prosecution. Later in May 1997, King suggested that Elcock became involved in a plot were he would lure a witness to their death if the necessary police papers that had to be destroyed for a client could not be accessed.

After 40 hours of recordings of around a dozen meetings, police had enough to act, arresting King and Hanrahan. Charge along with them were two men who had approached them on separate situations to have the cases against them scuppered. In one, Hanrahan and King were paid £1,000 by a man facing charges of car fraud to bribe Elcock into dropping these. In the other, King accepted money to organise the destruction of vital police notebooks and other materials in a case of grievous bodily harm. King also bragged to Elcock that he was in league with dozens of policemen, council officers and others. The arrests were made in 1997.

Following his arrest, it would subsequently emerge that Hanrahan had been a key figure in several other significant criminal enterprises which involved corrupt police officers.

Heathrow robbery plan (1994)

Two of Hanrahan's contacts in the police were DC Chris Carter and DS Len Guerard. At one point they were investigating the robbery of £1 million from a Lebanese courier at Heathrow. There account of that robbery apparently caused Hanrahan to hatch a plan to repeat it. With Carter and Guerard's connivance the officers introduced Hanrahan to the courier as a security consultant. Meanwhile, King got in touch with a criminal gang from Grove Park, who would carry out the actual robbery. The plan, which included using a stun gun to rob the courier, failed when the courier failed to show at Heathrow on the first attempt. A second attempt also fell through when Carter and Guerard quarrelled with the gang.

Alec Leighton spoke of this event in the context of having worked with Hanrahan to pull together quotes for security measures for the Lebanese businessman, and he had looked into costs of hiring experienced protection officers and a vehicle with a safe welded into it. He recalled that on several occasions Hanrahan had joked about robbing the courier, though he thought it was just part of Hanrahan's 'stupid inane comments that he was prone to making'.

The Crown Prosecution Service and CIB did not prosecute for lack of sufficient evidence against Carter and Guerard.

The Chiswick ecstasy robbery (1995)

In 1995, Hanrahan was part of a robbery gang in a complex plot to rip off a drug supplier, Jason Proctor. Through a friend of Jonathan Rees, called Barry "the Fish" Nash, Hanrahan was introduced to drug dealer Steven Warner; Warner, in turn, introduced Hanrahan to two others, John Walter and Vincent Arneil.

Arneuil was used as the go-between to set up a drugs deal with Jason Proctor, the manager of the Good Value Pine shop on Chiswick High Street. Under the deal, Proctor would source 40,000 ecstasy tablets with a street value of £600,000, which were stored at his shop.

With Hanrahan acting as a middleman to police, it was arranged that a police warrant would be obtained to raid the shop on 11 October 1995, using the pretence there had been a tip-off stolen lighters were on the premises. While there, the police stole the ecstasy tablets but told their bosses that they had found nothing. According to the prosecution in the subsequent trial, Hanrahan had recruited Carter and Guerard for the job, and they in turn had brought in DC Colin Evans. During the raid, Evans stayed with Proctor while the other two searched for the drugs; the drugs were taken outside and immediately put into Hanrahan's waiting van.

The drugs were then passed to Hanrahan, who in turn gave them to others to be sold on, mainly in Scotland. For his role in setting this robbery up, Hanrahan was paid £6,000. Given that Proctor would not be able to complain as it would be his word over those of three police officers regarding illegal drugs he had obtained, the gang had presumed the theft would remain a secret.

This would result in a major trial in October 2000 (see below).

Accessing Police National Computer

At one point Hanrahan entered into a corrupt relationship with DC Nigel Grayston, who was selling on information from the Police National Computer. Grayston was exposed for offering to sell criminal records to an undercover Sunday Times reporter. He also provided details on request to Southern Investigations.

Grayston and Hanrahan had worked together at Kennington Police station. Initially, Grayston simply accessed the PNC on behalf of Hanrahan, but the latter told CIB that they then moved up to sabotaging cases. In particular, one client of Hanrahan's, was an estate agent who had been arrested for affray. Hanrahan asked Grayston to arrange for his colleague, DC Steven Lee, who was handling the case, to scupper it. When the matter was dropped, the client refused to pay up on the grounds that the charges would have been dropped in any case. Grayston was suspended over the PNC checks and retired in September 1997, going on to form his own firm, Bridge Security.

Continued links with Southern Investigations

Though he had established his own business in 1994, Hanrahan maintained contact with Southern Investigations, doing freelance work for them. His name emerged as person of interest when that company was targeted by the anti-corruption intelligence unit CIB3 - which had planted a bug in its offices, as part of Operation Nigeria, which also included looking for information on the Daniel Morgan murder. The bug also picked up Southern Investigations principals Fillery and Rees discussing their relationship with Hanrahan and King. Fillery in particular is concerned about how much information Hanrahan his passing on to the police about his long association with Southern Investigations and the Daniel Morgan murder.

In one recording, which caught part of a telephone conversation, it appears that Hanrahan had managed to pass on to Rees details of the questions CIB were asking him about Southern Investigations and the Daniel Morgan murder. This ties with Alec Leighton’s claim that following Hanrahan's 1997 arrest, Leighton received regular feedback about CIB's debriefings of Hanrahan. It is also of note, that at Hanrahan's first hearing following his arrest, Sid Fillery appeared at court offering to give Hanrahan a job if he made bail.

Connection to Neil Putnam

Neil Putnam was another member of the network of police corruption who had turned supergrass around the same time as Hanrahan. He had been based with the South East Regional Crime Squad at East Dulwich, around the same time Hanrahan was active in the area. Clearly connected through various other police officers, the two men appear to have some knowledge of each other. Part of the information provided by Hanrahan was that during a police raid, a number of high value foreign bearer bonds had been seized, but of the apparent 92 originally found, only 54 were booked in at the police station. Hanrahan also stated that Putnam had been involved in attempts to cash them. This was denied by Putnam.

Putnam had been part of a group of corrupt SERCS detectives including Thomas Kingston and Thomas Reynolds, the latter officers being named as corrupt by Hanrahan The bug planted in Southern Investigation's offices by anti-corruption police at one point recorded Kingston, an officer with the South East Regional Crime Squad, passing on police information to Jonathan Rees. Kingston and Reynolds themselves would be imprisoned for appropriating drugs seized in raids and selling them on themselves.

Turning supergrass and convictions

As a consequence of his arrest for his attempting to corrupt Peter Elcock, and while in Brixton Prison, Hanrahan struck a deal with the Metropolitan Police's Complaints Investigation Bureau (CIB) to become an informer circa June 1997. For his own protection, he was thought to be at risk of attack from criminals associated with corrupt officers, he is was taken to the 'supergrass suite', nicknamed 'The Dorchester'. He would subsequently receive around-the-clock protection at his home.

He was debriefed over many months at Basingstoke police station, an operation lead by leading anti-corruption unit officers Dave Wood and Chris Jarratt, whose 'bullying and threatening manner' he came to resent. At one point he complained that CIB themselves are not 'whiter than white', and that one CIB detective had threatened to 'bury' his wife Linda, then a serving officer. It would appear Hanrahan also enjoyed putting one over on his debriefers.

Nevertheless, Hanrahan's evidence implicated more than 50 officers with whom he had worked as being involved in corruption. This included allegations that:

• He had been told by a former police detective and friend, that Morgan had been murdered to prevent him exposing corrupt police practices (including organising robberies and moonlighting for private security companies - likely to be a reference to some of the scandals associated with Southern Investigations).
• Information from the Police National Computer was being sold to criminals.
• Police were taking bribes to destroy evidence.
• There was a network of police detectives distributing cocaine. In particular this related to two detectives known to Hanrahan, one of whom retired the previous year due repeated questioning over criminal offences. This retired detective admitted to The Times that he had been subsequently raided over allegations of distributing cocaine and heroin and that he was an associate of escaped drug-dealer Joseph Wilkins.
• Naming a 'former Scotland Yard commander' as linked to a network of corrupt officers, and also the activities of a still serving senior police officer'.

Hanrahan's evidence may also have lain behind the October 1997 statement by Commissioner Paul Condon that there were around 250 corrupt officers in the Metropolitan Police, a statement that attracted controversy and concern at the time.

Note from Undercover Research Group: One of the senior officers concerned is likely to be Commander Ray Adams, whose name has been repeated consistently over the years in connection to the networks of corruption. It is also likely, given the timing, that Hanrahan's material contributed significantly to the creation of Operation Othona, the Metropolitan Police's intelligence-gathering operation around police corruption, and its subsequent large scale anti-corruption initiatives. In hindsight, there is some significance of this in relation to the allegations of corruption said to have tainted the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation and which was revealed in the 2014 Stephen Lawrence Independent Review by Mark Ellison to have been wrongfully withheld from the Macpherson Inquiry, though rumours and allegations had been circulating for many years since then.

In December 1997, an anti-corruption unit would raid the Flying Squad's north London headquarters, the day after Commissioner Paul Condon told a Parliamentary committee he was taking action to end the 'cycle of corruption' in the Metropolitan Police.

When not being debriefed, Hanrahan was held at the supergrass wing of Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, where he had been moved to in November 1997. There he encountered another informer, Bob Bown, who was up on a number of serious charges, and started talking about his activities, both criminal but also how he was 'getting one over' on the debriefing officers, not giving them everything (such as the activities with Carter and Guerard), or stuff that would be hard to corroborate. In August 1998, Bown contacted his handlers who in turn told Jarratt and Wood. Furious, the latter organise Bown to tape record conversations with Hanrahan from October to December 1998.

At court in February 1998, Hanrahan and King both pleaded guilty to corruption and conspiracy. Acting as counsel on their behalf is Ann Mallalieu QC. King would receive a 9 year jail sentence. Having plead guilty, King was sentenced to nine years (six on appeal) on 27 March 1998. Their co-conspirators in the corruption charges, Ray Brown and Mark Mahoney fight the case, but are found guilty in March and jailed for seeking to pervert the course of justice.

Based on the stuff from Bown, DCS David Woods seeks to corroborate the material; pressure is brought to bear on Steven Warner and Jason Proctor, both who had been charged with other offences, and Warner in particular agrees to inform on Hanrahan.

For 14 months, Hanrahan had been considered a key person in the Metropolitan Police's anti-corruption drive. However, in August 1998, following the information from Warner, Hanrahan was told by police that they did not think he had supplied information that was of any use, that he was deemed an unreliable witness and that he was still hiding the full truth from the police. Further charges in connection with Guerard and Carter were pressed against him. Nevertheless, parts of his evidence which could be corroborated was being used in investigations against five serving and former police officers. Overseeing the case against Hanrahan was Det. Ch. Supt. David Woods. Hanrahan, his life in tatters at that point, and in need of protection from retribution started to giveaway more on police corruption.

Hanrahan would be sentenced to 8 years and 4 months by Justice John Blofeld in March 1999 for 11 charges of corruption, including conspiracy with serving police officers dating between 1994 and 1997. Some of the charges included offering backhanders to police officers, trying to fix bail for a drug dealer (for which he charged £3,000) and planting fake evidence in the case of another drug dealer. One count was for arranging for a false letter, at a cost of £5,000, to be sent to a judge wrongly stating that a defendant, wrongly, had helped the police. Others would include the attempted robbery at Heathrow, and his role in the theft of the ecstasy tablets. He was defended at this hearing by Stephen Batten, QC. Named in court by the prosecutor, John Kelsey-Fry, as being involved in police corruption were Chris Carter, Len Guerard, Nigel Grayston, and Steven Lee.

Sentencing him, Blofeld said:

The offences strike at the very roots of justice, and must be deterred. If society has a future, as it does, the police force must be above corruption, with heavy sentences for those found out.

At the time of his conviction he was bankrupt and in the process of being divorced from his second wife (the police officer). He carried out the rest of his sentence in the supergrass wing at Parkhurst.

In 2000, it was reported that money-launderer, gangster and convicted murderer Kenneth Noye offered to turn informant in return for an early release from prison. To encourage a deal, he offered bits of information that were then apparently cross-checked with Hanrahan, and it was said that some of Noye's statements tallied with those of Hanrahan.

Quoted in Graeme McLagan's book Bent Coppers, Leighton is said to have stated the following about Hanrahan in a briefing note:

Anyone who has met or worked with Duncan will say he was always considered to be a relatively harmless Walter Mitty character with a very sick sense of humour. I do not know anyone who can believe that CIB have taken what Duncan has said seriously... I was aware that the inexperienced senior CIB officers dealing with him hung on his every word and saw a lot of mileage in him. The more streetwise and experienced lower-rank detectives considered him to be the total fabricator that he was always known to be.'

A CIB assessment of him of 11 February 2000, stated: 'He lied from the outset. He cynically manipulated the criminal justice system intending to falsely receive credit from the court that would eventually sentence him'.

The material that Hanrahan was giving CIB3 was not provided to the Macpherson Inquiry, though it would have been of interest in relation to their concerns about the role of corruption in the police mishandling of the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation.

Chiswick ecstasy trial

When confronted about not having been totally open with them, Hanrahan confessed to CIB about the Chiswick drugs theft, and apparently gave them the name of Steven Warner. Warner, who had connections to the Adams crime family, was targeted by CIB in an undercover operation which saw him arrested for cocaine dealing and providing a gun. They then successfully convinced him to become an informer himself; once co-operating, he admitted conspiracy with Hanrahan over the ecstasy theft.

This gave CIB reason to move against all those involved, including the three police officers - Christopher Carter, Len Guerard and David Evans.

Warner was given a much reduced sentence of 7 years in July 1999, having plead guilty to soliciting for murder, conspiracy to supply drugs, attempted robbery and possessing a firearm. At court he was escorted by officers from CIB. However, to police dismay, having considered his sentencing to be a good enough result, he then refused to testify against Hanrahan and the others. Police instead leaned on Jason Proctor, catching him in a sting operation as he had continued to deal drugs. In turn, he agreed to testify.

The case went to trial in October 2000, prosecuted by Orlando Pownall. Warner and John Walter admitted their role, while Proctor admitted supplying drugs. Carter and Guerard, who had both by then left the police, and Evans, then on suspension, all denied involvement.. As a result, Hanrahan was called as a witnesses, saying he had arranged for Guerard and Carter to steal the drugs

At the trial the ex-police gave a different account. Guerard dismissed Hanrahan as someone known to be dodgy and nicknamed 'Drunken Duncan'. According to him, they'd searched the shop on the grounds that Hanrahan had telephoned Carter the previous night with the tip-off, and they'd been interested as they were investigating the theft of lighters from a Heathrow shop. Carter said that he had met with Hanrahan after the phone-call and the Chiswick shop had been pointed out to him. Evans was involved as he was on early shift at their base, and that nothing had been found during the raid.

The tape recordings of Hanrahan made by Bown were admitted into the hearings, the first time that Hanrahan apparently learned of them. However, he told the court he was simply making it all up to pass the time. Further damage was done to the case when Hanrahan was asked to read out a remark full of casual racism and sexism from the transcripts. Also playing against the prosecution was that the three police officers all had clean records, while Walter, Hanrahan and Proctor had all admitted lying previously. In January 2001, the three officers were cleared.

Aftermath

In November 2002, Hanrahan made a complaint to the Police Complaints Authority that Chris Jarratt and David Wood had shown no interest in his work with Martin King, as that would have exposed Ray Adams and links to the Brinks MAT robbery. In relation to this, Hanrahan said of King that he 'was the window between the Brinks Mat era and the Lawrence scandal, which the Yard wanted to brick up'. In his complaint, Hanrahan wrote 'Jarratt said in the presence of Wood that he did not want me to talk about what he called God's work. When I asked what he meant by this he said that - to do with police malpractice to get convictions basically for stitching people up, that side of things.' Other allegations he made against Jarratt was that the CIB officer had sought to get him to change solicitor, and to incriminate another detective, John Bull. He asked the Police Complaints Authority to bring in an outside force to investigate, but the PCA merely passed it back to the Metropolitan Police who did not follow it up.

In an interview for Untouchables, Adams responded, saying he liked Hanrahan and King, but had no knowledge of the allegations made by Hanrahan to Complaints Investigation Bureau; he told the authors: 'I could tell you a few things about Hanrahan that would make your hair stand on end,' but refused to elaborate on this.

In 2004, Hanrahan successfully appealed against a decision to slash his police pension by 75%. He received back 15% on the grounds he had co-operated with the police.

Further resources

• Michael Gillard & Laurie Flynn, Untouchables: Dirty cops, bent justice and racism in Scotland Yard, Bloomsbury Reader, March 2012.

• Graeme McLagan, Bent Coppers, Orion Books, 2004.

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References

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