LGBT Advisory Group: Policing Watchdog for LGBT people in London

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THE SUB GROUPS: MURDER REVIEW

Over many years, the LGBT press and the national media have raised the question of confidence in the police handling of LGBT related homicides. The Murder Review Project Group was set up in late 2002 to examine this issue in what was to have been a year long research project. Independent advisors are not investigators. We do not wish to re-investigate these cases. However, we believe that there are key questions we can address.

OUR AIMS

review past and current cases (solved or unsolved) to compare them with established good practice;

ask what new avenues can be opened up and identify cases that may benefit from review;

examine how LGBT-related murders have been prioritised by the MPS;

ask if community issues should act as a factor for prioritising cases for investigation;

review cases for community input and establish whether steps are necessary to address issues of community confidence;

cases examined will be LGBT-related homicides within the MPS area. They will principally be cases within the last 15 years. The circumstances of these crimes would be related in some way to the actual or perceived sexuality and gender identity of the victim;

The four main categories that we have been focusing on are:

severe cases involving overkill, mutilation, torture;

deaths resulting from gang attacks;

cases where a suspect appears to be identifiable even if only by sight;

serial or mass murder

LATEST UPDATE

The years of prevarication and haggles involving New Scotland Yard bureaucracy finally seem to be coming to an end. The group made some real progress last year. It was agreed that officers from the MPS’s own murder review group would be allowed to research and do a thematic review on six cases, which we had selected. It was based terms of reference, which we had drafted and they had agreed to. The six cases are the Colin Ireland case (five murders) in 1993, also the murder of Michael Boothe in 1990, the murder of ‘Robyn’ Browne in 1997, the murder of Jaap Bornkamp in 2000, the murder of Geoffrey Windsor in 2002 and the murder of David Ridhalgh in 2003.

Part of the object of selecting these cases is to compare practice before and after the year 1999. This was the year of the Lawrence Report and the changes that followed that. It therefore provides an interesting ‘watershed’ to look at. It has been agreed we may use material from the MPS research in our report, but we also intend to add supplementary material of our own. We hope to publish our own report in the coming year, once the police’s own report becomes available.

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