A Killing In Tiger Bay: How bent cops fitted me up for brutal murder of call girl lover – while white killer walked free
EVEN genius script writer Jed Mercurio would not have come up with a plot like this for Line of Duty. No one would have believed it.
When 20-year-old call girl Lynette White was killed by a knife-wielding sadist on Valentine’s Day in a flat above a bookmaker’s shop, police quickly had a prime suspect.
A white man, distressed and in tears, his hands bleeding, was seen by four witnesses outside the building in the racial melting pot of Tiger Bay in Cardiff docks.
All the evidence pointed to the killer being a disgruntled punter.
Police even produced a photofit on TV’s Crimewatch programme of a white man with greasy dark brown hair they were looking for.
But ten months after the murder – with no evidence whatsoever to back it up - South Wales detectives arrested five black men instead.
They accused Lynette’s boyfriend Stephen Miller and four others living in the docks of getting together to stab her 50 times, in a ritual killing.
These five innocent men became victims of the biggest police corruption case in British history.
Now the mind-blowing story of the Cardiff Five and the misjustice they suffered at the hands of bullying detectives who twisted the truth is told on TV in a new three-part documentary starting tonight.
"I should have protected her"
It is 33 years since Lynette White was killed but her boyfriend is still scarred by the hell he was put through by corrupt cops.
Their trial - the largest police corruption case in British criminal history - collapsed when the defence claimed copies of files which the cops in the dock should have seen ‘had been destroyed’.
But a year later in 2012, the missing documents were found – in a South Wales Police office.
John adds: "You just couldn't move on because this was always hanging over you.
“The police were treated with kid gloves. They caught Gafoor but we've never had justice.”
Home Secretary Theresa May rejected calls for public inquiry and ordered a top QC to investigate.
Richard Horwell QC concluded ‘human failings, rather than wickedness’ were to blame.
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This incredible real-life story is now being made into a five-part drama for ITV, by the team that produced last year’s rating-winning series Pembroke Murders, starring Luke Evans and Keith Allen.
A Killing In Tiger Bay documentary is on BBC2 tonight at 9am