Scotland Yard is carrying out a full forensic review of the Daniel Morgan murder 25 years ago amid allegations that the News of the World under Rebekah Brooks attempted to subvert the inquiry into the killing. The revelation came as Nick Herbert, the police minister, told MPs a judicial inquiry into the murder was under consideration. The death of Morgan, a private detective who was killed with an axe to the head, has for two decades been mired in allegations of police corruption involving a detective agency using officers to provide information to sell to tabloid newspapers.

1. Bark & Co

2. Scotland Yard is carrying out a full forensic
review of the Daniel Morgan murder 25 years
ago amid allegations that the News of the
World under Rebekah Brooks attempted to
subvert the inquiry into the killing.
The revelation came as Nick Herbert, the police
minister, told MPs a judicial inquiry into the
murder was under consideration. The death of
Morgan, a private detective who was killed
with an axe to the head, has for two decades
been mired in allegations of police corruption
involving a detective agency using officers to
provide information to sell to tabloid
newspapers.

3. Speaking at an adjournment debate brought by
the Labour MP Tom Watson, Herbert said it was a
serious issue, and that the corruption and the lack
of justice for the family needed to be addressed.
He said the home secretary was considering a
judicial inquiry but another option of an outside
force being brought in with the oversight of a QC
was also being considered by himself and the
home secretary.
"This is a matter of utmost seriousness … It's
important to consider what options are now
available to identify and address issues of police
corruption and bring those responsible to justice,"
said Herbert.

4. He revealed that the Morgan murder – one of the
Met police's most notorious unsolved killings – was
now being overseen by the assistant commissioner
Cressida Dick, who would bring "fresh eyes" to a
controversy which has run through the stewardship of
five Met police commissioners. He said the Met
under Bernard Hogan-Howe was carrying out a full
forensic review of the case – similar to the one
undertaken in the Stephen Lawrence murder which
led to the successful conviction of two men earlier
this year.
Watson urged the minister and the home secretary to
give Morgan's family the judicial inquiry into the
murder which they have requested, and which the
Metropolitan Police Authority and the former acting
commissioner Tim Godwin have endorsed.

5. Watson said Morgan's family had always believed
he was killed as he was about to expose a network
of police corruption involving his business partner
Jonathan Rees, his friend the Met police detective
Sid Fillery and a network of corrupt police officers.
Rees's private detective agency worked for the
News of the World and other newspapers. One of
Rees's close associates was Alex Marunchak, who
was the News of the World's crime correspondent.
The men were so close they shared a business
address for their companies. Watson also told MPs
that Southern Investigations settled Marunchak's
debts.

6. Surveillance footage filmed by the police in operations over
the years to investigate the murder showed Marunchak and
Rees were in frequent contact at his agency. "Jonathan Rees
and Sid Fillery were at the corrupt nexus of private
investigators, police officers and journalists at the News of the
World," said Watson. "Southern Investigations was the hub of
police and media contacts involving the illegal theft and
disclosure of information obtained thorugh Rees and Fillery's
corrupt contacts."
Rees has always been a suspect for the murder. But the first
investigation was corrupted – the Met police has since
admitted – by the presence of Fillery on the investigating team.
Fillery interviewed Rees, but never disclosed to the
investigation that the pair were close friends and business
associates, MPs heard.

7. After Morgan's death Fillery became Rees's partner in Southern
Investigations. Watson told MPs Morgan had been about to take his
story about police corruption to the News of the World and its
crime reporter Marunchak at the time he was killed and had been
promised £40,000 for the story.
The Leveson inquiry heard this week that the News of the World
under Brooks put the senior officer who led the fourth and fifth
investigations into the Morgan murder under surveillance. Detective
Chief Superintendent Dave Cook and his then wife Jacqui Hames
believed that the suspects in the Morgan murder had encouraged
the tabloid to watch them. Hames told the inquiry she believed the
News of the World had put them under surveillance because
"suspects in the Daniel Morgan murder inquiry were using their
association with a powerful and well-resourced newspaper to
intimidate us and try to attempt to subvert the investigation".

9. The fifth inquiry into the murder collapsed last year
and Rees and two other men were acquitted after the
judge ruled senior police had coached one of the main
supergrasses in the case, and it was revealed that large
amounts of evidence had not been disclosed as a result
of the vast material gathered over so many years.
But Watson said: "What the family didn't know during
the investigation was the extent to which the
relationship between News International, private
investigators and the police had such an impact …
Southern Investigations sold information to
newspapers in the 90s … but I think exclusively to News
International after Rees was released from jail in 2005
[on another offence]. The main conduit was Alex
Marunchak.

10. "Rees and Marunchak had a relationship that was so close
they both registered their companies at the same address.
Rees's confirmed links to Marunchak take the murder of
Daniel Morgan to a new level."
Morgan's brother Alastair, who was at the debate on
Wednesday, said afterwards: "The seeds of the hacking
scandal that is unravelling at the Leveson inquiry were planted
a quarter of a century ago in a car park in south-east London
where my brother was murdered." He said he still wanted to
know the extent to which journalists interfered with the five
murder investigations and the political response to allegations
of police involvement in the murder.
• This article was amended on 6 March 2012. The original said
that Marunchak and Rees were in frequent contact with Rees
at his agency. This has been corrected.