Crime Scene Investigator (9 page)

As the events unfolded in the following days, the story was confirmed. There was no objection to the examination of all the items I had taken and so I submitted them to the forensic science laboratory.

Wood pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his wife and their family doctor on the grounds of diminished responsibility. His plea was accepted. The toxicological examination of the blood and stomach contents helped his defence. He had been under the influence of his medication at the time of the attack and he had tried to kill himself after realising what he had done.

It was a tragic story for his family and the family of Dr Goss. Wood was committed to a secure hospital. Within two years he was seen in a main shopping area where someone recognised him. He had been released back into the community. There was a lot of strong opinion about it, and I too felt, at the very least, surprise. I reminded myself that, whatever the judgement of the court, his subsequent treatment and release was the job of others. Mine was to help establish the truth and I think I did that.

I used to watch the TV series of
The Sweeney
during my years at school and college. The stories, involving fast cars, hardened detectives and tough criminals within the underworld, were popular and entertaining but seemed a million miles away. I had no ambition to become a police officer and so it never occurred to me that one day I would be a part of the real thing.

The Flying Squad had been formed in the 1920s within the Metropolitan Police. It was an élite group of detectives who were given the job of investigating violent crime. The mobile and proactive nature of the squad with its wide geographical remit caused a
Daily Mirror
reporter to refer to it as a flying squad of detectives and so the name stuck.

In good old cockney rhyming slang it became known as the Sweeney, after Sweeney Todd, the fictitious demon barber of Fleet Street.

In the 1970s the Squad’s role was redefined to investigate the increases in armed robbery, kidnappings and kindred offences. It proactively targeted those gangs who committed armed robbery rather than waiting for them to commit the offences and catch them after. It became the Central Robbery Squad but this was not a name to match the romantic and macho Flying Squad which it soon re-adopted.

The Sweeney
immortalised the Squad for a generation. DI Jack Regan and his sidekick Detective Sergeant Carter inspired young boys and coppers alike. They were earthy and tough with laddish lifestyles but they were also professional and honourable. And so it was in real life.

In the mid 1980s the Squad was C8 Branch with its main office at New Scotland Yard. Four branch offices in the north, south, east and west of London each contained about fifty officers. They were mainly detectives but there were also also surveillance officers and the famed Flying Squad drivers who were the cream of the Met’s Class 1 drivers. It was their job to get the detectives into the thick of the action as fast and as safely as possible, which they did regularly with heroic bravery and skill.

For over sixty years the Flying Squad had targeted London’s most dangerous and ruthless criminals, those who carry guns and commit violent armed robbery. The stakes were high with terms of imprisonment of fourteen years and upwards for those caught.

In reality it was called just ‘the Squad’. There was only one and everyone knew it. In the early 1980s the detectives and drivers were joined for the first time by civilian scenes of crime officers, of which I was to become one.

By 1982 two scenes of crime officers were attached to the Squad’s five offices covering the four corners and central area of London. Their success meant that by 1984 each of the four outer offices had their own with a manager based at the central office at the New Scotland Yard. I eagerly applied for the northeast London office post, but it was given to a SOCO who was a retired police officer many years my senior. He didn’t last too long in the post and I didn’t have to apply the second time. I was given the job. It would not be the last time I was second choice for a job, but that didn’t hold me back and it was to prove both enjoyable and successful, with a lot of hard work thrown in.

My appointment to the Squad was probably hastened by my performance in a case which occurred in my last year at City Road. The Squad descended on City Road Police Station with four prisoners in their custody. The men had been arrested for conspiracy to rob and I got actively involved with the examination of the suspects. This involved the taking of hair combing samples amongst other things. When it came to the trial at the Central Criminal Court in London, I was asked by the prosecution barrister to demonstrate how the sample was taken. As I stood in the witness box I showed them how I opened out a kit containing a sheet of white paper and a comb, the teeth of which were seeded with a strip of moistened lint. Showing how I would ask the subject to bend their head forward, I bent my own head forward and demonstrated the thorough combing action, allowing fibres to be caught in the comb or fall onto the sheet. Placing the comb in the paper, I folded the paper around it before placing it in a bag. Looking up I could see all the court, the judge, barristers, defendants, jurors and officials laughing, many with tears steaming down their faces. My bald head had been the focus of everyone’s amusement as I demonstrated how to take a hair combing. Wiping his eyes, the judge composed himself and apologised for himself and on behalf of the court. I replied that I quite understood, but offered that I ‘hadn’t resorted to wearing a wig yet’. The judge’s face changed abruptly and, lowering his head, he looked over the top of his spectacles and told me, ‘I’ll allow you to get away with that, Mr Millen.’ Everyone except the judge and barristers continued to laugh.

The greatest prize for the Squad was catching a team of robbers ‘on the pavement’, as they committed their offence literally outside a bank or similar premises. Months, sometime years of investigation, surveillance and planning would turn the robbers’ world upside down. The adrenalin rush felt by all those who witnessed such events would never be forgotten. And they would be accompanied sometimes by the bravest and often seemingly reckless pieces of police action, when unarmed police officers would tackle and arrest armed criminals.

The Squad detectives all had experience on local police divisions and all had talent and ability. There was, however, a core of the finest, most talented and hard-working investigators I was ever to come across in one place. I was moving from a minor league to the top division and I knew I had to work hard and competently.

The élite and hard view which some people had of the Squad drew its problems. There would be allegations of corruption. The allegations are understandable. When police officers deal with hardened criminals, use informants and recover large quantities of cash the allegations will not be far away. History had shown that some detective succumbed to these temptations or abused their power and position. However, that is not an excuse to abandon the police response. It would take committed, honest and ruthless detectives to overcome even the hint of allegations and demonstrate to anyone who needed to know that the job was done right.

I quickly realised that my role as the only civilian scene of crime officer attached to the north-east London branch office of the Squad was to have many facets. Yes, I was to examine and investigate every armed robbery scene, getaway vehicle and prisoner I could get to. But there was more. I would have to use as a resource all the officers on the Squad as well as SOCOs based locally on division. As well as recovering evidence, I would have to encourage and ensure the preservation of evidence recovered by others. Giving advice and instruction was the best way to counter allegations of corruption or just plain poor practice and engineer it out. So items would be preserved, labelled and sealed and these facts documented at the very earliest opportunity. Through this we would not only preserve evidence but preserve the integrity of the investigators. Poor practice and the allegation of or opportunity for accidental contamination or deliberate planting would be removed. Sometimes it would be a matter of protecting officers from their own eagerness, such as arresting a suspect and then going to the crime scene before it was preserved or examined.

Key to this was dealing with ‘prisoners’. Now I could use the more politically correct term of ‘detained’ or ‘arrested persons’, but prisoner was the accurate term used at the time for someone in police custody. For those merely suspected of a crime the word ‘suspect’ is accurate. Defendant refers to someone who has been charged with an offence and will stand trial. I remember one prisoner being unhappy at being referred to as such by a police officer. His reply, ‘I’m not a prisoner, I’m a free man,’ is a direct quote from the Patrick McGoohan character in the TV series
The Prisoner
.

The prompt and full examination of prisoners was always an important priority. Firstly, clothing and samples had to be taken to stop any loss of evidence. Secondly, the prisoner would be examined before interview so that they could not use any opportunity to destroy evidence as the case against them became clear. Finally, by securing and preserving this evidence at an early stage, the chance of contamination and planting is removed. In my first few weeks on the Squad, whilst at a police station dealing with a prisoner, I overheard one officer say, ‘Boy wonder has sealed all the exhibits.’ Well, I was the boy wonder and I was going to do that every time and at the earliest opportunity. I thought that my time on the Squad might be short lived, but that was not the case. The officer who I suspected made the remarks was soon moved. It would be naïve to think that there are not corrupt officers. Discipline and professionalism, however, will thwart and expose them. Over the coming years I would demonstrate to many, if anyone was in any doubt, that by doing the job in a professional manner the result followed. Some of the hardest and most ruthless of detectives would equally champion the high standards which I proposed.

For almost four years I worked out of the back of a car. I had an office and a desk back at the Flying Squad office and I would spend a lot of time there. It was, however, the need to be mobile and work in any environment that made the nature of the job, demanding, challenging and very enjoyable. The office did have one amusing aspect. Its name was ‘the Gannetry’. It was a large room suitable for the collation of sealed exhibits. Occasionally, I might examine items (if appropriate within the conditions) on an examination bench to confirm a description or make a search. This would normally be to screen a large number of clothing items from a single location (important to avoid contamination) for traces of blood prior to submitting positive items to the lab for detailed examination. One particular operation codenamed ‘Gannet’ (the name picked randomly from a book of birds) generated a large number of exhibits which occupied my attention and that of a small number of detectives for a long time. Being a keen birdwatcher myself, I started referring to the room as the Gannetry (as a place where gannets roost) and it stuck. Some years later I returned to visit the building; all my former colleagues had long since gone. One label on the door and another on the alarm panel caught my attention. It referred to ‘Gannetry’. ‘Everyone calls the room the Gannetry but we don’t know why,’ one detective told me. I just smiled.

Examining vehicles would also prove an important part of the job. Often the way in which a vehicle was stolen, prepared and stored as a getaway car would say a lot about an armed gang. So I spent a lot of time examining vehicles. To many scene investigators this was seen as a chore. For me it was a challenge. The benefit of personally investigating most of the vehicles used in robberies over a large geographical area was that you could build up a picture based not only on obvious items but on small nuances. The way the vehicle was stolen, the way its stolen identity was disguised told a story. I would also look over the examinations made by colleagues when I was not available. However, this wasn’t too often. A vehicle once preserved could wait a day if necessary.

On a cold evening just before Christmas in 1986 two armed robbers attacked a red Post Office security van which had been collecting and delivering high-value gold to the jewellery trade in the Kings Cross area. The gang was well informed. As the van stopped at a business premises in City Road the three postmen, all approaching sixty years of age, opened the cab door and were confronted by two armed masked men. They heard violent and very loud threats and one of the robbers opened fire. Almost immediately all three postal workers had been hit and were immobile. This completely halted any hope of the robbers getting any money as it was all safely locked in the rear security compartment. The robbers fled empty handed.

The postal workers had serious gunshot injuries, but by luck all survived. Between them they thought that no more than three shots had been fired. They had just heard a maximum of three bangs around the shouts and confusion. It appeared at first that each bullet had hit and gone through at least one person, as some had entry and exit wounds.