UK: Police re-investigate hangings
01 January 2000
Harold McGowan, 34, was discovered hanged in an empty house in Telford, Shropshire, in July last year after a sustained campaign of harassment by a racist gang. Six months later his 20-year old nephew, Jason, who had been investigating his uncle's death and had also been threatened, was found hanging from railings outside a leisure centre in the town. With disturbing echoes of the institutional racism that riddled the Ricky Reel and Michael Menson police inquiries, family members have accused West Mercia police officers of failing to link the campaign of intimidation with the suspicious deaths, and assuming that they were suicides. Their campaign has forced a new joint investigation, advised by the racial and violent crimes task force (CO24), into both deaths, a tacit admission of the inadequacy of the earlier inquiry.
Harold's death followed an incident while he was working as a pub doorman, when he turned a man away. As a result he was pursued around Telford, abused, taunted and threatened by members of a racist gang that has been linked to Combat 18 (C18); anonymous telephone calls threatened his life and he was informed that he was on a C18 death list. He kept a log of the incidents and reported them to the police on three occasions but, "...they didn't do anything then or when he died" his mother said.
His nephew, Jason, who worked on the production team of a local newspaper, began to investigate the circumstances of his uncle's death and the racist gang that threatened him. He also began to receive death threats. Jason, who had recently married and bought his first house, celebrated the new year with his wife; shortly before midnight he disappeared, and despite searches was only found hanged from railings outside a leisure centre the following morning. The railings were so low that he would have had to kneel to kill himself.
The mothers' of the two men point out that neither of them had any reason to hang themselves and that neither left a suicide note. Their doubts were supported by independent pathologist, Dr Nat Carey, who conducted a post-mortem examination of Jason's body on behalf of his family, and told The Independent newspaper:
"Most aspects of this case don't fit comfortably with a suicide. Particularly with the possibility that racism is involved. We owe it to the family members to investigate this with the same degree of thoroughness that would be expected in a full-blown murder investigation."
The families believe that the police, as with the Ricky Reel and Michael Menson inquiries, made an assumption of suicide and failed to investigate the possibility of murder, losing valuable forensic evidence. Six white men, all in their twenties and thirties, and allegedly part of the gang involved in the mens' harassment, were eventually questioned by police, but prosecutions did not follow.
The families' campaign has linked up with the National Civil Rights Movement to demand a reinvestigation of the deaths by Scotland Yard's race and violent crimes task force, but the West Mercia force have refused to meet this demand. Instead, at the beginning of February, after a meeting between family members, their legal representatives and senior police officers, West Mercia constabulary announced it would launch a new joint inquiry into both deaths and the allegations of racist harassment. The force will call in the CO24 task force to "advise them" and will disclose all "relevant" documentation to the family. Meanwhile, Jason's family have lodged a complaint with the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) claiming that West Mercia police failed to investigate his death adequately because of racism and that they treated the family poorly.
The new West Mercia inquiry will also liaise with Surrey police officers who investigated the death of 24-year old Akofa Hodasi who was found hanging from a tree in Frimley two days after being racially attacked in April 1998. Police officers concluded