Kevin Nunes: 15 years of hurt for family opening up about ordeal
There was an abrupt knock at the door and two detectives walked in.
Leanne Williams had been told to expect them, and asked to summon her family.
“I remember that day as if it was yesterday,” she recalled.
“It hit me like a bombshell.”
Reading from a prepared statement by the Crown Prosecution Service, the officers broke the news that the five men jailed for killing her boyfriend – the father of her son – had won an appeal.
“And worse – they were already free and back on the streets,” she sobbed.
That was March 2012.
Express & Star Investigations Editor Rob Golledge uncovers the background to the case
Four years earlier, Miss Williams had watched as the five men charged with murdering Kevin Nunes in brutal circumstances in a Staffordshire country lane, were found guilty and jailed for life with a combined minimum term of 135 years.
“We thought justice had been done,” she said.
“We had started to rebuild our lives. I’d gone to university and was trying to make a better future for us.”
Fast forward to October 2017 and Leanne, 34, and her brother Benjamin, 33, are sittingsat in the Express & Star offices in Queen Street, Wolverhampton.
It is 15 years since Kevin was pistol-whipped and shot five times, 10 years since the original murder trial, and five years since they were first told the case against Kevin’s alleged murderers was flawed.
And after one of the most protracted and complex police misconduct inquiries, the force watchdog has just published a 587-page report into the scandal.
It is a catalogue of serious failings: a covert police unit that was out of control, a chaotic witness who broke the law, falsification of reports, and a damning dossier of wrongdoing by officers that was never disclosed to the original murder trial.
Fourteen Staffordshire police officers – including three who became Chief Constables of Staffordshire, Northamptonshire, and Gloucestershire, one who headed up West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit, and another who led a war crimes inquiry – were placed under investigation.
The verdict from the experienced investigating officer was clear – 13 of the officers had a case to answer over possible misconduct and gross misconduct.
However, it concluded there was no criminality or wilful cover up.
Ultimately, none of them were held to account.
The Police and Crime Commissioners of Staffordshire, Northamptonshire and Gloucestershire, and the then-Chief Constable of West Midlands Police – who were tasked with instigating disciplinary proceedings – refused to do so.
They said their officers were not individually responsible, and that the failings had been a ‘cock-up not conspiracy’ and a ‘corporate collective’ failure.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission caved, and decided not to take any further action. All of the remaining officers had long retired, rendering the report’s recommendations meaningless.
Former Staffordshire Chief Constable Jane Sawyers and ex-Gloucestershire Suzette Davenport, a former Assistant Chief Constable in Staffordshire, went on to receive Queen’s Police Medals – the highest decoration for police officers.
For Miss Williams and her family it only compounded the pain. She has to try to explain to her teenage son why no-one has been punished or held responsible for there being no justice over the murder of the father he never got to meet. “As a family we are resilient,” she said.
“We have come far. We have remained quiet. But I just feel hurt. The most crushing thing is that they (the officers) haven’t even got a slap on the wrist. None of the commissioners believe that even a disciplinary hearing was needed. They said it was a collective failure, but to get a collective you need individuals first. To me it is just one big shambles. I am just hurt.
“They got rewarded and medals for doing such a fantastic job.”
Miss Williams, from Whitmore Reans in Wolverhampton, is equally condemning of the police watchdog.
“Having dealings with the IPCC, I don’t have any faith in them. To me the IPCC should have driven this home that these people needed to be held accountable.
“I also have no faith in the police whatsoever. It is absolutely shocking. I am flabbergasted. In normal jobs people would have been punished.
“It’s like they’ve set the kitchen alight, ran out because they couldn’t stand the heat, and then no-one admits to starting the fire.”
The failings on the case centred on the handling of the key witness, Simeon Taylor.
Taylor was Leanne’s step-brother and they grew up together.
Taylor contacted the police when they offered a £25,000 reward when investigations into the 2002 murder stalled. He admitted to driving Kevin to the scene of the murder and being present when he was shot.
He was taken into police protection – but proved to be chaotic.
He would make demands for cash, frequently return to Wolverhampton – the very place his life was at risk – and associate with drug dealers and get involved in criminality.
He stole £320 of police funds by getting a refund from the hotel which was acting as his ‘safe house’. He also caused more than £7,000 damage to another safe house in Wales.
In total, he breached the terms of the witness protection scheme a staggering 76 times.
But senior officers, who were aware of the wrongdoing, allowed him to give evidence in court.
The legal teams at the original trial were oblivious to his actions.
Mr Williams, of Bilston, said: “We warned the police from the outset. We said Simeon was a loose cannon and could not be trusted. He was only interested in what he could get out of it.”
Taylor was paid a £15,000 reward after giving evidence. It had been reduced from £23,000 to pay for the damage caused in Cardiff.
More background to the Express & Star's investigation
Detectives had warned there was an ‘at all costs’ approach to the case.
Taylor was dumped from the witness protection scheme weeks after the trial concluded.
The force has already paid £200,000 in damages to two of the men acquitted on appeal over the case. And Staffordshire Police could face further legal proceedings – from Kevin’s relatives.
Mr Williams said: “We have a barrister and we are about to serve a letter of intent. We feel we have a very compelling case.
“We have kept silent for many years hoping that the authorities would do their job. We trusted them to do that, and they failed catastrophically. Unfortunately, we as a family have to pick up the pieces after 15 years since Kevin was killed.
“There are certain people saying that now the report is out, it is time to move forward. It is easy for them to say that, but maybe they would like to jump in the shoes of my nephew, my sister, or the family?
“It hasn’t been easy. Put yourself in our position. We just have to carry on. We have no option to, otherwise it will destroy us.”
Kevin was just 20 when he was gunned down and beaten in a country lane in Pattingham outside of Wolverhampton on September 19, 2002.
He was a talented footballer who played for Stafford Rangers and had been on the books of Tottenham Hotspur.
In 2008, Adam Joof of Willenhall, Levi Walker of Birmingham, Antonio Christie of Great Bridge, and Owen Crooks and Michael Osbourne both of Wolverhampton, were jailed for murder after being found guilty.
The slaying was said to be in revenge for Kevin crossing two Black Country cocaine gangs. But the five men had their convictions quashed when failings were brought to light at a Court of Appeal hearing in London in 2012.
It was described as a ‘serious perversion of the course of justice’ by a top appeal judge.
Detective Inspector Joe Anderson had turned whistleblower and reported there was ‘corruption, falsification and dishonesty’ in the Staffordshire Police Sensitive Policing Unit which was responsible for witness protection scheme that Simeon Taylor joined in March 2005.
Superintendent Joe Costello was requested by then-Assistant Chief Constable Suzette Davenport to head a review of the unit.
In 2007, a damning 73-page report, known as the Costello Report, was produced many months before the murder trial but kept secret.
It emerged that a detective handling Taylor was involved in an ‘intimate’ affair with a disclosure officer involved in the case and that the pair used to meet where Taylor was being housed. It raised serious concerns over whether information relating to evidence in the case was contaminated and passed on to Taylor. There was some suggestion it had been.
Taylor also drank with his handlers and repeatedly broke the rules of the witness protection scheme.
Had the Costello Report been disclosed, the defendants’ legal team would have known that Inspector Anderson was in a position to give evidence which would have seriously undermined both the credibility of Simeon Taylor and the integrity and the honesty of the system put in place to handle him.
With the report the defence could have shown that the Sensitive Police Unit was a dysfunctional organisation fractured by in-fighting, containing officers whose honesty and integrity were also open to question.
The Crown Prosecution Service ruled in 2014 that none of the 14 officers should face criminal proceedings.
And they ended up escaping any kind of punishment, with the exception of a junior detective who received words of advice.
“We have been let down massively,” said Leanne. “You can’t start to comprehend. Police officers involved have complained about going through five years of investigation – if they think it was tough for them how do they think it was for us?
“If they had done things right they would not be in the position they are.”
Reflecting on an ordeal spanning 15 years, Leanne still has hope that one day she will get justice. “I do wonder why it happened,” she said. “I wonder why me, why him, why my son?
“Sometimes I think we are 15 years down the line and maybe someone will come out of the woodwork. There is always hope.”
“I am a strong believer in God and I believe justice will prevail in whatever way he sees necessary. I know that in the sense of me getting closure that it will happen spiritually.”
