13 April 2005

Former police officers arrested in Lynette White murder case

Five retired police officers have been arrested as part of an investigation into the murder of a Cardiff prostitute 17 years ago, South Wales police have confirmed.

Twenty-year-old Lynette White was found murdered in a flat in the Butetown area of Cardiff on Valentine’s Day, 1988.

Three men, Stephen Miller, Yusef Abdullahi and Tony Paris, were convicted of her murder in 1990 and all sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the Court of Appeal overturned the convictions two years later and they were freed.

The Lynette White case was reopened in 2000, following the discovery of new DNA evidence, which led to the arrest of Jeffrey Gafoor. Gafoor admitted to killing Ms White and was jailed for life in 2003.

Four men and one woman, all retired South Wales police officers, are currently in custody, being held for questioning in connection with offences of false imprisonment, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and misconduct in public office.

The arrests are the latest phase of an eighteen-month-long inquiry which followed Gafoor’s conviction. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is supervising the inquiry.

Commenting on the arrests, South Wales Police Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Cahill said: “When we embarked on this reinvestigation, it was a search for truth. We promised Lynette’s family and the victims, who were wrongly arrested, charged and, in three cases, convicted of her murder, subsequently serving time in prison for an offence they did not commit, that we would establish what went wrong and today is another step towards finding the answers.

“I can reassure everyone that we remain steadfastly committed to seeing this search for truth through to its ultimate conclusion.”

(KMcA/GB)