The bent cop who pretended he was a magistrate
Interviewing a former anti-corruption officer provided revelatory detail in understanding the level of police wrongdoing in 1970s' London
One of the most extraordinary stories I was told when researching my book The Real Ted Hastings came from a former anti-corruption detective called Don Williams.
I was lucky enough to chat to him at his home in 2022. He was recounting his experiences at Scotland Yard from 50-odd years before.
The theme of my book was to highlight the all-too-real corruption that was referenced in the BBC’s international hit drama Line of Duty. While the shootouts and car chases were all made up in the show, the corruption cases were entirely based on real events.
Williams had worked for A10, the real anti-corruption that foreshadowed the fictional AC-12 in the TV series.
He had a wealth of stories and insights into the appalling corruption he investigated in the 1970s.
However, one story was so outlandish that had Line of Duty featured it in an episode it would have been accused of jumping the shark.
Porn racket and a fake court
This is the saga Williams told me.
Cambridgeshire police had arrested some “toe rags”, as he called them, using old slang for suspected criminals. The charge was something like housebreaking.
It so happened these crooks were connections of a senior detective, Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Moody.
At this time Moody was overseeing an illegal porn racket in London’s Soho. This involved giving permission to various local ‘faces’ to run porn shops, some with illicit material, and acting as middleman between various vice crooks and those seeking the green light to operate in the trade.
In 1977 Moody would receive a 12-year sentence for corruption offences.
Prior to that, according to Don Williams, Moody had some kind of deal going with the Cambridgeshire suspects and did not want them to face trial.
Williams told me, “So they [Moody and some fellow bent officers] invented a fake court in Tintagel House and Wicked Bill Moody was the magistrate.”
The ‘toe rags’ went free and disappeared
Tintagel House was the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police on the Albert Embankment overlooking the Thames in London. Moody’s masquerade apparently entailed hoodwinking the Cambridgeshire police into believing their suspects were being dealt with in a genuine magistrates’ court.
“Magistrate” Moody turned down the Cambridgeshire officers’ request to remand the men in custody and instead granted “bail”. The men went free and disappeared, and the provincial police, no doubt disappointed with the outcome, returned home believing they had been dealt with in a real court.
Williams said he heard of this extraordinary deception from a man called Frank Williamson and Detective Chief Superintendent Charles Naan, two of the team that were thwarted by Moody when they were investigating The Times’ 1969 exposé of police corruption. While Williamson was Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, Naan was one of his trusted provincial officers on the corruption inquiry.
“Williamson got in touch to have a chat with me and tell me one or two things that happened to him,” Williams recalled. “He gave me a lot of background to what was going on. It made us realise the lengths these people would go to cover up.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but that happened. It was appalling what was going on, really appalling.”
The toll on anti-corruption officers
Bent detectives who knew they might be targeted by A10 often tried, much as their fictional counterparts do in Line of Duty, to sabotage Don Williams and his anti-corruption colleagues.
“You can imagine the kind of threats put on you,” Williams said. “Phone calls to your wife telling them their husband’s not doing the job, he’s out having affairs and all that sort of stuff. There was a lot of that taking place.
“That’s why we had to keep ourselves very closed. We had a couple of office suites that were bolted and barred. I had a very small team. On a Friday night, we’d come into my office, we’d have a couple of beers, fool about a bit just to get the pressure off, you know, just to relax and have a bit of fun. We did that every Friday night.”
I was hugely grateful to Don Williams, not just for the abundance of insights into this daunting role fighting corrupt officers, but for his hospitality and generosity with his time.
The opportunity to speak to those directly involved in past events can sometimes take you in surprising and extraordinary directions.
Back in the 1970s, I spent 6 years working alongside a Special Branch officer, Det Sgt John Sparks who was Charles Naan's right hand man. John told me how he had achieved early promotion to sergeant but, after he and Naan worked on the West Midlands Police corruption enquiries, he was told, unofficially, he had damaged his career by investigating police corruption and that he would never progress further. Indeed, despite being an assiduous and effective officer, he was still a sergeant when he retired.