IT was soon after midday on Wednesday, August 24, 2005, when my phone rang during the middle of a meeting at our magazine and newspaper distribution company in Thurrock, Essex. My cousin Michelle called to say she had heard my younger brother Robert had been shot.

 

I drove as fast as I could to The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, where he was critically ill in ICU – not from the result of a gunshot wound, but due to one deep stab wound to his heart.

 

The following afternoon I had the most horrendous decision imaginable when I had to accept the doctors’ dire prognosis that the situation was hopeless and that Robert’s life support be switched off.

 

From that moment on I just wanted to know the truth about what happened to him, why it happened and what was going to be done about it.

 

Losing my brother was painful enough for our family. We just wanted answers, like anybody else in our position would, so we could move on with our lives.

 

I want to be very clear, I had never previously met ***** or Jason Moore before this nightmare began. I remained completely neutral and open-minded about everything I was told as the murder inquiry unfolded. Within hours of the incident I was receiving phone calls telling me that ***** had stabbed our brother and Moore was with him. Robert had a friend Paul Hunt who was with him at the time of the incident.

 

Detective Constable Tony Taylor was a decent police officer and came and saw me on numerous occasions. He asked questions about my brother’s death, I told him what I knew and he thanked me and told me he would keep me informed.

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After DC Taylor retired we had sporadic meetings with different officers from time to time but, basically, heard nothing from them. I put this down to the fact that between 2005 and 2012, two different teams of detectives, firstly based in Ilford and then Barking, were meant to be investigating the murder. I think it was put on the back burner for most of this seven-year period.

 

What went on from the point where Moore came back in September 2012 and gave police a voluntarily statement, is quite unbelievable. The bottom line is, they let the real killer escape.

 

It has taken me years to gather all of the relevant information and piece together the jigsaw, and at times it has been extremely painful to keep going over the case, digging deep and finding out what went on. I have had a lot of help in getting to the bottom of what happened – from talking to solicitors and accessing all the many witness statements, reading the police evidence that was disclosed to the defence, as well as transcripts from the Old Bailey trial that took place at the end of 2013. I also spent some time at the offices of TM Eye, the reputable private investigators who spent around two years carefully re-examining the case. I had lots of questions for them and what these senior ex-Scotland Yard murder detectives uncovered is shocking.

 

I have also been in contact with members of the Moore family, as well as Jason’s closest friends, to get to know more about him and what they have managed to find out about the case for themselves. I came forward as a witness for Moore’s appeal, so it’s only natural that I have been in touch with them and also his solicitor Mark Bowen. The Moores have suffered just as the Darby family has.

 

What will become clear as you read various aspects of the case is that some of the strokes witnesses and the police pulled were so blatant, it’s scary. These people are an utter disgrace. They don’t care about justice or right or wrong. I don’t actually know what they believe in – they seem to have their own agenda. Police were just determined to arrest and convict ‘a body’, anybody, any way they could. Moore was their fall guy.

 

I experienced, first-hand, how police shamelessly ignored evidence and the information I passed on to them. I received a phone call in 2012, seven years after the incident, asking me to attend a police station, where I was told that Moore was back in the UK after spending time in Spain and Dubai. Initially, because he had been at the scene of the crime, he feared reprisals from Robert (who was still alive when Moore left the country) and our family.

 

From what I gather, he had hoped that either Paul Hunt or ***** would hand themselves in and tell police everything that had gone on that day in August 2005. But neither of them did. Instead, it was Moore who returned to the UK in 2012, walked in to Barkingside police station and gave a voluntary statement, answering every question Old Bill put to him. But as the police had no evidence on Moore, he was bailed and they were waiting to catch *****, who it turned out was still on the run somewhere in Spain.

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When Moore was charged with my brother’s murder just a couple of weeks later, I became very concerned and confused. Why charge him? It didn’t make any sense. And then we found out it was all about identification parades.

 

To understand how police stitched up Moore, we have to go back to the days and weeks immediately following Robert’s death. Two eye-witnesses, passer-by Abdul Ahmed and Sally Palmer, who happened to be driving along Perth Road at the time of the incident, came forward to tell police they had seen bits and pieces of what went on. Ahmed, who claimed he saw the actual fight, was asked by police to attend his first ID parade in September 2005. He picked out a volunteer in ***** ID parade. In his second video parade, which included Moore’s photo, he failed to pick out anyone. Ms Palmer failed to identify anyone from the same two viewings.

 

Two months later, the police asked Ahmed to attend another ID parade, this time one that featured a man they had charged with the murder of my brother. His name is ********. No-one had even heard of him, although it turned out that he was the co-defendant’s partner in a property scam they had going and, looking at phone logs, I see that they spoke very shortly after the stabbing. The point is, there is no documentation of this ******** Identification parade and the outcome remains undisclosed. Incredibly, despite what I have read, police even deny it ever happened. We are convinced it did.

 

Seven years later, with the co-defendant still hiding out in Spain, they wanted to put pressure on Moore, so what they did was ask Ahmed to come in for yet another video ID parade in October 2012 – and this time, would you believe it, he picked out Moore. Palmer declined to take part, stating that it was impossible to have a better recollection of who did the stabbing SEVEN YEARS after the event.

 

What the hell was going on? Somehow, unbelievably, Ahmed just happened to pick out Moore . . . even though he’d put on a few stones in the previous seven years and looks absolutely nothing like the short-haired, ***** lookalike volunteer he identified as the stabber in 2005.

 

Weeks later, at a committal hearing at the Old Bailey, DI Andy Jones (the SIO who took over the case) alongside DS Kevin Prosser were outside the court when they admitted to me and my brother Mickey: “We have no evidence on Moore and believe ***** to be the stabber.” Their masterplan was to get ***** back to the UK and “let them fight it out in court”.

 

In the meantime, thanks to Ahmed’s miraculous ID of Moore, they charged Jason with murder and kept putting pressure on him by saying he could have killed my brother. By putting an innocent man under the cosh like this, they hoped he would give evidence against *****. They convinced me that they knew what they were doing and I let them get on with it. I figured that as long as they also arrested ***** and brought him home to face trial, it was OK by me.

 

The police plan seemed to be working. In April 2013 they arrested ***** in Mijas, brought him back to London and charged him with murder. But ***** soon worked out that the police were setting Moore up. ***** cleverly worked with their evidence and used it against Moore. So now, instead of owning up to self-defence against my brother, he leapt at a great chance presented to him on a plate. Because ***** had also been charged and remanded, accused of a multi-million pound mortgage fraud, he managed to avoid being interviewed by police about my brother’s murder.

 

Here, the police behaved dreadfully. Surely they could see their plan was backfiring and that ***** was running rings around them, while at the same time putting his so-called mate Moore in the shit? But as I mentioned earlier, they really didn’t give a damn which of the two defendants was convicted, as long as they had a ‘body’ - anybody - to take the rap.

 

I was totally unaware of all the false evidence that was being used against Moore until we got to the trial. What really upset me about ***** is that he owed my brother money – I was told it was three grand – and just chose to ignore him. Having known Robert for many years, he knew this would wind him up, big-time. Robert had been out celebrating his birthday for three or four days on the spin and binging on drugs and alcohol. This, on top of the medication he’d been prescribed for PTSD (he had witnessed the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami while on holiday in Thailand), made him even more volatile.

 

According to the toxicology reports, it was a miracle that he could even stand up, let alone fight. ***** didn’t have to kill him – he could have just given him a beating.

 

I thought we might finally get the truth at trial but, again, we were denied.

 

I sat with police every day at the Old Bailey, where we had to listen to some mad tale about a ‘love triangle’ between Moore and Adele Rayner, Rob’s ex-girlfriend. My brother wasn’t the jealous type – I’ve never known him to get in a fight over a girl. You also have to bear in mind that he was seeing two different women around that time, one called Maggie and another named Mandy. Furthermore, Robert and Rayner could no longer stand each other, so where the prosecution got this jealousy angle from I’ll never know.

 

Paul Hunt was due in court but they couldn’t get him there on the first day because he claimed he was too ill. Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC then ordered him to attend and when Hunt finally arrived he was in a wheelchair. Remember, Hunt was a passenger in Robert’s car at the time of the incident and would have seen everything that happened in Perth Road with his own eyes. But it was immediately clear in court that he was scared of *****. He was meant to be my brother’s mate but turned out terrible.

 

While Robert lay dying on the ground in the Valentine pub car park, Hunt dragged his body and tried to put him back in Rob’s car – there was blood everywhere. When he couldn’t get Robert in the car, he dropped him back to the ground. My brother had scratches all down his face and body where Hunt hadn’t even held his head up. Hunt dragging and lifting Robert’s body could have caused untold damage and possibly contributed to his death. The thought of it haunts me to this day. If Hunt had called an ambulance straight away, maybe the emergency services could have saved Rob.

 

What is abhorrent is that CCTV footage from the pub showed that Hunt was more concerned about getting rid of Rob’s Stanley knife before even attending to his dying friend. Obviously, Hunt’s priority was to help *****, not my brother. All this was caught on CCTV, so police knew what Hunt was up to in the moments immediately after the stabbing. A two-year-old could’ve worked out that Hunt had seen everything.

 

Yet he was allowed to walk away from the Old Bailey making the totally ridiculous claim that he was “asleep” in the middle of the day and didn’t know what had happened to Rob, or how he came to be very seriously injured. To add further insult, miraculously, two days after being brought to court in a wheelchair, Hunt was spotted by a mate of mine at Dagenham Market, doing his Christmas shopping without a care in the world. He, along with *****, had again made complete fools of the judge, jury and police, and a mockery of the whole justice system.

 

It gets worse . . . I was sitting listening to the two police eye-witnesses describing the man who stabbed my brother as being 5’10 with short brown hair. When Jason Moore stands up he looks like a giant towering over everyone. Apparently, my brother used to call him ‘Lofty’ and a close friend of Moore refers to him as ‘The Big Fella’. He’s 6’5 tall in trainers and has thick black hair down to his shoulders. You couldn’t see him from any distance and possibly think he was 5’10. No chance.

 

I didn’t like the way the two key eye-witnesses, Abdul Ahmed and Sally Palmer, gave their court evidence from behind a screen. It stopped them seeing Moore and *****, which is exactly what the police wanted, as the person being described as the alleged stabber was clearly not Moore. But the police knew that not only did they prevent their main witnesses from seeing how tall Moore is, they also denied them any chance of identifying ***** as he sat in the dock.

 

The lengths police went to in their efforts to convict an innocent man was quite staggering. Again, I wasn’t happy and lodged another complaint with  them. “Leave it to us,” they said, so on we went.

 

Next up in court was Adele Rayner (Robert’s ex), who also knows Hunt and *****. When asked by Moore's QC David Howker if Hunt had told her that he was awake and had seen the incident, she replied: “Yes”. Suddenly, the CPS QC Dennison jumped up and stopped the proceedings, urging the judge to clear the court so that this point could be debated in the absence of the jury.

 

When court resumed after some legal points were discussed behind closed doors, and Rayner was asked the same question again, she appeared to have lost her nerve. This time her answer was: “I can’t remember”.

 

At some stage during the trial her car was vandalised, so obviously she – like Hunt – had been got at. To be fair to her, she complained to police the next day about the way her evidence was handled (that silly ‘love affair’ angle again) but DS Prosser virtually ignored her.

 

The trial was a complete joke, a total fiasco from start to finish. The judicial system has been manipulated and tricked again. I started to get a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and wouldn’t you know it . . . the verdict came back ‘Moore guilty, ***** not guilty’. What an absolute disgrace.

 

I was feeling speechless and angry as one gloating police officer had the front to say to me: “Be happy, we got someone.”

 

What? The man who I am convinced killed my brother was allowed to walk free. How can that make me and my family happy?

 

I had to get out of there, unable to stomach listening to these so-called police officers anymore. I was 52 years of age, I’ve been around the block, I’ve lived in the East End all my life and I’m not easily fooled.

 

I felt cheated and humiliated at what had just happened. But I saw it coming and I just let them do it. Police tricked me into believing everything done was in the interests of justice but I was so angry at them for playing with people’s lives and felt totally helpless.

 

I saw Kirstie Moore, Jason’s sister, outside the court. After sentencing she was as white as a ghost and looked totally devastated. As I approached her, she was immediately wary. But I told her not to be scared and that I knew her brother hadn’t killed mine. I promised her that I wouldn’t let the matter rest and would get to the bottom of it.

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The Barking-based murder squad that took over the case from 2012 have held my family in nothing but contempt and have taken us all for idiots.

 

At four o’clock one morning police officers were banging at my door to serve me with a reverse Osman warning – their way of telling me to stay out of the case. But I won’t be bullied and told to be quiet. Their attitude stank, and it just made me even more determined to fight back and ensure justice is done.

 

Moore doing a life sentence for merely sitting in *****’s parked car didn’t sit well with me.

 

I went to see my solicitor and told him all that had gone on. He happened to know Moore’s solicitor and, thankfully, they had the same energy and resolve as me. As the saying goes: ‘The enemy of my enemy, is my friend’.

 

I got back in touch with Moore’s sister and their solicitor and they suggested I met them. I also wrote a letter to Judge Hilliard about the injustice he presided over at the Old Bailey. He wrote back and told me to contact a solicitor and give the Appeal process a chance. I offered to testify as a witness at Moore’s first Appeal held in March 2017. 

 

My brother wasn’t a saint – far from it – but he was a saint compared to the animal that killed him. At least Robert had principles – he wouldn’t have thrown any of his friends under a bus to save himself.

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Police deemed my brother’s life as meaningless. They don’t care that an innocent man has been convicted. It’s not about right or wrong with them, it’s about them protecting their case and not looking stupid. But surely everyone deserves to know the truth about what happened when someone they love dies, especially in violent circumstances.

 

Robert will be turning in his grave at this outrageous travesty of justice. I owe it to his memory to put matters right. His death has been used like a pawn in some sordid police game and I’m not going to sit back and just let it happen.

 

TM Eye, a top team of experienced and respected former Met murder squad detectives, headed by Dave McKelvey and Steve Hobbs, have investigated the case thoroughly and uncovered lots of new and strong evidence.

 

They are totally convinced that Moore is innocent.

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TM Eye's comprehensive report, along with other compelling new evidence, has been submitted to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

 

This distressing saga has been going on for some 16 years. The evidence of Moore's innocence is overwhelming and should no longer be ignored. I hope the British media – written press and TV broadcasters – join me in my fight for justice.

 

Together, and with the help of the general public, we will show the world the evil that has gone on and I can finally get justice for myself and my family.

 

Thank you for reading and for your support.

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