The mother of Stephen Lawrence has expressed fury that no police officers have faced action over the bungled handling of information about a sixth suspect in her son’s murder.
Doreen Lawrence said the man accused of leading the group of attackers towards her son, named as Matthew White by the BBC on Monday, avoided capture because of failings by police.
Stephen was 18 when he was murdered by a group of five or six racist attackers in Eltham, south-east London, in April 1993.
In a statement through her solicitor, Baroness Lawrence said: “What is infuriating about this latest revelation is that the man who is said to have led the murderous attack on my son has evaded justice because of police failures and yet not a single police officer has faced or will ever face action.”
She went on: “The failure to properly investigate a main suspect in a murder case is so grave that it should be met by serious sanctions.
“Only when police officers lose their jobs can the public have confidence that failure and incompetence will not be tolerated and that change will happen.”
The names of five suspects have long been publicly linked with the case, but there were always accounts of a sixth, fair-haired attacker.
Two men have been convicted of the murder – Gary Dobson and David Norris, who were jailed for life in 2012 at the end of a trial that hinged on tiny traces of forensic evidence.
The three remaining suspects are brothers Neil and Jamie Acourt, who have since served jail time for drug dealing, and Luke Knight, who has remained free.
The Metropolitan Police said White was arrested twice over the murder, but on both occasions there was not enough evidence for a prosecution.
A BBC investigation claims that White, who died aged 50 in 2021, had a central role in the attack on Stephen, running ahead of the others towards the teenager.
His stepfather, Jack Severs, who died in 2020, told a police officer not involved in the case that White had admitted being present that night.
But Mr Severs was misidentified by the murder investigation team because White had two different stepfathers – a failure the Met called a “significant and regrettable error”.
Then-senior investigating officer Brian Weeden had also planned to meet White and his stepfather but this never took place, the BBC said.
Another witness also told police that White had admitted being involved in the attack.
It was 20 years before Mr Severs was spoken to by a detective investigating the murder, Clive Driscoll, the officer who finally brought Dobson and Norris to justice nearly two decades after they murdered Stephen.
White was first arrested over the murder in March 2000 and again in December 2013 but, on both occasions, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) advised there was no realistic prospect of conviction for any offence, the Metropolitan Police said.
He was spoken to again in February 2020 but there was insufficient witness or forensic evidence to progress any further before he died in August 2021.
In a statement prompted by the BBC investigation, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Ward said: “The impact of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence and subsequent inquiries continues to be felt throughout policing.
“Unfortunately, too many mistakes were made in the initial investigation and the impact of them continues to be seen.”
The original investigation into Stephen’s murder was hampered by racism and alleged corruption despite officers being given the names of five suspects in the days after Stephen died.
In 1999 the damning Macpherson Report on the murder and its aftermath found that the Met was institutionally racist.
