The head of the Metropolitan police has said the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation may be irreparably damaged by the egregious errors made in the first weeks after the killing.
Sir Mark Rowley told the London assembly’s police and crime committee that some detectives had worked to gain some ground but he could not promise that new opportunities would arise.
He said a routine forensics review was taking place in the hope it would identify new evidence aided by advances in technology.
He rejected a BBC report claiming a man called Matthew White, who died in 2021, was a new suspect in the investigation.
He said: “The sad truth is that if you do such a bad job at an investigation in its first weeks and months, you lose evidence … some of it can never be recovered. You miss forensic opportunities. You miss witness opportunities and witnesses’ memories degrade.
“I don’t want to pretend that you can necessarily always catch up the ground that you’ve so badly lost in the early days. That’s what makes it so egregious, and makes the error so egregious, that they’re not repairable always.
“And some really top detectives have moved heaven and earth to try to cover some ground and have made some progress but haven’t been able to recover it all. I always keep hoping that we’ll find a new opportunity, but I’m not going to promise that we definitely will because I can’t.”
Lawrence was murdered by a gang of five or six racist attackers in Eltham, south-east London, in April 1993 as he made his way home with his friend Duwayne Brooks.
Only two of his killers have faced justice: Gary Dobson and David Norris were jailed for life in 2012 after a trial that hinged on tiny traces of forensic evidence.
Last month, the BBC named White as a sixth suspect in the case for the first time and outlined the bungled handling of evidence against him.
But Rowley told the committee: “To suggest he’s a ‘new suspect’ is not accurate. He has been in the inquiry for a long time, he has been twice arrested.”
He said White was first arrested in 2000 and a file went to the Crown Prosecution Service in 2005. He was arrested again in 2013 and a file was sent to the CPS again, but on both occasions the prosecutors said there was not enough evidence to charge.
The routine forensics review of any potential new evidence in the case is being led by the deputy assistant commissioner Matt Ward, who has recently joined the Met from West Midlands police, Rowley said.
Prosecutors are yet to decide whether officers involved in the original investigation should face charges of misconduct in public office.
