Anthony Leeler: How the secret police helped solve the 1984 murder case

It became a pattern. Over the course of those months, the court heard, Michael pointed the finger at his brother, always insisting that he himself had nothing to do with the murder.

But the recordings were catching up with him.

Another undercover officer, Anna, knows him separately, and during an undercover conversation in a cafe in December 2023, she tells him that his nephew killed someone.

“My nephew didn’t kill anyone,” Michael replied. “It was my brother.”

At present, the investigation has broken the cover. Michael is arrested and questioned about the murder, then released – unbeknownst to him, the undercover operation continues quietly around him.

Then, in a March 2024 police interview, came the slip that helped put Michael on the spot.

Denying that he was covered in blood that night, Michael said, “Well if I was at the top of the road…how could I have blood on me? Come on.”

No one — not the police, his family, not a single witness — accused him of being a vigilante, prosecutor John Price Casey told jurors.

This list was nowhere to be found except in Michael’s night memory.

As he tries to talk his way out, Anthony lands on the top of the road as he is knocked to the ground.

And revealed a secret buried in the files since 1984.

Two minutes after the attack, a young man called 999 from a phone box near the street asking for an ambulance for a man who was bleeding profusely – then hung up anonymously.

Nothing was found, and the call was rejected as a false alarm.

Only someone who has been there can recognize it quickly, Price said.

That caller, prosecutors told jurors, was 15-year-old Michael Stewart — the bystander, the first to run, alerting a dying man who had left his own group behind.