Retired police officer offers up pension to catch vandal who splashed London memorials with white paint

Police want to speak to this man
Met Police
Hatty Collier26 January 2019
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A retired police officer who was with Pc Yvonne Fletcher when she was shot and killed has offered to give up a portion of his pension to try to catch the vandal who splashed white paint on her memorial.

Former Metropolitan Police officer John Murray was policing the protest outside the Libyan People's Bureau in the square in central London on April 17, 1984, when a gunman opened fire.

Mr Murray was standing next to 25-year-old Pc Fletcher when she was shot and promised her as she lay dying that he would find her killer.

The Yvonne Fletcher memorial statue
Met Police

The 63-year-old from Chingford said on Friday he is putting up a £100 reward from his pension for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the "heinous act" of vandalism.

Mr Murray said: "It's disgraceful, when I saw the photograph I was just gutted.

"I go there once a year to lay flowers and I have done for the last 34 years.

White paint was splashed over the RAF Bomber Command memorial
Jeremy Selwyn

"Because I was standing next to her that day and we changed places three or four times I think if we had done it once more it could have been me.

"When I was with her I promised I would find out what happened.

A police woman holds an order of service ahead of a remembrance service to mark the 30th anniversary of the killing of British police officer Yvonne Fletcher in April 2014
AFP/Getty Images

"I regard it (the memorial) as almost a personal shrine, I made a promise to find out what had happened and every time I go there I repeat those words.

No one has ever been convicted of Pc Fletcher's murder.

In 2017 a Libyan man who had been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder two years earlier was told any case against him would not proceed "at this time". The Met said there was evidence it could not produce in court because of national security.

The damaged memorials

The Bomber Command sculpture was unveiled by the Queen in June 2012 and commemorates the 55,573 airmen who were killed during the Second World War.

The Allies Statue of Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in New Bond Street was also damaged. 

The Canada memorial commemorates members of the Canadian forces who were killed during the First and Second World Wars. It was unveiled by the Queen in 1994 after being built two years earlier. 

The Royal Marines Memorial on the Mall was designed and unveiled in 1903. It remembers members of the Royal Marines who died in the Boxer Rebellion Campaign in China and the Boer War in southern Africa and features two bronze figures on a stone plinth.

The memorial for Yvonne Fletcher was built to remember her after she was shot dead aged 25 while policing a protest outside the Libyan embassy in St James’s Square in 1984.

The Met is trying to trace the memorial vandal who is believed to have worn ski goggles and a face mask as he splashed white paint on five statues in central London.

As well as the Yvonne Fletcher Memorial the vandal targeted the "Allies Statue" of Second World War prime minister Sir Winston Churchill and his US counterpart Franklin D Roosevelt in New Bond Street.

Also targeted were the Canada Memorial in Green Park, the Royal Marines Graspan Memorial on The Mall and Bomber Command Memorial in London's Green Park.

Police believe the suspect first struck at the Bomber Command Memorial before heading along the Mall towards Trafalgar Square, passing Canada House in the direction of St James's Square, before ending on Jermyn Street.

The force said it received reports of the vandalism on Sunday and Monday and is treating the incidents as linked.

Detectives are trawling through CCTV and appealing for information and witnesses.

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