Ax monster who slaughtered EastEnders star lover and their children got an incredible windfall thanks to The Sun
WHEN police were accused of ‘bungling’ the hunt for the axeman who murdered former EastEnders actress Sian Blake and her two young sons, the pressure was on.
The main suspect, her partner and father of the boys Arthur Simpson-Kenthad fled to Ghana in Africa and the Home office made it clear that they wanted the enemy caught.
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Now we can reveal that, incredibly, it was only thanks to a copy of The Sun seen in a Ghanaian bar that he was caught.
Despite Sian – who was terminal motor neuron disease – and her children have not been seen since December 13, 2015, they were initially considered missing persons of ‘medium risk’.
Officers in Belvedere, South East Londononly upgraded the case to high risk after Christmas – shortly before the family’s remains were found discovered in their garden.
Detective Inspector Steve Keogh faced the flak, even though none of it was his fault.
In fact, there was a very real chance that barber Simpson-Kent would NEVER be found.
And Steve reveals it was only due to a “genuine fluke” – and the help of The Sun – that the triple murderer was eventually brought to trial.
Simpson-Kent had fled to the seaside town of Butre, Ghana, where a local bar owner regularly received old copies of Britain’s favorite newspaper from relatives in Britain.
The female expat saw a photo of Simpson-Kent on our front page the night after she spoke to him at her company.
She told her sister, who, by another remarkable coincidence, was a serving officer in the Police met at the time – and local police soon swooped down on the wanted man as he cut coconuts in a remote bay.
Speaking for the first time about The Sun’s role in catching the killer, Steve said: “One of the things I’ve learned in my career is that things can turn into what seems like absolute flukes.
‘That was certainly one of them.
‘The fact that the person who referred us to him on that beach saw the front page of the newspaper underlines that perfectly.
“Without the press coverage we wouldn’t have found him, or certainly not as quickly as we did.”
The incredible conclusion of the search for the monster that murdered Sian, 43, and her children Zachary, eight, and four-year-old Amonwill be told next Wednesday in the first episode of a new series on the True Crime channel.
Steve, a retired officer turned author, hosts the show, titled Secrets Of A Murder Detective, in which he investigates a series of high-profile cases.
He had no intention of recording even one of the more than a hundred murders he had dealt with during his twelve years as a homicide detective at the Met.
But then he decided it was important to talk about what happened to Sian.
Steve, 52, an officer for 30 years, said: “This was the one case in my career that always stood out and will stay with me.
Infant mortality was always the hardest to deal with, and here they had been murdered by their father in their own home in a violent death
Steve Keogh
“We approached Sian’s family and they were happy for us to come along.”
Sian’s relativeswho played Frankie Pierre in the BBC soap in the 1990s, reported her missing on December 16, 2015.
Police who visited her bungalow in Belvedere that day spoke with Simpson-Kent, who said his wife and children were traveling.
Relatives who tried to contact Sian, who was unable to leave the house without help due to her condition, received messages on her phone saying she was gone.
It wasn’t until early January that homicide squad detectives were called in to investigate.
By then, Simpson-Kent had already fled the country.
Steve knew it didn’t look good for the three missing people, but says: ‘You always have hope, especially when it comes to the children, that even if he killed Sian, maybe he put the children somewhere.’
Simpson-Kent had repainted the interior walls of his home to hide evidence after callously murdering his two children and helpless partner.
But thanks to an ultraviolet light source, detectives were able to see bloodstains in the kitchen and bedroom.
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Analysis of the splatter told them that his victims had met a very violent end.
Hollow stakes were placed in the garden to release the scent of the buried bodies there, and cadaver dogs sniffed out the grave site.
Father-of-four Steve, whose two youngest children are the same age as Zachary and Amon, says: “That call from the scene, when they said they had three bodies, was probably the hardest part of my career.
“Infant mortality was always the hardest to deal with, and here they had been murdered by their father in their own home in a violent death.”
At that point, the team, led by Detective Richard Leonard, who interviews Steve in the series, had only one suspect.
Steve, acting DI at the time, explains: “There was no doubt whatsoever, but you still have to build a case.”
What they needed was to speak to Simpson-Kent – and that was going to be difficult because the Met Police have no jurisdiction in Ghana.
Steve feared the fugitive might have returned to his native country to take his own life.
It turns out the opposite was true: he was partying in bars.
I learned a long time ago that you can’t get into the minds of murderers. They are in a different space than we are
Steve Keogh
The detective says: “I learned a long time ago that you can’t get into the minds of murderers. They are in a different space than we are.
“You can’t quite understand him, from what he did to partying.”
The London detectives were dependent on foreign police, who were helpful but insisted on doing things their way.
When they received information that Simpson-Kent was on the coast, Ghanaian police wanted to send a team from the capital Accra, 250 kilometers from Butre, instead of the nearest officers.
Steve, who had remained in England, remembers: “It was frustrating. I knew where he was, I spoke to the woman who had seen him, but what the Ghanaian police would not do is send officers from the nearby police station.
“I felt it was my job to find him, so the pressure was on me.
“I received calls from representatives of the Ministry of the Interior. There was a lot of pressure.”
Steve was relieved when heavily armed police finally took Simpson-Kent into custody before he was extradited to Britain to face justice.
The brute, 56 – who later pleaded guilty to the three murders – got a lifetime rate in October 2016.
The court heard Sian planned to leave the cannabis retailer and take their children with him.
Simpson-Kent told a psychiatrist after his arrest that he had struck them down with an axe.
Sian’s isn’t the only case haunting Steve.
He was part of New Scotland Yard’s elite anti-terrorist unit when extremists killed 52 people the attacks on London on July 7, 2005.
He and a colleague were first on the scene at Edgware Road, where an underground train had been bombed.
He remembers: “We stayed there for two weeks. We recovered the body and handled the scene.
“That was the most difficult point of my career.”
Steve later received a special award for this work.
However, the detective regrets not getting all the convictions he wanted for the murder of 17-year-old shooting victim Samuel Ogunro in Peckham, south London, in June 2010.
While Ola Apena was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, no one was ever jailed for pulling the trigger.
Steve says: “They lured him into a car, shot him in the head and set the car on fire.
“That’s the one that makes me most uncomfortable.”
He also struggles to forget the gruesome murder of three-year-old Daniel Evbuomwan, who was beaten to death by his uncle Ben Igbinedion in Bromley, south-east London, in 2013 for wetting the bed.
The detective said: “I was at the autopsy for Daniel and the pathologist didn’t believe me when I said the victim had been found in his bed.
‘He thought he had been thrown out of a first floor window or hit by a car at 50km/h.
“Seeing his little body at the autopsy is something that will always stay with me.”
- Secrets Of A Murder Detective airs on True Crime from Wednesdays at 10pm through July, with new episodes delivered weekly.
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