Investigating The Almost Perfect Murders

A British detective superintendent recounts a remarkable ten-year investigation, and other compelling murder cases he worked in his long police career. Anthony Nott joined the Metropolitan Police in 1971, in a very different world from that of today. In this memoir he describes his early experiences in the Met, including the arrest of a man for murdering a prostitute in Kings Cross. He was present when a fellow police officer was almost stabbed to death, and witnessed an act of police brutality when he interrupted the beating of a petty criminal in a cell by the CID. In 1976, he transferred to the county force of Dorset where, not long after his promotion to detective sergeant, he engaged in what would be a ten-year long investigation into the disappearance of Monica Taylor, leading to the eventual conviction of her husband, Peter, for what was almost the perfect murder—Monica’s remains were never found. He also recounts a series of other cases in which he was involved, from the murder and decapitation of a woman in Bournemouth and the random killing of another, to the extremely violent killing of a gay man in Boscombe Gardens, Bournemouth, in which it took two years to bring the perpetrators to justice. While he served as a DCI in Bournemouth in 1994, the chance visit of a detective sergeant from Guernsey, who was investigating a life insurance fraud, led to the reopening of a missing person enquiry from eight years earlier, and resulted in the conviction of Russell Causley for murder, despite his wife’s body also never being recovered. This book provides an insight into the methodical and transparent way in which the police investigate complicated crimes—from riots to almost perfect murders.