The ECHO spoke with the senior officer who led the investigation into the murder of former prison officer Lenny Scott
DCI Lee Wilson, who led Lancashire Constabulary’s investigation into the murder of Lenny Scott(Image: Iain Watts)
Hardened criminals were “wary” of a “incredibly twisted” man who murdered a prison officer in a vile revenge attack, according to the police officer who caught him. Elias Morgan, 35, was convicted by a jury of the murder of dad-of-three and ex-Altcourse prison officer Lenny Scott yesterday, Friday, at Preston Crown Court.
Morgan, wearing a mask and hi-vis jacket, murdered Mr Scott in an “act of retaliation” when he opened fire with a handgun outside a gym on Peel Road in Skelmersdale on February 8 last year. The shooting came nearly four years after Mr Scott exposed an illicit relationship between Morgan, then a serving prisoner at HMP Altcourse, and a female prison guard.
Mr Scott, of Prescot, was offered a bribe of £1,500 to not report the phone which Morgan illegally held behind bars and which contained evidence of the affair. However he refused the bribe and Morgan, of Highgate Street, later warned him “I’ll bide my time, but I promise I will get you”.
Speaking exclusively to the ECHO from inside the force’s investigation room at Skelmersdale police station, Lancashire Constabulary’s investigating officer Det Chief Insp Lee Wilson said Morgan was “regarded as a loose cannon” in Merseyside’s criminal underworld.
DCI Wilson told the ECHO: “Hardened criminals in Merseyside appear to be wary of him. Make of this what you will, but I don’t actually think organised crime generally in Liverpool think that what he did was in any way shape or form justified. I’m sure that gives the family absolutely no comfort whatsoever.
“But criminals do have a code and there may be a consideration here that Morgan overstepped the mark. In terms of the character of Morgan, we saw him give evidence. He seems to me to be an incredibly twisted, dark and malevolent soul with a very strong sense of values, but they are values that no sane person would recognise as normal.
“He described prison as a job. He told the jury that having a phone in prison was normal. He lives his life in a different way. I don’t recognise it. Perhaps that goes some way to explain why he lives by the vendetta, why he feels the need to punish grasses as some sort of self-appointed revenger. But again, I wouldn’t begin to try and explain the actions of Elias Morgan. It was just unnecessary, disproportionate and wrong.”
Elias Morgan was convicted by a jury of the murder of Lenny Scott(Image: Lancashire Police)
DCI Wilson took over as the investigating officer in the days after the shooting. He said in its infancy the case was a “true whodunit” but as their investigations continued the threats Morgan issued to Mr Scott during his time in Altcourse became the case theory.
“That’s not to say at any point I or my team closed our minds to other possibilities,” DCI Wilson said. “Quite the opposite. Lenny works in a prison. It goes without saying that there are violent incidents. Lenny himself told us that he had been threatened before, from beyond the grave, if you remember, on the call that he made to Merseyside Police, where he initially reported those threats.
“So we couldn’t close our minds to the possibility that there were others out there who may have wished Lenny harm. And we did a parallel piece of work that was talked about in court and accepted by the defence that wasn’t challenged…it’s a piece of work that I’m particularly proud of, actually, because to have it accepted by the defence and not subject to challenge means that we did that work properly and we did it well.”
Lenny Scott was fatally injured when he was shot on February 8 2024 (Image: Lancashire Constabulary)
However, it was Morgan that was truly under the investigating detectives’ spotlight. An early challenge for the team was that Morgan was still out in the community. The killer handed himself into police on February 19 when he realised his name was being circulated in connection with the murder. But DCI Wilson said they did not have enough evidence to charge him at that time so he was released into the community.
“He had access to money,” DCI Wilson said. “He had a very well trodden path, some might say, suspicious, in and out of the country, flying invariably through Belfast and Dublin to avoid passport controls. And my concern was that he would flee and we would never get him back, or of course, that he may interfere and threaten witnesses.
“That was a really challenging facet of this investigation. We were able to engage with the media, in particular the ECHO, in terms of just limiting the amount of reporting that was done on the case. We reported factually when arrests were made, but we didn’t continue to make lots and lots of press appeals because I didn’t want to spook Morgan, quite frankly.”
Morgan murdered Mr Scott outside the Peel House gym where he knew his target trained in ju-jitsu. But in the weeks before the shooting, he stalked his victim and learnt his schedule, trying to find the “optimum time” to attack. DCI Wilson told the ECHO: “Mr Morgan was a diminutive figure. He would, in no way, shape or form, be able to get the drop on Lenny Scott physically.
“I would go so far to suggest that he’d taken the bladed weapon, that he would have run the risk that Lenny would have been able to disarm him, take that from him and definitely restrain him because of his background in ju-jitsu and obviously his training in the Prison Service.
“The only way that Morgan was going to get the drop on Lenny Scott was to take a firearm. We heard that chilling moment when he said ‘I’ll bide my time but I’ll get you’ and he made the gun gesture. He was sort of predicting the future, wasn’t he. He had it in his mind as early as that, I think. And that festered over the subsequent years.
“Obviously, as the [illegal phone] trial started to get nearer, I suspect perhaps he thought Lenny Scott was in some way going to give evidence still against him, even though his statement was unsigned and Lenny had been really clear to his family and to the investigation authorities that he wasn’t going to participate in any of that. He just wanted to move on with his life quietly, with his family and his children.
Elias Morgan approaches Lenny Scott outside the gym before shooting him(Image: Lancashire Police)
But Morgan was having none of that. He stalked his prey, he planned it…there’s no doubt in my mind that Morgan set out, identified that as the optimum time and place…The minute Lenny emerges [Morgan] becomes active, he knows exactly who he’s walking towards. The gunman, Morgan, was straight down the car park, the gun is out.
“There are no words spoken. He fired six shots. We’ll never know how many rounds were in that firearm, but he probably emptied the firearm into Lenny Scott. He had no chance.”
Throughout the nine-week trial, the jury, and Mr Scott’s heartbroken parents Paula and Neil, had to listen to Morgan claim that the victim was a corrupt prison officer with links to gang crime, while the gunman was an innocent party in the whole situation. But DCI Wilson said their extensive investigation found no link at all that Mr Scott was involved in criminality.
“It’s really important that we investigate our victims to understand where’re they’re coming from and, actually, could that present a problem later down the line in the investigation,” the senior officer said. “This was an investigation where we set out to leave no stone unturned.
“You’ve heard from Lenny’s family. He was a loving, devoted father. Those who worked with him, certainly in the Prison Service, none of them had a bad word to say about him…I suppose the best illustration for me was when I went to his funeral there was standing room only and we were 10 deep outside the chapel. I think that says all that you need to know really about the character of Lenny Scott – you don’t get that if you’re a bad person.”
Lenny Scott’s parents Neil and Paula Scott(Image: Iain Watts)
Morgan will return to the same court on Tuesday to be sentenced by high court judge Mr Justice Goose. He will be given a mandatory life sentence. Throughout the trial he was joined in the dock by one-time friend Anthony Cleary, who was found not guilty of both murder and an alternative charge of manslaughter by the jury.
Cleary admitted to driving a van which contained the electric bike used by Morgan during his escape up to Skelmersdale but said he had no knowledge about what it would be used for. He told the jury the first he heard of the murder was when Morgan called him and said he had “done someone in Skem”. Cleary said he did not report Morgan to the police because “it would have had a serious impact on my life”.
Speaking or Lenny Scott’s family, in particular his mum and dad. DCI Wilson said: “From the day I met them, they have been stoic, resilient and dignified.
“They are tremendous people. I know the pain is written across everything that they do, even 18 to 19 months down the line. I feel so dreadfully sorry for them. All we can do is try and deliver us some justice for them, and that’s what we set out to do.”
DCI Wilson, who will retire from the force next year, said the case “has been the biggest I’ve probably worked on, if not, certainly the biggest I’ve led”. He said the scale of the operation, involving 68 police staff, had seen over 1,100 statements taken and over five-and-a-half years-worth of CCTV footage downloaded and watched.
He told the ECHO: “This will sound very corny, but the operation is called Operation Privilege. I can only say it has been a privilege to lead it. It really has. I’m just so sorry about the truly tragic circumstances. It should never happen to any family, let alone a loving family like the Scotts, but it has, and everybody has kept their eye on the prize and on the objective of getting justice for the Scott family.”