Archive for October 24th, 2009
Missing teens found safe
(CNS): Update Sunday 9:55pm – Two teenage girls who were reported missing Saturday are now back at the West Bay address that they had gone missing from Friday night, police reported this evening. Without elaborating, the RCIPS said they were safe and well and were being reunited with their parents. The girls Tyisha Scott (left) and Amber Yates (right), who are both 15-years-old, had been missing since 10:30 pm on Friday, 23 October.
Anyone with information about crime taking place in the Cayman Islands should contact their local police station or Crime Stoppers on 800-8477 (TIPS). All persons calling Crime Stoppers remain anonymous, and are eligible for a reward of up to $1000, should their information lead to an arrest or recovery of property/drugs.
Met officer’s lover reveals all
(CNS): The Special Police Investigation Team is back in the British tabloids, this time with tales of a tawdry affair, naked pool parties, deception and binge drinking. The UK’s Daily Mail reveals that the cover of one member of SPIT, sent to the Cayman Islands to investigate allegations of corruption in theRCIPS and dubbed the “Sunshine Squad” by the Mail, was blown after he was thrown fully-clothed into water at a pool party hosted by his American mistress, Julie Karner. A friend of Karner’s told the tabloid the affair was no secret. Photo: Simon Ashwin, of SPIT
The Mail said Karner, 51, had an intimate photograph which illustrates the depth of her five-month relationship with Simon Ashwin, a 45-year-old detective inspector attached to Scotland Yard’s elite Directorate of Professional Standards.
Following last week’s revelations and a series of photographs showing the SPIT team living it up or asleep on the job, the Mail published an article today (Saturday 24 October) in which Karner, who told the Daily Mail she did not know Ashwin was married and thought he was a property developer called Simon Phelan, says she discovered his real identity after he was thrown fully-clothed into a pool during a party hosted by Karner and her friend Michele Nauss. After examining his sodden wallet, she found his police badge and discovered his real name, the Mail says.
Karner told the Mail, “It was a nude pool party, just a bit of fun. Simon wasn’t going to come, but then at 10pm he finally texted to say he would if I picked him up, so I drove to his apartment and collected him in my BMW.” She went on, “When we got to the party, it had got quite rowdy and all of a sudden people started throwing each other in the pool, including Simon. When he got out, he gave me his belongings to keep safe so I took them to my room and had a good look at them. There was his police badge with his real name on.” (Right: A photo of Julie Karner published by the Daily Mail)
Karner, until recently head of human resources of the islands’ National Roads Authority, described to the Mail how she met “Simon Phelan” at the Royal Palms beach bar in January last year and slept with him the next night.
In the article she describes strange details of the affair: “Simon would always say, ‘If you see me in a bar, don’t come up to me – wait till I come to you.’ So stupidly I used to wait until 2am when Simon would finally send me a text saying he was ready for me.”
Karner also claims that the UK officer was a heavy drinker: “Often, I had already gone home and had to come and pick him up in the car. I would usually find him completely drunk, staggering down the street, and I would take him home for the night. He made me jump through hoops for him. One night, after he had moved to an apartment, he kept begging me to come to him. I drove over to find he was so drunk he couldn’t answer his door. I could hear his phone ringing inside but he must have passed out.”
She told the Mail she asked him his true identity: “He said he couldn’t tell me because he was part of a special team and it was all secret. He told me I couldn’t talk to anyone about him. We would sleep together a couple of nights a week, but then a whole week would go by when he would keep saying he was busy with his secret stuff, and now I know that was when his wife and kids were here visiting him.”
Karner says in the Mail she reported her relationship with Ashwin to the lead investigator of SPIT, Martin Bridger. She said, “He told me he was really angry because he said it takes a lot of time and money to fabricate a false identity for a police officer.”
However, Michele Nauss, 41, who lives with Julie Karner, said in the article, “Simon and some of the other policemen were getting drunk every night. Simon would always start the evening keeping his distance from Julie, but by the end he would be half draped across her. It wasn’t much of a secret.”
After Ashwin returned to the UK, Karner says she learned that he had a wife, Laura, and three children in Surrey. She managed to discover Mrs Ashwin’s e-mail address and sent her a message, which read: “We have something in common … I met your husband Simon in Cayman and we spent some very intimate time together. Please believe me when I say that if I had known he was married it would not have happened. This is my attempt to right the wrong. Isn’t it ironic that a cop who was sent here to investigate corrupt police has to be so deceitful?”
She told the Mail, “He was supposed to be exposing crooked policemen and instead he was the most deceptive one of all. When Simon left in July 2008, he called me and said, ‘I’m leaving tomorrow and I’m really busy so I won’t be able to see you, but take care of yourself.’ And that was that.”
The Mail reports that, in a statement on the Ashwin affair yesterday, the Metropolitan Police said: “We do not believe that the officer’s behaviour had a specific impact on the overall investigation but we recognise that it was inappropriate and did not uphold the high standards we expect of officers.”
The members of SPIT, including Ashwin, were all RCIPS special constables.