NEW crime series The Hack is throwing light again on one of the Metropolitan Police's most notorious unsolved murders, whose victim was a Monmouthshire-raised private investigator.

The seven-part ITVX series focusses on the phone hacking scandal uncovered by journalist Nick Davies and the intersecting story of the police investigation into the death of Daniel Morgan, murdered in a London pub car park in 1987, and who had links to the News of the World newspaper.

The Hack stars David Tennant, Toby Jones, Robert Carlyle and Welsh actress Eve Myles, who starred in Welsh TV thriller Keeping Faith, written by Welsh Newton-based screenwriter and crime novelist Matthew Hall.

She plays Jacqui Hames, the former policewoman who was a fixture for many years on BBC's Crimewatch, and was the wife of Det Ch Supt Dave Cook, who re-investigated the Welshman's murder.

Daniel Morgan, who was brought up in Llanfrechfa near the current Grange Hospital site and studied farming at Usk's Gwent College, is thought by his family to have been investigating police corruption at the time of the 1987 killing.

No-one has been convicted over the murder, which has led to five inquiries costing some £40m.

Two years ago, following a scathing report by an independent panel into the handling of the case that found the force had been institutionally corrupt, the Metropolitan Police admitted liability and confirmed it was paying damages to Mr Morgan's family, reported in the national media to be around £2m.

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley apologised and admitted liability, saying the case had been “marred by a cycle of corruption, professional incompetence and defensiveness that (had) repeated itself over and over again”.

The private detective was found dead with an axe in his head in the car park of the Golden Lion in Sydenham on March 10, 1987.

Before leaving the pub, he had been drinking with Southern Investigations business partner Jonathan Rees, who was twice charged with his murder alongside three others, only for the cases to collapse, with damages later paid for malicious prosecution.

Mr Morgan, who worked in agriculture until a change of career saw him move to London, was allegedly about to expose links between corrupt police and organised criminals.

He had also told friends that a Sunday newspaper had offered him £250,000 for an expose on how he obtained his information.

Another theory was that police who were selling information and moonlighting as security guards feared he was about to expose them.

A former bookkeeper for Southern Investigations, the detective agency founded by Mr Morgan and Jonathan Rees, claimed in 1990 that about half its income came from the News of the World.

The paper asked the agency to snoop on Det Ch Supt Cook in 2002 when he was leading the murder investigation, which they later claimed was to see if he was having an affair with BBC Crimewatch cop Jacqui Hames, when in fact they were married.

According to Hacked Off – the campaign group set up by victims of media phone hacking – Ms Hames believed that "suspects in the Daniel Morgan murder inquiry were using their association with a powerful and well-resourced newspaper to try to intimidate us and so attempt to subvert the investigation".

Mr Morgan's family have said: "At almost every step, we found ourselves lied to, fobbed off, bullied, degraded and let down, time and time again."

Other failings found by the panel included that the crime scene was not searched or sealed off, alibis for suspects were not pursued, and police who tried to report other officers for wrongdoing had been blackballed, transferred, pressured to resign, or even faced disciplinary proceedings.