Cathy Horgan

ONE of the last people to see a mechanic alive before he was tortured by thieves has spoken for the first time in two decades about the unsolved murder that is among the most gruesome in Camden’s history.

Alan Holmes, who died in hospital the day after he was found barely alive and tied to his bed, had spent Christmas Day with his good friend Cathy Horgan and her family before they dropped him off at his home in Parkway, Camden Town.

On Boxing Day police believe two men broke into Mr Holmes’s flat and beat him until he revealed the PIN number needed to access his bank account. He was found, tightly bound and lying face down, nine days later on January 4. He died on January 5, 1996 – 20 years ago on Tuesday.

Ms Horgan, who had invited the 53-year-old to her home in Isleworth knowing he would otherwise be alone, said she has spent the past 20 years haunted by the details of his final hours.

Sitting in the living room of her home, she told the New Journal: “We dropped him off after dinner and I just left him there. I always think about what we could have done differently. Perhaps if he’d spent the night with us he might still be alive today.”

She added: “He was one of the nicest, friendliest blokes you could ever have met. He was so loveable, and to think he died like that is unimaginable.

“I’ve got to keep saying to myself that it’s over for Alan. He doesn’t have to be in that pain anymore, because the idea of him left like that, with his hands and wrists tied, I just find excruciatingly awful.”

Scotland Yard regularly uses the anniversary of an unsolved murder to launch a fresh witness appeal, but detectives in charge of the case refused to be interviewed when approached by the New Journal at the end of last year.

The Alan Holmes case remains unsolved

Mr Holmes worked as a garage hand at Kentish Town Police Station. Dressed in wellington boots, with a water hose in hand, preparing patrol cars for duty at the yard in Regis Road, he was a familiar sight to officers.

His murder has been described by hardened detectives as “horrific” and “the worst way to die”, but, despite a £25,000 reward, nobody has ever been charged with the killing.

Five men were arrested between January and March 1996, but all were released without charge. While officers believe they know the men responsible, CCTV footage and forensic techniques have failed to provide enough hard evidence to bring a case to court.

Pete Ryan, who retired in 2013 after 30 years with the police, remembered Mr Holmes from his days at Kentish Town in the 1980s. He described him as a “big, gentle guy that would never hurt a fly”.

He said that publicising details of Mr Holmes’s death might persuade someone to come forward. “It might just prick the conscience of someone who knows who did it,” he added.

Ms Horgan, who fears she may never know who was responsible for her friend’s death, said: “I never thought of myself as a vindictive person, but I do think somebody needs to know what they did to him. They should be told. That would be some form of closure for me.

“Somebody should be told Alan was such a good, kind bloke and they did such a cruel thing to him.”

She met Mr Holmes when he fell in love with her flatmate while studying at Queen’s University, Belfast, in the 1970s.

Describing the final happy memory she holds of him, she said: “My four sons were here and we had a pregnant cat in the house at the time.

“He always loved animals and I remember talking to him about the cat. He was the biggest softie you could imagine.

“When I went to his memorial service, there was a police officer on horseback and I said to him that Alan would have been amazed and so touched and so proud that he was there.”

She added: “It’s so important to me to know that he’s not forgotten. That at least people remember him.”

Cries won’t go unheard

As clichéd and contrived as it may sound, Alan Holmes, the police mechanic who was starved in his own home, is the ghost of NW1’s Christmas past, writes Richard Osley.

And it feels as if he will continue to be until the thief – or thieves – who bound him to his bed are found.

For in the middle of the season of celebration, in one of London’s busiest postcodes, where life bustled on outside the window, he suffered the most lonely, horrific ordeal.

The New Journal has marked nearly every anniversary since, usually with interviews with detectives talking about how hopes of a breakthrough can be raised as shifting loyalties change over the years; years that are now decades. But, given the round figure this year, we were surprised Scotland Yard did not, at the very least, circulate a press release.

The flat response is in stark contrast to the fervent pledges made early in the investigation that the killer would be hunted down and brought to justice.

The last tenant in the block next to the Odeon in Parkway ahead of its refurbishment, Alan’s cries for help went unheard. It may not count for much, it might not lead to an arrest, but we’ve made the decision over the years that they won’t be unheard in our newspaper’s pages.

For this is a murder case that, in reality, is unlikely to be seriously looked at again without a new line of inquiry, without a new clue emerging from somewhere. An appeal might seem like a token gesture, a shot in the dark, but it would be something.