The family of axe-murder victim Daniel Morgan formally lodged their demand for a full-scale judicial inquiry this week.

Lawyers acting for his relatives submitted documents to the home secretary, Theresa May, that call for a new review of the notorious unsolved case, which was recently linked to the News of the World scandal, on Friday.

Mr Morgan was found dead in a pub car park in south London with an axe in his head in 1987.

His brother Alastair Morgan, of Gee Street, Finsbury, who has seen five police investigations fail in his long-running quest for justice, said: “We call upon the home secretary to order a full judicial inquiry into this sorry state of affairs.

Corruption

“We consider that the material placed before her cries out for proper public scrutiny of the murder and its handling by the police and the prosecuting authorities over the years.”

It was recently claimed that the News of the World spied on the detective leading one of the murder investigations in 2002.

Last week the Gazette reported that Mr Morgan fears his family could have been targeted by journalists at the paper as well.

The latest attempt to bring the case to trial collapsed in March this year, with Tim Godwin, acting commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, admitting police corruption in the original investigation had “played such a significant part in failing to bring those responsible to justice”.