‘Black Widow’ finds husband’s shooting files after believing them lost | UK News

An author jailed for murdering her lover has tracked down files of her husband’s police shooting after being told they were destroyed.

Bestselling crime writer Linda Calvey was dubbed ‘black widow’ after being found guilty of murdering her lover Ronnie Cook in 1991 – although she still maintains she is innocent.

Ms Calvey’s late husband, armed robber Michael Calvey, was shot dead by police during a supermarket raid in 1978.

Now the author’s publisher needs details of the 1978 police shooting so they can fact check against her upcoming memoir.

South London coroner’s court in Croydon told Ms Calvey they no longer had the records because it has a policy of destroying them after 19 years.

But it was soon discovered this was not the case and the records do still exist.

Historian and author Carl Chinn was outraged, saying a policy of destroying records like this is ‘shocking, appalling and dangerous’.

When local paper The News Shopper dug into the case, they discovered no such policy existed at the court.

The paper was told Mr Calvey’s files are still preserved in an archive.

South London Coroner’s has now apologised for giving out incorrect information, but Ms Calvey is still angry it happened.

She said: ‘It’s absolutely disgusting. How many other people have been wrongly given the same information when they tried to access files?’

Ms Calvey, born in Redbridge, Surrey, was dubbed ‘the Black Widow’ by the tabloid press when she was convicted of murdering Mr Cook.

She was jailed for 17 years and spent her time in prison alongside notorious killers like Rose West and Myra Hindley, despite maintaining her innocence.

Since being released in 2008, Ms Calvey has written crime fiction as well as publishing her first memoir, titled Black Widow, in 2019.

The author plans to release her second autobiography, called Life Inside, in 2024, in which she writes about her first husband’s killing.

Michael and Linda Calvey lived in Walthamstow, north London in the late 1970s, but Mr Calvey was shot dead in Eltham in south London.

An inquest took place in February 1979 at South London Coroner’s and pathologist Dr James Cameron testified.

But none of the media reports from the time cover key details that Ms Calvey wants to include in her memoir, including disputes she had with authorities over the circumstances around her husband’s death.

This is why, when her publisher Welbeck asked her to corroborate what she has written in her book she wanted to access the inquest files.

In a message to Ms Calvey, the court wrote: ‘Please note documentation for case referrals from the year 1978 would not be available and destroyed. Croydon HM Coroner’s Court does not have the facilities for long term storage.’

The court then followed up in another message: ‘A case referral in 1978 would have been a paper file and stored for approximately 19 years before being destroyed.

‘The paper documents would not have been uploaded onto an electronic storage device or any other storage facility available at that time.’

This is when Ms Calvey then approached News Shopper for help.

When asked, South London coroner’s court denied destroying any records, and explained it doesn’t keep any records, sending them instead to London Metropolitan Archives (LMA).

LMA confirmed it had help Mr Calvey’s inquest files for a long time in 2020, when they had been moved to another archive.

The coroner’s service apologised for the treatment Ms Calvey received, adding that it couldn’t explain why a member of staff had cited a policy that doesn’t exist.

Boss Stephan Rowan said: ‘I am sorry that the incorrect advice was mistakenly given.

‘All staff in the service have been reminded of the process for responding to similar inquiries to ensure that the correct information is consistently provided at the first time of asking in future.’

Ms Calvey was grateful for News Shopper for tracking down her late husband’s files, but remained unimpressed with the coroner’s service.

She said: ‘They are telling you all of this, but they haven’t told me,’ she said. ‘Nobody has contacted me and said sorry.

‘I think there are big questions, not just in my case but for lots of other people who might have wanted to look into things that have happened in the past.’

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