Ex-Police Chief Says Met Should Have Alerted FBI Over Markle Claims

Scotland Yard may have allowed alleged child abuse to continue for as long as seven years by failing to inform the FBI about accusations made against Thomas Markle, according to a former senior police chief.

The Metropolitan Police has acknowledged that it took no action on a 2019 letter accusing the Duchess of Sussex’s father of being a paedophile.

Jim Gamble, who previously led the National Crime Agency’s child exploitation command, said there is an established procedure for Met officers to share serious allegations with overseas law enforcement agencies.

He said it was “really difficult to understand” why that procedure was apparently not used in the case involving Mr Markle, given that the letter suggested children could be at risk.

Mr Markle, 82, has denied any wrongdoing.

“If it turns out through the investigation ongoing in the Philippines and with the FBI that an individual is ultimately held to account for those offences, then there’s seven years during which children will have potentially continued to suffer abuse,” Mr Gamble told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Mr Gamble also questioned why the Met considered the allegations serious enough to send to the Duchess of Sussex, but not to pass on to other police or investigative agencies.

“I would have expected them to prioritise an assessment with regard to the safeguarding and child protection issues that seem to have been included in [the letter],” he said.

“If information reaches you about someone in another country who may pose a danger to children, there is a well-established route and, generally, you would expect a UK police force to share it.

“I would have expected the Metropolitan Police to contact the FBI and say, ‘This has not been proven, it is an allegation, but you may want to examine it.’ US authorities might have held other information capable of supporting or disproving the claim.

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“The information should also have been sent to the National Crime Agency, which has international links with police forces not only in the United States, but also in countries including the Philippines, Thailand and Mexico.”

The Met Police said it was considering whether its handling of the matter should be referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct for review.

Mr Gamble said an investigation conducted independently of the force was “absolutely necessary”.

“There’s a serious question to be asked about the process here,” he said. “This is not simply an administrative issue. It concerns the possibility that children were exposed for longer to an individual who, if the allegations are proven, represented a risk.”

The letter sent to the Met in 2019 is alleged to have been written by Mr Markle’s former wife, Roslyn Loveless, the mother of the Duchess of Sussex’s half-siblings Samantha and Thomas. She died in 2024.

Meghan’s half-sister Samantha, 61, has said that, if their late mother did write the letter, it was motivated by “hatred and bitterness”. She has also accused her mother of being an alcoholic and described her as “not credible”.

Mr Markle and Ms Loveless divorced in 1975, four years before he met Doria Ragland, Meghan’s mother.

Meghan and her father have been estranged since at least 2018 when she married Prince Harry. Their relationship broke down after he admitted staging paparazzi photos of himself prior to the wedding.

The Duchess wrote to him last December after his leg was amputated in the Philippines, allegedly telling him he posed a risk to children and would never be allowed to meet his grandchildren, Archie and Lilibet.

On Friday, police in the Philippines revealed they were investigating Mr Markle, 82, over claims he had ‘hundreds, if not thousands’ of child sexual abuse images, including an image of himself allegedly having sex with an under-age girl.

The Philippines’ interior minister Jonvic Remulla said Mr Markle appeared to be ‘a possible sex offender of the grossest kind’ and the country planned to take ‘appropriate legal actions’ against him.

Mr Markle has denied any wrongdoing, admitting he paid for sex in the Philippines but insisting it was only with adult prostitutes.