The Thomas Markle Saga: The Question That Still Needs Answers

Why did the Metropolitan Police apparently take no further action over the letter? It remains one of the most baffling questions in the deeply troubling saga involving Thomas Markle Sr and the allegations made against him.

The document in question was written by Mr Markle Sr’s late first wife, Roslyn Loveless, and handed to the Met in 2019. In it, she accused her former husband of repeatedly abusing children.

Police shared the letter’s contents with Meghan Markle, apparently because she had become a member of the British Royal Family after marrying Prince Harry the year before. Yet, beyond that disclosure, the force appears to have taken no action, including referring the allegations to overseas authorities that might have been able to investigate them. Why?

The principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty must apply, and it is impossible at this stage to establish whether Mrs Markle’s claims were substantiated.

Mr Markle Sr has consistently denied the allegations, describing the latest claims as ‘sick lies’. Nevertheless, if the Met considered the letter significant enough to share with the duchess, it is reasonable to ask why the claims were not examined by an authority capable of determining the facts.

That unanswered question has fuelled widespread speculation, with some people asking whether a ‘nothing-to-see-here’ cover-up may have occurred in 2019, involving either the police or, more controversially, the Palace.

There may, however, be an entirely innocent explanation.

Roslyn Loveless’s handwritten letter was sent to the Met’s Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, which deals with stalkers and ‘fixated individuals’ who target public figures. Ms Loveless, whose surname has drawn comment in this context, was described as a troubled alcoholic who died two years ago.

The letter arrived 44 years after her marriage to Mr Markle Sr had ended. Her daughter, Meghan’s half-sister Samantha, 61, dismissed Loveless as ‘not credible’ and driven by ‘hatred and bitterness’.

Perhaps officials at the assessment centre reached the same conclusion and decided no further action was warranted. But if that was the case, why was Meghan informed about the letter?

However questionable Ms Loveless’s credibility may have appeared, her letter reportedly alleged that Mr Markle Sr, who continues to deny the accusations, had travelled to Thailand and the Philippines to have sex with minors.

If there was even a possibility that children were being abused, that should have been the central concern. The police would surely have had a responsibility to respond.

Jim Gamble, an international campaigner against child sexual abuse, told Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday that the Met’s failure to share the information with authorities abroad may have resulted in children facing ‘extended exposure’ to possible abuse during the seven years since the letter was submitted.

Mr Gamble, the former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, said the Met’s decision was ‘really difficult to understand’ because the force had apparently regarded the letter as credible enough to disclose it to the duchess and the royal protection team.

He said: ‘If you get information that comes to you about someone from a foreign jurisdiction who represents a threat to children, there’s a well-worn path and you’d expect a UK police force to share that information.

‘I would have expected the Metropolitan Police either to have gone to the FBI Legat, the legal attaché in the embassy here, to say, “Look, this isn’t proven – it’s an allegation. You might want to look at it because in America you may have more information to add to this, so you can see whether you can corroborate it.”

He is not the only person to question the decision. Dai Davies, former head of Scotland Yard’s Royal Protection Command, said he was ‘gobsmacked’ that the Met had not contacted other law enforcement agencies about the allegations.

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‘I’m frankly astounded that, having received this material, they did not contact other relevant forces… I believe they had a duty of care not only to Meghan but to any alleged victims to investigate.’

Let’s consider the Met’s failure to act for a moment. It means that if the allegations were true, the supposed perpetrator has had a further seven years in

which to prey upon children in different parts of the world, by meeting them, or by watching them online.

We are told that hundreds, thousands, of pieces of evidence have been removed from Thomas Markle Sr’s home in the Philippines, after purportedly being discovered by his son, Thomas Jr.

Obviously, we cannot comment on what those pieces of evidence are with any confidence. But within the poisonously divided Markle family, furious rows are now blazing over them.

Meghan’s half-sister Samantha has accused Thomas Markle Jr of concocting the story in order to make money.

Eventually, the truth will out, however. And, whatever it is, I am bound to say it is not looking good for the royals.

Consider the allegations. We are either talking about Roslyn Loveless and Thomas Markle Jr telling lies on a truly prodigious scale. Or about a habit of disgusting criminality stretching over decades. And this allegedly perpetrated by the father-in-law of the man who is fifth in line to the throne. Meghan’s own personal response to these claims, therefore, must also be subjected to the most careful forensic scrutiny.

In 2022, three full years after the Met showed her the letter full of allegations against her father, she said in her and Harry’s Netflix documentary that she had always been ‘a daddy’s girl’.

At the time, it might have seemed trivial. Now, in the light of our knowledge about the letter, it is something much more serious than tittle-tattle.

If she had thought back in 2019 there was some possibility – even the faintest – that the allegations made by her father’s first wife were true, what did she do about it? Why, if she thought her father was a dangerous predator of children, did she not make these rumours public? Or at least urge the police to pursue the matter?

Perhaps, privately, she did. But the questions keep coming. Questions that may yet turn into a very serious matter, both for our police, and for our Royal Family, and hence for our entire constitutional monarchy and its future.

It simply beggars belief that these allegations were somehow forgotten about, or that they sank to the bottom of some incompetent junior copper’s in-tray. Which again raises the notion that they were deliberately suppressed.

We cannot say – yet – who might have suppressed them, or demanded their suppression. Was it some clodhopping fool in the Met itself, who smelt big trouble? An idiotic royal flunkey, some secretary in the royal household, who put pressure on the police not to embarrass the Royal Family less than a year after Prince Harry and Meghan had won all hearts with their beautiful wedding in St George’s Chapel, Windsor?

For their part, the police are ‘reviewing the handling of this matter in 2019’. The Palace, meanwhile, told the Daily Mail it is ‘not commenting on this matter which is personal to the Sussexes’.

Whatever the case, the sooner we get the full truth, the better for everyone.

The crimes alleged are of far greater magnitude than anything of which Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor stands accused, and the damage the story could cause our monarchy is infinitely worse.