![\"DCI](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_JS379154063.jpg\")
DCI Lee Wilson, who led Lancashire Constabulary’s investigation into the murder of Lenny Scott(Image: Iain Watts)<\/p>\nThe ECHO spoke with the senior officer who led the investigation into the murder of former prison officer Lenny ScottDCI Lee Wilson, who led Lancashire Constabulary’s investigation into the murder of Lenny Scott(Image: Iain Watts)<\/p>\n
Hardened criminals were “wary” of a “incredibly twisted” man who murdered a prison officer in a vile revenge attack, according to the police officer who caught him. Elias Morgan, 35, was convicted by a jury of the murder<\/a> of dad-of-three and ex-Altcourse prison officer Lenny Scott yesterday, Friday, at Preston Crown Court<\/a>.<\/p>\n Morgan, wearing a mask and hi-vis jacket, murdered Mr Scott in an “act of retaliation”<\/a> when he opened fire with a handgun outside a gym on Peel Road in Skelmersdale<\/a> on February 8 last year. The shooting came nearly four years after Mr Scott exposed an illicit relationship between Morgan, then a serving prisoner at HMP Altcourse, and a female prison guard.<\/p>\n Mr Scott, of Prescot<\/a>, was offered a bribe of \u00a31,500 to not report the phone which Morgan illegally held behind bars and which contained evidence of the affair. However he refused the bribe and Morgan, of Highgate Street, later warned him “I\u2019ll bide my time, but I promise I will get you”.<\/a><\/p>\n Speaking exclusively to the ECHO from inside the force’s investigation room at Skelmersdale police station, Lancashire Constabulary’s investigating officer<\/a> Det Chief Insp Lee Wilson said Morgan was “regarded as a loose cannon” in Merseyside’s criminal underworld<\/a>.<\/p>\n DCI Wilson told the ECHO: “Hardened criminals in Merseyside appear to be wary of him. Make of this what you will, but I don’t actually think organised crime<\/a> generally in Liverpool think that what he did was in any way shape or form justified. I’m sure that gives the family absolutely no comfort whatsoever.<\/p>\n “But criminals do have a code and there may be a consideration here that Morgan overstepped the mark. In terms of the character of Morgan, we saw him give evidence. He seems to me to be an incredibly twisted, dark and malevolent soul with a very strong sense of values, but they are values that no sane person would recognise as normal.<\/p>\n “He described prison as a job. He told the jury that having a phone in prison was normal. He lives his life in a different way. I don\u2019t recognise it. Perhaps that goes some way to explain why he lives by the vendetta, why he feels the need to punish grasses as some sort of self-appointed revenger. But again, I wouldn\u2019t begin to try and explain the actions of Elias Morgan. It was just unnecessary, disproportionate and wrong.”<\/p>\n DCI Wilson took over as the investigating officer in the days after the shooting. He said in its infancy the case was a “true whodunit” but as their investigations continued the threats Morgan issued to Mr Scott during his time in Altcourse became the case theory.<\/p>\n “That’s not to say at any point I or my team closed our minds to other possibilities,” DCI Wilson said. “Quite the opposite. Lenny works in a prison. It goes without saying that there are violent incidents. Lenny himself told us that he had been threatened before, from beyond the grave, if you remember, on the call that he made to Merseyside Police<\/a>, where he initially reported those threats.<\/p>\n “So we couldn’t close our minds to the possibility that there were others out there who may have wished Lenny harm. And we did a parallel piece of work that was talked about in court and accepted by the defence that wasn’t challenged…it’s a piece of work that I’m particularly proud of, actually, because to have it accepted by the defence and not subject to challenge means that we did that work properly and we did it well.”<\/p>\n However, it was Morgan that was truly under the investigating detectives’ spotlight. An early challenge for the team was that Morgan was still out in the community. The killer handed himself into police on February 19 when he realised his name was being circulated in connection with the murder. But DCI Wilson said they did not have enough evidence to charge him at that time so he was released into the community.<\/p>\n “He had access to money,” DCI Wilson said. “He had a very well trodden path, some might say, suspicious, in and out of the country, flying invariably through Belfast and Dublin to avoid passport controls. And my concern was that he would flee and we would never get him back, or of course, that he may interfere and threaten witnesses.<\/p>\n “That was a really challenging facet of this investigation. We were able to engage with the media, in particular the ECHO, in terms of just limiting the amount of reporting that was done on the case. We reported factually when arrests were made, but we didn’t continue to make lots and lots of press appeals because I didn’t want to spook Morgan, quite frankly.”<\/p>\n Morgan murdered Mr Scott outside the Peel House gym<\/a> where he knew his target trained in ju-jitsu. But in the weeks before the shooting, he stalked his victim and learnt his schedule, trying to find the “optimum time” to attack. DCI Wilson told the ECHO: “Mr Morgan was a diminutive figure. He would, in no way, shape or form, be able to get the drop on Lenny Scott physically.<\/p>\n “I would go so far to suggest that he’d taken the bladed weapon, that he would have run the risk that Lenny would have been able to disarm him, take that from him and definitely restrain him because of his background in ju-jitsu and obviously his training in the Prison Service.<\/p>\n “The only way that Morgan was going to get the drop on Lenny Scott was to take a firearm. We heard that chilling moment when he said \u2018I\u2019ll bide my time but I\u2019ll get you\u2019 and he made the gun gesture. He was sort of predicting the future, wasn\u2019t he. He had it in his mind as early as that, I think. And that festered over the subsequent years.<\/p>\n “Obviously, as the [illegal phone] trial started to get nearer, I suspect perhaps he thought Lenny Scott was in some way going to give evidence still against him, even though his statement was unsigned and Lenny had been really clear to his family and to the investigation authorities that he wasn’t going to participate in any of that. He just wanted to move on with his life quietly, with his family and his children.<\/p>\n But Morgan was having none of that. He stalked his prey, he planned it…there’s no doubt in my mind that Morgan set out, identified that as the optimum time and place…The minute Lenny emerges [Morgan] becomes active, he knows exactly who he’s walking towards. The gunman, Morgan, was straight down the car park, the gun is out.<\/p>\n “There are no words spoken. He fired six shots. We’ll never know how many rounds were in that firearm, but he probably emptied the firearm into Lenny Scott<\/a>. He had no chance.”<\/p>\n![\"Elias](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_elias-morganJPG.jpg\")
Elias Morgan was convicted by a jury of the murder of Lenny Scott(Image: Lancashire Police)<\/p>\n![\"Lenny](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_JS373402476.jpg\")
Lenny Scott was fatally injured when he was shot on February 8 2024 (Image: Lancashire Constabulary)<\/p>\n![\"Gunman](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_lenny-scott-shooting.png\")
Elias Morgan approaches Lenny Scott outside the gym before shooting him(Image: Lancashire Police)<\/p>\n
![\"Lenny](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_JS378902786.jpg\")
Lenny Scott’s parents Neil and Paula Scott(Image: Iain Watts)<\/p>\n