ESSIE Menson had just given birth to her third child when the telephone rang in the Australian hospital room.

In just a few seconds the joy she felt at the arrival of her daughter turned to horror.

Her younger brother Michael was in hospital with horrific burns. He had been discovered on fire staggering along a pavement in Edmonton, north London, early on January 18, 1997.

Police believed the former musician, who had a history of mental health problems, had tried to kill himself.

"I phoned the hospital and tried to speak to one of the nursing staff in the room with him and Michael was just dozing off," she said.

"Over the next few days I phoned again to find out how he was. I was trying to assess the severity of the situation, whether to come back given I had a new born baby."

Michael Menson, who had become famous in the Eighties with the group Double Trouble, suffered a cardiac arrest a week after the attack and fell into a coma.

As Essie flew home she realised there were things that didn't fit in with the explanation of suicide.

For a start, a consultant who assessed her brother three months before did not believe he was a suicide risk and Michael had never smoked and would not have been carrying matches or a lighter.

But, more importantly, most of the burns were to his back.

Back in England Michael told his brothers from his deathbed how he had not attempted suicide but had been set upon by a gang of white youths.

"When I got back to the UK I discovered only one police officer had been to the hospital. I did speak to a doctor who explained how severe things were. He had stabilised and and they were hopeful things were going to resolve.

"But he died a few days after I got back. After that we realised how little had been done by the police."

Officers had only sealed off the scene where Mr Menson was attacked 12 hours afterwards and did not even interview the 30-year-old before he died on February 13.

Essie, who lives in Brighton, said: "A few days after he died the police came to our house and that was the first real contact we had with them.

"They sent police officers to our house every two or three days who told us they were investigating what had happened. At the first few meetings we had a large number of questions about what had happened and why they had initially told my family he had set himself alight. We wanted to know who had been there to help Michael and details of the attack.

"They took away a list of questions and said they would meet with us in a day or two. But the problem which emerged was very few answers were coming back.

"They said they would look into it but we had very little information and a lot of it was conflicting about who was first on the scene. At one stage we had four different versions."

While they wanted to press the police to widen their investigation and get results, they did not want to irritate the very officers who were supposed to be looking for his killers.

"Through that year the team told us they had so many leads they didn't need an appeal for witnesses, but at the end of the year they said they had come to nothing. We just felt enough was enough and if they wouldn't make appeals then we would."

In exasperation, the family held a press conference a year to the day after the attack, appealing for any witnesses to come forward.

Essie said: "We were concerned the police seemed to be fobbing

us off. They just wanted

to keep us at bay

and we thought this

was unsatisfactory."

One source of support to the family during their bleak months of struggle came from the family of Stephen Lawrence, who offered help and advice. The black teenager was murdered in London but no one has ever been convicted of the attack. The police were criticised for their handling of the incident and the family is now suing 42 officers involved in the investigation.

Essie said: "We

suggested going on Crimewatch and they said in a patronising way, 'we are the ones investigating and know what to do'."

Unfortunately for Essie and her family, including her parents and nine brothers and sisters, it was not that clear-cut.

In early 1998 the police carried out an internal investigation looking into procedures and practices adopted in the all-important first investigation.

That August the police acknowledged they had made mistakes by making incorrect assumptions that Michael had harmed himself and they had not sealed off the scene in time for forensic analysis.

They also conceded Michael's protestations he had been attacked had not been acted upon.

The turning point in the family's fight came in September 1998 when a jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing at Michael's inquest.

The family wrote to the Police Complaints Authority to register their unhappiness about the quality of the investigation carried out by officers.

In November the case was handed over to the Metropolitan Police's Racial and Violent Crimes Task Force.

Within hours came the first formal admission from the police that Michael had been murdered.

Essie, who moved to Brighton to work at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in February, said: "Within a few short months they made arrests. It was clear the information was there and had not been acted on, it was shocking.

"Our family had to fight for two hard years to get to a stage where it was properly investigated, it's just not acceptable.

"By the time the Racial and Violent Crimes Task force came in, two years had gone past and we knew we had to maintain our vigilance to make sure this final chance wasn't lost."

"Every day while waiting for the court process to end we knew if we had not pushed so hard for a proper investigation then we may not be in court now. I think it's dreadful that without a family's pressure nothing would be done."

Yesterday justice was finally meted out to Mario Pereira and Harry Charalambous Constantinou, both 26.

In a month-long trial, the court heard how Michael was abused, attacked, doused with flammable liquid and set alight in an unprovoked attack in which his personal stereo was stolen.

Pereira, a student, was found guilty of murder while his unemployed co-defendant was convicted of manslaughter. They will be sentenced today.

The killers robbed Essie and her family of a man described in court as

gentle, natural and caring.

But they also stole the memory of Michael Menson, who will now be remembered for the circumstances surrounding his murder and not his true legacy - his music.

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