Love triangle cop says rival started fight

A detective sergeant accused of attacking a colleague in a row over his unfaithful inspector wife told a court she had been involved with several other men during their marriage.

DS Alistair Stilgoe, 46, allegedly punched DS Peter Blackburn in a pub toilet after challenging him about rumoured Sunday sex sessions with Stilgoe’s estranged wife DI Amanda Mawhinney.

DS Blackburn, who is married to DS Kate Blackburn, has told how he was left spitting bits of teeth out of his mouth after he was attacked by Stilgoe last June.

But Stilgoe claims he was punched by DS Blackburn who accused him of phoning his wife to tell her about his affair with the inspector.

Stilgoe insisted DS Blackburn’s wife had called him to find out about her husband’s weekend trysts.

Stilgoe was with colleagues drinking champagne at the Boot and Flogger pub in Southwark to celebrate a fellow officer getting the all-clear to from testicular cancer last 16 June.

DS Blackburn was in the same pub drinking with barrister Sam Brown.

Stilgoe said he served in the Flying Squad between 2005 and 2014, before becoming a detective sergeant at Acton police station.

He met DI Mawhinney in December 2004 and married in 2011, before they separated in April 2014.

The officer broke down in tears in the witness box and paused to collect himself as he was asked about his two children.

He said he first heard of the rumours surrounding his wife and DS Blackburn in December 2015.

Stilgoe said he asked his wife but she denied it.

‘It wasn’t the first affair. Amanda had affairs prior to that. I stayed there for my children,’ he said.

‘I just thought we know we’ve got to move on and that was it.’

Asked if he had spread the rumour, Stilgoe replied: ‘Absolutely not, I was a recipient of it rather than the person spreading those rumours.’

Stilgoe said on Maundy Thursday last year his estranged wife ‘had been out with Mr Blackburn drinking.’

‘She had come home and confessed to having an affair and the week after Easter Monday I initiated divorce proceedings.’

Stilgoe said by June 2016, the rumours had ‘died down’ when he and his friends went for a drink to celebrate DS Mark Davies’s cancer all-clear.

He said he had ‘four of five pints of Fosters’ or a similar strength lager, telling the court: ‘I don’t drink strong lager. I wasn’t drunk, just merry.’

Stilgoe said he had wanted to talk to DS Blackburn and said: ‘I wasn’t interested in causing a scene, I merely wanted to speak to him.

The officer claimed in the toilet DS Blackburn said: ‘You f**king called my wife,’ to which he responded: ‘I didn’t call your wife, she called me.’

Stilgoe claimed that Mr Blackburn then said: ‘You called my f**king wife,’ and punched him in the side of the head.

‘I was in the hit in face to my right eye’ Stilgoe told jurors.

‘It was hard enough for it to hurt and knock my contact lens out.’

Stilgoe said he temporarily blinded and ‘just started to hit out with my hands,’ saying he used a ‘heel palm strike’ as taught in police self defence classes.

‘It was just to protect myself in case he was going to hit me again,’ he said.

Stilgoe said the scuffle lasted for ‘about 30 seconds’ before he was pushed out of the toilet door.

DS Blackburn claims Stilgoe grabbed him round the neck then punched him.

But the officer said: ‘No, it’s a lie, your honour, definitely not.

‘Firstly, I would not have been able to see to do that. Secondly, it’s not the type of thing I would do.’

He added: ‘If I have hit him in the face, it is when I’m defending myself. I’ve certainly not clenched my fist.’

Stilgoe said that after the incident he ‘went back to the booth, sat down and carried on with cheese board.

Stilgoe said police arrived soon afterwards and he approached them.

Asked why he did not tell anyone that DS Blackburn had punched him, he said: ‘I have been in the police a long time. I still don’t hold any malice or ill will against Mr Blackburn.

‘I didn’t know if the rumours were true and I didn’t want either of us to get into any trouble.’

Asked how he felt now, he said: ‘Embarrassed. I never thought it would end up here and, you know, just embarrassment I suppose.’

He added that the following day, he informed his DI, Raj Mahajan, and the Metropolitan Police’s Department of Professional Standards about the incident.

Prosecutor Christiaan Moll, suggested Stilgoe was embarrassed about ‘the fight you had with Mr Blackburn.’

Stilgoe replied: ‘I defended myself. I didn’t have a fight.’

He added that he first heard the rumour about his wife and Mr Blackburn from DS Davies.

‘Mark told me he used to work with Pete at WG, which was the central desk force, and Mark had bumped into a couple of friends who used to work on the unit that worked in Teddington.

‘One of them had bumped into Pete and Pete had bragged to him that he was f**king his DI.’

He added: ‘I don’t know Pete from Adam, I had never heard of him before.’

DS Anthony Skinner, of the Serious Organised Crime Command, said he had supervised Stilgoe in a ‘very stressful’ role as part of the Flying Squad.

He said that ‘by the sheer nature of what we deal with we are dealing with armed robberies…in essence, theft with violence.

‘Very often, the people we deal with or arrest are volatile, violent offenders.’

He added that Stilgoe was ‘always very professional, very restrained.’

Asked about the allegation against Stilgoe, DS Skinner said: ‘I don’t believe it quite frankly. If there had been any volatile situation, there is no way he would be aggressive. If anything, he would be the pacifier and try to break things up.’

Stilgoe, of High Wycombe, Bucks, denies one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

The trial continues.
ends