Case Ref : 20150715, Morris, Derek

Official Narrative

Body of the Bristol music figure who went missing in July 2015 was too decomposed to establish how he died, says coroner.

Police have ruled out foul play and his family said he would not have taken his own life but an inquest was told it had not been possible to establish cause of death because his remains had lain undiscovered for so long.

DJ Derek – Derek James Serpell-Morris – went missing in July 2015 aged 74. After a high-profile search his remains were found in March in undergrowth close to Cribbs Causeway shopping centre about seven miles from his home.

Email received

I thought I would bring you to a case that seems to fascinate me, one in my home town of Bristol.

The death of DJ Derek. The popular DJ disappeared and massive search took place to find him, however nothing came to light until a year later, when his corpse appeared in a field. The case seemed to quickly be closed but everything about it seems weird. Thought I'd leave this with you as you might find it interesting...

One night I think he left his local Whetherspoons here in Bristol and that was it, wasn't heard of until a year later. It was huge front page headlines for the next 2 weeks trying to find out where he had been and supposedly loads of different sightings of him but no leads. The media in the following months would say that they had gathered information and had reason to believe he had taken a different bus than his usual one home and a new lead had been found. However what I found strange was before that had been published, there was mass searches for him and a campaign called 'Find DJ Derek'. My dad insisted that he had seen DJ Derek, either the previous night, or the day that he went missing. ( I can't recall for sure but I will ask) and he reported it to the police, but they told him 'Thanks, but we have reason to believe he went this way...' etc.. Only to find out a few months later that he had indeed gone that way that he had claimed, he was shocked that the police didn't take him more serious. Nearly a year later someone supposedly walking their dog had found human remains and this turned out to be DJ Derek, supposedly. There was wide media coverage whilst he was missing, with family speaking out and saying that they think he is still out there etc, but once he had been found, everything went quiet, and no reason to why he took a different bus in a different direction to his house and other strange things where never revealed and it was all brushed under the carpet. (That I remember) It's strange because I've spoken about it amongst friends at the pub before and only when you really sit back and think about the whole case, it does indeed start to seem strange and lots of things don't make sense. Hope this is enough information to help you.

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