Former police chief says Met should have reported Thomas Markle to FBI

The Metropolitan Police should have reported allegations surrounding Thomas Markle to the FBI, a former police chief has said.

Scotland Yard has said it passed the Duchess of Sussex a letter it had received in 2019, which contained a “number of claims about alleged offending outside the United Kingdom”, and was assured that they were investigated.

As a result of new accusations that have emerged about the 82-year-old, including that he kept a stash of child sex abuse images at his home, the Met Police has revealed they did not share the information with other law enforcement agencies and are “reviewing their handling of this matter”.

Jim Gamble, an international campaigner against child sexual abuse, said that the force’s failure to share information with overseas authorities could have left children with an “extended exposure” to further possible abuse over the last seven years.

He said the Met’s decision was “really difficult to understand”, given that they deemed the letter credible enough to inform Meghan and her royal protection team.

Meghan’s half-brother, Thomas Markle Jr, on Friday told The Sun he found a stash of child sex abuse images belonging to their father at his former home in the Philippines and reported it to local police and the FBI.

The US has an extradition treaty with the Philippines, which means Mr Markle Sr could face trial there if charged, and could face between 10 and 12 years behind bars if found guilty of accessing child abuse images.

Mr Markle Sr has admitted to paying for sex in the south-east Asian country but denies ever possessing a hoard of such material.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Gamble 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’.

“But ultimately, it also should have gone to the National Crime Agency. Whilst it seems simple, there is a complex network whereby you can share information, and you should share information.”

The BBC and other media, including the Telegraph, which said it had seen a copy, reported that the 2019 note was written by Mr Markle Sr’s ex-wife, Roslyn Loveless, who has since died.

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner called the Met’s decision not to share the allegations about Mr Markle Sr an “operational issue”.

She expressed sympathy for the “tremendous amount of intrusion” the Duchess of Sussex has faced into her family, saying it “must be difficult as a daughter to have all this out in the open”.

Philippine interior minister Jonvic Remulla told The Guardian that a forensic investigation into Mr Markle Sr will be completed in a week and provide a “definitive picture”.

According to the outlet’s report on Sunday, he said: “In these cases where family disputes are mixed up, we have to consider all the angles.

“Right now all signs point to a possible sex offender of the grossest kind. We want to be sure before we release the findings. The forensics data will be complete in a week.”

The Duchess of Sussex sent a final letter to her father in 2025 while he was recovering there from a leg amputation last year, according to reports in the Sun on Sunday.

She wrote to say she knows he is an abuser and that he will never see his grandchildren Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five, the outlet said.

In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Mr Markle Sr said he has “never had sex with anyone under the age of 18”.

He told the paper that when he was single he travelled to the Philippines at least twice and “slept with prostitutes”.

“I like Asian women but that is not a crime,” he said.

“I am not well enough to go to the Philippines but I will speak to anyone who wants to talk to me. I have nothing to hide.”

Meghan became estranged from her former TV lighting director father in the run-up to her 2018 royal wedding after he was caught staging paparazzi photographs.

He did not attend the wedding, leaving the King to accompany Meghan down the aisle and meaning the only member of her family present was her mother, Doria Ragland.

Meghan was the only child of Mr Markle Sr’s marriage to Ms Ragland.

In 2021, Meghan won a High Court privacy and copyright claim against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) over articles that reproduced parts of a “personal and private” handwritten letter she wrote to Mr Markle Sr in a bid to get him to stop talking to the press.

She wrote the emotional five-page letter to him in August 2018 after taking advice from two unnamed senior royals.

In 2025, Mr Markle Sr moved to the Philippines for a new life after suffering a series of strokes.