Police had councillor's fingerprints on hate mail but dropped case

Gerard Woodhouse was convicted in 2025 of sending up to 100 offensive, anonymous cards to a former Labour Party colleague

Police had fingerprint evidence linking a high-profile councillor to a poison pen letter up to 12 months before he went on to target another politician in a "persistent and wicked" hate mail campaign.

But the BBC has learned that although an investigation that pre-dated his hate campaign against Labour colleague Banks yielded fingerprint evidence from a letter sent to a housing association boss, the inquiry was stood down because officers were "unable to establish contact" with the alleged victim after she left her job.

The alleged victim, Julie Fadden, 65, said if Woodhouse had been dealt with he might have been stopped before he began harassing Banks and other suspected victims.

Woodhouse became a councillor in 2010, and served as its older people's champion and achieved a national spotlight with his anti-poverty campaigning.

He was arrested and pleaded guilty to harassing Banks, who he claimed to have become fixated on as a result of internal Labour Party fall-outs while suffering from severe mental health problems.

Gerard Woodhouse had been a high-profile anti-poverty campaigner in Liverpool during his time as a councillor

And the BBC has since learned that in 2022 the force received a complaint from Fadden, after a card arrived at the housing association she worked at. It suggested her "time was coming", and included the phrase "tick-tock, tick-tock".

She reported the letters to the police and they took away the original hard copies.

She did not suspect Woodhouse at the time, and only came to suspect it might have been him after seeing a BBC investigation into the ex-County ward councillor.

She said the pieces then fell into place, remembering that Woodhouse had once sent a text message about her to a former employee of the housing association.

"He sent a text message saying that they should have 'cut the rope'. The phone had previously been used by a member of staff he knew who had left, and it had been given to the finance director. So they received the message and brought it to me."