The Metropolitan Police has referred itself to the IOPC over its handling of a 2019 handwritten letter about Thomas Markle that was passed to Meghan in January 2019. The move puts the Met’s decision-making under outside scrutiny after Meghan said the letter gave her reason not to visit her father and not let him meet Archie and Lilibet.
Meghan and the 2019 letter
Meghan said last week that the letter had “made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father” and that the allegations “were being investigated.” Those words matter here because the police handling now being examined was not about a casual family note; it was about a letter that raised allegations serious enough for Meghan to say it affected her decisions about Thomas Markle and the children.
The letter was written by Roslyn Loveless, Thomas Markle’s first wife, who divorced him in 1975 and died in 2024. The Met said it had carried out an initial review in recent days before the voluntary referral to the IOPC, which means the case has moved from an internal police assessment to external oversight.
Metropolitan Police handling
Scotland Yard said the letter contained claims about offending outside the UK and was forwarded to the office of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for their awareness. The Met also said the letter did not actually contain any information specifically related to security matters, a detail that sits alongside the force’s decision to pass it on to the royal office anyway.
The referral was made in respect of two separate decisions: not informing other law enforcement agencies and passing the letter to the office of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Reports say the Met did not keep a copy of the letter and later had to get one from the Sussexes, which adds another layer to the handling question because record-keeping is usually what allows a force to reconstruct who saw what and when.
IOPC review and next steps
Jim Gamble, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, said he would have expected the police to have shared any warnings. His point tracks the central issue now facing the IOPC: whether the Met should have moved the letter into wider police channels in the UK or overseas once it received it.
The IOPC will consider why the Met did not share the contents of the letter with other law enforcement agencies in the UK or overseas. The Met said it intended to make further referrals to relevant overseas law enforcement agencies in the coming days, so the practical next step is not another public statement but a wider police review of who should have seen the letter and when.
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