Jimmy Saville’s fellow paedophile pal, Michael Willis, was once a respected broadcaster with dreams of becoming a politician.
The perverted pensioner, who died aged 79 after being found in the River Dart in January following reports of his disappearance last year, enjoyed a successful stint on Radio 1 before his dramatic fall from grace.
The serial child sex offender, who used the stage name Steve Merike when working for the corporation, was reported missing in December, some 60 years after joining the BBC.
Willis, who changed his name a second time to David Evans following an 18-month prison term for child sex offences, was last seen taking a water taxi to a pontoon where his yacht was moored in Dartmouth. His ex-wife’s new husband, simply said “good” when he heard the news his body had been found as details of Willis’ double life were unearthed…
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BBC employee
Willis, who went under the stage name Steve Merike when he was working, was a BBC Radio One DJ in the 1970s. He was also a DJ on the famous pirate station Radio Caroline and worked at Radio Trent in the 1980s, where Dale Winton also worked.
He also ran stations in Australia and lectured for 15 years at New College Nottingham and Nottingham Trent as well as being the governor at a number of schools in the Midlands. Willis was a presenter on TV show Pop Quest and interviewed celebrities, including T-Rex’s Marc Bolan.
Political aspirations
The 79-year-old stood as a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Loughborough at the 2010 General Election, where he polled nearly 10,000 votes, but lost to future Tory education secretary Nicky Morgan.
It was while standing as a constituent he was found in possession of indecent images of children following a raid on his private yacht.
Jailed for possession of more than 500 indecent images of children
Willis was imprisoned in 2020 for possessing more than 500 indecent images of children. The images were discovered during a police raid of the paedophile’s private yacht in 2017. He was jailed for 18 months – his second conviction for possessing indecent images of children.
In court, Willis denied possessing 238 Category A indecent images of the worst nature on his computer. The former college lecturer and school governor pleaded guilty to having just ten pictures in the least severe class, Category C, on a memory stick.
He took to the witness stand to declare that he found some of the more severe images ‘absolutely disgusting’. But the jury heard he was also caught with Category A images when he was arrested in Loughborough back in 2013.
Willis admitted that he used file-sharing software to find indecent images. But he claimed he had no idea how the more obscene pictures appeared on his laptop, desktop and the memory stick. A jury quickly dismissed his story and found him guilty by unanimous verdicts after a two-day trial.
He had told police in interview that he had been “intrigued by the Jimmy Savile affair” and wanted to pass on his findings to a sociologist. Willis also claimed to the police that while some of the images were downloaded others appeared because his computer had been hacked.
Name changes
Willis went under the stage name Steve Merike when he was a DJ at BBC Radio One DJ. The convicted criminal, who had also worked as a college lecturer, later changed his name to David Evans after being freed from jail following an 18-month sentence – his second conviction for possessing indecent images of children.
Police identified the body found in the River Dart as Michael Evans when it was found in January with no mention of his previous identity.
Mysterious boat death
After Willis was reported missing in December last year when his boat was found abandoned with his phone inside, coastguards and the RNLI searched the River Dart to no avail.
However, on January 20 a body was found half a mile down the river. It was later identified by the coroner as ‘David Evans’, 79, with no mention of his previous identity, according to the Sun.
Stating there were no suspicious circumstances, Devon area coroner Alison Longhorn said: “The circumstances are David resided on the boat which was moored on the River Dart. He was reported missing to the police as he had not been seen for several days. A body was located further down the river several weeks later and it has not been confirmed as that of David Evans. There are no suspicious circumstances. The medical cause of death is unascertained.”
Evans’ ex-wife Julia was approached by the publication for comment and her new husband responded to the news Willis had died by simply saying: “Good.” He added that Julia had no contact with him for “many, many years”.
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Source: Mirror
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