Crime This article is more than 13 years oldShirley Bassey: new inquiry into daughter's death
This article is more than 13 years old Open verdict after body of 21-year-old found in riverMother of murder victim links killer to 1985 case
Detectives are making new inquiries into the death of Dame Shirley Bassey's daughter 25 years ago after it was claimed that a convicted killer was connected with her death.
Samantha Novak, 21, was found face down in the river Avon near the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol in 1985. An open verdict on her death was recorded but Bassey has always suspected her daughter's death was suspicious.
Today, Avon and Somerset police revealed the mother of a woman called Penny Beale, who was murdered in 2001 by her boyfriend, Michael Moffat, had written to them with a new lead. Beale's mother, also Penny, said Moffat had claimed to be "involved" in Novak's death.
Detective Chief Inspector Mike Carter, head of the force's major crime review team, said: "The mother of Moffat's victim wrote to us with some information in the last couple of weeks. Her daughter had said that Moffat told her he was involved in the murder of Samantha Novak. We looked at the circumstances surrounding the death after comments made by Dame Shirley Bassey.
"There was nothing from the coroner's report to suggest it was murder; however, this information is obviously additional so we are making fresh inquiries." He said officers would decide in the next few weeks whether to visit Moffat, who is being held in Scotland.
Moffat, 47, originally from Edinburgh, was jailed for life for battering Beale to death in Hastings, East Sussex.
Last October, Bassey, who brought Samantha up with second husband, Sergio Novak, said in an interview with Guardian Weekend that she had never believed her daughter had killed herself. "Listen, if somebody jumped off – this is what annoys me with the press because it's a more sensational story. If she'd jumped off the bridge, all her bones would have been broken. But there was not a bone broken.
"In fact she did not have a mark on her. So if anything, I'm suspicious about her death. They said she didn't have a mark on her, and she didn't have any water in her lungs. So if somebody's drowning, they gasp, don't they?"
Penny Beale, 60, said she had been telling police for nine years that the man who murdered her daughter might have killed Novak. She said she first informed police of her concerns about him in October 2001, a month before her daughter died.
Since then she has contacted officers with the allegation "over and over again" but believes police refused to take her claims seriously until Bassey's interview.
Beale, who runs the Penny Beale Memorial Fund to protect women against domestic abuse, said: "Before my daughter was murdered, she attempted to kill herself and it was at that moment he [Moffat] said that another one of his girlfriends had committed suicide. He was a sadistic and nasty man and my daughter thought it was a very creepy thing to say. He told her it was Shirley Bassey's daughter. I said to Penny: 'Do you think he was involved in her death in any way?' She asked me: 'Am I sleeping with a murderer?' I didn't know what to say.
"In the summer of 2001, I told police my concerns he had murdered Samantha and was going to kill Penny but everybody thought I was just a mad, overprotective parent. What he did to my daughter wasn't a one-off. He did horrible stuff. I think there is a strong possibility that Samantha Novak was murdered by Moffat.
"The police have only taken me seriously this time because of what Shirley Bassey said in interview."
A spokesman for Bassey said: "We have no comment. We have not been informed by the authorities of this investigation."
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