A police officer known to have framed at least 13 people in London may have set up more than 100 innocent victims.
DS Derek Ridgewell targeted mostly black people in the 1970s, falsely accusing them of robbery.
He beat them up if they tried to resist arrest, before fabricating a semi-confession and lying on oath so they would be convicted.
The corrupt British Transport Police officer died at the age of 37 in jail in 1982.
But detectives believe dozens more innocent people may have been subject to abuse by the prolific offender, with up to 18 more officers potentially implicated.
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Graham Satchwell, a former detective said it was ‘most probable’ that more than 100 of Ridgewell’s victims were still awaiting justice.
The author of ‘Rot at the Core’, which investigates the Ridgewell scandal, told the Mirror that victims and their family members should now be able to speak confidentially about their ordeal.
Co-writer Winston Trew, who managed to clear his name at the Court of Appeal in 2019, said Ridgewell had ‘done untold damage’, ruining victims’ lives and tearing apart families.
‘People should come forward to expose this man’, he added.
Mr Trew was arrested by Ridgewell along with the ‘Oval four’ underground station in South London in 1972.
The quartet was beaten by officers and served eight months in jail for assaulting an officer.
Their convictions were only overturned 47 years later.
Despite a 1973 BBC Nationwide film showing Ridgewell as a corrupt officer who deliberately supplied false testimony to get his victims convicted, he was given a job investigating across the nation at head office, where he continued to frame innocent people for another five years.
Mr Satchwell’s book reveals that Ridgewell was even commended by senior officers for his work, including after he detained 77 people, mostly Turkish and Nigerian nationals at the Bricklayers Arms Goods Depot in Southwark.
Ridgewell, DC Douglas Ellis and DC Alan Keeling all admitted to stealing from the building while setting up staff.
Other groups targeted by Ridgewell became known as the Stockwell Six, the Tottenham Court Road Two and the Waterloo Four.
A total of 13 have had their fabricated crimes written off in court.
Ridgewell was eventually handed a seven-year jail sentence after being convicted of stealing £1million of goods.
He was found to have split earnings from stolen mail bags with criminal groups.
Matt Foot, a lawyer from the charity Appeal said Ridgewell ‘set off a nationwide moral panic’ in which he branded innocent black men as muggers.
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