For more than three decades Gavin Moss served with Kent Police, rising through the ranks to head up some of the county’s most high-profile murder investigations. Ahead of his retirement last week, he sat down with reporter Rhys Griffiths to look back on a long and successful career and recall some of the biggest cases he has overseen..
. Seven days had passed since the discovery of the body of a dog walker bludgeoned to death in the east Kent countryside, and Gavin Moss was no closer to identifying the killer. The murder of 53-year-old serving PCSO and mother-of-two Julia James had shocked Kent Police and people across the country - and the pressure was growing on detectives to track down the person responsible for the brutal slaying.
“I didn’t have a clue who was responsible for Julia's murder,” Det Supt Moss recalls of the unfolding investigation, “and for a week that was an uncomfortable place to be, trust me”. One of Kent Police’s most senior detectives, with a career’s worth of successful cases to his name, Moss had been given leadership of the investigation into Julia’s killing which would grow to encompass the combined effort of 1,100 police officers and staff. When he took on the senior investigating officer role on the case in April 2021, Moss – who retired from the force last week at the age of 57 – had almost three decades of policing experience under his belt.
But every fresh investigation brings its own unique challenges. “The scene itself .