Warning: Contains graphic details of Rebekah Arter's death - and references to coercion and sexual abuse

A former Metropolitan Police detective, investigated for sexually exploiting vulnerable crime victims it was his job to protect, later lied about the death of his wife in a Barbados hotel room, BBC Panorama has learned.

Warren Arter first met his wife Rebekah after she reported domestic abuse to the Met. He then abused her for more than a decade. Her death two years ago has never been properly investigated.

Despite a request from her family for assistance, the Met did not send detectives to the Caribbean island.

The Met told the BBC it took this decision because no allegation of criminality had been made.

Rebekah's family, speaking publicly for the first time, have told Panorama the Met failed her. The cause of her death is still not known with a coroner in the UK recording an open verdict.

We have also spoken to hotel staff who were called to the room in June 2024 after Arter rang reception to say his wife had collapsed.

Interviews with the staff, police sources - plus Arter's erratic communications following Rebekah's death - reveal:

Arter, 54, took his own life in HMP Wandsworth, days after he had returned from Barbados and been arrested for allegedly abusing another woman.

Rebekah had been escaping an abusive relationship when Arter investigated her case in 2006. The detective then pursued a relationship with her and moved in not long after.

Three years later, he was placed in charge of a unit in south-east London investigating rape cases.

Arter was later suspended by the Met and investigated over his conduct towards eight alleged victims by its watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) - but was never convicted.

Over the seven years he was suspended, Arter continued to receive his full detective inspector salary, before being dismissed in 2023 for drug offences.

All this time, he subjected Rebekah to sexual and domestic abuse, coercive control, and drugging, which the BBC has seen video evidence of.

Panorama has now spoken to several members of staff who were working at the luxury O2 Beach Club in Barbados on the night of Rebekah's death. All say Arter behaved suspiciously.

Two of them entered Arter's hotel room after he had called to say his wife was unwell. Both say it was immediately clear Rebekah was dead.

Andrew, a security guard, says he had to prevent Arter from going to a nearby street party, before emergency services arrived.

"So I'm asking him, why do you need to go when you have a bigger issue here?"

Andrew says Arter responded: "Oh, I just need to clear my head."

Arter then began crying "crocodile tears" and conducting performative CPR despite Rebekah's lips being blue, according to Andrew, who says Arter's explanation of what happened kept changing.

Initially, Arter told Andrew she had fallen near a chest of drawers - but her body was some distance away, near the kitchen. When police arrived, Andrew says he heard Arter tell them he had found her like that.

There was no sign of Rebekah having a head injury, Andrew says, despite bloodstains on the bed, the wall and the living room area.

Arter recorded a video of the room and sent it to family and friends in the UK.

"It looks like chocolate but it's blood," he can be heard saying.

Andrew says he told Arter to phone family in the UK - and then heard him tell them that she had been unwell.

"He was just trying to find the right story that fits and none of them added up," says Andrew.

The security guard says he told Barbadian police officers what he saw and gave a statement but was never formally interviewed.

Panorama has seen some of Arter's messages and spoken to Rebekah's friends and family who were contacted by him shortly after her death.

They reveal that Arter provided other possible causes of death - that Rebekah had "choked" or that her drink had been spiked.

These accounts are contradicted by Rebekah's daughter-in-law, Lacey, who says he told her they had both been asleep for 18 hours and he had woken up and found her dead.

"He was outright lying. He was forgetting what he was telling people," says Lacey.

Arter was briefly detained by Barbadian police but released a short time later.

One of the police officers who attended the room that night refused to share information with Panorama without payment. He still had a photograph of Rebekah's dead body on his phone.

Police in Barbados did not respond to our request for comment.

Other hotel staff members have told the BBC they were concerned about Arter's treatment of Rebekah during their stay.

Security supervisor Kenneth says Arter appeared "controlling" and "didn't allow Rebekah to do anything on her own". Rebekah also frequently appeared to be "intoxicated", he says.

A third member of staff, who worked on the front desk, says staff suspected Arter was "drugging" Rebekah.

Panorama has seen a video, filmed by Arter on his phone when she was still alive, which shows Rebekah clearly intoxicated. She is wearing the same clothes that she is pictured in after she died.

In the early hours of the morning after her death, during the staff member's night shift, Arter approached the hotel front desk to ask when Rebekah last had a massage in the hotel spa.

She says his question struck her as bizarre and felt like he was trying to get his story straight.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, Rebekah's son, Elliot, and his wife, Lacey, were becoming increasingly concerned after visiting the home she shared with Arter.

Inside, they say they found a variety of drugs and hidden CCTV cameras that Arter had rigged up in the house.

They also discovered photographs of Rebekah naked and bruised, involved in sexual acts, seemingly taken without her consent.

Four days after Rebekah's death, they went to Bexleyheath Police Station, the same station where Arter once led rape investigations, to report her death to the Met and raise concerns about his possible involvement.

"The front office staff said, 'Oh well it's happened in Barbados, it's a Barbados issue' - and tried to brush it off at first," says Elliot.

"The moment I gave Warren's name, it was like chaos - we had sergeants coming down to the front desk," says Lacey.

"But it really wasn't about Rebekah, it was more about Warren," she says.

That evening, an officer briefed a Gold Commander within the Met, a senior boss who decides how to respond to incidents. The Met did not send detectives to Barbados.

UK police forces can be asked to help investigate a death of a British national overseas - usually at the request of local police where the death occurred.

Under Foreign Office guidance, the case for such involvement is strengthened when families request assistance and there are credible concerns about the circumstances of the death, as there were in Rebekah's case.

The Met told the BBC it made immediate efforts to obtain information in order to assess whether to travel to Barbados but decided it would not be appropriate without an allegation of criminality.

An inquest in the UK later found that Rebekah's organs had been inexplicably "chopped up" into small pieces by a pathologist in Barbados.

The inquest also established that key toxicology and histology tests - to look for signs of disease, injury or other changes in the body - were not conducted.

The coroner, Andrew Harris, said this raised the prospect of "deliberate concealment or obstruction of further investigation".

He also said that while bloodstains on bedclothes may be consistent with vomiting, he could not accept the cause of death determined by Barbadian authorities, aspiration pneumonitis - inflammation of the lungs - and delivered an open verdict.

He concluded that Rebekah's death likely involved intoxication and said unlawful killing could not be ruled out.

The inquest did not, however, consider Arter's alleged sexual exploitation of several other women whose cases he had investigated, to be within its scope.

Police in Barbados have previously said no marks of violence were found on Rebekah's body and there was nothing to suggest anything untoward - adding that they did not order toxicology tests because they believed she died from natural causes.

A week after Rebekah died, Arter flew back to the UK where he was arrested at Heathrow in connection with alleged sexual offences against another woman whose case he had investigated as a police officer in 2010. He was found dead in Wandsworth prison three days later.

In response to the BBC, Metropolitan Police Commander Simon Messinger said: "Our thoughts at this time remain with Rebekah Arter's family, who understandably have questions about the circumstances of her death.

"We would urge any victim survivors of rape and sexual offences - no matter how long ago a crime may have occurred - to reach out."

Elliot says his two young children will never know their grandmother.

"My daughter, my son - they're never gonna actually have any memories of her," he says.

"For the rest of my life, I'm never going to know how she's passed away."

If you have more information about this story, you can reach Noel directly and securely through encrypted messaging app Signal on: +44 7809 334720, by email at noel.titheradge@bbc.co.uk