Gerard Woodhouse was convicted in 2025 of sending up to 100 offensive, anonymous cards to a former Labour Party colleague

Police had fingerprint evidence linking a high-profile councillor to a poison pen letter up to 12 months before he went on to target another politician in a "persistent and wicked" hate mail campaign.

Well-known Liverpool anti-poverty campaigner Gerard Woodhoue, 63, was given a community order last year for harassing ex-Lord Mayor Christine Banks – who he had known for 50 years – with anonymous letters and cards in the post between 2023 and 2025.

But the BBC has learned that although an investigation that pre-dated his hate campaign against Labour colleague Banks yielded fingerprint evidence from a letter sent to a housing association boss, the inquiry was stood down because officers were "unable to establish contact" with the alleged victim after she left her job.

Despite reopening the case earlier this year, police have now had to drop it because the time limit for prosecuting harassment allegations has expired.

The alleged victim, Julie Fadden, 65, said if Woodhouse had been dealt with he might have been stopped before he began harassing Banks and other suspected victims.

Merseyside Police did not respond to the BBC's questions about whether it had done enough to contact Fadden during the 2022 investigation.

Woodhouse became a councillor in 2010, and served as its older people's champion and achieved a national spotlight with his anti-poverty campaigning.

After being de-selected by Labour in 2022, he bombarded Banks with more than 100 offensive cards and letters until his fingerprints were found on one in summer 2025.

He was arrested and pleaded guilty to harassing Banks, who he claimed to have become fixated on as a result of internal Labour Party fall-outs while suffering from severe mental health problems.

But a BBC investigation at the time found evidence to suggest several other people had also received offensive, anonymous letters from him while he was a serving councillor – claims he has never commented upon.

Gerard Woodhouse had been a high-profile anti-poverty campaigner in Liverpool during his time as a councillor

And the BBC has since learned that in 2022 the force received a complaint from Fadden, after a card arrived at the housing association she worked it. It suggested her "time was coming", and included the phrase "tick-tock, tick-tock".

Fadden – who is now a Liverpool Labour councillor herself - said: "That could have meant anything. It could have meant I was losing my job, but it could have meant that someone was going to be harmed."

She reported the letters to the police and they took away the original hard copies.

She did not suspect Woodhouse at the time, and only came to suspect it might have been him after seeing a BBC investigation into the ex-County ward councillor.

It featured handwriting from letters received by other Labour members, which Fadden recognised as the writing on the cards she had received.

She said the pieces then fell into place, remembering that Woodhouse had once sent a text message about her to a former employee of the housing association.

"I had done an abseil down the side of the CN Tower in Toronto to raise money for the charity Crisis, and there was a photo of me doing it on the internet.

"He sent a text message saying that they should have 'cut the rope'. The phone had previously been used by a member of staff he knew who had left, and it had been given to the finance director. So they received the message and brought it to me."

She said she now believed Woodhouse – who was a councillor at the time but was de-selected by Labour in 2022 - may have harboured a grudge because the housing association had withdrawn funding from one of his community projects.

Woodhouse was convicted of harassment without violence in December

Merseyside Police reopened its investigation in February. Woodhouse was later arrested and questioned.

But Fadden has since learned Merseyside Police will not be taking any further action.

In a letter from a Merseyside Police detective constable, she was told: "At the time of the incident a number of other offences [besides malicious communications] could have been considered and were maybe more suitable for this incident, including harassment.

"However, as harassment is a summary only offence then it carries a statute of limitations of six months so would have expired back in June 2022.

"This is why the matter was progressed with malicious communications as it is the best suited offence available, as it does not carry a statute of limitations."

However, he said while the letters were "offensive in nature", the "Police Decision Maker does not believe that they go beyond the limits of what is tolerable in society, aiming to shock, insult or degrade the victim".

Fadden said she was disappointed that the opportunity to prosecute Woodhouse had been missed.

"They said they didn't know how to contact me [when I left my job], but they had my phone number.

"When I went back to them, they told me they'd found a fingerprint on one of the letters."

She added that she "knew the police have got a hard job, and they've not got the resources they need", but that "if they had done what they needed to four years ago", then Woodhouse's campaign against Banks may have been avoided.

A text message sent by Woodhouse to a third party suggested the rope should have been cut during Fadden's charity abseil

A spokesman for Merseyside Police said its initial 2022 investigation was "initially limited due to evidential constraints".

They added: "In September 2022, fingerprint analysis confirmed identification of a suspect and efforts were made to obtain a further statement from a victim in order to progress the investigation and consider further action.

"But we were unable to establish contact with her at that time and the investigations remained closed."

The spokesman said that as the statute of limitations for a harassment case had expired, a malicious communications case was considered in 2025 "when the victim made contact".

"However, the evidential threshold was not met for the alternate offence," they added.

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