A paedophile former BBC Radio 1 DJ has died aged 79 after falling into a river. Michael Willis, who had also worked as a college lecturer, had changed his name to David Evans after being freed from jail following an 18-month sentence. Police said he went missing in December and was last seen taking a water taxi to a pontoon where his yacht was moored in Dartmouth, Devon. In 2020, Willis was jailed for possessing indecent images of children after police raided his private yacht. He was caught with nearly 500 vile pictures on his computer equipment. Willis, who went under the stage name Steve Merike when he was a disc jockey, was a BBC Radio One DJ in the 1970s. He was also a DJ on the famous pirate station Radio Caroline and worked at Radio Trent in the 1980s, where a colleague was late television presenter Dale Winton.
Coastguards and the RNLI searched the River Dart but did not find Willis when he went missing. However, on January 20 a body was found half a mile down the river. It was later identified by the coroner as David Evans, 79, with no mention of his previous identity, according to the Sun. Devon area coroner Alison Longhorn said: "The circumstances are David resided on the boat which was moored on the River Dart. He was reported missing to the police as he had not been seen for several days. A body was located further down the river several weeks later and it has not been confirmed as that of David Evans. There are no suspicious circumstances. The medical cause of death is unascertained.".
His ex-wife Julia was approached by the publication for comment and her new husband responded to the news Willis had died by saying: “Good.” Willis was handed a suspended sentence at Leicester Crown Court in 2015. He moved to Plymouth, where he lived on his boat Appalachian Spring at Plymouth Yacht Haven. Willis denied possession of 238 Category A indecent images of children on his computers – showing them being sexually abused by adults.
He also denied having 226 Category B images. Willis pleaded guilty to having just 10 pictures in the least severe class, Category C, on a memory stick. Police raided his yacht back in August 2017. He took the witness stand to declare that he found some of the more severe images “absolutely disgusting”. But the jury heard that he was also caught with Category A images when he was arrested in Loughborough back in 2013. Willis admitted that he used file-sharing software and used typical search times to find indecent images. But he claimed he had no idea how the more severe pictures appeared on his laptop, desktop and the memory stick.
A jury quickly dismissed his story and found him guilty by unanimous verdicts after a two-day trial. Willis pleaded guilty at in Leicester in 2015 to nine counts of downloading indecent images and movies of children between 2006 and 2013. He had told police in interview that he had been “intrigued by the Jimmy Savile affair” and wanted to pass on his findings to a sociologist. He was in possession of the images while standing as a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Loughborough at the 2010 General Election, where he polled nearly 10,000 votes but lost to future Tory education secretary Nicky Morgan. Willis also lectured for 15 years at New College Nottingham and Nottingham Trent as well as being the governor at a number of schools in the Midlands. He also stood unsuccessfully for various councils in Leicestershire.
