FORENSIC expert Ian Brewster was the first person to examine the corpse of leading Nazi Rudolf Hess and has worked on a catalogue of high-profile crimes. Today, he opens his casebook exclusively to IWAN DAVIES - and tells for the first time why Hess killed himself.

IAN Brewster has been at the centre of major crime investigations across the globe. The 45-year-old head of scenes of crime for Gwent Police was first on the scene to investigate the controversial death of Adolf Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, in Spandau prison.

Mr Brewster, (pictured) from Rogerstone, has also been blown up by an IRA bomb and had a contract put on his head by Latin American drug barons after busting a drug ring in Belize.

He has also helped track down Serbian war criminals and put them behind bars for murdering women and children in Bosnia. Mr Brewster formerly served with the Special Investigations Branch (SIB) of the British Army.

And it was in that capacity that he was the first person on the scene to examine the body of one of the most important Nazis in the Third Reich, Rudolf Hess, after he hanged himself at Spandau prison, Berlin, in 1987.

Hess, who famously flew to Scotland in May 1941 in an apparent attempt to negotiate a peace deal with Britain before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, was kept a prisoner for over 45 years. He committed suicide because the Americans who guarded him, along with the British, French and Russians, had given him a black orderly.

Mr Brewster said: "These facts have been kept secret over the years, but I suppose it's OK to tell them now - Hess' writings confirm that he was firstly an anti-Semite who agreed with extermination of the Jews, and he believed that black people should be next. "When the Americans decided to give Hess a black orderly he was so outraged that he decided to kill himself."

Mr Brewster's 25 years of service in the army included time with the Royal Military Police as well as the SIB.

He did two tours of Northern Ireland, from 1975 to 1978, and 1980 to 1981, at the height of The Troubles, investigating shootings by both the British Army and Ulster Defence Regiment, and by the IRA.

Mr Brewster was blown up by an IRA bomb in a hotel car park while he was investigating a suspicious car and was lucky to receive only minor injuries.

Some good did come out of his years in Northern Ireland, as it was here that Mr Brewster met his wife, then a Royal Ulster Constabulary reserve officer.

He said: "I still feel uneasy about going back to Belfast, even today, because it was such a nightmarish place to be all those years ago."

A trip to Belize to investigate drug smuggling in the late 1970s sparked off a diplomatic incident with Guatemala and led to a contract being put on his head after some drug runners from the Central American country were arrested.

After enjoying 25 years in the army his contract ran out and he returned to civvy street. He decided to do a two- year chef's course in ethnic cooking, and after that he ran a pub in Salisbury for all of two weeks.

Mr Brewster said: "I just hated it and decided to apply for a job with Gwent Police. "I don't have any ties with the area, and don't with anywhere, really, because my father was in the RAF and we travelled all over the world."

Joining the divisional scenes of crime at Newport in 1995, his first case led to the solving of the mystery of the death of local man Tyrone France, whose remains were found on a bonfire in Wentwood Forest.

Two years later, after moving to Police Head-quarters in Cwmbran to lead a new forensic department, his investigation into the disappearance of Llandogo woman Sandie Bowen led to her husband Michael's conviction for murder - despite the fact that her body was never found.

In 1997, Mr Brewster led a team of investigators from Gwent Police to Bosnia to track down war criminals responsible for the execution of 150 women and children who had been shot through the knee, elbow and head.

"It was in Bosnia that I experienced the cruelty that human beings were capable of inflicting on each other," he recalled.

The investigation led to the arrest and imprisonment of two Serb officers responsible for the atrocity.

Last week was a happier time for Mr Brewster, as he headed to London to be honoured as the first forensic expert to be admitted to the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners - a body set up to regulate and improve criminal analysis.

Welcoming the new register, he said: "It is vital that we maintain high levels of competence and encourage development, and to ensure that the miscarriages of justice seen from the early 1980s and 90s do not happen again."