Wednesday 8 August 2012

"And a dog was put through our house" (1)

For this post I shall repeat the short piece of testimony from Mrs Kelly that I quoted in my first post on the communication masts:

Q. Did you speak to the police at all during that night?
A. Yes, all night, all night. Then a vehicle arrived with a large communication mast on it and parked in the road and then during the early hours another mast, 45-foot mast was put up in our garden.
Q. For police communications?
A. Yes, indeed. And a dog was put through our house. At 20 to 5 the following morning I was sitting on the lawn in my dressing gown while the dog went through the house.
Q. Trying to --
A. Trying to establish that he was not there. 

As touched on in my last post, assuming a reasonably orderly recollection of events by Mrs Kelly, and noting use of the phrase 'during the early hours' then it is quite likely that the communication masts had arrived before the start of the search with the dog.

Two days after Mrs Kelly ACC Page makes his first visit to the Inquiry.  Not only was he a poor witness giving a number of vague answers he, so far as is known, didn't visit the Kelly home so the report on events at the house that night provided by him was second hand.  Clearly the witness statement from Sergeant Morris should have been sent to the Inquiry and Morris called to give evidence.

Page informed the Inquiry that he received a phone call at 3.09 am regarding the missing person report on Dr Kelly.  At some time prior to his assessing the situation we learn from Mr Page that Sergeant Morris with officers from the night shift at Abingdon had made 'a reasonably thorough search of Dr Kelly's house and the surrounding grounds' . 

It seems that 'reasonably thorough' wasn't thorough enough because there is this response by ACC Page to questioning from Mr Dingemans:


Q. And what was the outcome of your review?
A. I asked for a further, more thorough search of the house and the outbuildings and the surrounding grounds to be made.
Q. We have heard from Mrs Kelly in fact I think she said 4.30, it may have been 5.30 in the morning she has to go out of the house while a police dog goes through. That is as a result of your initiative, is it?

A. Yes.


As an aside it might be asked why once again Dingemans is sloppy with the times ... the same thing had happened when evidence was given by Mrs Kelly about the time one of her daughters had called the police.  Picking up on a point made by Felix in response to an earlier post where he expressed surprise about Mrs Kelly being precise about the time the police were called we have a repeat situation here with the time of '20 to 5'.  Yet her testimony on other timings is often very vague.


Norman Baker recalls a conversation with a chief constable who described the second search with a dog as 'bizarre'.  The fact that Mrs Kelly had to vacate her home while the search was made appears extraordinary in view of the fact that she obviously had a thorough appreciation of the geography of the building.  In a letter to Mr Baker TVP, explaining why Mrs Kelly had to wait outside, said that they wanted 'to remove possible distractions from those engaged in the search'.  TVP also stated that 'a dog is used as an aid to search operations as they can detect things beyond human capability', however that should be interpreted in this context.

Although not stated by Mrs Kelly logic would suggest that the other members of the family joined her outside for the duration of the more thorough search.

Possible more sinister reasons for the Kelly family having to wait outside will be discussed in my next post.

 

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