Wednesday 29 August 2012

Sergeant Paul Woods

Before looking at the evidence of PC Franklin and PC Sawyer some reference to their sergeant, Paul Woods, is necessary.

Unfortunately, as was the case with Sergeant Morris, Hutton doesn't call him as a witness.  But at least his witness statement is sent TVP/7/0042 - 0043None of his statement is in the public domain.

This is ACC Page on 3 September being examined by Mr Dingemans:

Q. And that further search carried out, did you ask for anything else?
A. Yes, I did. I asked for a number of key individuals to meet me at Abingdon police station at 5 am.
Q. Who were those key individuals?
A. Those key individuals were a superintendent to arrange resourcing for what I anticipated would be more widespread searching. The head of Special Branch of my organisation.

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Q. Who else was there at the meeting?
A. I called out Detective Inspector Smith, who was the area detective inspector, to begin inquiries for me. And myself and the area commander -- I beg your pardon, I also asked for a qualified police search adviser, Sergeant Paul Wood.
Q. Sorry, I lost that, a qualified police?
A. Police search adviser.
Q. Yes.

A. And I asked for a sergeant from Milton Keynes who had undertaken a lot of work nationally in respect of the assessment of missing persons and I asked them all to meet me at Abingdon police station at 5 am.
Q. Did they all get there at 5 am?
A. I think we started the meeting about 5.15 am. 

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Q. What was the result of your meeting at 5.15?
A. Well the result of my meeting was that we began to establish a search pattern. As a holding measure, I asked for officers who were reinforcement officers who were arriving about this stage -- we had between 30 and 40 officers available to us, and I asked them to start searching outward from Dr Kelly's house. I asked for the helicopter to be brought into play again.
Q. Right.
A. But I also asked the police search adviser and the sergeant from Milton Keynes with the specialist knowledge of missing persons to make an assessment for me of where we should begin looking for Dr Kelly; and the way they do that is to gain as much information as they can about the person who is missing, favourite haunts, favourite walks, that type of thing and they produced a list of probably half a dozen places that we should begin to look. So by about 7 o'clock I was beginning to get some sort of form to the search we were making. 

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Q. By 7 o'clock you had got the assessment back from those two specialists in missing persons?
A. Yes.
Q. And did they identify Harrowdown Hill as a site of interest for you?
A. Yes, Harrowdown Hill to the best of my recollection was number 2 on their list.
Q. Did you send a search team to Harrowdown Hill?
A. Yes, I asked the police search adviser to arrange for the area to be searched, and members of the South East Berks Emergency Volunteers and the Lowlands Search Dogs Association, who by this time had also joined us, were deployed to Harrowdown Hill.


Two quick points: it appears that the helicopter wasn't brought into play again notwithstanding Page saying he had asked for it.  Secondly. Page thinks that Harrowdown Hill was number 2 on the list (although I'm not that confident about his recollections).  It would be interesting to know the location of number one and whether it was searched.  

Paul Woods was an experienced police officer with, at that time, about 25 years service in the force. 

Thus Sergeant Woods is seen as being instrumental in getting Harrowdown Hill searched. 

Lastly, from the above information and other evidence Paul Woods appears to be "Bronze" in the search phase  http://drkellysdeath-timeforthetruth.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/gold-silver-and-bronze-in-search-phase.html

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