"Gone for a walk by the river"

Mrs Kelly gave her evidence on the morning of 1st September.  This is the exchange with Mr Dingemans regarding her activity following the time that her husband set off for his walk on the afternoon of the 17th:

Q. So between 3 and 3.20 he had gone for a walk?
A. That is right, yes.
Q. And what were you doing for the rest of the day?
A. I was still feeling extremely ill so I went to sit in the sitting room. I could not settle, I put the TV on, which is unheard of for me at that time of the day. There were a few callers at the front door. I answered those and had a short chat with each of them. Then I began to get rather worried because normally if David was going for a longer walk, he would say. It was a kind of family tradition, if you were going for a longer walk you would say where you were going and what time you would be back.
Q. He had not said?

A. He had not said that. He just said: I am going for my walk.

Q. How long would a normal walk take?
A. About 15 minutes, depending if he met somebody, perhaps 20 minutes, 25 minutes.
Q. What time did you start to become concerned?
A. Probably late afternoon. Rachel rang, my daughter rang to say: do not worry, he has probably gone out to have a good think. Do not worry about it, he will be fine.  She had planned to come over that evening. She made a decision definitely to come over. She arrived -- I am not quite sure what time she arrived, half five, six o'clock, I think. She went out. She said: I will go and walk up and meet Dad. She walked up one of the normal footpaths he would have taken -- in fact it was the footpath he would have taken. She came back about half an hour or so later.
Q. What time was this?
A. This must have been about 6.30 perhaps by now. I am not sure of the times. I was in a terrible state myself by this time trying not to think awful things and trying to take each moment as it came.
Q. And Rachel gets back about 6.30.
A. Something like that.

Rachel gave her evidence on the same day and we have this (Mr Dingemans posing the questions again):

Q. On the 17th we have heard about the circumstances in which your mother contacted you.
A. Yes.
Q. I think you came and helped look for your father?
A. I did, yes. I came over -- Mum told me that Dad had gone for a walk; and we are actually quite a private family and I assumed that after all he had been through he would want to find some solitude, which I quite understood. I thought he had perhaps gone for a walk down to the river. I could quite understand that need in him. So initially I did not worry. But When he then -- I could not reach him on his mobile phone, which did make me worry because I could always reach him. I then dashed home and was talking to my sisters. Mum actually was not very well and I was torn between leaving Mum and going to look for Dad. Initially I walked down -- I just assumed he would be coming home by now and I walked down to see if he was coming. Then I went back home and then went out in the car and just searched all the local routes. I went actually down to Harrowdown first, that was my first thought, and looked at the track but I could not see him coming. I promised I would not leave the car and start walking as it was starting to -- it was quite an overcast night. 

I think that it was quite understandable for a young woman on her own to be concerned about going up the track to Harrowdown Hill on an overcast evening.  Even if she had followed the track I'm sure that she wouldn't have seen the spot where her father was discovered the following morning, unless she went into the wood.

Civil servant James Harrison was the Deputy Director for Counter Proliferation and Arms Control in the MOD.  In the late afternoon of the 17th he tried contacting Dr Kelly on his mobile phone to resolve some points about Dr Kelly's press contacts but to no avail.  He also spoke to Mrs Kelly and made a note of the conversation with her as seen at MOD/13/0032 http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090128221550/http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/evidence/mod_13_0032.pdf 
Mr Knox seeks clarification about the note and the following relates to its first paragraph:

Q. We know at MoD/13/32 you appear to have made a note of your last conversation.
A. Indeed, yes.
Q. Perhaps you could just clarify one or two words.  "Rang Mrs K about 1750 or so."
I am not quite sure, the words you have inserted  then are?
A. "Having tried mobile -- rang, no answer."
Q. And then?  
A. I am afraid I am not sure what the blob is. 
Q. Then after that? 
A. "To see if back", i.e. if David was back yet. "Gone for a walk by the river. Bad headache. Had intended to go about 2 o'clock, but delayed [by phone calls?].  Sometimes goes on long route."    

Mrs Kelly hadn't said anything in her evidence about a walk by the river but she seems to be sure that is what has happened.  Rachel wonders if he had gone down to the river.  Did she impart that thought to her mother with the latter believing that is where he had gone and then Mrs Kelly telling Mr Harrison the same as a fact.  Possible perhaps but difficult to really believe.  I'm assuming that "Bad headache" refers to the fact that Mrs Kelly had a bad headache - but is this right?  Perhaps Dr Kelly had had a bad headache, we just don't know.

What we do know though is that the last quoted evidence was given by Mr Harrison on his first visit to the Inquiry, on the 27 August, less than a week before the testimony from Mrs Kelly was heard.  If Hutton was honest, competent and diligent - as we have every right to expect - then he should have asked Mrs Kelly about the supposed walk by the river.  This wasn't an isolated failing on the part of his Lordship, again and again and again he failed in his duty to adequately investigate matters.

The mobile phone was switched off

ACC Page is asked at the Inquiry about whether the mobile phone was switched on or off when it was discovered in the pocket of the Barbour jacket.  His reply:

My recollection is that when found it was off.

The first of the five people who tried to ring Dr Kelly was John Clark.  He is clear that he had an electronic response that was proof of the phone being turned off.  Similarly the last of the five, Olivia Bosch also got an electronic response but the detail is hazy as to the nature of this message.  James Harrison and Bryan Wells it seems each rang with no response as if perhaps the phone was on but not being answered; their attempts to call Dr Kelly were only ten minutes apart.  Rachel Kelly simply says 'I could not reach him on his mobile phone'  

Are these variations in response indicative of some quirk with mobile phones ... that sometimes the electronic response cuts in quickly and on other occasions you have to wait for a considerable number of rings.  In the latter circumstance the caller might ring off too early.  I don't know enough about this subject to know whether this can happen but otherwise it appears possible that the phone was turned off, then turned on by Dr Kelly (or a third party) but with incoming calls ignored and finally turned off. 

Paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 from Annex TVP-5 supply a little more illumination: http://www.attorneygeneral.gov.uk/Publications/Documents/Annex%20TVP%205.pdf 

2. At a meeting held at 5.00am on Thursday 17th July 2003 cell site data was ordered on the mobile telephone of Dr Kelly in an attempt to pin point its location.  Unfortunately the phone was switched off so cell site data could not be retrieved.  Following the discovery of Dr Kelly's body his mobile phone was found, turned off, in his coat pocket.

3. At that time cell site techniques were not as advanced as they are now and technicians were unable to trace when the mobile last accessed the network (or where) as there had not been live cell site tracing on the phone at the time. 

4. Technicians were able to say that mobile communications were operating correctly in the Longworth area on the 17th and 18th July although one sector was showing slight congestion on the afternoon of the 18th. 

The date quoted in paragraph 2 is meant to be "Friday 18th July" I imagine.  Perhaps the "congestion" mentioned in paragraph 4 resulted from intense media use of the airwaves that afternoon.

Normally Dr Kelly was well known as a person always contactable because he kept his mobile phone on.  Therefore goes one argument he set off to commit suicide by keeping his phone off so that he couldn't be contacted or his location known.  My counter argument to this is why take his phone at all.  We know that the phone wouldn't have already been in the jacket because the last outgoing call was at 12.58 that day, a time according to Mrs Kelly's testimony when he was at their home.

Perhaps Dr Kelly took his phone as he normally would on his walks but decided to leave it turned off.  From his perspective he might have thought that his last conversation with John Clark shortly before 3 o'clock had finally wrapped up all the points he had had to deal with and that he needed a walk uninterrupted by telephone calls to try and wind down from what had been a tumultuous and stressful week.  Speculation on my part?  Certainly.  I don't think it's possible to come to any definitive explanation as to why, unusually, the mobile phone was switched off.

The mobile phone - Rachel Kelly and Olivia Bosch

Apart from John Clark, whose relevant testimony is in my last post, at least two other people tried to contact Dr Kelly on his mobile after he left home: daughter Rachel Kelly and colleague Olivia Bosch.

In her evidence we have this from Rachel:

Q. I think you came and helped look for your father?

A. I did, yes. I came over -- Mum told me that Dad had gone for a walk; and we are actually quite a private family and I assumed that after all he had been through he would want to find some solitude, which I quite understood. I thought he had perhaps gone for a walk down to the river. I could quite understand that need in him. So initially I did not worry. But When he then -- I could not reach him on his mobile phone, which did make me worry because I could always reach him.  I then dashed home and was talking to my sisters. Mum actually was not very well and I was torn between leaving Mum and going to look for Dad.

This is part of Olivia Bosch's testimony for 17 July:

Q. Did you have any other conversation with him?
A. No. That evening I tried to call him because I had called him -- we called -- we spoke with each other every day and after the Channel 4 News I tried to telephone him. His land line did not have the answer machine on so I thought maybe there was a problem in the village as before. I tried his mobile phone and some message came up to the effect that the line was not working or you could not get through, or something to that effect.
Q. Just pausing there for a moment. This may be significant. You are sure that the phone just did not keep ringing but there was actually a message that came up on the mobile phone?
A. Yes, yes.
Q. Can you recall roughly what time it would have been that you tried to call him on his mobile phone?

A. It was after the Channel 4 News, so about 7.45 or so that night. So I would have talked about the news coverage of the day with respect to what was going on.
Q. Did you try again later that evening or just that one time?
A. I just tried that one time. I assumed from our conversation that morning he was finding time to himself.

I don't know whether Mrs Kelly had tried phoning her husband, I've not found anything on the Hutton website to say one way or the other.

The knife - summarising my observations

The last seven posts on this blog have been concerned with the knife found close to the body at Harrowdown Hill.  Here is a summary of my thoughts on this particular aspect of the Dr Kelly mystery:

• There is general agreement in the description of the knife by witnesses.  An exception is DC Coe who, in the Mail on Sunday, stated that it had a wooden handle.
• The searchers fail to mention the presence of the knife.  They aren't asked about it either.
• The ambulance crew report the presence of the knife but don't talk of blood on it.  Nor do they observe a pool of blood under the knife.
• DC Coe states at the Hutton Inquiry that the watch was on top of the knife.  This was subsequently interpreted from photographic evidence as part of the watchstrap lying on the handle of the knife.  Despite this observation by DC Coe he fails to note the pool of blood under the knife.  In fact he states in the Mail on Sunday 'On the ground, there wasn't much blood about, if any'
• My belief is that the knife and watch were repositioned after being seen by the ambulance crew (I'll explain the reasoning later).  This might readily explain why neither Dr Hunt nor Mr Green see the watchstrap partly over the knife handle.
• The description of the knife demonstrates that it was totally unsuitable for the incision of the ulnar artery.  Ideally a very sharp straight blade with a knobbly sort of handle for good grip would be used, the traditional style of "Stanley" knife then would be much better than a pruning knife.
• Dr Hunt records the presence of crushed edges to the wrist wound which suggests that the knife wasn't very sharp.
• In 2010 Tom Mangold makes a comment about gaffer-tape on the handle of the knife contrary to previous recorded evidence.  The gaffer-tape story appears to have been brought into play to explain why fingerprints weren't recorded on the knife; when asked Mangold refuses to explain how the gaffer-tape story originated.
• The official narrative has the knife normally in a draw in Dr Kelly's study.  The implication from this it seems is that Dr Kelly took it from the drawer before he started his last walk thus lending some credence to the suicide hypothesis.
• Lord Hutton mentions comment about the knife by daughters Rachel and Ellen in his Report.  However the only oral evidence from the family about the knife came from Mrs Kelly.
• Mai Pederson believed that she had seen the knife and that Dr Kelly habitually carried it in a pocket of his Barbour jacket.

The Family and the knife

When Mrs Kelly attended the Hutton Inquiry on 1 September 2003 Mr Dingemans had little option but to ask her about the knife.  This is the relevant part of her evidence: 

Q. We have heard about the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death and the fact that a knife was used. Were you shown the knife at all?

A. We were not shown the knife; we were shown a photocopy of I presume the knife which we recognised as a knife he had had for many years and kept in his drawer.
Q. It was a knife he had had what, from childhood?
A. From childhood I believe. I think probably from the Boy Scouts.

It appears that there was nothing to distinguish this knife from any similar knife.  I would suspect that part of the "identification" was derived from the fact that the knife was missing from the draw.

In paragraph 146 of his report Hutton says:

Very understandably the police did not show the knife found beside Dr Kelly's body to his widow and daughters but the police showed them a photograph of that knife. It is clear that the knife found beside the body was a knife which Dr Kelly had owned since boyhood and which he kept in a desk in his study, but which was found to be missing from his desk after his death.

He then sets out the quoted evidence I have already given.  Paragraph 146 is completed as follows;

And in a statement furnished to the Inquiry Police Constable Roberts stated:

The knife found in possession of Dr David Kelly is a knife the twins, Rachel and Ellen recognise (from pictures shown by Family Liaison Officers). It would not be unusual to be in his possession as a walker. They have seen it on their walks with him. He would have kept it in his study drawer with a collection of small pocket knives (he did like gadgets) and the space in the study drawer where a knife was clearly missing from the neat row of knives is where they believe it would [have] lived and been removed from.

In the evidence tab on the inquiry website there ought to be mention of the statement by WPC Roberts but as yet I haven't located it.  There is I think just this statement from her about Dr Kelly's handedness: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090128221550/http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/tvp/tvp_16_0001.pdf  It can be seen that there was an extraordinary delay in making the statement relating to David Kelly's handedness.  Whereas she spoke to Sian about this it was Rachel and Ellen who appeared to have given information about the knife so it wouldn't be surprising in my view if WPC Roberts made separate statements about these matters.

I might have missed the other witness statement from the WPC in the evidence lists.  Please add a comment if you see it!

The suggestion that there was a space in the drawer where a knife was clearly missing I have to treat with some scepticism.  Unless the knives were separated by being in their own compartments for example then I find it difficult to believe with the opening and closing of the draw that Dr Kelly's knives would neatly stay in a line.  My experience of putting things in a draw is that they don't stay arranged for long if merely neatly placed.

 

Mrs Kelly's dubious testimony (1)

In arriving at a conclusion as to whether or not Dr Kelly committed suicide it is I think fairly self evident that the testimony from his wife would be of critical importance.  On Monday 1 September 2003 Mrs Kelly was questioned for 65 minutes by senior counsel James Dingemans.  At an inquest the bereaved spouse would undoubtedly have been visible to the coroner and all in the courtroom; not so with Mrs Kelly (nor incidentally with her daughter Rachel who also gave evidence), she was allowed to give evidence by audio link although perversely she could see Mr Dingemans.  Yet we have Hutton, in the attachment to his letter of 3 September 2010 to the Attorney General, saying:

Under section 17A of the Coroner's Act 1988 the public inquiry took the place of an inquest and carried out the functions of an inquest.

On 1 August, following Hutton's opening statement at the Inquiry, Geoffrey Robertson QC made a submission on behalf of two TV companies: ITN and Sky.  They wished to have some of the witness evidence televised.  In his submission Mr Robertson stated:

My submission is that it is important not that the public should read every word of evidence but they should hear the tone of voice in which that evidence is delivered, see the body language and demeanour of the witness who is speaking it, because very often, as one knows, tone of voice, demeanour and so on may give a very different impact and truth to a particular utterance, and very often it alters it considerably. In order to appreciate evidence, as your Lordship knows, the Court of Appeal are always saying: well, the trial judge saw the witnesses.

Although Hutton dismissed the application Mr Robertson makes an excellent point about being able to observe body language and demeanour.

I am not suggesting that Mrs Kelly was reading from a script for instance in giving her responses, the point is that we don't know.  For such a key witness it would be imperative that she was visible anyway.

A story that Mrs Kelly might give evidence by video link to avoid travelling to London appeared in the Daily Mail during the preceding week http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-194201 /Kellys-widow-testify-video-link.html  Although she wasn't visible to those in the courtroom there was contemporary news footage of Mrs Kelly, Rachel and Rachel's fiance David Wilkins approaching the building.

Mrs Kelly's testimony confirms that her husband was going to be named on the evening of 9 July as the mole who, in part at least, was the informant in Andrew Gilligan's controversial broadcast on Radio 4 on 29 May 2003.

Sunday Times journalist Nick Rufford visited Dr Kelly at about 7.30 on the evening of the 9th and we are told had a conversation at the garden gate.  This is the relevant exchange between Mr Dingemans and Mrs Kelly:

Q. And did you speak with Dr Kelly after the conversation?
A. Yes, I did. He came over to me and said that Nick had said that Murdoch had offered hotel accommodation for both of us away from the media spotlight in return for
an article by David. He, David, was to be named that night and that the press were on their way in droves. That was the language David used, I am not sure Nick used that. 

Events subsequent to the Rufford conversation went like this according to Mrs Kelly:


Q. Having heard that the press were on their way in droves, what did you do?
A. We hovered a bit. I said I knew a house that was available to us, if we needed it, down in the south-west of England, and he did not pick up on that initially.
Q. Did you remind him of that?
A. Yes, I did. The phone rang inside the house and he went in to answer it, came out and he said: I think we will be needing that house after all. The MoD press office have just rung to say we ought to leave the house and quickly so that we would not be followed by the press.
Q. So the phone call was from the Ministry of Defence?
A. It was the Ministry of Defence press office.
Q. And they said you ought to leave?
A. Yes. Whether he had offered anything else in the interim I do not know, that was never mentioned. 
Q. Right. But you decided to go down to this place that you knew --
A. Indeed. We immediately went into the house and packed and within about 10 minutes we had left the house.

This is obviously quite a dramatic turn of events but is what Mrs Kelly described true?  There is some support for Mrs Kelly's story, particularly from Rachel.  But, as will be seen in my following posts, the panicked flight from the Kelly home and subsequent events would mean that the evidence from the following witnesses is well nigh certainly incorrect: email evidence from Steve Ward, oral evidence from Nick Rufford, Rod Godfrey and Roger Avery.

Hutton resolutely failed to resolve the conflicts in evidence, in the case of Rod Godfrey the latter even pointed out to Hutton that Dr Kelly couldn't in effect be in two places at once.  He might just as well have saved his breath.

The following posts will look at the problems of Mrs Kelly's testimony in the light of other people's evidence.  

Collating a few facts about David Kelly

The aim of this post is to assemble some biographical facts about David Christopher Kelly, to get a bit of sense of Kelly the person.

David Kelly was born on 14 May 1943 in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales.  According to journalist Tom Mangold he was very proud of his country of birth and liked to be called Dai.  Although there is plenty of reason to criticise Mangold in what he has said about Dr Kelly's death I suspect that this particular observation is correct.

Norman Baker has sketched Kelly's childhood well, telling us that his father was the son of a coal miner and that he was a signals officer in the RAF.  His mother, who was the daughter of a gravestone sculptor, was a schoolteacher.  His parents, who had married in Pontypridd shortly after Christmas in 1940, moved after a time to Tunbridge Wells in Kent.  Within two years of this move the couple had separated and David went back to Pontypridd to live with his mother and grandmother.  He was an only child.

Almost immediately after the divorce was made official David's father married Flora Dunn, a woman ten years younger than him.  The couple had three children of their own and adopted a fourth.  Mr Kelly became head teacher at a school ... he was die of lung cancer aged 66.  It seems that David didn't ever live with them.

Interestingly, there is a common thread of teaching here: his mother was a teacher, his father became one, he married Janice Vawdrey who taught and it's clear that David Kelly himself was very keen to impart some of his very considerable knowledge to colleagues and to demystify various complexities to the media.

The young Kelly then wasn't blessed with the best home life but nevertheless excelled at school.  Academically he was gifted enough to go on to University, first Leeds, then Birmingham for a second degree before studying at Oxford for his PhD.  Mr Baker also mentions that he had become head boy at his Grammar School and was a good athlete.  Certainly he appears to have had a passion for sport, parts of his diaries are on the "evidence" tab of the Hutton website and it can be seen that he had noted upcoming sporting events, some of these occurring in the months after his death. 

Romance blossomed when he was at Leeds University, on Saturday 15 July 1967 he married Janice near her Crewe family home.  He was 23, she a year younger.  They were to have three daughters, Sian and twins Ellen and Rachel.  At the time of Dr Kelly's death Sian was 32, the twins 30.  Dr Kelly was last seen alive two days after his 36th wedding anniversary.

For many years the Kelly's lived a comfortable middle class life in their spacious home in the village of Southmoor in Oxfordshire.  As demand for his expertise increased Dr Kelly would be spending more time away from his home.  He was much travelled spending time on inspections in Russia and making more than 35 visits to Iraq as an Inspector after the first Gulf War.  Another port of call was New York for UN meetings.  He seems to have visited other parts of America, Geneva and other countries as well.

Very much in contrast to this jetting to various parts of the World was his lifestyle back at Southmoor.  An enthusiastic gardener he grew vegetables and kept the grass in check in the paddock.  He rode a horse (whether his own or not I don't know)  but he had a riding accident in I think late 1991 because of a saddle that moved, resulting in an elbow injury.  This injury, as will be discussed later, had important implications regarding the suicide hypothesis.  If it is true, and I believe it is, that he had residual weakness in his right arm then it's possible that he didn't regularly ride after that mishap.

He enjoyed the traditional pub game of cribbage at the Hinds Head, a pub in the adjoining village of Kingston Bagpuize.  There was evidently a cribbage league because we have learnt that David, who drank little or no alcohol, would drive players to the various away venues.  It seems that he gave up alcohol when he was introduced to the Baha'i faith.

Not well known I think is the fact that David Kelly enjoyed music to the extent, I seem to recall from a press report, of playing the saxophone.  He also had a substantial collection of CDs and another press report says that these (800!) were left in his will to his friend Professor Christian Seelos.  Austrian born Seelos is another interesting character: he says 'Music became a passion and I played in several rock bands' http://christianseelos.com/journey.html  The fact that the CDs were left to Seelos rather than anyone in the family does beg the question of whether they shared his musical taste.

A time line showing the history of Dr Kelly's employment in the government can be read here: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090128221550/http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/mod/mod_2_0041.pdf