Giving the "suicide" story an early spin

My last post was number 100 in this blog and I've decided that for the moment I'll get away from the scene at Harrowdown Hill, albeit temporarily, and spend a little while looking at legal rather than forensic aspects.  But before that I want to flag up the fact that on the very day the body is discovered the family are already being informed that Dr Kelly has committed suicide.  The statements reproduced here could hardly be more significant regarding the cover up.

On the 1st September Dr Kelly's half sister, Sarah Pape, is being examined by Mr Knox.  Dr Pape is a consultant plastic surgeon.  This is part of her testimony relating to the morning of 18th July, the morning the body was discovered:

I returned to my office between the next two operations, which would have been some time after 10 o'clock, and there was a message from my husband asking me to ring home. I initially thought he was just going to give me the same information, that the press would by now know. In fact when I rang him he told me that the police had found my brother's body and that it looked as though he had committed suicide.  I decided that I was not going to be able to stay at work, so I decided that I should come home at that point.


This is from the Sunday Mirror of 20 July 2003:

Dr Kelly's grief-stricken brother-in-law Derek Vawdrey attacked the behaviour of MPs on the committee.

Mr Vawdrey, 56, of Crewe, Cheshire, said: "There is no doubt that he was traumatised by it. David was devastated. He was never trained for this sort of thing unlike Alastair Campbell.""

He told how his sister, Janice Kelly, rang him on Friday morning. "Her first words were 'Are you sitting down? She then just blurted it out. She could hardly speak for the shock of being told herself. She said he'd committed suicide." He went on: "Somewhere along the line someone needs pay for this. David was driven into a corner, the pressure on him was immense.

On the day the body was discovered Mrs Kelly gave a telephone interview to the New York Times.  http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/19/international/worldspecial/19BRIT.html?scp=2&sq=dr%20kelly%2018%20july%202003&st=cse
The third paragraph of the piece is extraordinary:

Mrs. Kelly said the police had confirmed that the body was her husband's, and that the cause of death was suicide. She declined to say what led the police to that conclusion, saying they had asked her not to discuss details of his death.  

This is an extract from Tony Blair's autobiography:

In the middle of the night Sir David Manning woke me. 'Very bad news,' he said....'David Kelly has been found dead,' he said, 'suspected suicide.' It was a truly ghastly moment.  

(At that time Blair was flying west from Washington to Tokyo, Blair started talking to Falconer at 12.10 so it was before then)

On the morning the body was discovered the only visible evidence relating to cause of death was an injured wrist and a knife nearby.  It was midday before the forensic pathologist Dr Hunt and Chief Investigating Officer DCI Young arrived at Harrowdown Hill.  Dr Hunt's detailed examination commenced at 14.10 and the post mortem wasn't completed until 00.15 on the following morning.

In a nutshell there was no justification whatsoever on Friday 18 July to say that the death was suicide or suspected suicide.

A short timeline for 18 July - on the ground and in the air

I'm a great believer in timelines in trying to focus on various events and their possible relationship.  Following my last post I thought it would be interesting to compare events on the ground at Harrowdown Hill from midday for the next two and a half hours with what was happening on Tony Blair's flight from Washington to Tokyo during the same period.

From a Freedom of Information request there is now information on when Blair and Falconer were in conference; the times I give I think are British Summer Time but I'm not sure so they may be liable to correction, however the duration is right.

Events on the ground are in blue, those in the air are in red.

12.00 Forensic pathologist Dr Hunt logged into outer cordon  

12.04 Dr Hunt is logged in at the inner cordon
12.06 DCI Young logged in at the outer cordon
12.10 to 12.13 Blair talks to Falconer
12.20 to 12.55 Blair again talks to Falconer
12.35 Dr Hunt goes to the body to confirm death then withdraws from scene
12.50 PC Franklin is asked by DCI Young to organise a fingertip search
13.08 Start of fingertip search
14.10 Dr Hunt, Mr Green and Dr Hickey go to the body to start the examination
14.17 Godric Smith goes to rear of plane to brief journalists
14.35 Blair's plane lands at Tokyo

This contemporary article in the Guardian usefully helps with the timing of the briefing by Godric Smith, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/jul/19/uk.iraq2 

I'm fairly confident about the landing time for the Blair's plane at Tokyo.  I think that someone took a photo of the plane at that moment and there is a comment to that effect somewhere on the internet.  At the moment I can't find it. 

There may well be further timelines on this blog. 
   
 

There was no need for the Hutton Inquiry

A body, believed to be that of the missing government scientist Dr David Kelly, was discovered by Brock the search dog owned by Louise Holmes at about 9.15 on the morning of Friday 18 July 2003.  Louise was accompanied by another volunteer searcher Paul Chapman who attempted to phone their controller but as that phone was set to answerphone Paul had to resort to dialling 999 from his mobile.  The 999 call was received at Abingdon police station at 9.20.

The preceding and subsequent events to the discovery of the body will be discussed in later posts but suffice to say at the moment that the forensic pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt arrived at Harrowdown Hill where the body was found at about midday, shortly followed by the chief investigating officer from Thames Valley Police DCI Alan Young.

Dr Hunt confirmed the fact of death at 12.35 but then withdrew from the scene because a decision had been made to call for a forensic biologist, Mr Roy Green.  It seems that the thinking was that it would be better to await the arrival of Mr Green before Dr Hunt proceeded with his examination of the body.  It was about one and a half hours later, at 2.10, that Dr Hunt, Mr Green and Mr Green's assistant Dr Eileen Hickey began their examination of the body and the surrounding area.

It can be seen that there was a delay of approximately five hours from the finding of the body to the start of the forensic examination.  In that five hour period Tony Blair, en route by plane from Washington to Tokyo, had agreed with former flat mate Lord Falconer that there should be a judicial inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly.  Charles Falconer, at that time, was Secretary of State for the Department of Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor.

A person goes missing from his home, about eighteen hours later his body is found about two miles away.  Under the suspicious and unexplained circumstances appertaining in this case one would obviously expect a thorough police investigation and also for the coroner to be informed.  But with no obvious explanation as to the cause of death, whether it is a case of suicide or murder for example, why have a judicial inquiry.  Whilst Mr Blair and Lord Falconer were agreeing that there should be a judicial inquiry into the death the only real evidence that the police had was a dead body, believed to be that of David Kelly, a relatively small amount of blood in the vicinity and an open knife close by with blood on it.  

Dr Kelly it is true had been under the spotlight the previous Tuesday in a televised session of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.  There was a public perception, aided by careful editing of his FAC appearance on subsequent news bulletins, of a man driven over the edge by the way his name as a mole had been revealed and that he had been mercilessly harangued by certain members of the FAC.  Yet careful examination of the totality of the facts fails to support this hypothesis.   Publicly, on the day that the body was discovered, Thames Valley Police were treating the death as "unexplained".  There was no possible justification for an inquiry at that time.  

Let us suppose there had been a thorough, honest investigation by TVP and the coroner had completed his inquest in the normal manner.  And let us suppose that he (or a jury if called) had returned a verdict of suicide then at that point there may well have been reason to set up an inquiry.  In fact public clamour might well have made an inquiry at that juncture inevitable.

I say again: there was absolutely no legitimate reason to set up an inquiry on the morning of 18 July, the morning that the body was discovered, and at a time when it should have been impossible to know how Dr Kelly died.