Surprise had been expressed in a comment some time ago on this or another blog that there was no mention of a wallet or other identification on the body of Dr Kelly.
Looking at the latest batch of responses from Thames Valley Police I'm pleased to see that somebody has raised this very matter. The questioner had raised other points which won't be covered in this particular post.
These are the questions and answers relating to the wallet and ID:
Q Was a wallet found on or close to Dr Kelly's body at Harrowdown Hill on 18 July 2003?
A No
Q Was any form of identification found on Dr Kelly's body at Harrowdown Hill?
A No
Q Was Dr Kelly's wallet found at a location other than Harrowdown Hill? If so, at what location and on what date was it found?
A Dr Kelly's wallet was found by his family on the dining table of his house prior to them reporting him missing.
Probably many people would be surprised that Dr Kelly wasn't carrying any identification on him although I don't have too much of a problem with this.
The thing I found more interesting was the location of the wallet in the house. Leaving his wallet on the table seems odd to me in view of my perception of Dr Kelly being meticulous. The best possible explanation I can come up with at the moment is that he put it on the table preparatory to putting his Barbour jacket on. We know he took a phone call just before 3 o'clock. Did this distract him and he just forgot to put it in his pocket before he exited the front door?
Perhaps the unexpected appearance of Mrs Kelly who heard the phone ring and came downstairs to answer it also upset his normal thought processes.
The fact that the key fob, spectacles (no sign of their case), blister packs and mobile phone were jangling together in one pocket is also very surprising.
Dr Hunt made a lot of the fact that the spectacles weren't on Dr Kelly's face when he examined him and that, in his opinion, he removed them at the time he was allegedly cutting his wrist. Did Thames Valley police find an empty spectacles case in the Kelly home when they made their extensive search of the premises? True to form the question wasn't asked at the Inquiry.
This is not credible,Brian.
ReplyDeleteDr Kelly goes for a short walk as therapy for his bad back usually 15 mins, allegedly.
Mrs Kelly recovers sufficiently to deal and chat amicably with some callers at her door (were they traced?).
Mrs Kelly says her daughter arrives between 5.30 and 6 pm.
I would have thought the wallet would have been the first thing Mrs Kelly would have seen when or even before she started to get worried.
The recent police information (is it in the family police statements?) refers to his family noticing the presence of the wallet. The implication then is that it is not Mrs Kelly but Rachel Kelly who notices. Very strange.
Methings too Special Branch might have been very interested in the wallet as an exhibit and any additional contact cards and phone numbers contained in it (unless this information had already been extracted in the safe house).
Felix, it seems to me that one of the problems we have is not knowing the geography of the Kelly home. It appears to be very substantial in size and I suspect that the dining room is specifically for dining.
ReplyDeleteTherefore if it's not on the route to anywhere else then maybe something left on the table may not have been noticed until other family members arrived and had reason to enter that room.
On the other hand if the dining table was in a specific dining room one has to ask why Dr Kelly happened to be in that room with his wallet loose. Mystery on mystery!
I quote "prepatory to putting his Barbour jacket on". I am still not convinced that he took it with him when he left the house. I believe it was taken, along with the contents of his jacket pockets, when the police searched the premises whilst Mrs Kelly and Rachel were asked to wait in the garden. I still believe that these items were 'planted'at a later time.
ReplyDeleteBrian, the dining room table is a strange place to leave a wallet when one takes one's keys with one. However, it might have been customary on these walks - because,say, of an aversion to being mugged - in which case Mrs Kelly would have known. There were no coins on his person either. The cashless society had already arrived.
ReplyDeleteSylvia, don't forget that Sian Kelly and her partner Richard also turned up later, indeed Mrs Kelly couldn't remember which daughter called the police, so both must have been there before midnight. Then, they just seem to disappear from the radar on the 18th. Mrs Kelly mentions no other family members when her house is searched.
Sian Kelly was however still at or in the vicinity of the house on Saturday 19th,making a statement to the family liaison officer about Dr Kelly's handedness,something which any family member would have been able to do, one imagines, although a statement wasn't taken until the 28th. Rachel Kelly's statement is dated 31 July (!)
This is a general point ( and later what I think the implications are); how much reliance should we put on TVP’s FOI responses?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that if they are prepared to lie about the position of the body then they are prepared to lie about anything that may be inconvenient to their cover up.
I’m not saying the wallet wasn’t found on the dining room table, all I’m saying is anything that comes from TVP should be mistrusted until independent evidence supports their statements.
We know for certain that the Hutton inquiry did not get the answers that a Coroner’s inquest would have the duty in determining, even though the Hutton inquiry was very much more expensive than an inquest.
And I assume that the Attorney General’s investigation was very much more expensive than an inquest; Mr Grieve having no lawful investigative powers makes any conclusion from any investigation he may decide to waste our money on, worthless in the eyes of the law.
My conclusions from my investigation into the moving of Dr Kelly’s body has as much weight in law as the Attorney General but mine didn’t cost the tax payer a penny but did come to the obvious conclusion that the body had been moved.
How much more of our money are they going to spend covering this up?
When you can’t trust the police, the Attorney General and Parliament and when the press are too gutless to challenge corruption then we have to accept that democracy died with Dr Kelly
Sylvia, the point about whether or not Dr Kelly was wearing his Barbour jacket when he left his house is a very important one. I hope to write a post on this subject soon.
ReplyDeleteMs Absalom wasn’t really sure what day she saw Dr Kelly;
ReplyDelete“Q. What were you doing on 17th July? Do you remember the 17th July?
A. Is that the day I met David?
Q. Yes.
A. Just walking the dog.”
So its just possible he didn’t go for a walk at all. If Dr Kelly’s friend Mr Mangold is to be believed Dr Kelly’s marriage was in tatters and he was thinking of moving to America. If this was true and Dr Kelly had told his wife that he was going to leave her this might give her a financial motive to murder him.
Certainly Mrs Kelly’s description of Dr Kelly after his 11am coffee suggests to me that he may have been poisoned.
The problem is because there has been no investigation and such a wide ranging cover up, anything might be possible.
But if Mrs Kelly is innocent it is deplorable that the Attorney General has allowed a situation where she can be suspected of murdering her husband to continue.
LL, if Ms Absalom didn't meet Dr Kelly on the 17th then the part of DC Coe's testimony about his seeing Ms Absalom on the morning of the 18th becomes total fiction (which it might be but I would think that house to house enquiries in the area of the Kelly home would start fairly early).
ReplyDeleteJohn Clark spoke to Dr Kelly on the phone shortly before 3 pm and Dr Kelly seemed to be fine then.
Yes, anything is possible. However I don't think that the AG would think that there was a situation where Mrs Kelly could be suspected of murdering her husband. It wouldn't be seen as a viable scenario IMO.
Brian
ReplyDeleteI don't believe Mrs Kelly murdered her husband but if he was murdered she would be a suspect until she was eliminated from inquiries
I also don't believe DC Coe was sent to conduct house to house inquiries on the morning of 17th, I suspect house to house inquiries may have been made by other officers (not plain clothed detectives) and at some point Ms Absalom made her statement but as the rest of DC Coe's evidence has proved to be pure fiction I have no reason to think he is telling the truth re the Ms Absalom encounter.
LL, I agree that it would be much more likely for uniform officers to do the house to house inquiries. In view of his other evidence one would have to be very cautious about accepting DC Coe's statement about meeting Ms Absalom.
ReplyDeleteThe wording of the extract of DC Coe's statement quoted in Annex TVP1 indicates that events prior to being shown the body at 9.40 weren't included in his police statement.
Some sort of scenario had to be painted at the Inquiry I believe to get DC Coe and his companions walking toward Harrowdown Hill.
LL
ReplyDeleteI have long thought that the story of Dr Kelly , related not under oath, meeting Mrs Absalom was quite improbable and served merely to put Dr Kelly near Harrowdown Hill where his body was found nearly 18 hours later. It is also single sourced.
Oddities:
Both lived almost opposite each other yet, amazingly they "bumped into each other" in the next village coneniently on the way to Harrowdown Hill.
Norman Baker reported a press reporter who in turn had seen unusual men talking to her in the following days..
The swarms of press which did descend on Southmoor after the body was found did not seem to pick up Mrs Absalom even though they seemed to find numerous other people in the village to talk to. I would have thought she would have been a red hot witness on the 18th and would have had no reason to come out with her story immediately.
Mrs Absalom was probably non unknown to Mrs Kelly.
Mrs Absalom was, I think, a widow aged 74 at the time.
Shortly afterwards I also believe her bungalow was demolished and a planning application submitted.
She gave evidence to the Hutton Inquiry by video link from an unknown location. Her evidence was, well, to put it mildly, pretty anodyne,shorn of credible detail.
There seemed no reason at all for her to give evidence by video link as she seemed fit enough, allegedly, to walk to the next village and back.
Mrs Absalom's timings don't fit in at all with Mrs Kelly's.
I don't for a minute believe that Dr Kelly was in the next village on the 18th july 2003.
Sorry, no reason for Mrs Absalom not to come out with her story immediately.
ReplyDeleteLL
ReplyDeleteACC Page said he was probably inherently suspicious.
If DCI Young had also been inherently suspicious, he could not have completely banished from his mind that Mrs Kelly had poisoned Dr Kelly although toxicology results as published suggests otherwise (but neither did they suggest co-proxamol overdose!). Most murders do occur by close friends of family members. He would also have noted that two Kelly daughters and partners were driving around in the dark before Dr Kelly was reported missing, extremely belatedly.
In such cases where family murders are disguised as suicide (and Professor Shepherd has experience of this kind of invesgitation) it is obvious that the perpetrator(s) not to want the matter further investigated, or to call for second post mortems. Motives in such crimes may be financial. Or they may involve relationship complexities. Did DCI Young go down that road, even though police were allegedly not looking for anyone else at a very early stage? Is that why Janice Kelly's DNA sample was taken? For a policeman of DCI Young's experience, it must have looked like a very amateurish disguised suicide,almost theatrical.
I am still not ruling out natural death which might have coincidentally been convenient for the Government/MoD. But Dr Hunt has discounted a heart attack,even though Dr Kelly could,according to him, have dropped dead at any moment so severe was his silent heart condition. (I didn't notice a blood test for troponin).
Did Mrs Absalom prefer the Rolling Stones' cover version of Walking the Dog to Rufus Thomas' original,one might ask?
One interesting character at the Hutton Inquiry was Dr Olivia Bosch. She phoned Dr Kelly daily even when he was in a safe house. She alluded to problems with the phone lines in Southmoor.
ReplyDeleteAn obscure contemporary report mentioned Dr Kelly using a call box to avoid suspected phone taps. Andrew Gilligan also mentions attempting to call Dr Kelly from a call box.
ACC Page, at his second visit to the Hutton Inquiry, mentioned investigating Dr Kelly's social contacts. First out of the hat from Mr Dingemans was Dr Bosch.
Some [contacts] we assessed the relationship with Dr Kelly to be more of a friendship, and therefore my main concern there was whether Dr Kelly may have confided in those individuals and therefore with a certain number of individuals we actually interviewed them and took statements from them.
Q. And took statements. One of the persons that you interviewed and took statements from in fact was able to give evidence and that was Olivia Bosch and we have
heard from her.
A. That is correct, my Lord
Except that her panicky early testimony divulged little in the way of her friendship with Dr Kelly. In fact her related telephone call on the morning of the 17th July with Dr Kelly seems so long that he would hardly have had time to send any emails.
Was there anything in the conversations you had had with him which would have given any indication that he might have wanted to take his own life?
A. No, not at all.
So there you have it.
Felix, regarding Ms Absalom ... Mr Dingemans confirms that she is speaking from Oxford at the start of her testimony. As her testimony only lasted for a few minutes I'm happy that she spoke via a video link; the main thing is that she was VISIBLE unlike Mrs Kelly and Rachel.
ReplyDeleteBrian,
ReplyDeleteI do not read that as speaking from Oxford at all...this is the bizarre exchange:
Q. Where are you at the moment?
A. Where am I? Sorry.
Q. You are in Oxford, are you? What village do you live in?
18 A. Southmoor.
She doesn't say where she is, she only answers where she lives.
Felix, in a literal sense you are correct but I am happy to assume that she did indeed speak from Oxford on the basis that I can't see any reason for Mr Dingemans to say 'Oxford' if that was incorrect and could then be denied.
ReplyDeleteAs a lady of mature years I can imagine that Ms Absalom was disconcerted when first speaking on the video link to London. Some early confusion in response to Mr Dingemans would be understandable in my opinion.
Perhaps he got confused and picked up the second cap thinking it was a wallet.
ReplyDelete