Blood and the Barbour cap

Last Wednesday I wrote a post entitled 'Dr Hunt's Exhibit List'.  This brought forward a variety of interesting comments and it was one from "Lancashire Lad" that made me realise that here was another detail that needed to be aired as a new post.

I had dealt with what I believed to be very understandable reasons for the cap in the game pocket of the Barbour jacket to be in the Exhibit List and the cap near the body not.  In summary it became clear to me that any items recovered from the pockets of Dr Kelly's clothing rightly were the province of Dr Hunt but that articles physically detached from the body weren't, at least from the point of view of recording in an exhibits list.

An aspect of the scene at Harrowdown Hill on the 18th July that hasn't received the attention it merits is the fact that there was blood on the Barbour cap and it was LL's comment that got me seriously thinking about this.  Going first to what Dr Hunt says in his published report this is the first paragraph under the section 'Adjacent scene':

Lying adjacent to the left shoulder/upper arm was a 'Barbour' cap with the lining side uppermost.  There was blood over the lining and also the peak.

At the Inquiry Dr Hunt just adds the small detail that it was a flat cap:

Q  Did you investigate the scene next to the body?
A. Yes. 
Q. And what did that show? 
A. There was a Barbour flat-type cap with some blood on the  lining and the peak near his left shoulder and upper arm. In the region of his left hand lying on the grass  there was a black resin strapped wristwatch, a digital watch, which was also bloodstained.

The Barbour cap, water bottle and bottle top would seem to have been in close proximity to each other - a crowded area of the scene.

Just before Mr Knox obtains the testimony of Dr Hunt he takes evidence from DC Coe.  DC Coe intriguingly appears to be in two minds as to whether the cap is on Dr Kelly's head or off the body:

Q. Could you be more particular as to what the clothes you saw were? 
A. He was wearing a Barbour jacket. There was a cap, a pair of trousers and think walking boots, but I cannot  be certain on that. 
Q. Was the cap on the head or was the cap apart from the  body? 
A. That I cannot remember -- I have a feeling the cap was off, but I cannot be sure.

We know that while DC Coe was supposedly standing guard over the body, but in reality I'm sure some distance from it, the body was moved away from the tree.  I suspect that there was more activity at this time than just moving the body to a flat position.   Lancashire Lad has put forward the possibility that the Barbour cap was covering a small pool of blood that would have been in the "correct" position when Dr Kelly had his head and shoulders against the tree but once the body was moved forward a puddle near his head would have appeared very odd!  So someone had the brainwave of removing Dr Kelly's cap from his head to cover the pool of blood.  I think that this explanation has a lot going for it.

The fact that blood was seen on the knife, wrist watch, bottle and bottle top are all explainable to a degree.  But the cap?  How or why would blood find its way there?

Dr Hunt's Exhibit List

A little while back Lancashire Lad had spotted what appeared to be an anomaly, something causing concern, and he made a comment about it on one of my blogposts.  In a nutshell LL flagged up that Dr Hunt's evidence included mention of a Barbour cap with blood on it and lying near Dr Kelly's body.  This was not included in the list of exhibits that formed part of Dr Hunt's report of the 25th July.  However what was included in the list was "NCH/17/5 Flat cap from game pocket", although this second cap didn't feature in Dr Hunt's testimony.  Some speculation has arisen about all this, particularly the apparent failure to include the "blooded cap" in the Exhibits List.  It would seem from what I have been able to deduce that the reason for the anomaly is very mundane!

I have been trawling through Dr Hunt's Exhibit List in his report and then the penny dropped as they say.  It wasn't just the Barbour cap that was missing from the list but the knife, wristwatch and Evian water bottle!  However the articles in the Barbour jacket pockets had been included.  Whether this would be standard practice I don't know but here there appears to be a demarcation line: any exhibits relating to Dr Kelly's body and anything that he was wearing at the time of the examination (including any pocket contents) would rightly come under Dr Hunt's exhibits.  Other objects close to the body even if only inches away would be the province of the SOCOs so far as their numbering was concerned.

This is not to say of course that Dr Hunt didn't look at the knife, wristwatch, water bottle and Barbour cap although he seems to have paid remarkably little attention to them.  And again he is at fault in not recording the presence of the cap in the game pocket in his main body of evidence; he did of course describe the contents in the bellows pocket - the mobile phone, spectacles, key fob and blister packs.  He was perhaps so excited by the presence of the blister packs that he forgot to record the game cap information at that time!  Did he overlook any other pockets in the Barbour jacket?

A very long body examination at Harrowdown Hill

This article concerning forensic pathologist Dr Nicholas Hunt is from the MailonLine 23 August 2010: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1305159/Dr-David-Kelly-pathologist-Nicholas-Hunt-demands-inquest-Ive-hide.html  The final section on doubts and rebuttals is particularly interesting and Dr Hunt's rebuttals seem extraordinarily weak.

Looking at the second paragraph of his final rebuttal we read:

'We look at every millimetre of skin. We're looking for any needle puncture marks and so forth, any sign of skulduggery – between the fingers, the toes, under the nose, behind the ears, here, there and everywhere.

Well at this point Dr Hunt is at least talking facts rather than engaging in the speculation that is his forte.  I wonder if Dr Hunt considered the possibility of needle puncture marks being obscured by the cuts to his left wrist; there is absolutely no indication that he did.  From his published report we read that at approximately 17.30 hours following the tapings and swabs he was able to examine the body more fully.  It was at 14.10 that he and Mr Green were logged into the inner cordon, Dr Hunt having already confirmed death at 12.35.  By the 17.30 time mentioned above the two men had been carrying out their roles for 3 hours 20 minutes.  It would seem that by 17.30 the initial work of on site examination of Dr Kelly's clothing and the tapings and swabs were complete.  When he writes about examining the body more fully this I suppose includes the business of looking at 'every millimetre of skin' referred to in the press article.  

 

I can fully understand that certain aspects of the examination have to be done where the body is found but Dr Hunt seems to have taken this to ridiculous extremes.  It seems absolutely right and proper to, as he says, look at every millimetre of skin but surely to goodness the correct place to do this is at the mortuary.  If, as it seems to me, Dr Hunt was doing this part of the examination in the scene tent at Harrowdown Hill then I find such an action quite extraordinary.  You are inside a scene tent in woodland, you are having to kneel down or squat down for an hour and a half or more while someone else one assumes is holding a torch as you are peering hard looking for puncture marks.  Wouldn't that aspect of the examination be just that bit easier when the body arrives at the mortuary with facilities and with the pathologist being able to stand upright rather than contorting himself.  It must have been uncomfortably hot in his forensic suit in the tent as well.  I just find it unbelievable that so much time was spent "on site" when surely the closer examination could have been done indoors.

 

So couldn't the body have been identified by Mrs Kelly that evening at Oxford and the close physical inspection completed  with the actual post-mortem taking place on the Saturday.  Or would that have been too simple?