The only evidence on these mysterious events given to Lord Hutton seems to have been that given by Assistant Chief Constable Michael Page on the afternoon of Tuesday 23rd September 2003 (see Pages 202 and 203 of the transcript).
For convenience, I reproduce ACC Page's full evidence here:
9 Q. Were you ever contacted by Dr Kelly's dentist?
10 A. Yes, we did receive a telephone call from Dr Kelly's
11 dentist, shortly -- I cannot recall whether it was on
12 the day that he died or the day after but we did receive
13 a call, yes.
14 Q. What was that about?
15 A. The doctor -- the dentist, rather, expressed some
16 concerns. Upon hearing of Dr Kelly's death on Friday
17 18th July, she was aware he was a patient and apparently
18 the practice has a process whereby patients are
19 contacted shortly before an appointment. She was aware
20 that he was due an appointment shortly and she did not
21 want to cause distress to Dr Kelly or his family, so she
22 went to the filing cabinet to find his notes of his
23 dental records and they were missing.
24 Q. So what did the police do?
25 A. We carried out a full examination of the surgery and, in
203
1 particular, one window which the dentist was concerned
2 may not have been secure. We found no trace of anything
3 untoward either in the surgery or on the window.
4 Q. Did you carry out any further investigations as a result
5 of this?
6 A. Yes, the dental records -- we had another call from the
7 dentist to say that the dental records had reappeared on
8 the Sunday in the place in the filing cabinet where they
9 should have been. We forensically examined those and
10 could find no evidence of extraneous fingerprints or
11 whatever on that file. However, upon hearing about
12 this, and again I stress because I am a police officer
13 and probably inherently suspicious, because dental
14 records are a means of identification it did prompt me
15 to take the extra precaution of having DNA checks
16 carried out to confirm that the body we had was the body
17 of Dr Kelly, notwithstanding the fact that that had been
18 identified by his family.
19 Q. Did you have those DNA checks carried out?
20 A. I did and they confirmed that it was the body of
21 Dr Kelly.
Several interesting issues occur to me:
1. Notice how casual the questioning of ACC Page is. He either doesn't know or chooses not to disclose when the call came from the dentist. Surely that's a basic piece of information in terms of how it relates to David Kelly's death. And the counsel to the Inquiry lets him off with that vagueness. ACC Page should have been made to disclose the timeline of events.
2. When on Friday 18th July did the dentist notice that David Kelly's dental records were missing?
3. Notice that Thames Valley Police investigated the disappearance of the records. One has to assume that they looked in the relevant filing cabinet and confirmed that the records were missing.
4. The dental records of David Kelly (or documents that purport to be the dental records of David Kelly) reappear.
5. The Police can't solve this mystery either. But the Hutton Inquiry seems uninterested. Truly bizarre.
It is not credible that the dentist simply couldn't find the records. Thames Valley Police, we are told, "carried out a full examination of the surgery".
Assuming that the examination was "full", then the conclusion is that David Kelly's dental records were missing from the surgery at the time.
Then David Kelly's dental records (or something purporting to be them) inexplicably reappear.
Two possible interpretations occur to me:
1. A member of staff of the dental surgery replaced the records but lied to cover that up. (That assumes that Thames Valley Police investigated thoroughly).
2. Someone entered the dental surgery premises (in all likelihood twice) and that person's entry (or entries) of the premises were undetected by Thames Valley Police.
If interpretation 2. is the correct one (and I tend to think it may be) then we learn that an individual exists whose movements Thames Valley Police cannot detect.
If Thames Vally Police were incapable of detecting the presence of an individual at the dentist's surgery it raises questions about whether the TVP were equally incapable of detecting the presence of a "third man" at the scene where the body of David Kelly was found.
Entirely in keeping with the sloppy questioning of witnesses at the Hutton Inquiry, nobody makes this basic connection.
Several question are of particular interest.
1. What motive could there be for a "third man" to remove David Kelly's dental records?
2. Was it simply to ascertain their contents?
3. Was it to alter their contents?
4. What could David Kelly's dental records contain that was of such importance as to risk a buglary (albeit, seemingly, a highly skilled burglary) so close to the time that David Kelly may have been killed?
In the Kelly matter, with so much of the surrounding facts pointing to that an inquest would have had to draw an open-verdict, it is easy to fail to recall the disappearing dental records episode (which you wisely draw attention to again). This really is a smoking gun.
ReplyDeleteIf Dr Kelly's death was suicide what possible scenario would have caused his dental records have gone missing?
For anybody to assert that the Hutton enquiry was a valid replacement of a coroners inquest need only to frankly consider the relevance of these missing records.
ACC Page fails to expound on why he took the missing records seriously enough to check the body's DNA but not enough to allow their absence to promote any deeper suspicion of how Kelly died. Nor did Hutton ask anything like this of Page.
Hutton allowed it to appear that he drew his 'suicide conclusion' (or lack of will to examine any alternative) almost exclusively from Page.
It was Tony Blair who called for an urgent inquiry into the death of David Kelly. It was the findings of that inquiry which ultimately supplanted the process of the coroner's inquest. Dr Kelly is the only British citizen who has been a single victim of an incident resulting in sudden death and yet not had a coroner's inquest return a verdict.
ReplyDeleteThe Hutton inquiry was not the appropriate means by which to conclude the cause of Dr Kelly's death. An inquiry of this type usually relates to an incident - such as a rail disaster - where it is not the cause of an individual's death that is at question, but rather the cause of the incident itself. The terms of reference given to Lord Hutton were no wider in their scope.
The coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, should have been allowed to conclude his inquest before the Hutton inquiry commenced. Failing this, the coroner should not have subsequently waited for Lord Hutton's findings. Lord Hutton should not have attempted to draw a conclusion as to the cause of death, because this was outside his remit and the "rigours that are normally undertaken at a coroner's inquest simply were not fulfilled" (to quote coroner Dr Michael Powers).
From the outset, this was a prejudicial conclusion of the Hutton inquiry. An inquest's verdict of suicide and murder has to be established beyond reasonable doubt. If the coroner had returned an open verdict, the thrust of the Hutton inquiry would have been wholly different or perhaps not occurred at all.
Andrew, the evidence presented three weeks after his first appearance by ACC Page is strange. When so many statements and so much evidence was never put before the Hutton Inquiry and witnesses not called, why was the dentist's break-in even broached? Had it already reached the Mainstream media, and ACC Page had to do a mop-up?
ReplyDeleteACC Page used in conjunction with the dental record evidence the phrase "the day that he died or the day after" We do not know the day that he died and neither would Mr Page I assume.
Mrs Kelly had somehow not been asked in her extensive questioning about the identifation of the body, a fact that would, it seems to me, be a major omission. It then fell to Mr Page three weeks later to drop it into the dental evidence as almost an afterthought:
it [the missing dental record] did prompt me to take the extra precaution of having DNA checks carried out to confirm that the body we had was the body of Dr Kelly, notwithstanding the fact that that had been identified by his family
What, the whole family?? Was this another mop-op remark?
@eu.truth. Please read the October 2010 opening statement by Tim Owen QC at the inquiry into the death of Azelle Rodney in 2007, the only OTHER case I can find where there was no inquest, for reasons described therein. The Inquiry to circumvent the inquest was only set up after a series of events which was a lot more protracted than the almost instantaneous inquiry into the circumstances leading up the the death of Dr David Kelly.
ReplyDeleteAndrew -
ReplyDeleteAssistant Chief Constable Mr Page provides evidence on toxicology and forensic data (DNA, lung samples) , Mrs Kelly provides evidence of police operations (helicopter searches) . It is a world turned upside down.
Mr Page says I am a police officer and probably inherently suspicious
I am an ordinary member of the public and I am very suspicious.
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ReplyDeleteFelix - Your point accepted - it was copied from my letter published in the Telegraph 22 Dec 2004. However the fundamental cause of Azelle Rodney's death is not in question - the coroner's ruling clearly states that Rodney was shot to death by the police.
ReplyDeleteThe Kelly death would be far less opaque if that coroner had also established cause of death before handing-over to the inquiry.
I note that, sitting at Hornsey North London, Andrew Walker was the coroner for Rodney's death. Walker is also the Oxfordshire Assistant Deputy Coroner, assisting Oxordshire's coroner Nicholas G Gardiner. Mr Gardener was the coroner for Dr Kelly's truncated inquest.
Andrew Walker, as Oxfordshire's Assistant Deputy Coroner, has been helping-out with the heavy workload resultant from RAF Brize Norton being where all dead servicemen are repatriated through.
Of cause, regardless of his and Oxfordshire's familiarity with the supplanting of inquests with inquiries, he has not called for an inquiry into the legitimacy of the war in Afghanistan or Iraq that has resulted in these deaths.
You are right, EU,and those are interesting additional observatins you make. I did understand,as you will have guessed, that the cause of Azelle Rodney's death is not disputed. In that case it seemed that evidence could NOT be admitted (reasons not clear other than perhaps to prevent the truth coming out?). It seems to me that in the Dr Kelly case, an Inquiry might have been used to PREVENT awkward evidence from coming before a coroner,hence an inquiry. That is the only parallel I draw.
ReplyDeleteFelix,
ReplyDeleteMr Page says I am a police officer and probably inherently suspicious
I am an ordinary member of the public and I am very suspicious.
If only Lord Hutton had been so perceptive!
Felix,
ReplyDeleteAssistant Chief Constable Mr Page provides evidence on toxicology and forensic data (DNA, lung samples) , Mrs Kelly provides evidence of police operations (helicopter searches) . It is a world turned upside down.
It's almost enough to make you think that Lord Hutton didn't want to get too close to the truth, isn't it?
eu.truth,
ReplyDeleteIt was Tony Blair who called for an urgent inquiry into the death of David Kelly. It was the findings of that inquiry which ultimately supplanted the process of the coroner's inquest. Dr Kelly is the only British citizen who has been a single victim of an incident resulting in sudden death and yet not had a coroner's inquest return a verdict.
In the interests of accuracy I would point out that in Scotland inquests aren't held and there are no coroners.
With respect to your first point. Undoubtedly, it was in Tony Blair's interests to widen the issues so that obfuscation became significantly easier.
The removal of the dental records was nothing to do with DNA and nothing to do with his teeth.
ReplyDeleteYou are all missing someting here. It's very simple.....someone was searching for a potential murder weapon.
Think about it.
What would these records reveal, apart from information about his teeth?
They would show if DK been prescribed any pain killers after dental surgery recently. If he had been prescribed something like codiene for example, then that is what we would have found in his pocket instead of coproxamol.
Ffrank,
ReplyDeleteWhy would it have been necessary to remove the dental records from the surgery in the scenario you propose?
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteIt would not have been necessary to remove the documents if the person breaking in to the dental surgery was competent in reading such documents and identifying any drugs that were noted on the record as having been prescribed. If however the “burglar” was disturbed or felt unable to do this whilst in the surgery it would make sense to remove the records to a safe place where they could be checked in more detail and returned later. It would be vital that the drug used to kill DK was a drug that he had recently had access to
I have given this a lot of thought and this really is the only explanation I can give for the break-in. I cannot see how identification issues could b relevant with someone as well known as DK.