An Inconvenient Death

An Inconvenient Death - Episode 6

April 05, 2021 Sam Eastall Season 1 Episode 6
An Inconvenient Death
An Inconvenient Death - Episode 6
Show Notes Transcript

In the next episode Miles and Sam leave the official narrative aside to explore some facts that have come to light which cast major doubt on our understanding of what really happened to Dr Kelly.  

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An Inconvenient Death – Podcast Episode 6 script

 

Sam - Welcome back to the series examining the mysterious death of Dr David Kelly with me Sam Eastall and the journalist and author Miles Goslett.

SAM – When the Hutton Inquiry was set up it appeared to be a rigorous investigation into Dr Kelly’s untimely death. Some of the highest profile Establishment figures in the country - from Tony Blair down – agreed to be questioned. This demonstrated its apparent robustness. 

Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6 who, as discussed in episode 1, had secretly told the BBC of his own scepticism of the threat Iraq posed, also gave evidence even though his voice had never been heard in public before. Truly, this was an exceptional situation.

But Miles, you say this public inquiry was nothing like a coroner’s inquest for one simple reason. What is that reason?

MILES – Well its premise from the outset was that Dr Kelly had killed himself. So whereas a coroner sets out to establish how, where and when someone died, Hutton had already reached this conclusion before he began. 

SAM – We heard at the end of the previous episode that Hutton’s conclusions were tilted in the government’s favour. But having looked more closely at what ground Hutton’s inquiry covered, what specifically surprises you about it?

MILES – Lots of things. Let’s start with a statistic: less than half a day of the 24 days on which the inquiry sat was spent going through the medical evidence relating to Dr Kelly’s death. So the medical evidence – which a coroner would normally rely on to reach a finding - was secondary to everything else. 

SAM – What else did you find?

MILES – Hutton’s inquiry was a smoke and mirrors exercise. It very successfully gave the impression of investigating Dr Kelly’s death. But many of the high-profile witnesses who gave evidence were red herrings. They could throw no light on how, where and when Dr Kelly had died simply because they had no knowledge of his death. It was Ive concluded a PR job to put it crudely.

SAM – What about the Hutton Inquiry’s legal status?

MILES – Well it had no legal significance per se. Hutton’s conclusion was that Dr Kelly had taken his own life. But this was merely his opinion based upon the evidence he heard. It had no legal force which is partly why we are left today with so many questions. 

SAM – What was going on behind the scenes when the inquiry was running?

MILES –It’s now clear that those who were aware of the differences between a coroner’s inquest and Hutton’s ad hoc public inquiry felt very uneasy. I would put the Oxfordshire coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, at the top of the list. 

On Monday 4 August, three days after the Hutton Inquiry opened, Lord Falconer, as the Lord Chancellor, asked his private secretary to write to Nicholas Gardiner making clear that he would be invoking Section 17A of the 1988 Coroners Act.

SAM – What did that mean?

MILES – By applying this law, Falconer negated the role of the coroner. To all intents and purposes, it meant that the Hutton Inquiry would replace the coroner’s inquest.

SAM – For those not familiar with Section 17A of the 1988 Coroners Act, what is it?

MILES - It was created to simplify the task and to cut the expense of dealing with multiple deaths as a result of a tragedy such as a ferry disaster or a motorway pile-up. At the time of Dr Kelly’s death it had only ever been used twice: first, in 2000, when investigating the 31 deaths caused by the Ladbroke Grove rail crash; then in 2001 to inquire into the 311 murders committed by Dr Harold Shipman. Both of the resulting public inquiries were held on a statutory basis.

SAM – So Dr Kelly’s death was only the third time it had been used?

MILES - Yes. And the point is: it was a very strange legal instrument to use because Dr Kelly’s death was a single death, not one among multiple deaths. Also, Hutton’s inquiry was held on a non-statutory basis meaning that it had no legal powers. 

In fact, Dr Kelly’s death is the only ever occasion on record when a coroner’s inquest into a single death has been adjourned using this obscure law so that a non-statutory public inquiry could be held instead. This may sound complicated but it is highly significant.

SAM – So what did the letter of 4 August which Gardiner received from Falconer’s office say?

MILES – It said that he should adjourn the inquest unless he had an exceptional reason not to do so. 

SAM – Was this illegal?

MILES – No not illegal, but it looks like a highly cynical manoeuvre by the government to seize full control of the situation. 

Remember: Hutton’s terms of reference were QUOTE “urgently to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly”. They were in fact very vague compared to what a coroner always sets out to achieve. 

SAM – So what happened next?

MILES – Gardiner replied to Falconer’s office by letter on Wednesday 6 August – coincidentally this was the day of Dr Kelly’s funeral in Oxfordshire, which both Hutton and Dingemans attended – and in his letter he sounded perplexed. 

He said he had envisaged concluding the Inquest into Dr Kelly’s during September. He also raised some concerns, pointing out that a Coroner has power to compel the attendance of witnesses whereas Hutton would not. 

Gardiner also used his letter to point out to Falconer that legally every inquest must be opened, adjourned and closed in a formal manner. 

In other words, some further formal sitting would have to be conducted by the coroner.

SAM – What else did Gardiner’s letter say?

MILES – It talked about the very important matter of the pathologist, Dr Nicholas Hunt, wanting to change his opinion as to what had caused Dr Kelly’s death. Gardiner wrote: “The preliminary cause of death given at the opening of the Inquest no longer represents the final view of the Pathologist and evidence from him would need to be given to correct and update the evidence already received.” 

SAM – What exactly did he want to change?

MILES - After finishing the autopsy on Dr Kelly, Hunt produced two reports: a preliminary report dated Saturday 19 July 2003, and a final report dated Friday 25 July 2003. Surprisingly, it seems Hutton was unaware of the second report when he opened his inquiry on 1 August. But the preliminary report, which has never been published, must have placed little or no importance on a potential coproxamol overdose because when Hutton opened his inquiry on 1 August he referred only to the preliminary report of 19 July, which referred to bleeding from incised wounds to the left wrist.

SAM - So in other words, Hunt made no mention of the coproxamol tablets even though he personally found those empty blister packets of pills in Dr Kelly’s coat? 

MILES – That’s right. So in his letter to Lord Falconer, Gardiner said that Hunt’s “preliminary cause of death…no longer represents [his] final view…”

SAM – How did Falconer respond?

MILES – Well despite the seriousness of the matters raised, Falconer’s department was apparently not minded to allow Gardiner to resume his inquest – or indeed to formally close his inquest. 

Gardiner asked for a special meeting on Monday 11 August at the Department for Constitutional Affairs to discuss the situation. The Hutton Inquiry had begun in earnest that very morning.

SAM – This means the Hutton Inquiry began that day in London to try examine the circumstances of Dr Kelly’s death and yet a parallel meeting was taking place at the same time to try to straighten out the unusual way Dr Kelly’s death was being examined?

MILES – Yes.

SAM – Who was at this meeting?

MILES – Gardiner plus a man called Victor Round, the coroner for Worcestershire; a parliamentary clerk called Michael Collon; and Judith Bernstein, a solicitor and civil servant who specialised in inquests.

SAM – Do we know what was discussed?

MILES - There are no known notes of it but three years later, in 2006, a reporter interviewed Gardiner and he said in his view the officials were QUOTE “reluctant” to allow him to resume the inquest until he managed to persuade them of its importance. 

SAM – So you believe that by trying to take over the investigation into Dr Kelly’s death and not having a coroner’s inquest, the government got itself into a tangle over this. 

MILES – Absolutely. It seems extraordinary that Gardiner had to go to these lengths to ensure that the law was followed in a matter involving a sudden death.

SAM – What was the upshot of all this?

MILES - Falconer’s office wrote to Gardiner the next day, 12 August, saying he thought Hutton would investigate Dr Kelly’s adequately so Gardiner was swatted out of the way.

In the same letter, Falconer’s office did agree that Gardiner could take evidence from Dr Hunt and from a forensic toxicologist, Alexander Allan, but it was stipulated Falconer wanted him to keep the proceedings as short as possible and to take the evidence in writing.

SAM – So Gardiner did resume the inquest?

MILES – He did, he took evidence from Hunt and Allan on Thursday 14 August and then adjourned his inquest pending the outcome of the Hutton Inquiry. 

But he took evidence from nobody else. The inquest was quickly aborted. We don’t even know what was said at the inquest because no reporters attended it.

What we do know is that four days later, on 18 August, a death certificate was registered with the Oxfordshire registrar’s office. 

SAM – And you think we should be sceptical of this.

MILES – I know we should. 

SAM – What does the death certificate say?

MILES – Well first, it lists the three separate causes of death as:

1a Haemorrhage

1b Incised wounds to the left wrist

2 Coproxamol ingestion and coronary artery artherosclerosis

But it doesn’t identify the place where Dr Kelly died. In the box where the place of death should be stated are the words: “Body found at Harrowdown Hill”. 

This clearly demonstrates that the coroner was not able to determine where Dr Kelly died because he had been forced to shut down his inquest. Had he been allowed to carry on, he might have been able to state more categorically where Dr Kelly died.

SAM – What else is odd about it in your opinion?

MILES - The certificate states that an inquest into Dr Kelly’s death took place on 14 August 2003. This is, to put it generously, misleading. The inquest was adjourned on that day having taken evidence from only two witnesses. It can hardly be described as a full inquest. It was nothing of the sort.

SAM – OK. Anything else?

MILES – Yes. Dr Kelly’s date of death is listed on the death certificate as being 18 July. But nobody has ever established whether it was the 17th or 18th of July.

SAM – And I remember from your book you have identified further problems with it.

MILES. Well the most extraordinary thing of all about this death certificate is that it was completed and registered more than five weeks before the Hutton Inquiry stopped hearing evidence from witnesses. In other words, the Hutton Inquiry may as well have not been going on at all, because as far as the authorities were concerned they already “knew” how Dr Kelly had died and could point to a death certificate for proof. 

SAM – So Nicholas Gardiner reconvened the inquest while the Hutton Inquiry was under way and issued a full death certificate without having amassed enough evidence to prove suicide beyond "all reasonable doubt".

MILES – That’s exactly right. The public was – and still is - led to believe the Hutton Inquiry was a replacement inquest into Dr Kelly’s death to establish how he died but Gardiner’s adjourned inquest of 14 August closed the case. The manner of Dr Kelly’s death had been pre-judged, though most people seemed oblivious to this at the time. 

And with the excitement of Blair, Campbell and senior intelligence chiefs who were about to take the stand at the High Court, it’s hardly surprising most people missed this at the time.

SAM – Has Gardiner ever talked about this?

MILES – He told his local paper in 2012 that he was never under any political pressure and wouldn’t have done anything differently. He said the Government was always “very proper”, as he put it.

But really?

He had had to remind officials how to act. 

Anyway, I’ve met Gardiner and he is nice man and was a decent public servant but he is not the type to rock the boat…especially when examining this most controversial death. 

I find it very hard to believe that on 18 July when Blair and Falconer set up the Hutton Inquiry, Falconer, as Lord Chancellor, was not fully aware of his legal ability to be able to force the coroner to stand down and therefore of the possibility open to the government of opting for a less stringent form of investigation via the Hutton Inquiry.

SAM – So aside from the legally untidy way in which the Hutton Inquiry was set up, there are some equally pressing questions about how Dr Kelly spent his last days alive, his disappearance, his death, and the discovery of his body – and a series of holes in the Hutton Inquiry itself.

We’ve been through these events in previous episodes but lets now go back and re-examine things with the benefit of the information that’s subsequently come to light.

So, Janice Kelly’s evidence concerning the events of Wednesday 9 July - the evening on which she and her husband allegedly fled to Weston-Super-Mare – provides a good starting point for exploring many of these unresolved matters. 

What can you tell us, Miles?

MILES - Mrs Kelly gave her evidence over a period of 65 minutes on 1 September 2003 during phase one of the Hutton Inquiry – the phase which sought only to establish facts. 

First, it is important to note that although she was recorded by press photographers and TV news crews arriving at the Royal Courts of Justice, she never appeared in Court 73, where the hearings took place. Instead, she answered questions from a private room in a different part of the building via an audiolink. A still photograph of her was displayed on a computer screen in Court 73 while she was questioned by James Dingemans, but in effect Mrs Kelly was nothing more than a voice answering questions over a loudspeaker.

SAM – And what relevance do you give this?

MILES – A lot. She was granted semi-anonymity of the strangest kind. The precious opportunity for those present to see Mrs Kelly’s face, and to view her body language as she spoke, was denied. This would not have been the case at a coroner’s inquest.

But even allowing for the understandable idea that Mrs Kelly was afforded this special treatment to protect her from prying eyes and distress: what was the point of her travelling all the way to central London from Oxfordshire and being photographed walking into the High Court if she wasn’t even going to give evidence in the conventional way? Why not simply remain in Oxfordshire and give evidence from there via a digital telephone line or videolink, as another witness to the inquiry did the following day? I think her arrival in London was a staged event. It led people to believe Mrs Kelly was onside with the Hutton Inquiry.

SAM – And what about the evidence she gave?

MILES – Before we get into that, let’s remember. This was not the first time that she had ever spoken to Hutton or James Dingemans, who examined her. They had visited her and her daughters for a private meeting at their house in Oxfordshire on the morning of 26 July, eight days after Dr Kelly’s body was found. 

Hutton later defended this meeting by claiming he went there to express sympathy and to assure them that he intended to investigate Dr Kelly's death fully. He said he took no evidence from her. 

But not only was it irregular of Hutton to spend time with Mrs Kelly before his inquiry began – something no coroner would have done - his memory of the visit also appears to be completely wrong. In his opening statement on 1 August 2003 Hutton had said he had “been given information by Dr Kelly's widow when I met her at her home on the morning of Saturday 26th July.” 

So according to Hutton himself, he and Dingemans were in fact given information – which has never been divulged publicly - by Mrs Kelly before the Hutton Inquiry got under way. 

SAM – And Hutton and Dingemans had also attended Dr Kelly’s funeral?

MILES – Yes.

SAM – So what about the evidence?

MILES – Well, in a previous episode we talked about how a Sunday Times reporter called Nick Rufford had rung the Kellys’ house on the morning of 9 July. Mrs Kelly had claimed her husband was working in London that day. In fact, she admitted to the Hutton Inquiry that her husband had uncharacteristically decided to take the day off and spent much of it gardening at home. 

She told the Inquiry that when Rufford showed up at her house that evening and spoke to her husband she was “alarmed”. She also told the inquiry they had a heated conversation and her husband asked Rufford to leave.

She said Dr Kelly was “extremely upset” and his friendship with Rufford was “at an end.”

SAM – It all sounds quite dramatic.

MILES – Well two people can have entirely different recollections of the same event. But Rufford said they had a civil conversation for 15 minutes and he left of his own accord. 

It’s also noteworthy that Mrs Kelly gave the impression to the Hutton Inquiry that Rufford told Dr Kelly that he was to be named that night. Actually, the MoD told Dr Kelly they had leaked his name to the press.

SAM – What did she say happened next?

MILES - Mrs Kelly told the Hutton Inquiry that she and her husband “hovered” for a while after Rufford left, then she said she knew a house they could use in the south-west of England as a hiding place. Apparently the MoD then rang Dr Kelly and advised him to leave his house and he told his wife they should head to this bolt hole in the south west of England. 

So according to her they packed and within about 10 minutes they had left.

SAM – And they left a message with someone nearby is that right?

MILES – Yes, a barmaid called Leigh Potter who worked in the Wagon and horses just opposite the Kellys’ house said dr Kelly went into the pub at about 8 o’clock and asked her to tell the publican, Graham Atkins, that he was going away for a few days because the “press were going to pounce.” 

SAM – So putting all of these details together, Mrs Kelly’s account would mean that the Kellys must have stopped gardening, packed a bag each, locked up their house and very abruptly fled home at about 8.15pm on the 9th July at the latest. 

MILES – Yes. And further complicating matters, Mrs Kelly described herself to the Hutton Inquiry as “disabled”. She has for many years suffered from painful arthritis, restricting her mobility. 

SAM – What else did she say?

MILES - She said they drove along the road towards the M4 and got to Weston-Super-Mare in Somerset at about 9.45pm and stayed in a hotel. She described her husband, who drove the car, as “very, very tense”. She said before they got on to the M4, they pulled over and tried to get hold of his line manager Bryan Wells. 

She said he was “exceedingly upset, very anxious, very stressed.”

In fact, during this stage of her evidence she was asked several times by Dingemans to describe her husband’s mood. She replied: “Very taut. His whole demeanour was very tight. I was extremely worried because he was insisting on driving. I asked if I could drive, he would not let me. He was very, very tired and so was I by this time.” She said they spoke to their daughter Rachel as they drove and reiterated they had a sleepless night in Weston Super Mare en route to Cornwall.”

SAM – So this is the account according to Mrs Kelly but you Miles have found what appear to be some inconsistencies in this undeniably dramatic telling of the tale. Tell us about these inconsistencies.

MILES – Well, there’s certainly some conflicting evidence. I’ve talked to people who have told me they were playing cribbage with Dr Kelly at the Hinds Head pub at the time the Kellys were supposedly driving to Cornwall. It’s a pub about a mile from his home in a neighbouring village. He had played cribbage for the pub team for several years. It was a hobby he really enjoyed.

SAM – So he was in two places at once?

MILES - Well immediately after his death, the police officers interviewed the landlord of the Hinds Head, a man called Steve Ward. Ward produced an email listing 16 regular cribbage team members. The email in which Mr Ward supplied these names was sent to the police on 22 July – four days after Dr Kelly’s body was found - and was among thousands of pieces of evidence considered by the Hutton Inquiry team. 

In his email to Thames Valley Police, Ward wrote he had checked the fixtures list and Dr Kelly played cribbage on Wednesday 9th July. He then listed for the police other team members who had been present that night. Thames Valley Police then contacted every member of the Hinds Head cribbage team and interviewed them. 

SAM – And you checked this independently?

MILES – I did, in 2015 I spoke to a married couple called Brian and Pat Forster. They were regular cribbage players and Mrs Forster told me she was Dr Kelly’s partner in the game they played on 9th July. She said it began at about 8.30 pm. She said she remembered it because they won the game and she could remember the game had lasted a long time, and she found it unlikely that Dr Kelly would have left the pub much before 10.30pm at the earliest. 

SAM – So the police knew this?

MILES - She described her police interview to me. She said she and her husband were interviewed in separate rooms at their house because they were among the last people to see him alive. 

SAM – Did she tell you what kind of mood Dr Kelly was in?

MILES – She just said “He seemed fine.” 

SAM – How else can we verify this?

MILES - Between late 2010 and June 2011 the then-Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, held an official review of the Dr Kelly case and he said in it he said that Dr Kelly last played for them on 9th July 2003. He even wrote: “Every other member of that team was interviewed by officers from the investigation team.” 

SAM – So we have a fundamental contradiction, courtesy of multiple witnesses. Shouldn’t this have posed a serious question for Hutton and for Dingemans?

MILES – Yes, because the police interviewed all of the cribbage team members, and then passed their findings to the Hutton Inquiry. But Hutton was quite happy to focus on one of the two places Dr Kelly is meant to have been on 9 July – he focussed on this very dramatic escape to Weston-Super-Mare and then to Cornwall.

SAM - And Dingemans made no attempt to discover whose story was true I suppose.

MILES – No. And I would say the integrity of the Hutton Inquiry is undermined by conflicting details like this. It’s hard to know why Mrs Kelly would have deliberately misled the Hutton Inquiry over something which, in the scheme of things, was fairly trivial. 

SAM – Why do you think she may have done this? 

MILES - It could be that, having given police a witness statement within a few days of her husband’s death on which her evidence to Hutton was based, she was not given the chance to amend it. Or, for some reason she may have wished to give the Ministry of Defence the impression that both she and her husband had obeyed their instructions and left immediately. Even though her husband had died, perhaps she still feared what this department might do if it found out that Dr Kelly had ignored official advice. Who can dismiss the possibility that Mrs Kelly might have been led to believe that Dr Kelly’s pension, for example, hung in the balance depending on what the Hutton Inquiry revealed? 

SAM – You say on the face of it, it’s fairly trivial. But actually, it’s not. It’s important. Because Dingemans really pushed Mrs Kelly for details of her husband’s mood. Let’s remember, she was giving evidence from an annexe but she had made a very public entrance into the court building as you said. And she kept being asked to talk about how tense and unhappy her husband was just days before he was found dead.

MILES – Yes, if it’s true that according to all of these witnesses Dr Kelly was in the pub, he was actually pretty relaxed and displayed a certain coolness of character. 

SAM - So why was Mrs Kelly’s elaborate story about rushing off to Weston-Super-Mare not scrutinised by Hutton? 

MILES – I don’t know. But what is particularly striking is that none of the cribbage players whom the police interviewed so carefully within a few days of Dr Kelly’s death was called as a witness to the Hutton Inquiry. Neither was Steve Ward, the pub landlord who’d supplied police with the information in the first place. 

I just wonder if Mrs Kelly’s account escalated the drama and tension of the evening of 9 July to such a degree that it suited the story the authorities were pushing, namely that Dr Kelly was a weak figure who fled the press on the advice of the Ministry of Defence, leaving his house in the space of 10 minutes, and who then felt under such dreadful pressure that he took his own life the following week.

How else do you explain the Hutton Inquiry calling Leigh Potter, the barmaid who had never met Dr Kelly before, to give evidence based on nothing more than the 30-second conversation she had with him in which he delivered a rather cryptic message, but not calling his friend Pat Forster, who said she partnered him at cribbage for several hours that night - or indeed Steve Ward, the landlord of the Hinds Head, who was something of a trusted friend to Dr Kelly? 

SAM – So you think Leigh Potter was hauled in to help the Hutton Inquiry to build its case?

MILES - There is no question Miss Potter was telling the truth about the brief chat she had with Dr Kelly that night. It was witnessed by a customer for one thing. But it seems very possible Dr Kelly changed his mind after speaking to her and remained in Oxfordshire. 

SAM - Both stories can’t be right but for reasons best known to themselves, Hutton and Dingemans chose not to pursue the evidence. 

MILES – Yes. And special mention must be made here of the then-Attorney General Dominic Grieve. He appears to have done a very poor job of “reviewing” the Dr Kelly case because he actually confirmed Dr Kelly played cribbage. 

SAM – If Dr Kelly really was playing cribbage that night, rather than driving to Weston-Super-Mare, it raises questions about his supposed fear of the press; his allegedly weak state of mind; and the testimony of Janice Kelly at the Hutton Inquiry.

MILES – These are uncomfortable questions but they do have to be asked.

SAM – So what happened next according to Janice Kelly?

MILES - According to Janice Kelly, giving evidence to the Hutton Inquiry, she and her husband woke up early on the morning of Thursday 10 July in a hotel in Weston-Super-Mare. 

SAM – What’s known about this hotel?

MILES - Its name has never been made public and Mrs Kelly was never asked for it during the inquiry. 

She said she and Dr Kelly ate breakfast in what she called its main dining room and read the Times newspaper as they did so. She then said she remembered reading an article by Nick Rufford QUOTE “giving a brief outline of his contact with David, naming him in his article,.”

It may seem pedantic to point this out, but this cannot have been true, because Rufford only worked for the Sunday Times, an entirely separate newspaper from the Times. 

This proves that she was mistaken on points of fact. It also shows that James Dingemans, who examined her, did not bother to correct her.

SAM – Did Mrs Kelly elaborate any further?

MILES – She said her husband ate very little breakfast and then made a few calls to the Ministry of Defence on his mobile phone from the garden of the hotel. Then came an interesting exchange between her and Dingemans. She was asked by Dingemans: “Do you know what was said? Did he report back?” And she replied: “No, he did not. He just said I was okay to continue down towards Cornwall.”

SAM – What is it that interests you about that exchange?

MILES - Mrs Kelly’s response used the singular: “I was okay to continue down towards Cornwall”, Either she and her husband had agreed that she would travel on to Cornwall alone. Or she was alone in Weston-Super-Mare already. 

SAM – Which takes us back to the game of cribbage the night before.

MILES – It does. But what happened next was also strange.

Mrs Kelly said they each packed a small suitcase and they set off directly to Cornwall, leaving the hotel at about 8.45am and arriving in a village called Mevagissey at about midday.

That makes sense given the rough length of time this 143-mile journey would take.

But it does not explain the testimony to the Hutton Inquiry of another witness, Rod Godfrey.

SAM – Tell us who Rod Godfrey is?

MILES - Like Dr Kelly, he was a weapons expert. He knew Dr Kelly well and appeared at the inquiry on 3 September - two days after Mrs Kelly. 

And like Mrs Kelly, he was examined by Dingemans. 

SAM – So what did he have to say?

MILES - Godfrey said the last time he saw Dr Kelly was at his house near Swindon on the morning of Thursday 10 July. They were both meant to be going to Iraq on Friday 11 July but events had obviously put paid to that trip. However, Dr Kelly had a batch of the anti-malarial drug Paludrine which had been prescribed for both of them and had to give Godfrey his share of these pills.

Godfrey said Dr Kelly rang him on the morning of the 10th of July and wanted to drop the pills off. In fact, he said Dr Kelly “almost insisted” he would drop the pills off with Mr Godfrey. 

Godfrey described the visit. He said Dr Kelly parked some distance from his house and walked 100 yards up the road to the front door and said he seemed “distracted”. He said normally they would talk about work but Dr Kelly seemed to want nothing more than to have a cup of coffee and walk through the garden talking about flowers.

SAM – What about Mrs Kelly?

MILES – Godfrey said he did not see Mrs Kelly at all that morning. He did say it was possible that she could have been waiting in the car, but he didn’t seem convinced by this idea.

SAM – So when they talked by phone, Dr Kelly didn’t deny to Godfrey that he was at home and said nothing about Weston-Super-Mare either?

MILES – That’s right. So with the cribbage story in mind, the idea that Dr Kelly never went to Weston-Super-Mare but remained in Oxfordshire has to be taken seriously.

SAM – Did Mrs Kelly say anything about going to Godfrey’s house?

MILES – Not a word. And it would have been a 60-mile detour from Weston-Super-Mare to Godfrey’s house in Swindon, in the opposite direction to Cornwall, which would have taken about two hours. So it was not something you’d easily forget if youd made such a detour.

I wonder if she even knew at the time she gave evidence to the Hutton Inquiry that Dr Kelly’s visit to Swindon had taken place. If she and Dr Kelly were travelling separately, it’s entirely possible she did not. Maybe her husband died without ever mentioning to her that he had made this stop-off on his way from Oxfordshire to Cornwall, which is why it didn’t crop up in her evidence, on 1 September, but why Rod Godfrey did refer to it in his evidence two days later.

SAM – And if she did go to Swindon with her husband, it was a curious decision that she should remain outside while Dr Kelly went into Godfrey’s house to drink coffee and wander around his friend’s garden. 

MILES – Yes, and bearing in mind the Kellys had, according to Mrs Kelly, been forced to leave home the night before with 10 minutes’ notice, Dr Kelly did extremely well to remember to pack the Paludrine pills for Godfrey in the first place.

SAM – Would it even have been possible to get from Weston Super Mare to Swindon and then from Swindon to Mevagissey in Cornwall by midday – which is when she said they arrived in Cornwall? 

MILES – No. Mevagissey is 200 miles from Swindon. Add this distance to the 60 or so miles which Dr Kelly had supposedly had to drive from Weston-Super-Mare to Swindon that morning, and he apparently undertook a 260-mile round trip that day. 

That would have taken at least five hours. Mrs Kelly claimed she and her husband were on the road for only three hours. 

SAM – Not forgetting the coffee drank with Rod Godfrey in his garden in Swindon. 

MILES – In terms of timings, this makes no sense, but nobody at the Hutton Inquiry seemed bothered by this discrepancy. Rod Godfrey even made it clear that he was puzzled by the chronology but nobody at the Hutton inquiry seemed to care.

SAM - So you have witnesses contradicting the official timeline actually at the Inquiry and nobody picks up on it or questions it?

MILES - Yes and by the way another witness who appeared at the Hutton Inquiry was a colleague of Dr Kelly’s called Dr Richard Scott. He said he, too, had received a call from Dr Kelly on the morning of Thursday 10 July at 9am. 

SAM - The morning where Dr Kelly supposedly wakes up in a hotel in weston super mare, according to the official timeline.

MILES - Yes and Scott said Dr Kelly rang him to cancel a meeting and he said he thought Dr Kelly rang him from home. 

SAM – So we have a deeply unresolved timetable of events concerning how and when Dr Kelly got to Cornwall but what we do know is that both the Kellys did eventually get to Cornwall on the 10th of July.

MILES – Yes, that’s right.

SAM – These were among Dr Kelly’s last days alive, so presumably some effort was made by the Hutton Inquiry to find out what he did in Cornwall and what his mood was like.

MILES – Not exactly. You’re right. It was a key period - his final weekend alive. But it was left almost entirely unclarified and there is a strong sense that it was kept deliberately vague. 

SAM – OK. What is known officially?

MILES - Mrs Kelly’s evidence about what she and her husband did in Cornwall amounted to very little. She told James Dingemans that she wanted this unexpected trip to be almost like a holiday for her husband so he could relax and be less upset. She said they visited two local tourist attractions; ate well; relaxed; and walked around the beaches and bays of south Cornwall. But at no stage was she asked where they stayed or whether they saw anybody else while they were there, so she was therefore required to make no mention of any socialising which they did.

SAM – But I know you've looked into this.

MILES - It turns out they were together in Cornwall for three nights in a holiday property in a place called Portmellon. A couple called John and Pamela Dabbs had a key to this house. They live locally and knew Mrs Kelly slightly through mutual friends. Mr Dabbs had never met Dr Kelly before but it was agreed that they would all see each other at some point over the weekend.

SAM – Did they see the Kellys?

MILES – They did. But before we go over their meeting, it’s important to go back to the Hutton Inquiry and look at what Mrs Kelly was asked and what she said about this period of time.

According to Mrs Kelly, she and her husband ate lunch together that Thursday afternoon, the 10th of July. She told Hutton her husband was “more upset at that stage and very tense.” She added: “He seemed to withdraw into himself completely.” 

Apparently they went to lie down and then went for a walk. While they were out, Dr Kelly took a call from his friend Olivia Bosch, a former weapons inspector, and was apparently unsettled when she told him his name was in the public domain. 

SAM – What else did Mrs Kelly say happened the next day, Friday the 11th of July?

MILES – Mrs Kelly told the Hutton Inquiry they visited the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which is a popular tourist attraction, and while there he spoke to his Ministry of Defence line manager, Bryan Wells. Wells told him he would have to appear before the Intelligence and Security select committee of MPs the following week, and that he would also have to appear before the Foreign Affairs select committee as well, to discuss his contact with the media. He was also told that this second meeting, with the Foreign Affairs Committee, would be televised. 

SAM – So how did Mrs kelly say he reacted?

MILES - According to his wife he was “ballistic” at the prospect of being on TV. 

SAM – He was angry?

MILES – I think she meant angry and upset. He apparently retreated into “a world of his own”. He and Bryan Wells spoke by phone a further nine times that afternoon, during which it was agreed that they would meet in London on Monday 14 July to prepare for the committee hearings. 

SAM – Did Dr Kelly speak to anyone else?

MILES – Yes, he rang his half-sister, Sarah Pape, at about 9 that evening. 

SAM – Did Sarah Pape give evidence to the Hutton Inquiry?

MILES – She did. Interestingly, she said Dr Kelly told her he had gone to stay with some friends. He didn’t say a word about Weston-Super-Mare - nor was she asked at the Hutton Inquiry about that. Dr Kelly told his half-sister about the forthcoming select committee hearings but apparently expressed no concerns about them and Sarah Pape said he sounded normal.

SAM – So that’s in stark contrast to Mrs Kelly’s evidence. She said he was upset. 

MILES – True. I suppose you could say in her defence she was actually with her husband so would have been able to see his reaction to what was going on. Maybe he didn’t want to alarm his sister. 

SAM – Who else did Dr Kelly speak to when he was in Cornwall?

MILES – On the morning of Saturday the 10th of July he spoke to his daughter, Rachel. They agreed he would stay with her rather than going home when he returned from Cornwall, which he had resolved to do the next day, Sunday the 13th of July. She lived close to Oxford railway station and could get to London easily from there for the following week’s hearings so I suppose that’s why he agreed to stay with her. 

SAM – And what else do we know from the Hutton Inquiry about what happened on this day?

MILES – Well it’s very interesting. When discussing with Mrs Kelly at the Hutton Inquiry what she and her husband did on the 12th of July one of the only probing questions which James Dingemans – the barrister examining her - asked related to another tourist attraction, called the Eden Project. 

Having been told that the Kellys had visited this place Dingemans asked Mrs Kelly to describe it. Mrs Kelly replied to Dingemans as though reading from a tourist brochure. She said: “It is a huge quarry which has some biospheres in it with tropical and warm temperate plantings within.” Doesnt exactly trip off the tongue that sentence.

Dingemans asked if Dr Kelly enjoyed himself and Mrs Kelly said: “No. He seemed very grim, very unhappy, extremely tense, but accepting the process he was going through. He knew he would have to go forward the following week. I was trying to relax him. He was eating, he was drinking soft drinks but it was a very grim time for both of us. I have never, in all the Russian visits and all the difficulties he had in Iraq, where he had lots of discomforts, lots of horrors, guns pointing at him, munitions left lying around, I had never known him to be as unhappy as he was then.” 

So having heard this poignant but vivid description of Dr Kelly’s steely disposition, which clearly showed that in his wife’s opinion he had experienced much greater hardship and danger than most people in their day-to-day lives, Dingemans evidently wasn’t satisfied. 

Instead of asking Mrs Kelly to inform the Hutton Inquiry what sort of work her husband did which had put him in life-threatening situations in Russia and Iraq, thereby drawing out from her a fuller portrait of a man who was evidently used to being in complex and stressful situations and who therefore might not necessarily be the type of person to take his own life, Dingemans probed Mrs Kelly for more emotional details.

He asked if she could “feel his unhappiness?” 

Mrs Kelly answered: “It was tangible.” 

And as if those listening had still not got the message, Dingemans went on: “You could see it as well?” 

She replied: “Absolutely, palpable.”

SAM – So Dingemans squandered this valuable opportunity to show that Dr Kelly was not, in fact, the weak, middle-ranking civil servant he had been portrayed as but was actually a man who had risked his own safety in the name of his country by involving himself in incredibly dangerous situations overseas?

MILES – Right.

SAM – Why would Dingemans do this?

MILES – Well, first of all I should think it was understood that details of Dr Kelly’s working life should not be made public. And second, it looks like Dingemans emphasised Dr Kelly’s allegedly fragile state of mind because it fed into the narrative of his suicidal disposition.

SAM – Did he ask more questions about Saturday the 12th of July?

MILES – Yes. He asked what else the Kellys had done and Mrs Kelly said she wasn’t sure.

SAM – But you managed to find out.

MILES – Yes, I spoke to the aforementioned John Dabbs. He wasn’t called to give evidence to the Hutton Inquiry but he and his wife, Pamela, were both required to give a witness statement to Thames Valley Police. 

SAM – So the Dabs’ were their hosts in Cornwall. What did John Dabbs have to say to you?

MILES – He told me that the Kellys visited him and his wife by arrangement for a couple of hours on that Saturday afternoon at their house. The Kellys arrived at about 4 o’clock. 

SAM – Had he ever met Dr Kelly before?

MILES – No. But his wife had met Mrs Kelly. They were in the kitchen and Mr Dabbs and Dr Kelly were alone for about an hour and had an open conversation.

SAM – Do we know what was said?

MILES - He confirmed that Dr Kelly spoke to him about the situation he was in but he told Dr Kelly that he would keep what was said between them confidential, so he would not elaborate on exactly what was told to him. To be clear: Mr Dabbs offered to keep their conversation secret. It’s not that Dr Kelly asked him to.

SAM – So you don’t know exactly what they discussed?

MILES – No, I don’t. Mr Dabbs refuses to talk about it. But it is just as interesting to me that Mr and Mrs Dabbs were not even mentioned at the Hutton Inquiry. It shows how insufficient it was. Not only was Mr Dabbs one of the last people to speak to Dr Kelly in a social context, just five days before he disappeared, but he was also truly independent and he or his wife could potentially have provided vital testimony about Dr Kelly’s state of mind, about his mood and behaviour, and about the conversational areas they covered. Yet Hutton didn’t call them. 

Mr and Mrs Dabbs unwittingly played a small but important role during Dr Kelly's last week alive. They showed him friendship and listened to his problems at a time when, according to his wife, he was near his wits’ end. They also supported his wife, whose trust in them appears to have been absolute. And yet for reasons unknown, they were essentially written out of the script by Hutton and by Janice Kelly.

SAM – Did Mrs Kelly see the Dabs’ again?

MILES – Yes, she saw them twice more in Cornwall after Dr Kelly had headed back home, so it is even more bizarre that all of her contact with them was expunged from her account. 

And jumping forward in time, Mr Dabbs also told me that Mrs Kelly rang him at about 6am on Friday 18 July – just three hours before her husband’s body was found at Harrowdown Hill – to see if Dr Kelly had returned to Cornwall and was staying with Mr and Mrs Dabbs. Surely this proves they were at the front of Mrs Kelly’s mind throughout this time. Yet they were written out of the script. 

SAM - Do you know anything about what happened to the statements Mr and Mrs Dabbs gave to the police?

MILES – Mr Dabbs told me the police drove from Oxfordshire to see him and his wife on 28 July, three days before the Hutton Inquiry got under way. Their statements were then passed to inquiry officials but were never released publicly.

SAM – So there is no doubt the Hutton Inquiry was aware of the existence of Mr and Mrs Dabbs?

MILES – No doubt. But just as with Dr Kelly’s cribbage team, they were not called as witnesses.

SAM – What did the Dabbs’ tell the police in their statements, do you know?

MILES – John Dabbs told me that when the police initially rang him, they were very interested to know about any telephone conversations which he or his wife might have had with the Kellys. But when they arrived to take their statements a day or two later, no more about this was said. Mr Dabbs offered to show the police around the property where the Kellys had stayed in case they found something important there. The officers accepted this offer but, according to Mr Dabbs, showed virtually no interest when they got there, merely putting their heads around the door in a cursory fashion. Mr Dabbs had already checked the place over himself as soon as he heard about Dr Kelly’s death but found nothing of relevance there. 

SAM – What did he say about the official interview?

MILES – He said he and his wife were interviewed separately He had expected to be asked questions about Dr Kelly’s mental state but there were none. He didn’t reveal to the police the contents of his private chat with Dr Kelly and he was told he might be called to the Hutton Inquiry but obviously he never was. 

SAM – Miles, what’s your impression of the relevance of all of this?

MILES – Well I do not understand why Janice Kelly’s evidence about Cornwall was so vague. I would like to know why James Dingemans was so fixated on getting Mrs Kelly to talk about the allegedly fragile mental state of her husband when there were so many other things she could have talked about. Anyone would think it mattered greatly to James Dingemans to prove that Dr Kelly had perhaps been on the brink of suicide at this point in a way that even raising with Mrs Kelly her and her husband’s visit to Mr and Mrs Dabbs was not. 

SAM – And does Mr Dabbs think there should have been a coroner’s inquest into Dr Kelly’s death?

MILES – Last time I spoke to him he said he thought so, yes.

 

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SAM - In the next episode we explore the scene where Dr Kelly was found. And with conflicting eyewitness accounts further confusion is thrown on the idea that Dr Kelly had indeed taken his own life on Harrowdown Hill.