The final episode revisits key parts of the story as Miles shares his thoughts on what may have really happened to Dr Kelly on the day he went missing.
The final episode revisits key parts of the story as Miles shares his thoughts on what may have really happened to Dr Kelly on the day he went missing.
SAM – In this final episode we’re going to look at the concluding points relating to the David Kelly affair and also some of the more recent events surrounding the case. Miles, you’ve studied this story in such detail for such a long time. What are your concluding thoughts?
MILES – First, I would like to say: had Tony Blair’s government acted responsibly, and been willing to do the right thing by Dr Kelly, a coroner’s inquest would have been held by now and the need to look at this case again probably wouldn’t exist. It is very important to bear that in mind at all times.
But as that didn’t happen, first let’s talk about the timeline of events associated with the death of Dr Kelly.
It is so strange as to be almost unbelievable. From an aeroplane thousands of miles away from Oxfordshire Tony Blair ordered Lord Falconer to set up a public inquiry into what Blair says he was immediately told was a “suspected suicide” even though, officially, neither of them had any accurate knowledge as to how Dr Kelly had died and no medical professional had examined his body. This decision was made less than an hour after Dr Kelly’s body was found and Lord Hutton was appointed less than three hours after the body was found. The public has never been told on what basis Blair made this unprecedented decision.
SAM – And you think that had a direct and significant consequence as it removed the Oxfordshire coroner from any conclusive involvement in the matter of Dr Kelly’s death.
MILES – That’s right. So the question is, did Tony Blair act on something other than a mere hunch?
SAM – What other points do you think ought to be considered?
MILES – I find it odd that Thames Valley Police invested so many resources and such significant manpower looking for Dr Kelly within minutes of hearing of his disappearance. Officially, he failed to return home from a short walk. But there was no tangible evidence that anything untoward had happened to him. And yet somebody ensured that the police went to very great lengths, as soon as he was reported missing, to carry out a full-scale and very public search. It seems hard to believe that any other 59-year-old man’s disappearance would have been given the same importance so quickly. So why did Lord Hutton decide NOT to hear evidence at his inquiry from Sgt Simon Morris, who led the initial hunt for Dr Kelly? That was a very surprising decision.
SAM – So what all this comes down to is that you, and many others, have a problem with the public having to accept that Dr Kelly took his own life.
MILES – Well based on the available evidence, I think there are far too many inconsistencies attached to the suicide finding for me to be able to accept it. It’s very unlikely that any coroner would conclude that Dr Kelly left his house on the afternoon of 17 July 2003 with the sole intention of taking his own life and then did so. What man of science, with his level of knowledge of human anatomy, would choose one of the least effective available methods of killing himself if he truly wanted to do so?
SAM – And I know you find the method itself and the goings on at the scene itself problematic.
MILES – There’s the dispute over how much blood Dr Kelly lost, and the confusion of how many pills he allegedly swallowed, plus the fact that it was never firmly established what time he died. All of this makes the official account look even shakier.
SAM – OK so let me ask you - why do you think the government didn’t want to have a coroner’s inquest?
MILES – My best guess is that if the Oxfordshire coroner Nicholas Gardiner had been allowed to do his duty, as he seemingly wanted to do, he would not have been able to determine exactly how Dr Kelly died or what his true intentions were. Therefore, he would have reached an open verdict, where a cause of death cannot be established. This uncertainty would have been the government’s worst nightmare, of course, which would explain why Gardiner was moved aside and replaced by Hutton.
SAM – And it follows, as far as you are concerned, that by setting up the Hutton Inquiry, the government used a handpicked official to draw a very definite line under the affair.
MILES – Undoubtedly. It meant the government was able to survive intact.
SAM – So let’s talk about what might have happened to Dr Kelly. Do you think he was murdered?
MILES – I have to be very careful how I answer this question. I’ve already said I don’t think there’s enough evidence to support the idea he took his own life. That means he was either murdered or he died of natural causes – in other words, he had a heart attack or seizure of some kind, perhaps during an official meeting or some type of interrogation or interview. Only a coroner’s inquest could help to establish this.
If such speculation is considered unhelpful, please remember: it’s the Blair government’s fault for being so secretive and for leaving this matter so untidily.
SAM – OK, so if we were to take suicide out of the equation and we have a choice between murder or natural causes. What would you say if you were pushed to say one way or another?
MILES – Well, all I will say is that a greater emphasis could be placed on Dr Kelly’s coronary heart disease, as mentioned by Dr Hunt during his post mortem. This condition also features on Dr Kelly’s death certificate as having contributed to his death.
SAM – So you would tend to think natural causes rather than murder?
MILES – I think it is incredibly difficult to prove a murder based on what we know but I am keeping an open mind. But as I say, I do not think he took his own life in the manner officially found.
I think back to the evidence Mrs Kelly gave at the Hutton Inquiry when she talked about the afternoon on which her husband disappeared. She recounted what had happened during the first 30 minutes after he had left their house to go for a walk. She had vomited earlier that day and was recuperating on a sofa at home. She said that she remembered having to get up to answer the front door more than once. She said: “There were a few callers at the front door. I answered those [sic] and had a short chat with each of them.”
Amazingly, nothing more about these callers was asked or said at the Hutton Inquiry. Who were they? Hutton certainly showed a stunning lack of interest in finding out. But note Mrs Kelly’s use of the term “callers”. She didn’t refer to them as friends, or neighbours, or indeed in any descriptive sense, suggesting that these “callers” were not necessarily known to her. I would like to know more about them.
I also think back to the door-to-door inquiries which the police made in the locality following Dr Kelly’s death. They ,ade 167. Nobody who was out and about in the area of Southmoor and Longworth that afternoon saw him.
I think back to the apparent theft of his dental records which must have taken place before Dr Kelly’s body was found by the two volunteer searchers on Friday 18 July.
When I think about all of the inconsistencies in this case, alternative theories are very compelling.
SAM – What other inconsistencies are you talking about?
MILES - As previously mentioned, several items were found with Dr Kelly’s body on the morning of 18 July. They were: his glasses, mobile phone, watch, key fob, knife, pill packets and the Evian water bottle. Years after the Hutton Inquiry ended the police admitted in Freedom of Information responses that in-house tests showed Dr Kelly’s fingerprints were not found on six of these items. The seventh item, the keys, were not, in fact, subject to any fingerprint tests. And yet, no gloves were found with Dr Kelly’s body at Harrowdown Hill. The police knew about this lack of fingerprints at the time the Hutton Inquiry was going on and so, presumably, did Hutton. Yet the fact that the tests had been carried out went unmentioned at the inquiry, the results weren’t mentioned either.
The police claim it is normal that no prints were recovered, for the simple reason that prints on any item exposed to the elements can be harder to detect. But even if this is true, would it not have been transparent for Thames Valley Police to have alerted the public to the lack of prints at some point? Or did keeping this fact secret help to support the suicide story? Surely a coroner would have bothered to find out before reaching any definite conclusions.
Separately, DNA tests were carried out on one of the three pill packets, the watch and the glasses. The glasses returned a negative DNA result, which is considered unusual given their continuous proximity to Dr Kelly’s skin until he removed them. A “full profile” of Dr Kelly was obtained from the watch and the pill packet, but this unspecified DNA evidence - which could have been blood, sweat or hair - does not explain the lack of fingerprints on any of the items found with his body. Again, the fact that these tests had been conducted was never mentioned at the Hutton Inquiry.
SAM – In your book you run though some other peculiarities that have emerged since Dr kelly’s death. What are they?
MILES - The first is that in 2006 Lord Hutton attended the retirement dinner of ACC Michael Page and Hutton gave a speech in his honour. Given that these two men are understood not to have known each other before the Hutton Inquiry began, and were of contrasting backgrounds and ages, Hutton’s presence at this event certainly surprised some who attended.
SAM – What else?
MILES - This point is altogether more bizarre. It relates to a semi-literate email disclosed to the Hutton Inquiry by Thames Valley Police. They apparently received it shortly after Dr Kelly’s death. It’s dated 31 July 2003 and it would appear to be the work of a crank or parodist because it was written using a bizarre typeface of varying sizes more commonly associated with a poison pen letter, with some characters highlighted in bold. This heavily redacted message alleged there was a link between Dr Kelly’s death and what it described as “The World’s Worst Paedophile Ring”, some members of which, it claimed, were present at the “murder” of Dr Kelly. The author of this very strange document emphasised that Dr Kelly was not a member of this group and requested that anyone wanting further information should “consult the Federal Bureau of Investigation in China, Asia”.
Some people have speculated not on the document itself, which can easily be dismissed as nonsense, but on the reason why it was made public at all. Of the thousands of documents on the Hutton Inquiry website, it appears to be the only one which strays into anything approaching such absurd, conspiratorial territory. What on earth was it doing there? Who decided it should be submitted and made public – particularly when so many documents on the site have been redacted? There is a theory that it was included in order that someone senior connected to the Hutton Inquiry would be reminded to ‘do his duty’. I can say no more than that.
Another peculiarity involves Alastair Campbell and Cherie Blair. In May 2006 they autographed a copy of the Hutton Report which was sold for £400 at a Labour Party fundraising event. Neither Campbell nor Mrs Blair has ever tried to justify their actions – presumably because they never expected the public to find out.
SAM – What do you read into this?
MILES – I think this was in incredibly bad taste and really quite despicable. Others must decide for themselves whether what they did demonstrated bad taste or reflected something more sinister.
Mrs Blair’s link to this stunt is all the more remarkable given that in 2004 two years before the autograph incident - she and Tony Blair invited Janice Kelly and her three daughters to the prime minister’s country residence, Chequers. And in her memoir, published four years AFTER the autograph incident, she had the brass neck to write that the invitation to Chequers had been issued QUOTE “to say personally how very sorry we were about what had happened.”
SAM – What about Campbell? We should mention that he resigned from his job in the government in August 2003 as a direct result of the Gilligan affair.
MILES – Well six years after the autograph incident, in 2012, he published a book in which he wrote: “I never met David Kelly, but I think about him often, and whether I could have done anything differently that might have stopped him from taking his own life. With the exception of the deaths of family and close friends, the day his body was found was perhaps the worst of my life, certainly the worst of my time with TB [Tony Blair]…The feelings I had then are among the reasons why, despite staying involved, and going back to help in two general elections, I have never really wanted to return to a full-time position in the front line of politics.”
Now, this could be interpreted as Campbell saying that the Dr Kelly affair continues to haunt him. Certainly anybody who has watched an edition of BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, first broadcast in February 2011, in which Campbell had a panic attack live on air while attempting to explain to Marr how the ‘intelligence’ surrounding WMD had come to be would consider this possibility seriously. Whatever caused Dr Kelly’s tragic death, there are many reasons why Campbell should continue to feel guilt over it.
SAM – And have you ever discussed the case with the coroner Nicholas Gardiner? The man who you think should have been allowed to conduct an inquiry.
MILES - I once went to see him and I asked him why, in his opinion, Hutton had recommended in 2003 that all of the records relating to Dr Kelly’s death, including the photographs of his body, should have been secretly classified for 70 years.
Usually only the most sensitive documents remain closed for more than 30 years. Examples include murder files, which stay hidden until the victim’s youngest child is aged 100 in order to protect them from distressing information. Gardiner said I’d have to ask Hutton.
I persisted with my question, mindful not only that Dr Kelly’s youngest children were aged 30 when he died, and would therefore be aged 100 when the remaining records and photographs relating to his death can be disclosed; but also that the records will not be available to view until 2073, when everybody with a clear memory of the Dr Kelly affair will most likely be dead themselves. Gardiner looked at me and without hesitating replied: “As you said, anybody concerned will be dead by then, and that’s quite clearly Lord Hutton’s intention.”
SAM – What else has happened more recently?
MILES – In early August 2017 I was contacted by someone who told me that Dr Kelly’s remains had recently been exhumed in the dead of night from the churchyard of St Mary’s in the village of Longworth and the headstone on Dr Kelly’s grave had also been removed. This had happened exactly 14 years to the month after his death.
SAM – That’s obviously very unusual. What do you know about it?
MILES – It is highly unusual for this to have happened and it’s very difficult legally to have anybody’s remains exhumed. From what I can gather it is more likely from a legal perspective that Dr Kelly’s family asked for this to happen. Apparently his remains were cremated.
SAM - And what does that mean for the future of this case?
MILES - If Dr Kelly’s remains were cremated in 2017, it is worth saying three things. First, the form which must be completed before a licence to exhume human remains can be issued specifically asks whoever makes the application: “Do you know of any person (relative or otherwise) who may object to the proposal to remove the remains or is likely to do so?” If this question is answered positively, the details of the objector must be listed. Assuming this question was answered in the case of Dr Kelly, it has been confirmed to me that the public is not allowed to know how it was answered or what consideration was given to it by the Diocese of Oxford, the Church of England’s administrative office for Oxfordshire which oversaw the exhumation. The deputy registrar of the Diocese, Darren Oliver, wrote to me in November 2017 stating that it had been decided that “it would not be in the public interest” for copies of the exhumation application to be disclosed. I was invited by the Diocese to embark on a legal journey to apply to see the forms, but this would cost money and time and would offer no guarantee of a positive response.
The second thing to say is it is clear that there are a great many people who would have objected to Dr Kelly’ remains being cremated, if that is what happened to them. For by destroying his remains, the opportunity to carry out any required forensic tests in future has been lost.
Thirdly, on an altogether more personal note, Dr Kelly converted to the Baha’i faith a few years before his death. Not only does this faith strictly oppose suicide, but it also strongly encourages its followers to be buried and not cremated. The uncomfortable question must therefore be asked: did Dr Kelly’s family go against his (assumed) beliefs by exhuming his remains and disposing of them in the way that was reported?
SAM – Are there any other developments you think ought to be mentioned.
MILES – We’ve talked about how Dr Kelly’s family have maintained a strict silence when it comes to discussing him. So I think it’s worth adding that his half-sister, Sarah Pape, did once talk about it.
A vascular surgeon called John Scurr – who incidentally does not believe it possible that Dr Kelly died in the manner officially found – contacted me in 2018 to tell me that Sarah Pape - herself a leading plastic surgeon - rang him shortly after Hutton published his report in January 2004 to say she didn’t believe Dr Kelly took his life.
Scurr said she clearly had concerns about whether Dr Kelly could have died from slashing his wrist. He said they had an in-depth conversation about it..
I think Scurr’s claim is doubly significant because Sarah Pape gave evidence to the Hutton Inquiry but on that occasion didnt say anything about her doubts.
SAM – What else did Scurr tell you?
MILES – He said that Sarah Pape doubted whether her brother could have taken his life on a personal and a medical level.
Scurr is an expert in arteries and veins doesn’t believe it’s possible to die from simply cutting your ulnar artery. He thinks Dr Kelly may have had a heart attack and this was covered up for some reason. He talked to me about the relative absence of blood at the scene and the fact that a blunt knife was used and he said these are really significant things. He said the way the cuts had been made and the location of those cuts suggests that somebody else took the knife and actually slashed Dr Kelly’s wrist taking the stroke across the ulnar artery.
SAM - So Miles, my last question to you is this. Why do you think it’s important to keep pursuing the truth in this case all these years later?
MILES - I think the law was subverted in this case. I think its wrong that a lower standard of proof was required to investigate Dr Kelly’s death. I think the inquiry into his death was insubstantial and confusing, perhaps deliberately so. And if asked I wouldn’t say based on the available evidence he intended to take his own life and then did so. So the question is how did he die and that should only be answered in the proper setting of a coroner’s court.
END