An Inconvenient Death - Episode 9

The penultimate episode concentrates on how public pressure led to a government review of the case in 2010, 7 years after Dr Kelly’s death. Would the review lead to a proper inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death or would it become another establishment whitewash?

Transcript

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An Inconvenient Death – Podcast Episode 9 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 – So Miles, I know that from the year 2009, quite a few doctors and politicians and others began to speak out more prominently about the Kelly case, and it was this activity which ultimately triggered the decision by Dominic Grieve, who became the Attorney General in 2010, to review the entire case. What can you tell us about this?

MILES – Quite a few senior medical professionals did, as you say, raise questions about the case. They drew on their collective expertise in human anatomy. They focussed on the ulnar artery, rejecting the idea that Dr Kelly bled to death, and lobbying for a full coroner’s inquest to take place. 

SAM – What were their specific arguments?

MILES – Really just that according to the evidence given by Dr Hunt to the Hutton Inquiry, Dr Kelly’s blood would have quickly clotted, this would have stemmed the flow and would therefore have prevented his death. 

They said blood clots would have formed in the wound, but also within the narrowed artery. That clotting within the artery would have happened more quickly because the cutting was done with considerable trauma. This would have caused more damage to the lining membrane. Damage to the cells hastens clotting within the vessel.

SAM – And wasn’t it these doctors who told you about Lord Hutton’s secret recommendation that all medical and scientific reports relating to Dr Kelly’s death should be classified for 70 years?

MILES – Yes, I was told about it by them in January 2010 and I wrote about it in the Mail on Sunday. During their efforts to use legal means to force a coroner’s inquest to be held, the local authority in Oxfordshire had explained that this embargo had taken place.

SAM – What did you make of this embargo?

MILES – I was baffled. 

Within 24 hours of my publishing that story, Hutton released a statement explaining his decision and revealing that he had written to the Ministry of Justice making clear that he was, after all, happy for the doctors to see the post mortem papers that had previously been denied them. This amounted to the embargo on this one document being lifted.

Hutton sought to distance himself from the idea that there was anything secret about his embargo. But if he had had nothing to hide in the first place, why did he not simply state in his report that he had made the 70-year recommendation?

SAM – So this detail emerged almost seven years after Dr Kelly died, what happened next?

MILES – In May 2010, Dominic Grieve was appointed as Attorney-General and the doctors began preparing a formal submission in which they set out the reasons why they felt Dr Kelly’s death should be subject to a full coroner’s inquest. As Attorney-General, Grieve had the power, having considered the case, to apply to the High Court in London for an inquest to be held. 

Another group of doctors – many of them eminent in their field - also called for a detailed investigation of all the medical circumstances of Dr Kelly's death via an inquest.

SAM – So pressure was mounting.

MILES – Pressure was definitely mounting and Mai Pederson who we talked about in the previous episode, she added her name to these calls for an inquest.

SAM – We’ll come back to the events of 2010 in a minute but before we do, one aspect that we haven’t discussed in any depth relates to Dr Kelly’s mental state and his mental health in general. What can you tell us about that?

MILES – Well as far as we know he had no history of suicide attempts, or drugs or alcohol abuse, or financial worries or psychiatric disorders. And a leading expert in suicide, Professor Colin Pritchard from Southampton University's School of Medicine, wrote to me and said that in his opinion there was nothing in the evidence given to the Hutton Inquiry to suggest Dr Kelly had any “intent” to commit suicide. This means that in his opinion a coroner would not return a suicide finding in the case of Dr Kelly. And interestingly, intent was an area that Hutton had not even mentioned. So again, while the public were meant to believe that the Hutton Inquiry was a replacement inquest, here is another example of how it was not actually like an inquest as this key area of intent was never explored.

SAM – And we know that Dr Kelly had planned to see his daughter on the evening of his death, what do you make of that?

MILES – I find that very odd. And Professor Pritchard found it strange that on the morning of the day of his death he received some positive emails too. The professor also told me, having studied the Hutton Inquiry, that according to the available evidence it states categorically that Dr Kelly was not or had not previously been mentally ill. He said a major factor in suicide is mental illness and that the crucial thing is that if you read the Hutton Inquiry there is no evidence to suggest he intended to kill himself. There was nothing in the psychiatric evidence to indicate intent. He said a coroner's inquest would therefore record an open verdict.

SAM – But I know from the transcripts that a Professor of Psychiatry at Oxford University, Prof Keith Hawton, did give evidence at the Hutton Inquiry as an expert witness?

MILES – He did, he gave evidence twice. But on neither occasion did Hutton ask Prof Hawton the simple but vital question - whether, in his “expert opinion”, he thought Dr Kelly had killed himself. This meant Professor Hawton was never required to deliver a formal opinion to Hutton in the way he might have had to do in a coroner’s court. 

SAM – So what did Hawton say to the inquiry?

MILES – He said he believed Dr Kelly suffered from “severe loss of self-esteem” at the time of his death but not depression. He said: “There is certainly no evidence that he had significant mental illness, either at the time of his death or previously.” 

SAM – Another important point to mention is that Dr Kelly left no note of intent either. Is this considered strange for a family man of 59 years of age?

MILES - Professor Hawton said older people considering suicide might show evidence of planning such as saving up medication, or deliberately obtaining a specific method for the act, obviously seeking out a place to carry out the act, or changing their will.

SAM – Do you know about Dr Kelly’s will?

MILES – It was drawn up in November 1998 and he did not change it before he died. He didn’t take any medication either so he couldn’t stockpile it as Hawton suggested. 

SAM – How common is it not to leave a note of intent?

MILES - Hawton said between 40 and 50 per cent of people who die leave a suicide note or a suicide message and this was taken at the Hutton Inquiry as evidence that the majority of people therefore do not leave a note but I don’t think that statistic proves anything either way. You can’t generalise. No two suicides are the same after all. 

The question that is more pertinent to ask is: Would Dr Kelly really have killed himself while knowing that his much loved soon to be married daughter was finishing work and expecting to see him, expecting to meet him? In fact, they were to have been together close to the spot where, we are to believe, he had perhaps already taken his life.

SAM - OK, so now we’re going to cover some rather sensitive territory but it’s vital to look at it. It’s to do with the commonly held belief that suicide can run in families. At the Hutton Inquiry it was mentioned that Dr Kelly’s mother apparently took her own life when he was 19 years old. But Professor Hawton chose to dismiss the possibility that Dr Kelly would have been suicidal as a result of this didn’t he?

MILES – Yes, Dr Kelly was a student at Leeds University at the time. It was in 1964. Interestingly, although Dr Kelly told his wife that he believed his mother had taken an overdose, the coroner who investigated her death recorded an open verdict. He attributed the death to a chest infection as a result of barbiturate poison.

SAM – Is anything known about what the wider Kelly family believe may have happened? 

MILES – His relatives have never really said anything much publicly about his death but a distant cousin of his, a former nurse called Wendy Wearmouth, has told me she is sceptical of the official finding. She told me she felt wrist slashing and painkillers represent a cry for help if anything. She said to me: If you knew the man it’s totally against his whole way of being. He doesn’t fall into a category of someone who would commit suicide…”

SAM – And I know his religious views played a large part in this conclusion. As we mentioned in the last episode, Dr Kelly had recently converted to the Baha’i faith. Is this a relevant factor?

MILES – Well Mai Pederson, who played such a key role in his conversion to the Ba’Hai faith, certainly thinks so. We’ve talked before about an interview she gave to a British newspaper in 2008. In that interview she also said she knew Dr Kelly had been “upset” by the Gilligan episode but she said he was not devastated. Apparently he told Pederson he was misquoted and his words were twisted and taken out of context. She said he wasn’t depressed, he was upset. And she spoke as someone who had taken courses on suicide prevention. In her opinion he exhibited none of the signs. He was planning for his retirement and wanted to make more money to provide for his family and he’d had job offers in America as well as Europe. And he was excited that his daughter [Rachel] was getting married. He said, ‘The controversy will blow over.’”

According to Pederson Dr Kelly believed his mother did commit suicide and didn’t want to inflict that on his own family, not least because of his new religion, which expressly forbids suicide. Pederson said he told her he would never commit suicide, he could never hurt his wife and daughters the way that he was hurt by his mother’s death.

SAM – So moving back to 2010 and by the summer of that year I know you had written quite a few articles about the David Kelly case and these had contributed to it rising up the news agenda again.

MILES – Yes, that’s right. People certainly started talking about it again and public scepticism was mounting. And then I remember something odd happening. It now appears that some kind of pro-Hutton fightback was under way. On 16 August 2010 a vascular surgeon called Michael Gaunt, who had never previously been associated with the Dr Kelly affair in any way, and hasn't since, gave an interview to the BBC in which he stated he had reviewed “the transcripts of the Hutton Inquiry and the post mortem report.” 

I don’t know how Mr Gaunt came to be invited to comment on the case, but he told the BBC that he was happy with the official finding. 

But more to the point – I don’t know how he obtained a copy of the post mortem report. At that time it was still a restricted document which was not in the public domain. Hutton had said seven months previously that he would be happy for the group of campaigning doctors to see it but they still hadn’t had access to it. 

This man Michael Gaunt would not have been allowed to see it without the authorisation of the coroner, Nicholas Gardiner. He says he was sent a copy by a national newspaper. But who was responsible for handing out this sensitive information to a newspaper? And why was this newspaper content to be used so that it was, essentially, acting as the mouthpiece of those who wanted to bolster the idea that Dr Kelly had killed himself? These are questions I simply have no answer for,

What is clear is that Gaunt seemed happy to take to the airwaves at this time to reinforce the official version of events in what appears to have been nothing more than a crude public relations exercise to try to silence the doctors.

It didn’t end there. On 22 August 2010 Dr Nicholas Hunt then confronted the growing criticism of the findings of his autopsy on Dr Kelly, which had proved so influential in leading Hutton to his conclusion. 

SAM - What did Hunt say?

MILES - He gave an interview to the Sunday Times in which he referred to Dr Kelly’s death as a “textbook” case of suicide and graphically explained that he had found “big, thick clots of blood inside [his] sleeve, which came down over the wrist, and a lot of blood soaked into the ground.” 

Not only was it professionally unorthodox of Hunt to discuss his post mortem of Dr Kelly with a newspaper reporter – something expressly forbidden by his regulatory body, the General Medical Council - but Hunt had made no mention of these clots at the Hutton Inquiry or in his post mortem report, which merely stated that there was “heavy blood staining over the left arm, including that part which was over the jacket sleeve.” 

So again, why was he bringing this new information to light in such an unusual way?

Hunt also told the paper that two of Dr Kelly's main coronary arteries were 70-80% narrower than normal – a figure not included in his post mortem report - and that his heart disease so severe that he could have “dropped dead” at any minute. He said: “If you have narrower arteries, your ability to withstand blood loss falls dramatically. Your heart also becomes more vulnerable to anything that could cause it to become unstable, such as stress - which I have no doubt he was under massively.” 

If true, and as already mentioned, it was peculiar that this condition, known as artherosclerosis, had not been picked up two weeks before Dr Kelly’s death, when he underwent a medical at the behest of the MoD ahead of his planned trip to Iraq. Hunt seemed to use his Sunday Times interview to make more of Dr Kelly’s heart condition than he had done either in his post mortem report or during the evidence he gave to the Hutton Inquiry. 

SAM – And when the case started to be discussed again in 2010, where was Lord Hutton in all this?

MILES – His feathers seemed to have been ruffled. In what now appears to have been a pre-emptive strike, on 3 September 2010 he wrote a letter to then-Attorney General Dominic Grieve headed “The death of Dr Kelly” stating that he had “asked to have a meeting with the Lord Chancellor [Kenneth Clarke] on his return from holiday.” Hutton had clearly already prepared for this meeting, for he had written fairly extensive notes covering what he thought were the key eight points addressing the perceived failures of his inquiry. The purpose of the letter was to share these points with Grieve as well. He quoted extensively from witnesses’ testimony to his inquiry as a way of trying to explain how he had reached his conclusion that Dr Kelly had died by his own hand. 

SAM - And at the same time the group of doctors were also working through the evidence.

MILES - Yes and in September 2010 the doctors submitted their aforementioned memorial to Dominic Grieve. It said there was “serious doubt” that sufficient evidence was available at the time of the “hastily conducted” Hutton Inquiry to reach the conclusion that Dr Kelly deliberately killed himself by cutting his wrist and swallowing some painkillers, as his death certificate suggests, and described scrutiny of the medical evidence as “unacceptably limp”. Nicholas Hunt’s Sunday Times interview was also criticised as being inconsistent with the evidence he gave to Hutton. The doctors further used the memorial to query from where Dr Kelly had got the coproxamol he had apparently taken, why his blood and stomach contained a non-lethal amount of the painkiller, they questioned why the police helicopter failed to locate his body on the night it searched for him and why no fingerprints were found on the knife apparently used to slit his wrist. Falconer’s dual role in ordering the inquiry as Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and then as Lord Chancellor declaring himself satisfied with its findings was also raised as a concern, as was the fact that Hutton, a man with no previous coronial experience, was placed in charge of pronouncing on Dr Kelly’s death. 

SAM - I have a section of the memorial here. It reads “The Hutton Inquiry was manifestly relatively powerless and lacking investigative bite when compared to its statutory equivalent or coronial proceedings. The evidence provided by witnesses was not tested in the normal way through cross-examination by the representatives of other properly interested persons to the proceedings. Evidence was accepted, with minor clarifications only, at face value and without challenge - just one flaw in the procedural framework of the Hutton Inquiry which had the consequence of rendering the Inquiry insufficient in its breadth, reach and thoroughness.” The report concluded: “It is necessary and desirable in the interests of justice for there to be a fresh, full inquest into Dr Kelly’s death before a different coroner.”

SAM - So what happened when the doctors’ memorial landed on the attorney general’s desk?

MILES - By the time Grieve received this document, he had already begun to gather information from those parties he considered relevant to the question of whether Dr Kelly’s death had been properly investigated in accordance with the law. 

While he did so, in October 2010 the government decided to publish Dr Kelly’s post mortem report and the toxicology reports into his death. 

Now this was a curious decision – and, arguably, a smokescreen. By appearing to release into the public domain more information – some of it highly personal about Dr Kelly in a physical sense - than had initially been requested by the doctors, it allowed the government to say it had gone above and beyond the call of duty in being as transparent and thorough in informing the public about Dr Kelly’s death. So it looked very much like an attempt to silence the clamour for an inquest.

In fact, publishing the post mortem still meant that some key questions were not answered. And furthermore, it did nothing to quell the doctors’ desire for a proper inquest to take place. For example, the reports offered no more insight into the direction of the cuts on Dr Kelly’s wrist; there was no evidence that Dr Kelly’s body had been tested for more exotic drugs like ricin; there was no independent verification of the blood test results; and Dr Allan’s testing of Dr Kelly’s blood had been confined to just one site sampling – the heart blood – even though four other sites samples were available. So the doctors found what they regarded as numerous holes in the post mortem and toxicology reports.

SAM - And was any action taken about their concerns?

MILES - In December 2010, three months after submitting their report to Dominic Grieve but having had no answer from him, the doctors published their report. By then, Grieve had launched what amounted to a mini inquiry of his own into the matter.

Within a few weeks, Grieve’s review had been completed. Grieve was to deliver his findings in the Commons on 9 June 2011. By coincidence, that morning Tony Blair was interviewed on the BBC1 Breakfast programme on an unrelated matter. At the end of the interview he was asked whether he would welcome a new inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death. Appearing uncomfortable at being asked about this.

Blair archive

SAM - I remember seeing that and how it completely threw Tony Blair.

MILES - Well it seemed to. But just a few hours later, Grieve announced that he had turned down the doctors’ request for an inquest, saying that in his opinion the evidence that he killed himself was “overwhelming” and rejecting claims there had been a “cover-up”. It was interesting to me he used the term  “conspiracy” twice during his statement, perhaps subtly smearing those who believed – and believe to this day – that Dr Kelly has been failed by successive British governments which have refused to allow his death to be examined in full by a coroner. Looked at one way, however, Grieve’s decision changed nothing. 

SAM – Was Grieve’s inquiry robust would you say?

MILES – No. Grieve appointed two medical professionals – Prof Richard Shepherd, a forensic pathologist, and Prof Robert Flanagan, a toxicologist - to review the evidence from the post mortem and toxicology reports. Neither of these two conducted further forensic tests themselves, they merely gave opinions based on information already in the public domain by re-reading the relevant records. Having done so, they reached conclusions which nobody was allowed to cross-examine. And many of the questions raised by the doctors in their petition for an inquest either were not answered or, if they were answered, they were not answered in the way they would have been at a coroner's inquest. 

SAM – Give us an idea of what you’re talking about.

MILES – Well there were questions about Dr Kelly’s weight, which could have had a bearing on calculating what time he died, as we’ve already mentioned. Hunt’s autopsy report states that Dr Kelly weighed 59kg, or 9 stone and 4 pounds. Yet at a medical 9 days before his death, Dr Kelly’s weight was recorded as being 74kg, or 11 stone and 6 pounds. In Grieve’s review of the case in 2011, he dismissed Hunt’s error over weight as a “moot” point. Richard Shepherd, the forensic pathologist who helped with Grieve’s review, blamed Dr Hunt’s miscalculation on faulty hospital scales, as though that was somehow an acceptable excuse. 

As Dr Kelly’s body was naked when it was weighed at the post mortem, Shepherd also tried to suggest that Dr Kelly might have been clothed when – nine days earlier - he was weighed during his Ministry of Defence medical at 74kg. Clothing, Shepherd reasoned, would have made him seem heavier. Shepherd further speculated that the loss of blood he suffered could account for the missing 15kg, or two stone and three pounds. On any logical basis this appears absurd. 15kg represented 20 per cent of Dr Kelly’s total body weight. Therefore, the public is being asked to believe that Dr Kelly lost more than two stone during the last nine days of his life. If this were true – because stress can trigger severe weight loss – why didn’t Shepherd just say so instead of introducing complicated and deeply unconvincing explanations?

Ultimately, the issues the doctors raised ought to have been explored in court proceedings, not under the umbrella of a government office. Once again the question had to be asked: why was there such reluctance to stage a full coroner’s inquest into Dr Kelly’s death? What had the authorities to fear from every relevant fact and every available witness being scrutinised under oath? 

SAM – So Grieve successfully blocked a proper inquest but didn’t one of the doctors keep campaigning for one? 

MILES – David Halpin who we’ve talked about before made a public plea for help in seeking permission at the High Court to launch a judicial review of Grieve’s decision not to grant an inquest. In the space of six weeks, 830 donors from all over the world gave £40,000 to Halpin’s fund to cover the cost of his legal fees.

Halpin’s legal challenge was not a review of the facts relating to Dr Kelly’s death or of the inconsistencies surrounding it. It was simply the only potential route left open to sustain the possibility of an inquest taking place. 

SAM - And how did Dr Halpin’s appeal go?

MILES - Frankly not very well. In December 2011 Halpin’s request was denied. The judge said he believed that Grieve had acted appropriately in turning down the original request for an inquest brought about by the memorial. Legally, at least, the matter had come to a full stop. 

Of course, this does not alter the fact that there has been no inquest into Dr Kelly’s death, neither does it change the fact that so many people find it highly improbable that he died in the manner officially found. 

SAM - In the next and final episode we go back through 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.