Kelly Death Paramedics Query Verdict (couldn't have died from wrist wound)

[DeepModem Mom]

UK Observer:
Kelly death paramedics query verdict

The Hutton inquiry found that the scientist caught in the storm over the 'sexed up' Iraq dossier committed suicide. Now, for the first time, the experienced ambulance crew who were among the first on the scene tell of their doubts about the decision. Special report by Antony Barnett

Sunday December 12, 2004


....The death would become one of the biggest news stories of the year, a tale of intrigue and confusion which would threaten the future of Tony Blair. Kelly was a government scientist who had been revealed as the source of a broadcast by BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan which questioned the veracity of the government's report on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is remembered for the allegation that Downing Street 'sexed up' the report to make the case for going to war against Iraq.

With Kelly's body lying in the woods and Blair facing political meltdown, the government announced the Hutton inquiry to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death. Its report said Kelly had died by 'bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist'. No shadow of a doubt.

Now the paramedics, two of the first people to see Kelly, want to question that judgment. In their first interviews about the death, they are not trying to spin conspiracy theories. They offer no alternative explanation for Kelly's death. They have decided to speak out so that information which they believe Hutton failed to emphasise is put into the public domain.

They have no answers to the questions they have been asking themselves over the past 12 months, but they seem certain of one thing: Kelly could not have died from the wound they saw on his left wrist in the woods that Friday morning....


http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1371976,00.html

[UL_Approved]

1. OMFG, this was THAT obvious?

Looks like Blair needs a no confidence vote for being so crude and amateur in his political aspirations. Not to mention imperialism and murder for his personal gain...

[Stella_Artois]

63. He was a Bahai

This from someone on another forum

"Speaking as probably the only Bahai on this forum, our Faith does not advocate suicide in any way, shape or form, describing it as taking a life that is not one's own to take... i.e. not allowed. Those who do commit suicide are, however, prayed for with the utmost pity as they must have done so under tremendous sadness, etc.

As such, I have always found it strange that a Bahai such as Dr. Kelly would commit suicide"

http://www.bahai.org/

[Ruffhowse]

2. I don't trust Blair at all anymore, ever since he became Bush's lap

poodle. I put him in the PINO category--Progressive in Name Only. He seemed to have a lot in common with Bill Clinton and it makes me suspect much about Clinton as well. Clinton's pushing through the GATT and NAFTA treaties really hurt this country. But then, I'm always suspicious of moderate Democrats.

[Zhade]

104. Greg Palast's work can give you other reasons not to like Blair.

NT!

[Nordic]

3. There must be photographs

somewhere, of the scene.

Man, I'm just shaking my head ..........

These people are just brazen ...........

[arikara]

4. I heard that ages ago

shortly after it happened, it was said that he couldn't have died from the little wound on his wrist... maybe the doctor that examined him, or maybe the paramedics. I forget where I read it though, and it never received much notice because the Blair government was spinning it like crazy.

[omulcol]

9. Death of Kelly ...

Some time ago I read an article written by an expert dealing with suicide who said it was almost impossible to die from a slashed wrist - unless the "victim" is immersed in cold water.
When a wrist is slashed the artery immediately dilates and muscles contract which stems blood flow - but the reverse effect occurs if the body is in cold water.
He states that virtually all successful wrist slash suicides are found in baths of cold water.

My memory on this subject is too vague to continue - so I'll try n find the link .

There were other strange events happeniing at the time of his death, in particular the sighting of two strangers dressed in black - ( Men in Black ! ) and of witnesss accounts proving Kelly's body had been re-positioned before the ambulance crew arrived.
Of the 27 - or 29 tablets missing from the prescription tabs, only One Half of a tablet was found in his stomach.
I often wonder exactly what Blair meant when he shouted to someone at No 10, " I want you to get rid of that man"!

Dr David Kelly loved his job. He loved visiting Iraq and was looking forward to returning --- but, more than anything else, was looking forward to his daughter's wedding.
Kelly would not, in my view, have contemplated suicide at such a time in his private life - or over such a trivial matter .
Perhaps his death was ultimately linked to the other 13 mysterious deaths of Microbiologists at the time ?

[DeepModem Mom]

10. The TV report I saw today addressed the repositioning of the body....

As I recall, the paramedics said that when the call came in, it was reported that the body was leaned up against a tree, maybe in a seated position, and when they arrived, it was lying flat on the ground, and not near a tree.

[omulcol]

12. Dr David Kelly

Couldn't find the original but here's one containing identical information.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0405/S00028.htm

[DeepModem Mom]

14. Thanks for the additional info, omulcol --

[omulcol]

18. Hi DeepMadem Mom :hi:

:toast: You're welcome !

[omulcol]

17. Apologies for making the error in

mentioning cold water. I should have stated Warm water.

Sorry !! :spank:

[AP]

5. I bet they have the same agents Clinton's Arkansas state troopers had.

$$$

[Brundle_Fly]

6. Well this is huge....

so it's probably the last we'll hear of it.

[zann725]

7. Sad, but true.

n/t

[Dr Fate]

40. Who is stopping a prominent Democrat form talking about it on TV?

n/t

[Xenus Sister]

58. Prominent Democrats (sigh) n/t

[ilovenicepeople]

65. What is a prominent Democrat?

I don't think I have seen one of those since Wellstone was Kellyed.

[xchrom]

8. kick

[NNN0LHI]

11. My bullshit meter was pegged when they said he died from a slit wrist n/t

[AP]

13. Speaking of BS, some things to keep in mind:

the paramedics say they expected to see blood everywhere. They say that there should have been (was it?) four to six pints of blood and that sometimes they see suicides whose blood spurts up to the ceiling.

Well, there was no ceiling here. He killed himself outside. Also, he probably killed himself at about 4 pm, and they found him at 10 am the next day. Here's an experiment: go out to the woods and pour 4-6 pints of milk on the grass (the analogy the paramedics use), come back 18 hours later (after it, no doubt, rained -- we're talking about the UK here) and let me know how much blood you see.

The article also makes a big deal about the drugs not being enough to kill him. But were they enough to relax his arteries and heart enough so that his wound would not have spurted so much?

Here's a book about the difference between murders and suicides: http://www.writing-world.com/mystery/suicide.shtml. See for yourself which pattern this follows.

Rolled up sleave, single wound, and took a lot of painkillers as part of the plan: that's what suicides do.

And also consider the context here. An election is coming up. People who think there's more money to be made for big corporations off of more chaos in the ME and off the middle and working class in the UK are going to want a more friendly PM, just as they did in the US vs Clinton. There are going to be lots of stories like this one, and lots of spin and innuendo.

[ClarkUSA]

20. What are you saying, AP? That Kelly's death was on the up-and-up?

You are contradicting quite a number of learned testimony and comments.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

23. I'm saying it. This was a suicide.

You people are doing exactly what the freepers did with Vince Foster. Even if the forest had been drenched in blood you'd be arguing that the spray patterns are utterly inconsistent with a self-inflicted wound. Whatever weird interaction of pills and wrist-slashing plus god knows what else--this was a real belt and suspenders guy--Kelly according to his wife, was blackly depressed and walked off into the woods of his own accord. He was a deeply private and very professional intelligence guy who'd just been busted running his mouth to a sleazy journalist. If you saw his demeanor in the prior few weeks you could tell he wasn't handling it well.

But the bigger point is this: what motive would Blair, or anyone, have for offing him? There's already twenty posts in this thread and no-one's offered a motive. Kelly had just testified that the BBC report was wrong, or at least couldn't have been based on his information. He was a card up the government's sleeve. Why would they kill him?

[omulcol]

26. Well ... remember that

Dr David Kelly was a hugely respected scientist who knew the exact situation regarding WMDs in Iraq.
If he knew there was nothing worth worrying about - while Bush & Blair were trying to convince the world we all were in mortal danger ... the last thing Blair wanted was a world authority on WMDs telling reporters his government were taking his reports ... and blowing them up out of all proportion... to gain support for the invasion of Iraq.

When Kelly testified at the inquiry it was clear to everyone he was a man of clear conviction unable to lie his way out of a situation. The whole government realised if anyone was going to crack and tell the world the real truth over Iraq ... it was going to be Dr Kelly. I don't think Blair was prepared to take this risk, taking into consideration the deal going on with the Bush Administration at the time. There were too many lies being dished out by both government sources to have Kelly blurting out the truth.
It was imperative Iraq was to be invaded ... reasons had to be found ... and Kelly was a threat to those plans.

[AP]

29. Kelly had ALREADY given all the information he could possibly give.

The story he told revealed that he was a private man who was very proud of his work, but who had been manipulated by people like Judith Miller and Gilligan.

[w4rma]

82. How do you know he gave all the information he could possible give?

I don't think that he did. Dr. Kelly was on the inside and could point fingers at specific people like noone else could.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

31. That doesn't fit the timeline

Kelly died after Iraq had been invaded, and also after it had come to light that WMD reports had been exaggerated. He knew no more or less than hundreds of other people in the intelligence services and what he did know he'd already blabbed to the press. That horse had already bolted. Besides, unlike those hundreds of others, Kelly was, by the time he died, a public figure. Bumping him off was certain to provoke a scandal. The morning the news broke that he was dead was probably the worst morning of Blair's tenure. He was on a foreign trip trying to shift public attention from the Iraq post-mortem and instead he had to answer questions at a joint press-conference about whether he felt he had Kelly's blood on his hands. The cost/benefit analysis of an assassination simply doesn't add up.

[H2O Man]

35. What you are saying doesn't

ring true. For example, in post #23, you write that, "If you saw his demeanor in the prior few weeks you could tell he wasn't handling it well"; and in #31 you write, "He knew no more or less than hundreds of other people in the intelligent services and what he did know had already been blabbed to the press."

I would suggest that DUers interested in this read Ambassador joseph Wilson's book, "The Politics of Truth." He writes about the Kelly case (see page 349), saying among other things that Kelly "had been under increasing pressure from the investigation...."

One might notice a pattern in the US and England, that when members of the IC informed the public of the lies of their governments, they were punished.

The claim that Kelly knew "no more or less" than others is simply ridiculous, unless anyone is to believe for a second that you know what Kelly knew. Likewise, one might find it hard to believe that you were a witness with inside information on how Kelly was behaving in the last ten days of his life.

While I don't know if Kelly was a suicide or not, I do know that no one on DU knows, either. To feign that you do is silly.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

38. with all due respect

i do have a pretty good idea what kelly knew, because

a) he told it to andrew gilligan. that meeting was off-the-record. why would he hold back?

b) kelly was a former weapons inspector who worked for british intelligence. he was on the cc list of experts contributing to, editing, and agonizing over the government's WMD dossier. thanks to the two public inquiries, what they knew and what they didn't is now a matter of public record. the claim that kelly knew no more or less than others, rather than being silly, is an established fact. weapons inspectors, like clerical intelligence employees, work in teams, not singly. case closed.

you're absolutely right, however, that i don't know for a fact that kelly killed himself. i meant merely to suggest that that was my strong opinion. i apologize for not being more clear.

[H2O Man]

45. Public inquiries

do not make everything that those who serve in the intelligence community know. Let's just take one example: someone forged some "yellow cake" uranium documents in an effort to make it appear that Iraq was buying this from Niger. Based on the public record, are you able to say for sure that Kelly did or did not have knowledge that may have been useful in establishing who forged these documents, for what purpose, and at the request of and/or coordinated with what other party? We do know that British intel was part of that little incident, and that the British government refused to share the information they had with the International Atomic Energy Agency, as international agreement mandates.

With this example alone, I think reasonable people could agree that there is far more to the picture than meets the eye. The fact that someone talks to a journalist does not mean, in any way whatsoever, that they tell everything they know. That's not even close to accurate. If one reads Ambassador Wilson's book, or the interviews he has done with journalists, it doesn't mean that you know everything he knows. Intelligence agents compartmentalize.

Because intelligence agencies do compartmentalize, too, it is safe to say that hundreds of agents and analysts do not know the exact same thing. Thus, even if one were to believe that there was a significant chance that Kelly was murdered, it remains extremely unlikely that someone like Blair would be aware of that.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

48. you are correct, sir.

i cannot prove any of those negatives. all i can do is point out:

that there is no evidence david kelly was murdered.

that nobody has offered any plausible scenario, practically speaking, under which he could have been murdered.

that there is plenty of evidence that he killed himself.

that there is no evidence that anyone wanted him dead.

that he himself had made cryptic comments weeks earlier about being found "dead in the woods."

hence my opinion that he killed himself. if you think otherwise, more power to you, though i think we may be working with different definitions of "a reasonable person."

[H2O Man]

66. As I stated

I do not know one way or the other. Ambassador Wilson expressed some interesting opinions on the subject in his book. Of course, you may not believe him to be a reasonable person. I know that many people thought he was unreasonable when he exposed this administration as lying about the yellow cake.

One might reasonable assume that exposing the identity of a CIA operative at the level of deep cover that Wilson's wife was at could put her or other people's lives at risk. This is why it is a federal offense to expose a CIA agent. You may find that law unreasonable, too. Again, there are some in the White House who felt this law was an unreasonable and annoying stumbling block, which kept them from their goal.

You are, of course, taking the Blair talking point when you say of Kelly that there was no evidence of anyone wanting him dead. But that's fine. It's nice to occassionally have a visitor on DU who is able to take the Bush/Blair stance on these issues. I'm sure that someone of this mind-set could take a very reasonable position that the USA and England weren't looking to hurt anyone when they decided to invade Iraq. It was likely 9-11 that altered this nonviolent approach that these two had planned.

[AP]

70. Kelly wasn't a spy.

Also, taking Blair's side doesn't mean you're taking Bush's side, and lots of people think Bush wants to undermine Blair and get Tories back in power and that the media will be using arguments like the one in the OP to undermine Blair.

[H2O Man]

74. Kelly wasn't a professional wrestler.

But of course, you didn't say he was. Likewise, I didn't say he was a spy. So at least we agree that he wasn't a spy posing as a professional wrestler, or a professional wrestler posing as a spy.

That, of course, is foolishness, just as saying that there is a difference between taking Blair's side and Bush's side.

[AP]

80. His job wasn't to have a secret identity (so the Plame analogy doesn't...

work).

In fact, part of his job was to talk to the press, so long as he cleared with his bosses, which he didn't do when he talked to Gilligan and Miller, IIRC, which was part of the professional humiliation for him.

[H2O Man]

84. It works.

Perhaps you don't get it. But that doesn't change it a bit.

[AP]

86. Try to explain it one more time.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

79. if you're at all interested

i am a big fan of blair. i've lived under some shitty heads of state in my time, thatcher and bush II to name the worst, and i confess that when a leader as smart, decent, articulate and honest as tony blair seems to be comes along i find it hard to withhold my support. the war was a tough one. although it sounds nonsensical, i basically supported blair's war and opposed bush's. the same action can have different moral weight depending on whether the actor has the right motivation--and i thought blair did and bush didn't. i found blair's war speeches very persuasive and i don't believe at any point he intentionally misled anyone.

anyway, i didn't quite get this sentence. "You are, of course, taking the Blair talking point when you say of Kelly that there was no evidence of anyone wanting him dead."

i know you're being sarcastic about the talking points, but as far as i'm aware NOBODY has any evidence of anyone wanting kelly dead. do you know different?

[H2O Man]

83. Sure.

Either way -- suicide or murder -- at very least one person wanted him dead.

I used to respect Blair. It has been one of the more disappointing events in world politics in the past 40 years to see him behave like a lap dog for George W. Bush.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any comment on the role of the British in the Niger yellow cake forgeries? Unlike Kelly's death, we do know for sure that the British refused to turn them over to the IAEA, despite the fact that this is mandated under international agreement. Despite the fact that three US investigations showed the information was false, and the fact the documents are forged, the British government insisted on treating them as if they were serious evidence. Does that fall into the description of behavior that reasonable folk can support?

[Reverend Smoothfield]

89. are you saying blair privately opposed the war in iraq?

that's the not the impression i get from the guy. he seems genuinely pro-war to me. i think he thought invading iraq was the right thing to do.

as for the yellow cake, no i have no comment. i know hardly anything about it.

[H2O Man]

92. No.

I didn't say that. I did say that his government has assisted the White House in attempting to promote "evidence" that they certainly knew was false. And Blair's government refused to honor an international agreement regarding providing that information over to the IAEA.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

95. what was the false evidence?

as i recall the basic problem with the dossier was that it didn't accurately convey the intelligence community's uncertainty. these were bits and pieces of information gathered over years of spying, wiretapping etc. cambpell and co massage the text and the tone as they did with all their pr documents to make a strong a case a possible, and arguably that was unethical. but there weren't any actual lies, were there?

[H2O Man]

99. There are some "documents"

that were forged. They are not real. Someone forged them.

In the United States, when some in the IC were calling the administration's allowing the president to use the infamous "16 words" in his state of the union address, the neocons & VP Cheney's informal intel group responded by exposing Plame.

For an extended period after that, the British government refused the IAEA access to those forged documents, although England had signed on the international agreement that provides for the IAEA to have that type of document.

It's a long and complex situation. If you are interested in this case, I would recommend reading Wilson's book. It's interesting, and has some information on the Kelly case, etc. Again, a reasonable person could read the book and come to very different conclusions than I have.

[AP]

96. Re the yellow cake, Muriel might still have the Democracy Now! link...

...where the CIA agent who quit re his involvement with Bush using that claim in his SOTU address said that he was told not to worry about Bush using it becuase the plan was to blame the british for its inaccuracy.

Bush can say whatever he wants because the press is on his side in the US. But they needed some material to sabotage Blair in the UK...

[muriel_volestrangler]

98. I don't have the link

but everyone should be aware that the CIA agent said that, if the claim was shown to be false, then they could blame Britain, rather than taking the rap themselves. He did not claim that it was an attempt to set up Blair. I've pointed this out to AP twice before, but he still tries to twist it into something else.

[H2O Man]

101. What is a bit

harder to twist is that the director of CI contacted Rice's office three times to recommend that this information be removed from Bush's speeches. And it was removed -- and then put back in. If the administration was trying to "blame Briton," one assumes they would not have supported the British refusal to allow the IAEA to review the documents, or have exposed Plame to punish Wilson for saying the 16 words were dishonest.

[AP]

103. The plan was to blame britain.

That's the fact we know. Obviously we don't know the motivation, but people who don't like Blair are going presume one motivation, and people who believe Bush wants to help get Tories back into office will believe another motivation.

I'm not trying to twist anything. I admit my biases. I'm just trying to get this fact out there so people are aware that Bush's plan was to blame blair for the uranium story.

[Minstrel Boy]

54. Your raising compartmentalization is important,

and not well-enough appreciated.

"even if one were to believe that there was a significant chance that Kelly was murdered, it remains extremely unlikely that someone like Blair would be aware of that."

A great effort is made to keep senior officials as clean as possible. There will be no evidentiary chain from Blair to Kelly's murder.

It's a problem I have with the shorthand of "Bush Knew." It's only of value to me if we mean "Bush" to stand, broadly, for the administration. Bush the man knew nothing, and I imagine he still doesn't. (The bizarre conditions of his appearance before the 9/11 commission - unsworn, unrecorded testimony accompanied by Cheney - is suggestive of both his ignorance and of his being handled.)

[bin.dare]

56. "compartmentalize" --- which brings me to what has troubled

me during that whole period. Here goes, Kelly was under intense scrutiny, we have pictures of him coming and going from his home, his office, etc, he was high profile. I am certain therefore that he had some sort of SS tail or minder. Where was the minder during the suicide? how did it happen that Kelly went missing? was it only his car that was tailed?

I am confident that the paramedics (in the posting) arrived at the scene long after others were already there (and probably gone).

[Reverend Smoothfield]

57. why would they have tailed him? n/t

[bin.dare]

59. keeping a friendly eye on him, for his own safety. n/t

[Reverend Smoothfield]

62. unlikely

there was no reason to think he was in danger. and any minder or tail would certainly have been called to testify at the hutton inquiry.

[AP]

69. Maybe they took the minder off him after he testified.

And that was his first opportunity to go off and kill himself in private.

[H2O Man]

67. Interesting.

Note even the choice of words used by a poster here, who is clearly hostile towards Kelly for having spoken to reporters: in post #31, it states that Kelly "had already blabbed ..." "Blabbed"? Hmmmm! It seems that Kelly provoked some strong emotional reactions from those who resent his attempts to expose the lies of the Bush/Blair administrations.

[AP]

68. Kelly was talking with Judith Miller...

...and seems to have regreted that he did.

I think it's OK to use the word "blab" to describe having a relationship with Judith Miller in which you discussed Iraq.

[H2O Man]

75. Of course it is okay.

It still shows how one views the discussion.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

81. actually it doesn't

i was trying to rebut the notion that the government had a motive to kill kelly. when i used the word "blabbed" i was describing the situation from the government's point of view. as far as they were concerned, kelly had already blabbed, therefore why kill him?

i'm certainly not hostile to kelly. if he felt the government was doing something shady, and he appears to have done, then i think talking to the press was the right thing to do.

[AP]

85. ...part of Kelly's humiliation (IIRC) was that he talked to Miller and...

...Gilligan without getting permission.

"Blabbed" is a perfectly appropriate term to use in an internet discussion.

Also, it's silly to try to impute bias based on the use of this term when the Rev is so willing to state his biases freely. The problem isn't that one side has one bias and the other side has another bias in this discussion. It's that one side is having a hard time providing a coherent explanation of what happened, bias or no bias.

[H2O Man]

91. Yes. Once again

the use of the word "blabbed" is fine. I said that the first time you made this point. I've made it again, in this, the second time you've made the point. And, to save time, "it's fine," "it's fine," "it's fine." There, now if you care to say it three more times, I've already agreed.

Likewise, it is fine to note the meaning of people's choices of words. While you want to attribute it to my being "silly" -- not an original choice of words for this discussion -- I note you do not seem to find someone else attributing meaning to Kelly's words as "silly."

[muriel_volestrangler]

78. I don't think Kelly would have had any minder

He had given evidence to a parliamentary committee; there had been press interest, but he had returned to his home after that, and had been with his family, who gave evidence to the Hutton enquiry. They did not say anything about a minder. There would have been no need for one.

The paramedics saw the body at 9.55am; it was found by a volunteer searcher, her dog, and another volunteer at about 9am.

The only strange thing I find is that the volunteers, and 2 PCs, all of whom were witnesses at the enquiry, all say they met DC Coe and 2 other police officers (descibed by one of the volunteers as CID, ie plain clothes; but by both the PCs as uniformed officers, but the constables met them at a different time from the volunteers) on the path between the body and the road.

Coe was also a witness; he said he was accompanied by a DC Shields, and no-one else. Coe was not part of the search; he was investigating in the village, and had gone to the woods on a hunch, after talking to a woman who was the last to see Kelly alive in the village. Coe, with or without 1 or 2 other police officers, was alone with the body for at least 15 minutes.

'DC Shields' was never called to the enquiry. Why? Wasn't Hutton slightly concerned that 4 witnesses (2 police, and 2 trained searchers) gave evidence that contradicted another policeman?

[bin.dare]

88. what do you make of this then ?

Telegraph 2/8/03, referring to Hutton:
"Crucially, he will examine what arrangements were made by ministers for the health and well-being of a man who was suffering from a serious heart complaint at the time he was unmasked."

you did not mention:

"Four electrocardiogram pads, used to monitor the heart, were found on his chest when his body was discovered in woodland a few miles from his home in Oxfordshire on July 18."

minder, tail, whatever, but YES the gov. was interested in keeping an eye on him.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

90. with hindsight, they definitely should have tailed him

counseling, medication, the whole thing.

apparently the pads were left there by paramedics at the request of police. no idea why.

[muriel_volestrangler]

93. The pads were used by the paramedics to try to find a heatbeat

both they and the PCs gave that as evidence (and one of the PCs took photos of the body before and during this procedure; I'd hope these were verified by the enquiry).

Kelly's own doctor also testified; he said Kelly wasn't under treatment by him for anything, and the results of a Ministry of Defence healthcheck done on 8th July were sent to him (he didn't say if that was before or after Kelly's death). It did not mention any problems.

The Telegraph's 'suffering from a serious heart complaint' appears to come from the pathologist's report at the start of the enquiry: "It is noted that (Dr Kelly) has a significant degree of coronary artery disease and this may have played some small part in the rapidity of death but not the major part in the cause of death." It seems the MoD healthcheck didn't indicate any sign of this. It would be easier for a pathologist to detect than a routine check.

[bin.dare]

100. continuing ...

remember, i am not arguing murder/suicide, only the issue of other people (not identified) being around/present.

from the mail 1/28/04
Dr Sennett, 70, said: "My argument is that possibly he was alive when he was found but unconscious and someone interfered with him - not in a malicious way, but in a well-meaning way.
"Perhaps someone moved him, and thought they would prop him up by a tree to make him comfortable.
"He would then have choked to death on his own tongue as he was unconscious."

The following is not from a credible source, but ...
A former MI6 spook, was speaking about the circumstances of Kelly's death. He said he's been taught how to "make anything look like anything" and said that there must have been some kind of struggle at the scene of Kelly's death. He said it was sloppy work that Kelly's body was found with enough pills for an overdose but hadn't ingested them, he said that should have been removed from the scene under normal procedure. He added "You can slit someone's wrists and make it look like suicide easily but it's a lot harder to make someone swallow tablets." He also said the heart monitor pads found on Kelly's chest were "simply there to make sure he was dead." He also said those should have been removed and suspects the agents involved were disturbed by someone in the process of the killing.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

102. didn't the paramedics testify the pads were theirs? n/t

[bin.dare]

106. minder, paparazzi, spooks, whatever, ...

the question is were there people around watching him? and if not why not?

From the Observer:
Flanked by two Ministry of Defence police officers, Kelly walked into the oak-panelled room overlooking the river Thames on 15 July. As his minders sat behind him scribbling notes ...

New zealand herald 20/7/03:
He said he had been unable to get home because he was being pursued by the press. A friend said Kelly stayed at a safe house but left because he was unhappy away from home.

hartford advocate july 31, 03:
Prior to his "grilling," he'd been moved to a "safe house" for protection ...

The age july 19, 03:
Mr Kelly, who had been staying at a Defence Ministry safe house to avoid the media ...

unsourced:
But a deliberate decision had been taken by Britain’s security services - MI5 and MI6 , Scotland Yard’s Special Branch and the Thames Valley police who had day-to-day responsibility to protect Kelly’s home in the picture postcard village in Oxfordshire where he lived – not to surround Kelly with protection.
But in the last hours of his life he did suddenly find himself hemmed in by security. Two Ministry of Defence detectives accompanied the 59-year-old scientist to the closed hearing of the Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee ...

back to the Telegraph according to Hutton:
Instead, it appears, he travelled to Cornwall via Weston-super-Mare, and some time before his appointment with the committee spent a few days with one of his daughters at her home in Oxford.

hmmmm

[Nordic]

36. well ..... then the cause of death would have been something different

don'tcha think? If he'd died of an overdose and, before conking out, sleepily attempted to slit his wrists, don't you think they would have found massive amounts of some drug in his system?

[Reverend Smoothfield]

41. who knows?

the undisputed facts are these.

a) deeply depressed, publicly humiliated oddball says goodbye to his wife and goes for a walk in the woods.

b) guy is later found dead.

clearly, something happened to his body to stop it from living. i don't know what that was. but given the circumstances--particularly the damage that was done by kelly's death to the blair government--i'm pretty sure who the culprit was.

[Nordic]

53. well you're speculating as much as anybody!

the fact of the matters seems to be:

A) He didn't die from slitting his wrists.

B) The government, which was against him, said publicly that he DID die from slitting his wrists.

C) His death was mysterious.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

55. am not!

your A) and C) are essentially the same proposition and it is very far from being an established fact. we know that kelly's wrists were slit, that he took an overdose of his wife's prescription painkillers, that he had coronary artery disease, that he was depressed, that he'd been muttering dark comments about being found "dead in the woods," that he was, eventually, found dead in the woods. even if you think cause of death has not been established, there's still no reason to think anyone other than kelly brought it about.

just as this thread is conspicuously short on motives for kelly's "murder" even thinner on the ground are theories of how he died. what are you suggesting? some undetectable poison? was it administered before or after kelly gagged down thirty of his wife's painkillers? seeing as the killer then went to the trouble of slashing kelly's wrist, wouldn't it have made more sense just to use an undetectable knockout drug, thus ensuring a plausible and fatal flow of blood? give me a scenario here.

B) is just plain false. the government never said kelly died from slitting his wrists. and in no sense was the government "against" kelly. campbell was locked in an obsessive war with the BBC and Kelly was his trump card.

[Zorra]

42. Motive: Retaliation and intimidation.

I'm not saying that his death was either a murder or a suicide; just that there is a possible motive behind murder.

Why was Valerie Plame "outed"?

IMO, it is not unreasonable to speculate on the possibility that he was murdered. Governments involved in covert, nefarious enterprises, (such as engaging in a war for profit or conquest), are not beyond murder as a way to intimidate others, and the circumstances prior to Dr. Kelly's death make the possibility of murder as a warning to others a plausible consideration.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

43. then why make it look like a suicide?

and again, think about the damage done to the blair government by kelly's death. it was a disaster for blair, the low-point of his prime-ministership. if you really think it was murder--which the facts simply don't support--then your prime suspect has to be someone who had it in for tony blair. makes more sense that the tory party or OBL would have killed kelly than anyone on blair's side.

[Zorra]

47. IMO, the problem with speculating about this issue is that

we have no way of really knowing much of anything because in general our information is in all probability very incomplete, and may not be accurate. "Facts" are only what we have been told are facts. (Unless, of course, you were/are an investigator in this case, and would therefore be privy to information that most of us are not.)

It is possible that someone had more to gain by murdering Dr. Kelly than we could possibly be aware of, especially when considering the nature of his revelations and his work.

The possibility exists that if Dr. Kelly was murdered, whoever did it did not care what happened to Blair.

Again, I am not saying that he was murdered. Just that there appears to be evidence that supports reasonable consideration of a possible motive for a political assassination.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

49. i disagree

i think we probably know more about the facts of this particular death than we do almost any other. the hutton inquiry was a public inquiry. they dug into kelly's mental state, his religious beliefs, his behavior leading up to the, um, incident in the woods, his professional life, what he knew and didn't know about WMD.

you and h20 man and right, of course, that we don't everything. nobody can. but absent any evidence a) that kelly was murdered or b) that anyone had a motive to murder him, i'm simply saying that in my opinion he probably wasn't murdered.

to my knowledge no-one has yet offered any "evidence that supports reasonable consideration of a possible motive for a political assassination." if someone does i might change my opinion--though it's going to be hard unless someone explains to me how kelly even COULD have been murdered in some way that fits the physical evidence.

[H2O Man]

71. Actually, that is not accurate

The facts that are known do not prove anything much, other than that he was dead, had medication in his system, and had a slit wrist. The other information shows that he was under a growing amount of stress, due to his challenging the official position of his government regarding their lies about WMDs in Iraq.

Those are the facts.

You choose to interpret them as indicating only one possible method of death. Your interpretation is clearly influenced by your disgust for Kelly's having -- to quote you -- "blabbed to the press" the information that shows he knew the english government had lied in the build-up to war.

You make the point that his death came after the invasion. I think that even you would admit that the exposing of CIA operative Plame came well after the invasion. Which again brings us to the role the British played in the forged yellow cake documents .... but you clearly do not wish to consider that as a factor.

Again, I do not know how he died, nor why he died. I do not have an opinion. But I think it is good to keep an open mind.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

87. What isn't? n/t

[AP]

50. In fact, Blair was coming off one of the few high points for him when this

happened. Blair had two high points: when he went to Iraq before Bush and when he gave a very good speech in DC. Within twelve hours of both of those events, he was derailed by negative press.

Even if Labour did kill Kelly, they NEVER would have done it when they did it -- within twelve hours of Blair getting excellent press for a very good speech.

[rooboy]

60. "busted running his mouth to a sleazy journalist".

He wasn't "an intelligence guy" - he was a highly qualified scientist.

You want a motive? How about preventing him from telling the media everything he knew? How about sending a warning to anyone else who might want to talk?

And HOW IN HELL was he a card up the government's sleeve??? You really need to check your facts 'cause you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

64. mystifying choice of tone, but anyway:

you're right. i misspoke. kelly was not technically an intelligence guy, but rather a guy who had access to classified intelligence.

your motive makes no sense. kelly had already spilled his guts to the media, resulting in a blizzard of publicity that, according to his wife, left this deeply private man very depressed. even assuming kelly had something more to tell--and there's no evidence he did--his death was a major headache for the government, blair's worst nightmare.

as for the "warning to others" theory, what information were the killers trying to suppress? at no point did anyone, kelly include, know for certain one way or another whether iraq had WMDs. the fact that there had been widespread skepticism in the intelligence community was already public knowledge by the time of kelly's death. and, furthermore, if you're murdering people to send a message, you don't make it look like a suicide.

and, finally, kelly was a card up the government's sleeve because the media-obsessed blair government, alistair campbell in particular, were at war with the bbc. cambpell, by this point, was increasingly certain that andrew gilligan had relied on kelly for his "sexed up dossier" story and misrepresented him--much as i did, coincidentally--as a senior intelligence official. kelly was living proof of gilligan's bias. and then, suddenly, dead proof.

hope that helps.

[muriel_volestrangler]

97. Actually he had apparently been talking off the record

to an award winning journalist (Gilligan, that is). He had won the Amnesty International Award for Radio News for a report "Sale of Illegal Landmines". I wish people would stop trashing Gilligan's reputation. A loose cannon, perhaps, but not "sleazy".

And his family do not say he was "blackly depressed". He was looking forward to returning to Iraq for his work. At lunchtime of the day he disappeared, he was, however, "dejected".

[KoKo]

21. There were many questions at the time of his death. DU archives are

filled with Kelly stories from the Guardian and BBC. Gilligan took the heat for talking to Kelly. The Hutton Report (supposedly heavily influenced by the Blairites, was questioned for not allowing later evidence into the report. Kelly wasn't despondent according to all who knew him. And he was a whistle blower. But, after the Hutton report the BBC fired Gilligan and clamped down on any more information about Kelly or criticism of Hutton.

I imagine the "Guardian" has it all in their archives.

[omulcol]

25. Suicide v Murder

I don't want to appear rude here AP but you missed a couple of points ... one quite glaring if we follow your route of inquiry.
On " Suicide", from your link ...it says ;

Presence of a note: A suicide victim will almost always leave a note.

The other is of weather. I don't think it rained during or after the event.

And there is a significant difference between milk and blood stains on soil & grass.

Dr Kelly's last e-mails showed no indication he was contemplating suicide. Also, as a Father , I'm sure he'd have left a message to his daughter ... at the least ... apologising for his impending action the week before her wedding.

I'd also like to mention that no-one has yet put forward a theory he may have been murdered other than the area he was found.
This might account for the lack of blood at the scene.
I don't know enough regarding dead bodies & bleeding - other than ...they don't bleed .... but is it possible for David to have been murdered - taken to the woods - then have his wrist cut to insinuate suicide ?

There are more articles around - one from a from a UK ( MI5?) agent stating the MI5 or MI6 were furious to discover Kelly had been murdered.

All this said, I respect your view. That we should consider all possibilities of suicide, before concluding he was murdered - but there is more evidence and suspicion to support his murder than of suicide at the moment.
Lord Hutton might very well be responsible here, for his eagerness to absolve Blair and the government of any blame for his death far outweighed his desire for whole truth to be established.

I still maintain he was another one of 14 Microbiologists to have been murdered - and perhaps - just perhaps - the "Sexed Up Dossier" thing was a cover story.

here's another link for anyone interested.

http://www.deadscientists.blogspot.com/

[merh]

27. The most important point that AP missed and that justifies the

questions regarding the suicide determination is the lack of blood on the right hand or anywhere other than on the pant leg. As the paramedics question, why was there no blood on the right hand or his clothes on the right arm? How do you severe an artery with a sharp item using your right hand and not get any of the spewing blood on your right arm?

Also, even if it rained a deluge, there would be blood some where on his clothes other than the blood noted on the pant leg and if it rained and washed away the blood as theorized by AP, why didn't it wash away the blood on the pant leg? :shrug:

[AP]

32. If suicides don't like to be found naked, and if they take the time to

roll up their sleeves, maybe their conscious of not leaving blood all over their clothes too. They definitley seem to be conscious of how they're going to be found in many cases. Who wants your family to see you covered in your own blood?

What is hard to believe about the idea tha he held his arm away from his clothes when cut his wrist?

He hat taken the pain killers so he probably was able to cut slowly and deliberately. As soon as he saw the blood he could have moved his arm to the side so the blood would run into the grass. And who's to say it didn't spurt a little.

The article said the ulnar isn't a huge artery, so right there they're suggesting it's not going to spurt as much as other arteries. But if he turns his wrist away from his body, it's going to spurt and flow away from him.

I think post 23 above says what needs to be said.

[AP]

34. I got the impression from the Hutton Inquiry that Kelly's family were

perfectly aware of his depression. They didn't think it was a mystery.

It rains every day in the UK. If anyone knows of historical wealther reports being available on the internet, let's take a look. My money is on rain. Blood is thinner than milk and only slightly thicker than ater. Pour milk on the grass, come back 18 hours later, and you're not going to see what those parademics thought they'd find. And remember, these are paramedics who themselves admit that they thought it was rare to find someone outside (they were used to people opening their veins and arteries inside cars).

Another thing: they did find blood on the grass. The paramedics simply thought they'd see more. If he was moved, why was there any blood in the grass.

[reorg]

110. I would suggest to save some of that money

Maybe those paramedics know what they are talking about? They would have mentioned pouring rain, wouldn't they?

I'm not sure why you would make up claims out of thin air. Even in the UK it doesn't rain all day and night in mid-summer.

Take a look at the weather in London at the time:

http://tinyurl.com/62yrq (July 17, 2003), Precipitation 0.0 cm

http://tinyurl.com/3ox7s (July 18, 2003), Precipitation 0.0 cm

[Nihil]

111. I was less than 40 miles south of where Kelly died that day

> I'm not sure why you would make up claims out of thin air.

Basically, he does it because any slight, perceived slur against his
beloved Tony B Liar requires him to do so.

> Even in the UK it doesn't rain all day and night in mid-summer.

What? You mean AP *doesn't* know as much about the UK as some of the
people who actually live here? Are you trying to undermine his
credibility or something? Ye gods ... whatever next?

:hi:

[omulcol]

37. Ok ... there's more info for

the skeptics . Try ;


http://www.rense.com/general43/kelly.htm

and

http://www.rense.com/general49/kelll.htm

[Reverend Smoothfield]

51. i read the first one. i found it weak.

how does the fact that someone may have moved kelly's body after it was found suggest that "Kelly's body was likely moved from where he died to the site where two search volunteers with a search dog found it"?

isn't it far more likely that either the volunteers, or the cops, or someone moved the body in an attempt to revive it?

and what's the deal with DC Coe? apparently he's in on the hit in some unspecified way. he and his companions described by the author in quotes as ""police"". yet there he is at the hutton inquiry giving testimony. if the guy was a covert assassin in a cop costume, is it really plausible he would have showed up months later at the most scrutinized public inquiry in decades still in costume? presumably he had to testify which police station he worked at, how long he'd been on the force. if the guy didn't actually exist, someone would have noticed.

c'mon people. this is freeper stuff. let it go.

[Minstrel Boy]

15. "Questions for the coroner's inquest" by Renan Talieva

...

It has been estimated that for a person of Dr Kelly's size to die of haemorrhage, he would need to lose about five pints of blood. But witness accounts did not indicate anything near that amount at the scene.

Paramedic Vanessa Hunt volunteered the observation that there was 'no obvious arterial bleeding. There was no spraying of blood or huge blood loss or any obvious loss on the clothing. ... As to on the ground, I do not remember seeing a sort of huge puddle or anything like that.' This was seconded by ambulance technician David Bartlett, who commented 'we was surprised there was not more blood on the body if it was an arterial bleed.'

...

On the morning of the day he went missing, Dr Kelly sent an e-mail message to Judith Miller, a journalist acquaintance with the New York Times, containing the line: 'I will wait until the end of the week before judging - many dark actors playing games.'

David Broucher, British ambassador to the disarmament conference, reported to the inquiry a conversation he recalled having with Dr Kelly at a Geneva meeting in February 2003 (the date and location of which are subject to debate). Broucher had asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were invaded, and Kelly had replied, 'I will probably be found dead in the woods.' Professor Hawton dismissed this as 'pure coincidence' and without relevance to Dr Kelly's death. Others have strangely twisted it to represent a premonition of his impending suicide. Taken at face value, it could as readily be interpreted to mean he was aware of some threat to his safety.

http://www.deadscientists.blogspot.com/

[DeepModem Mom]

16. Thanks, MB, for finding those two haunting quotations from Dr. Kelly --

n/t

[bin.dare]

28. I like your reference to Judith Miller ...

As we now know she was/is in cahoots with the pentagon. I am certain that this was/is a two-way relationship.

Re the suicide, the Brithish SS is competent enough (after lots of experience) to fake a suicide, don't expect too much out of this. BTW the Observer is the Sunday fluff version of the Guardian, I usually disregard their stories.

[DeepModem Mom]

30. The paramedics' story is being covered elsewhere, including BBC --

http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=uk&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Paramedics-throw-doubt-on-cause-of-Kellys-death/2004/12/12/1102786951031.html

[bin.dare]

33. just in case i was misunderstood DM ...

i am not disputing what the paramedics said. In fact, the inquest already has testimony similar to what they said in the article. I am saying this is not a new piece of investigative journalism. that's all.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

44. More on Kelly saying " You'll probably find me dead in the woods."

http://www.moderateindependent.com/v1i9kelly.htm

[AP]

76. Interesting thing from that link:

The person to whom he made the comment interpreted it this way:

"To gain their trust he had been obliged to assure them that if they complied with the Weapons Inspectors' demands they would not be. The implication was that if an invasion now went ahead, that would make him a liar and he would have betrayed his contacts, some of whom might be killed as a direct result of his actions. I asked what would happen then, and he replied, in a throw away line, that he would probably be found dead in the woods.  I did not think much of this at the time, taking it to be a hint that the Iraqis might try to take revenge against him, something that did not seem at all fanciful then."

The dynamic was this: the Iraqis didn't want to cooperate with the inspectors because they thought that if the West knew what they had, they'd get attacked. Kelly convinced them to be honest...

[H2O Man]

77. Interesting.

Easily ignored, of course, if one has concluded he was a suicide before looking at any of the facts.

[The Backlash Cometh]

19. So, is anybody compiling a list of Bush & Blair's dead bodies?

Hey, they did it for Clinton. Why not Bush?

[Mari333]

22. Here you go....this does not include all the soldiers and civilians

Bush and Blair killed in Iraq...


http://www.rense.com/general31/scont.htm

[The Backlash Cometh]

24. Thanks Mari.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

46. The 'beltway sniper' killed FBI cyber-security specialist Linda Franklin

who was most likely the reason for the sniper in the first place. But terrorizing all of DC was useful so her murder was enlarged to freak out the whole country post-9/11 and eliminate a possible whistleblower.

She worked in an FBI division that examined terror threats to infrastructure and cyber-security.

"The center where Franklin worked, established in 1998, is the only FBI organization scheduled to transfer to the Department of Homeland
Security under the Bush administration's proposal."

http://www.landfield.com/isn/mail-archive/2002/Oct/0055.html
(Internet Security News)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned=us&q=sniper+linda+franklin+fbi+cyber+security&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dsearch=Search+the+Web
(Google search for Linda Franklin articles)

[AP]

73. Shoot at 20 people in DC, you're bound to hit one intelligence person,

especially after 9/11.

[The Backlash Cometh]

113. What an incredible coincidence, eh?

On the other hand, what if, this woman wasn't even one of the sniper's targets? What if she was a copy cat, and the people who did the job, took her out intentionally?

Okay, it's tinfoil, but hey? Would it be the first time?

[Dr Fate]

39. Our news media and our Democrats "forgot" to talk about this on US TV.

And I'll bet they will continue to "forget" to talk about it.

[IndianaGreen]

52. I wouldn't be surprised that Blair ordered the assassination of Kelley

The UK and the US are each run by thugs in business suits. Blair and Bush had no qualms about butchering tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians so why should they worry about the morality of assassinating one of their citizens.

[neweurope]

61. No way he could have died from that wrist wound. And no

way even a depressed father would commit suicide a week before the wedding of his daughter without leaving as much as a note.

[AP]

72. Did you know that men, statisticallly die before their birthday and women

die after their birthdays?

Women like to meet a milestone and then after reaching it feel better about letting go. Men tend to see milestone events as opprotunities to feel miserable about themselves and want to let go before having the milestone force them to confront failure in their life they don't want to confront.

If Kelly were suicidal and humiliated about being used by Gilligan and Judith Miller as a part of scam to prop up Bush and take down Blair, then it would make sense that he wouldn't want to have to be a spectacle at his own daughter's wedding among family and friends.

He's a man. He's suicidal. He's proabaly not going to want to subject himself to his daughter's wedding and feels like she'd be better off without him around.

[muriel_volestrangler]

94. A professor of psychiatry who specialises in suicides

gave evidence to the Hutton enquiry that just under half of UK suicides leave a note.

[JohnyCanuck]

105. British Doctors Question Kelly Suicide Theory.

As specialist medical professionals, we do not consider the evidence given at the Hutton inquiry has demonstrated that Dr David Kelly committed suicide.

Dr Nicholas Hunt, the forensic pathologist at the Hutton inquiry, concluded that Dr Kelly bled to death from a self-inflicted wound to his left wrist. We view this as highly improbable. Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss. Dr Hunt stated that the only artery that had been cut - the ulnar artery - had been completely transected. Complete transection causes the artery to quickly retract and close down, and this promotes clotting of the blood.

<snip>

Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered the amount ingested of Co-Proxamol insufficient to have caused death. Allan could not show that Dr Kelly had ingested the 29 tablets said to be missing from the packets found. Only a fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach. Although levels of Co-Proxamol in the blood were higher than therapeutic levels, Allan conceded that the blood level of each of the drug's two components was less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.

We dispute that Dr Kelly could have died from haemorrhage or from Co-Proxamol ingestion or from both. The coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, has spoken recently of resuming the inquest into his death. If it re-opens, as in our opinion it should, a clear need exists to scrutinise more closely Dr Hunt's conclusions as to the cause of death.

David Halpin
Specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery

C Stephen Frost
Specialist in diagnostic radiology

Searle Sennett
Specialist in anaesthesiology

www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1131833,00.html

[neweurope]

107. NOW do some people think?

Why are you so set to defend the idea that this was a suicide, AP and Rev. Smoothfield? Don't you think it is way healthier to question everything these days?

I for one don't "let go". And I'd rather err a little on the hysterical side... "Freeper stuff"? Hell no.

[NNN0LHI]

109. The doctor is lying because some DUer said everything is on the up and up

These doctors don't no Jack. Right AP?

Don

[American Tragedy]

108. kick

absolutely unbelievable.


:kick:

[idiosyncratic]

112. My neighbor had an accident and a piece of metal hit an artery

in his wrist. It was a small wound, but the amount of blood that spurted well away from his body was astounding.

And, it got all over the thing he was working on and the ground around him.

If the paramedics did not see lots of blood, the wound couldn't have been the cause of death . . . or the body was moved.

[arikara]

116. I worked as a paramedic for many years

and even a little bit of blood at a scene looks like a lot. Another thing is that blood coagulates very quickly. Does anyone say what the ground was like that he was found on? Unless it was fresh turned loam or sand, massive amounts of blood most likely wouldn't be able to just sink into the ground like milk or water. Once it starts coagulating, the puddle just spreads and can't soak down very easily.

When I read about this ages ago, it all sounded very fishy. Little transverse cuts on the wrist just don't kill someone unless they are on blood thinners or they have a blood disorder like hemophelia. If a person is serious about suicide, they slash their arms lengthwise following along the artery. I was told that they make the cut like this because the artery can't clamp itself off or clot as easily, and also for another reason... that if they should survive the attempt that there is less chance of them severing a tendon and losing the use of their hand.

[muriel_volestrangler]

117. The ground was leaf litter

A. Obviously injuries are a pathologist's domain. However, the blood distribution was what I would expect to see if an artery had been severed. There was bloodstaining typical of that sort of injury.
Q. What do you expect to see in such circumstances?
A. Well, when veins are severed the blood comes out under a low pressure, but when arteries are severed it comes out on a much higher pressure and you get spurting of blood, you get a phenomenon known as arterial rain, where you have a great deal of smallish stains all of about the same size over the area.
Q. Did you find that arterial rain?
A. Yes.
Q. On what?
A. On the nettles -- there were nettles alongside the body of Dr Kelly.
Q. And did you look for the distribution of blood?
A. Yes.
Q. We have heard from some ambulance personnel, and they said they were not specifically looking, for obvious reasons, at the distribution of blood but they noted, just on their brief glance, not very much blood. What were your detailed findings?
A. Well, there was a fair bit of blood.
LORD HUTTON: There was -- I beg your pardon?
A. A fair bit of blood, my Lord. The body was on leaf litter, the sort of detritus you might find on the floor of a wood, which is -- and that is very absorbent, so although it may not have appeared to them there was that much blood, it would obviously soak in."

Evidence of forensic biologist Roy Green

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/transcripts/hearing-trans29.htm

I don't believe that the inquiry ever described the cuts as 'transverse', just 'a series of cuts', of which the deepest severed the ulnar artery. The pathologist also claimed the amount of coproxamol in the blood (about 10 times a therapeutic dose, though a third of a fatal dose) and Kelly's undiagnosed heart disease would have contributed to the death by haemorrhaging. I have no idea if this is an accepted medical theory.

[oasis]

114. kick

[Skarbrowe]

115. I remember watching the hearing they put him through. SCARY

He was being raked over the coals by some inquiry board, sorry I don't know the name, and I remember watching his eyes. This man was terrified. I remember thinking that he appeared to know something or was actually seeing something different in the people that were questioning him than anyone else in the room, including those watching on TV like myself. I am convinced he knew he was not going to come out of this intact. I've never forgotten David Kelly's eyes at that hearing. When I heard he had supposedly committed suicide very soon afterwards, I had chills go up and down my spine.

I'm not a psychologist, but isn't slicing of the wrists something that mostly women do while sitting in the bathtub? I haven't studied suicides, so I really don't know. Didn't someone just the other day post a long list of things that had happened to people involved with our voting irregularities over here and one of them was a man who had been found dead from slicing his wrists? Oh my. Maybe I'm reading too much.