Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (66 page)

•12:15 PM
Mrs. Kelly returns home (she had gone out to pick up some photographs). She tells her husband about the photos.

•12:30 PM
Dr. Kelly leaves his study and joins her in the sitting room. In addition to talking about the photos, they also share some lunch, sitting opposite the table from each other, but do not speak a great deal (she feels he is very absorbed in his work).
Dr. Kelly eats the sandwich that she made and also has a glass of water.
Mrs. Kelly was later asked how she would describe her husband at 12:30 pm that day and she replied:
“Oh, I just thought he had a broken heart. He really was very, very—he had shrunk into himself ... I had no idea at that stage what he might do later, absolutely no idea at all.” As Norman Baker points out, this is what attorneys refer to as reinterpretation after-the-fact with benefit of subsequent knowledge. What that statement actually tells us is that—at that precise moment—nothing out of the ordinary had taken place to even remotely suggest that her husband was suicidal.

•1:30-1:45 PM
As she often does, Mrs. Kelly goes upstairs to rest after lunch. She suffers from arthritis and it is flaring up today. Dr. Kelly returns to his study to continue working.
Analysis: Note that it is actually Mrs. Kelly who is very bothered by the recent media storm and is the one who is in pain. The Copraxamol tablets that are later ascribed to being Dr. Kelly’s are not his. He has not been prescribed that medication and also has a very strong aversion to swallowing tablets. He walks for his back pain and that seems to work. The Copraxomol, which is a mild analgesic commonly prescribed for arthritis sufferers, probably belonged to his wife. And there is later a wide window of opportunity for items to be taken from the Kelly home to stage the crime scene.

•Slightly prior to 2:00 PM
Dr. Kelly goes upstairs to check on his wife who is lying down a bit because he knows that she hasn’t been feeling well today. She states: “Then shortly after I had lay down, he came to ask me if I was okay. I said: yes, I will be fine.”
At this point it bears noting that if he was sympathetic enough to go upstairs and check on his wife, he’d certainly be sympathetic enough not to make matters dramatically worse by killing himself.

•2:00 PM
Dr. Kelly gets ready for his afternoon walk. His wife states: “And then he went to change into his jeans. He would be around the house in a tracksuit or tracksuit bottoms during the day. So he went to change and put on his shoes.”

•2:30 PM
Operation Mason officially begins (technically an investigation into Dr. Kelly’s death, by the Thames Valley Police). Analysis: Since the operation clearly began half an hour prior to Dr. Kelly even leaving his house for his afternoon walk, it has been quite logically suggested that other forces were at play, and that Operation Mason, in reality, was a police response to a newly known and active threat upon the life of Dr. Kelly.

•2:53-2:54 PM Phone Call
Mrs. Kelly hears the phone ring and, not having the cordless with her upstairs, goes downstairs to answer it because she had believed her husband had already left for his walk. She then hears Dr. Kelly talking on the phone and is fairly sure he is speaking to someone at MoD again (which was almost certainly Wing Commander Clark who testified that it was he who again called Dr. Kelly shortly before 3:00 PM, and that was the last time that they had spoken).

•Slightly after 3:00 PM
Dr. Kelly leaves the house for his afternoon walk. He took regular walks for his bad back. They were typically twenty-five minutes or less. He had told his wife earlier that he was going for his walk and would be back soon.
His wife knew, in the way that spouses know specifically what to infer from the use of certain words, that he therefore planned on taking his regular brief walk (she testified as such), which would always put him back home in something under half an hour (as opposed to his longer ones, which were usually to Harrowdown Hill and took closer to an hour). If he was taking one of his longer walks, he always specifically mentioned that and would have taken his coat. He did not take his coat that afternoon.
It would also be logical to infer that if he had actually packed away his pruning knife and pills and planned to do away with himself on his walk, he most probably would have made a more memorable gesture to his wife of many years. Instead, he simply told her that he was going out for his afternoon walk, as he normally did, and that he would be back soon, as he normally was.

•3:20 PM
Wing Commander Clark phones the Kelly home again. Mrs. Kelly answers and, sure this time that her husband is gone, she informs Clark that he’s not at home, having left for his walk a few minutes after 3:00.

•3:20 pm-3:25 PM
Ruth Absalom, a neighbor who has known him many years, sees Dr. Kelly and the two chat a bit. She places the time at somewhere around 3:00 but is not at all sure, but it obviously had to be a little later than that if he left his house shortly after 3:00 and then walked to where they meet, at Harris’s Lane, which is slightly less than a mile from Kelly’s home (at a brisk pace that would take at least 15 minutes). They talk for about 5 minutes. As they part, Dr. Kelly says “See you again then, Ruth.” The witness later describes Dr. Kelly’s demeanor during this conversation as perfectly normal, nothing at all out of the ordinary:
“Just his normal self, no different to any other time when I have met him.” “We parted and he said ‘Cheerio Ruth.’” Since Dr. Kelly has been under the security watch of MoD, and/or MI5, and MI6 due to the known threats upon his life, it stands to reason that he would not be allowed to leave his home at this time unaccompanied or unsurveilled, to meander dangerously alone through the British countryside; especially considering that his afternoon walk was an established routine, thereby making it the most vulnerable point in his day. Yet, the above witness notes no other persons accompanying or surveilling Dr. Kelly at the time of his arrival, during their talk, or as he departs. The MoD has not produced documentation on the specific security procedures taken for Dr. Kelly, therefore, little is known except for the existence of Operation Mason. Operation Mason was a security program designed for the specific case of Dr. Kelly and it officially began at least thirty minutes prior to the time he left his home for his daily walk. So where was his security?
The above witness also verifies that Dr. Kelly was not carrying anything. He did not have a bottle of water, or a pruning knife, or three ten-sheet-packs of Copraxomol, or a heavy jacket to conceal them in—yet, later, he was supposedly found with all of these.

•3:25 PM
Dr. Kelly continues on his walk, to Ruth’s right, down Appleton Road, in the direction of Kingston Bagpuize. Analysis: The direction in which Dr. Kelly continued walking was consistent with his regular short walks, and was not the walking route that he would have taken had he intended going to Harrowdown Hill (the location his body was later found).

•3:25 -10:00 PM or later (Over seven hours missing)
Note that there are approximately seven missing hours between the time that neighbor Ruth Absolom bid goodbye to her friend (the last witness to see him alive), and the approximate time of Dr. Kelly’s death. We know from forensics that Dr. Kelly was alive during this time period. When the body was discovered on the following morning, the pathologist ignored standard procedure and failed to take the victim’s body temperature, with which an accurate time of death could be estimated. However, we know that the rigor mortis process generally takes six hours to begin and takes approximately twelve hours to become vivid. We know that Dr. Kelly’s body did not evidence the full effect of rigor mortis when it was eventually found at 10:00 AM on Friday morning. Therefore, working backwards, the time of death can be established—and the earliest time Dr. Kelly could have died— was 10:00 PM, Thursday night; and it could very well have been later. So he was alive for many hours after he had gone missing.

•4:30-5:00 PM
Mrs. Kelly states that when it was getting close to a couple of hours that he’d been gone, she realized that her husband had been gone too long and she “began to get rather worried.” The fact that she knew that his walks typically took less than thirty minutes, but did not begin to worry until almost two hours later, again suggests that—at the time in question— there was no reason for her to consider anything like suicide. There is also no mention anywhere in the record that Mrs. Kelly (or anyone else, for that matter) tried calling her husband on his cell phone, which would have clearly been the logical thing to do. He had his cell phone with him.

•5:00-5:10 PM
Mrs. Kelly speaks to her daughter, Rachel, on the phone and apparently informs her of the situation.

•5:10-5:30 PM
Rachel takes the twenty-minute drive to her parent’s home.

•5:30-6:00 PM
Rachel arrives at the home of her parents and talks to her mother. She then retraces the route of her father’s normal walk, a route that she knows.

•5:00-6:00 PM
A colleague of Dr. Kelly’s from the British Ministry of Defence attempts to reach him on his cell, but Dr. Kelly’s mobile phone is switched off.
Analysis: We know that his cell phone was turned off during this time period which, in itself, is extremely suspicious—Dr. Kelly was in the midst of very fluidly-changing events and had been in constant contact with colleagues in the Ministry of Defence. Therefore, it is virtually unthinkable that he would have shut off his cell phone voluntarily. He had specifically informed friends that his mobile was always on.

•6:30 PM
Rachel returns to the Kelly home, not having found her father.

•Throughout the evening hours
Rachel is joined by her sister, Sian, who has arrived at the Kelly home with her partner, Richard. The sisters search around town looking for their father, with no success.
Analysis: It was well known to all concerned that Dr. Kelly was in an extremely high profile position and in a very dangerous business—this was at the height of his controversy in the British press. Note that a man in that dangerous position went for his methodical half-hour walk many, many hours ago and yet, even in a small village, there is no trace of him having been anywhere. But, reportedly, the police still have not been called.
Note, also, that which is absent. At no time is it mentioned, anywhere in the official evidence, that anyone attempted to call him on his cell phone.

•11:00 PM
The sisters finally return to the home, unsuccessful in tracking their father. Harrowdown Hill was checked as a possible location, because it was known that Dr. Kelly did sometimes go there on his longer walks.

•11:40 PM - Police are finally called (Missing for over eight hours)

•11:50-11:55 PM
Police arrive at the Kelly home

•11:55 PM-1:00 AM Friday
Three police officers take down the information with a missing- persons form. Sergeant Simon Morris told the Hutton Inquiry that, at that time, he arranged “a reasonably thorough search of Dr. Kelly’s house and the surrounding grounds to be carried out.” The apparent reason for searching the area was in case Dr. Kelly had had a heart attack or was unconscious due to a medical emergency.

•1:00 AM Friday
Sgt. Morris puts out an order for an aerial search, which Mrs. Kelly states began at about 1:00 AM. However, there is an exact record of the aerial searches made, and they were apparently much later. Records indicate that a police helicopter was dispatched from Luton and was airborne in search of Dr. Kelly from 2:50 to 4:05 AM. The police helicopter then refueled at RAF Benson, and a second search sortie then took place from 4:30 to 5:10 AM, for a total aerial search of one hour and fifty- five minutes.

•Sometime during the early am hours
A large vehicle with a 110-foot communication tower with a huge antenna, arrives by truck and is set up in the yard of the Kelly home. It has been deployed by Thames Valley Police. Analysis: Norman Baker, Member of Parliament, checked with some experts about this item. They told him that, even in an area with poor reception, they would expect a communications mast no higher than fifteen feet to be used because it would be more than sufficient for all anticipated communication necessary. Therefore, the only discernible explanation for the huge tower would have been to enable hi-tech communication to someone very far away or perhaps airborne, for example. It is known that, at the time this took place, Prime Minister Tony Blair was airborne, en route from Washington to Japan.