Crime Scene Investigator (26 page)

The Society also developed professional membership, becoming a professional body for qualified members, to complement its learned status. Ordinary membership remains open for those who do not qualify for professional membership as the Society wishes to develop all those interested parties.

For me, all these matters would take time to come together but they did. They began to in 1997 when Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary conducted a full review of Surrey Police. This is an important Home Office review of the competency and efficiency of police forces. I was interviewed at length and had to demonstrate to the inspectors all the current practices and work of the department. In the final report, HM inspectors singled out the department. Scientific support was commended in four separate areas and then given an overall commendation: ‘Her Majesty’s Inspectors were extremely impressed by the range and quality of initiatives being pursued by the scientific support section and commend it as a centre of excellence.’

Throughout many years in Surrey I was blessed to have the constant support and encouragement of a number of senior officers – Detective Chief Superintendent Len Rikard, Assistant Chief Constables Peter Hampson and Peter Fahy, Deputy Chief Constable Ian Beckett and Chief Constable David Williams. Len Rikard was the first businessman I ever met in the police service, but he was also a great leader and senior detective. He applied business models to policing in a way I had not seen before. Like me he was analytical and he used his skills to look at the causes of crime and apply resources in the right places. He taught me that detecting crime was but a tool in reducing crime with the final goal of trying to engineer it out altogether. Utopia may be an unrealistic goal, but at least we should try, and try we did. The reduction of crime was the goal of David Williams and Ian Beckett, who used detection to fuel a whole programme of reductions in crime and disorder, working with communities, social workers and even architects to reduce the opportunity for crime and the things which motivate it. These were new views in 1994 and Surrey was at the forefront. Peter Hampson saw the big picture and realised the use and value of the scientific detection of crime. His constant support and encouragement for my work and that of colleagues such as Ray Elvy were a source of strength. There was continuity as these men moved on. Ian Blair, the new chief constable appointed in 1997 would obviously support the new scientific technologies and their application. He recognised my personal efforts and challenges, and ensured that the force’s investment was properly applied. I found him to be a man of vision, courage, honour and compassion. I would expect that of someone who went on to become Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police as he did.

The science and practice we would develop in these years would be applied to the challenging crimes which Surrey Police had to investigate.

The role of the SIO is amongst the hardest in the UK police service. The senior investigating officer is responsible for the sound, professional investigation of major crimes such as murder and bringing the guilty to court. That in itself is hard enough, but they also have to manage the resources of the investigation, in particular the cost. I always found this an incredibly difficult conflict of responsibilities with huge potential for allegations of corner cutting and failing to fully investigate.

It is the nature of policing in the UK that detectives develop and rise, some to lofty ranks, and there is a steady and constant turnover at the top. When you have been around for some time and move on you often hear that a former colleague, one you knew when they were young, is now the senior detective and running the show. Life at the top is short as retirement quickly approaches and allows for the promotion of those below. Such is the cycle. A lot of talent is lost.

It is easy to remember colleagues as they were in their youth, rather than see what they have learned and become in the intervening years. Many may think of me that way. But I like to think we are all wiser, more mature and, above all, more experienced.

Brian Woodfield, in 1993 a detective chief inspector with Surrey Police, was one such colleague who rose, rightly, to the top of his trade. I didn’t know him as a young officer although I heard stories about him. Like all of us, Brian was from humble hard-working stock. His mentor at the time I knew him was Pat Crossan, a detective superintendent and very much from the same school. Both had a steely, determined approach. Brian appeared a little less caring than Pat. It often strikes me that there is a loftiness, an arrogance, in some officers, but it is really the air of authority which the police officer, and more importantly, the detective must display to get to the truth. With Pat Crossan and Brian Woodfield that shield hid a deeply compassionate and practical side. These men would do their job and ensure that everyone around did theirs.

Brian strongly led his investigations and there were times when I had to advise caution or restraint. He always listened, and then he made his mind up, after all it was his investigation, he was in charge. When a key piece of evidence was found during a scene investigation he would shout, ‘Get it down the lab!’ It became quite a catch phrase. He even let slip that once, in the middle of the night, he woke up shouting it out aloud, to the dismay of his wife. He was passionate about his work and I liked that.

It was, however, something else which Brian said which has stuck with me. He regularly used just two words, which are the finest I have heard any investigator use. They were polite and targeted. He would say, ‘Show me.’ He would use them in investigations and they became particularly important when reviewing the work or cases of others.

In late August 1993, I was on a visit to the police National Training Centre for Scientific Support to Crime Investigation (NTCSSCI) in Durham, when I got a call from the east Surrey division. It was from Danny Finnerty, who was the duty crime scene manager. Danny was from the other side of the county and had taken the first call to this incident. The body of a man, naked and covered in a white powder, had been found. Danny was a very talented and capable professional, but he was under pressure from the officer in the case, Detective Chief Inspector Brian Woodfield. I often thought that I must have worked with a more professional and demanding detective than him, but I would have trouble remembering when. Until I remembered Pat Crossan of course.

Brian was directing the investigation at the scene with Danny struggling to assert his professional knowledge on the management of the scene. The role of the crime scene manager was very much in its evolution at that time, and there was no way Brian Woodfield wasn’t going to control every aspect of the case, especially the scene. I didn’t want that situation to change. After all the buck stops with the SIO. But with a little delegation on his part, I knew that his lot would be easier and he would get the answers he wanted.

In later years, it was conceivable that highly motivated, dynamic and capable SIOs such as Brian Woodfield would be kept out of the scene for much, if not all, of the time it was being examined. It is not a situation I support. Whereas the scene can be photographed and videoed, the presence of the SIO is important for them to understand the dynamics and layout of the scene from a first-hand perspective.

Certainly the practice had improved from when detectives would go into the scene unprotected and then call for the scenes of crime personnel. By this time we had persuaded them to withhold the presence of any detective officer until a path had been cleared from the outer cordon to the body. Usually only one detective (the SIO) would enter at that time with the pathologist.

In all cases it is important for a medical practitioner, with the skills and authority to determine and confirm that the deceased is, in fact, dead, to attend. Confirming a time at which life is no longer present is a matter of coroner law. I never wasted a moment in allowing a doctor into the scene where this was in any doubt. In those cases I would ensure that the doctor was quickly briefed to certify death with as little disturbance as possible and dispatch them inside unimpeded. It would then be necessary to deal with any aspect of their contamination of the scene or vice versa. I felt that if I was not sure the victim was dead any delay could cause a seriously injured victim to die when they could have been saved. I would have felt responsible if a victim had died on the way to the hospital, and I would have been heavily criticised by the coroner. My view was not always readily accepted by those embryo crime scene managers who I taught much later at NTCSSCI Durham, but I remain convinced of it to this day.

Later still, the presence of any officer, specialist scientist, medical or other expert would be based on a need identified as the investigation and scene examination developed. The scene would be managed by a crime scene manager whose responsibility came from the SIO.

Back at this scene Danny had done an excellent job by ignoring the obvious route in and out of the scene, preferring instead to cut a new path through some undisturbed vegetation straight to the body. It allowed the obvious and likely route of the offender to be examined at a more steady and professional pace.

The decision about whether the incident looks like murder, an accident or suicide is not always easy and, in any event, requires investigation. The scene which confronted Danny Finnerty and Brian Woodfield was probably easy to judge but they took all the right steps. The body was that of a naked male lying in a clearing behind some bushes, ten yards from a country road. The body was covered in a fine white powder. It would be an understatement to say it looked suspicious. If it were a suicide it would be a bizarre one.

The police had been called to the scene by two men, working in a landfill site in Redhill. They had been working for a few days by the perimeter fence. On the day in question they had noticed a mound of white powder which had appeared on the other side of the fence. During a break they walked out of the gate, around to the country lane adjacent to the site. What they discovered there was the naked body of the deceased and the white powder covering him.

After securing a common approach path from the perimeter to the body, Iain West, a distinguished Home Office pathologist entered the scene with the SIO and CSM. The scene was extensively photographed. A sample of the powder was taken at Brian Woodfield’s request and immediately dispatched to the Forensic Science Laboratory at Aldermaston. Iain suggested the powder was lime as it had been in one of his first cases some thirty years before. The powder was confirmed as lime within a day. Brian Woodfield also ordered that soil samples should be taken from around the body. If he had a reason for this he didn’t explain it to Danny, who by then was doing as he was told. I later asked Danny Finnerty for what purpose they were taken, the reply being because the SIO had said so.

The post mortem revealed that the man had been stabbed. A tattoo on his body was recorded and circulated to police forces for comparison with missing persons reports. When an individual is reported missing by concerned relatives or friends it is normal to take a description which would include height, weight, hair, eye colour and any distinguishing features such as scars, birthmarks or tattoos. Other items such as the clothing they were wearing, along with any jewellery, may help their identification. The police record these details and circulate them to other stations and forces. Nowadays, obtaining a sample of potential DNA would be extremely useful. That would have to come from a hairbrush or wristband of a watch strap. That technology had yet to be invented in 1993. We had to rely on simpler methods to identify our victim but the tattoo gave us a great chance, provided that had been recorded somewhere. We were in luck. The victim was quickly identified as a man from south London who had been missing for four weeks.

Brian Woodfield rather cunningly and independently asked Iain West how long the victim had been dead. It was an interesting question to test the reliability of expert opinion and how that might appear in evidence. It was an open question so carefully delivered that the importance of the reply may have been overlooked by many, but not Brian. Iain’s reply was five weeks. Brian of course already knew by that stage that the victim had only been missing for four weeks. We would have to look at what Iain based his opinion on.

I returned to Surrey and reviewed the scene investigation with Martin Gaule (the crime scene manager for the east Surrey division which included the Redhill area), who had accompanied me to Durham.

A key investigative question emerged. It was, ‘How long has the deceased been there?’ The importance of this was to narrow down the investigation to a shorter period of time than the four weeks between him going missing and the discovery of his body. It might indicate a shorter time frame for potential witnesses to the dumping of the body and indicate for how long he was kept (dead or alive) at another or other locations. Two other things had also been determined. The first was that he had been dead for most, if not all, of the four weeks and he had not been killed here.