There were no defensive injuries to the fingers or palms of the hands that would result from the victim trying to grab a knife or other bladed weapon, or to the outer part of the arm if the victim was trying to parry a blow.
The temperature of the body was measured using a rectal thermometer and death was estimated to have occurred between eighteen and twenty-seven hours earlier. This put the time of death between 4.15 p.m. on 17 July to 1.15 a.m. on 18 July.
According to Dr Hunt: “Dr Kelly was an apparently adequately nourished man in whom there was no evidence of natural disease that could of itself have caused death directly at the macroscopic or naked eye level. He had evidence of a significant incised wound to his left wrist, in the depths of which his left ulnar artery had been completely severed. That wound was in the context of multiple incised wounds over the front of his left wrist of varying length and depth. The arterial injury had resulted in the loss of a significant volume of blood as noted at the scene. The complex of incised wounds over the left wrist is entirely consistent with having been inflicted by a bladed weapon, most likely candidate for which would have been a knife. Furthermore, the knife present at the scene would be a suitable candidate for causing such injuries.”
The orientation and arrangement of the wounds over the left wrist were typical of self-inflicted injuries. Also typical was the presence of small, so-called tentative or hesitation marks. Dr Hunt noted that Dr Kelly’s watch appeared to have been removed deliberately to allow access to the wrist.
“The removal of the watch in that way and indeed the removal of the spectacles are features pointing towards this being an act of self-harm,” he said. “Other features at the scene which would tend to support this impression include the relatively passive distribution of the blood, the neat way in which the water bottle and its top were placed, the lack of obvious signs of trampling of the undergrowth or damage to the clothing. To my mind, the location of the death is also of interest in this respect because it was clearly a very pleasant and relatively private spot of the type that is sometimes chosen by people intent upon self-harm.”
Many of the injuries to the left wrist showed evidence of a “well-developed vital reaction”– that is, the body showed some signs of trying to heal itself – so Dr Hunt believed that they had been inflicted over a period of minutes, rather than seconds or hours, before death. This “vital reaction” manifests itself chiefly in the form of reddening and swelling around the affected area.
Dr Hunt again remarked on the total lack of classical defence wounds against sharp-weapon attack.
“Such wounds are typically seen in the palm aspects of the hands or over the outer aspects of the forearms,” he said. “It was noted that he 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.”
Given that blister packs of Coproxamol tablets were found in the coat pocket and vomit was found on the ground, Dr Hunt said it was an entirely reasonable supposition that he may have consumed a quantity of these tablets either on the way to or at the scene itself. The toxicology report also indicated that he had consumed a “significant quantity of tablets”.
There was also a minor injury to the inner lip and small abrasions to the head “consistent with scraping against rough undergrowth such as small twigs, branches and stones which were present at the scene”. There was no sign that Dr Kelly had been knocked out by a volatile liquid such as chloroform before his death or been subject to a violent attack. There were no indications that he had been restrained by the wrists or ankles, or had been strangled either manually or by a ligature.
Dr Hunt concluded that Dr Kelly had died from the loss of blood from the wound in his left wrist. His death was hastened by the ingestion of dextropropoxyphene and the weakness of his coronary arteries.
“There was no pathological evidence to indicate the involvement of a third party in Dr Kelly’s death,” said Dr Hunt. “Rather, the features are quite typical . . . of self-inflicted injury if one ignores all the other features of the case.”
Forensic biologist Roy Green arrived at the scene where the body was lying at 2 p.m. on 18 July. He examined the scene with particular reference to the bloodstaining in the area and found that most of the staining came from blood spurting from about a foot (33 cm) above the ground, though the highest came from 20 in. (50 cm). This meant that most of the injuries took place while Dr Kelly was sitting or lying down. When Green first viewed the body, Dr Kelly was lying down with his wrist curled back. There were bloodstains on his right elbow, the tops of his thighs, his right shoulder and the sleeve of his Barbour jacket. Green described the bloodstain on the right knee of Kelly’s jeans as a “contact bloodstain” – meaning that the stain had come from direct contact with a source of blood, rather than blood being splashed on it. Probably Dr Kelly had knelt in a pool of blood after he was bleeding.
“The jeans . . . with this large contact stain, did not appear to have any larger downward drops on them,” said Green. “There were a few stains and so forth but it did not have any staining that would suggest to me that his injuries, or his major injuries if you like, were caused while he was standing up, and there was not any – there did not appear to be any blood underneath where he was found, and the body was later moved which all suggested those injuries were caused while he was sat or lying down.”
The smear of blood on the Evian bottle indicated that Dr Kelly had become thirsty – “when people are injured and losing blood they will become thirsty,” said Green, because they are losing fluid.
The forensic toxicologist Dr Alexander Allan examined blood and urine samples as well as the contents of Dr Kelly’s stomach sent to him by Dr Hunt. These also contained paracetamol and dextropropoxyphene. The prescription medicine Coproxamol contains 325 mg of paracetamol and 32.5 mg of dextropropoxyphene. It is a mild to moderate painkiller, typically used to alleviate a bad back or period pain. The concentrations of the drugs he found represented “quite a large overdose of Coproxamol”.
Dextropropoxyphene is an opioid analgesic drug which causes symptoms typical of opiate drugs in overdose, such as drowsiness, sedation and ultimately coma, respiratory depression and heart failure. It is known, in certain circumstances, to cause disruption to the rhythm of the heart and it can cause death by that process in some cases of overdose, while paracetamol does not cause drowsiness or sedation in overdose, but if enough is taken it can cause damage to the liver. Dextropropoxyphene was present in the blood at a concentration of one microgram per millilitre; paracetamol in a concentration of 97 micrograms per millilitre. These levels were much higher than would be found in therapeutic use.
“Typically, therapeutic use would represent one tenth of these concentrations,” said Dr Allen. “They clearly represent an overdose. But they are somewhat lower than what I would normally expect to encounter in cases of death due to an overdose of Coproxamol.”
When asked what concentration he would expect to see in a case where dextropropoxyphene resulted in death, Dr Allan said: “There are two surveys reported I am aware of. One reports a concentration of 2.8 micrograms per millilitre of blood of dextropropoxyphene in a series of fatal overdose cases. Another one reports an average concentration of 4.7 micrograms per millilitre of blood. You can say that they are several fold larger than the level I found.”
Paracetamol was found in concentrations five or ten times higher than would normally be expected in therapeutic use, but lower than expected if it was the cause of death.
“I think if you can get the blood reasonably shortly after the incident,” said Dr Allan, “and the person does not die slowly in hospital due to liver failure, perhaps typically three to four hundred micrograms per millilitre of blood.”
The levels of paracetamol and dextropropoxyphene found in his body were consistent with Dr Kelly taking twenty-nine or thirty Coproxamol tablets and that the only way these drugs could have got into his body was by him ingesting them. There was a plentiful supply on hand. Mrs Kelly, who suffered from arthritis, kept them and Dr Kelly was thought to have taken them from her store.
The police did not show the knife to Dr Kelly’s widow or his daughters. Instead, Mrs Kelly was shown a photograph of the knife found beside the body. It was a knife that Dr Kelly had owned since he was a boy, which he kept in the desk in his study along with a collection of pocket knives. It was found to be missing after his death. His daughters said that it was not unusual for him to take the knife when he went for a walk.
Professor Keith Hawton, Professor of Psychiatry at Oxford University and the Director of the Centre for Suicide Research, visited the site of Dr Kelly’s death.
“It occurred in an isolated spot on Harrowdown Hill,” he said, “in woodland about forty or fifty yards off the track taken by ramblers. The site is well protected from the view of other people . . . What struck me was it is a very peaceful spot, a rather beautiful spot and we know that it was a favourite – it was in the area of a favourite walk of Dr Kelly with his family.”
This and the other circumstances of Dr Kelly’s death led Professor Hawton to believe that Dr Kelly took his own life.
He had read Dr Hunt’s report and seen photographs of Dr Kelly’s body, and concluded that the injuries to his wrist were consistent with suicide, even though the ambulance crew and others said that there was not very much blood at the scene. The fact that Dr Kelly had removed his glasses, his cap and his watch also suggested suicide. There were no signs of violence on his body, other than the obvious injury to his wrist, that would indicate that he had been involved in some sort of struggle or a violent act. There was no sign of the trampling down of vegetation and undergrowth in the area around the body. So Professor Hawton concluded that it was highly unlikely that others were involved. Certainly, if someone had forced Dr Kelly to take Coproxamol, there would have been signs of a struggle. He was not drugged and force-fed the tablets either. While a sample taken of Dr Kelly’s lung was not tested for volatile liquids such as ether, no traces of stupefying substances were found in his blood. Based on his examination of the evidence of the pathologist and the biologist, Professor Hawton also ruled out the possibility that Dr Kelly was force-fed Coproxamal elsewhere, then brought to the scene.
“I think that taking all the evidence together, it is well nigh certain that he committed suicide,” he said.
According to Assistant Chief Constable Page, around 500 people were interviewed during his investigation into the death of Dr Kelly; 300 statements were taken; 700 documents were seized and numerous computer files examined to determine whether there was any criminal dimension to Dr Kelly’s death. As it seemed out of character for Dr Kelly to commit suicide, the investigation focused on whether he was being blackmailed, but could find no evidence of it.
However, the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr Kelly also heard from David Broucher, the United Kingdom’s Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, who had met Dr Kelly in connection with his duties. He had wanted to pick Dr Kelly’s brains about Iraq’s compliance with the biological weapons convention, asking him why the Iraqis were courting disaster by not cooperating with the weapons inspectors and giving up whatever weapons they might have had in their arsenal. Dr Kelly said that he was in touch with the Iraqis but found himself in an ambiguous position. He had assured the Iraqis that if they cooperated with the weapons inspectors they had nothing to fear. However, he had come to believe that the invasion of Iraq might go ahead anyway and the Iraqis would think that he had lied to them. He said he did not like working for the Ministry of Defence and wanted to go back to working for the weapons research establishment at Porton Down.
Broucher asked Kelly directly what would happen if Iraq was invaded. According to Broucher: “His reply was, which I took at the time to be a throw-away remark – he said, ‘I will probably be found dead in the woods.’” This raised the possibility that he had been murdered by Iraqi agents.
“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,” said Broucher. “I now see that he may have been thinking on rather different lines.”
The Hutton Inquiry concluded that Dr Kelly had committed suicide, but others were not satisfied with this conclusion and called for a formal inquest into Dr Kelly’s death. Former assistant coroner Dr Michael Powers QC said that the cuts would not have caused Dr Kelly to bleed to death and the dose of Coproxamol in his body was normal. He was backed in this view by trauma surgeon David Halpin, epidemiologist Andrew Rouse, surgeon Martin Birnstingl, radiologist Stephen Frost and Chris Burns-Cox, who specializes in internal general medicine.
“Suicide cannot be presumed, it has to be proven,” said Dr Powers. “From the evidence that we have as to the circumstances of his death, in particular the aspect of haemorrhage, we do not believe that there was sufficient evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he killed himself.”
He also found it suspicious that, while there were twenty-nine pills missing from the packs found nearby, there was comparatively little Coproxamol in his body. The inquest should not have been left to Lord Hutton, he said, as he is not a coroner.
“Any unnatural death has to be investigated properly,” said Halpin. “This has not.”
In their twelve-page submission, Powers, Halpin et al. concluded: “The bleeding from Dr Kelly’s ulnar artery is highly unlikely to have been so voluminous and rapid that it was the cause of death. We advise the instructing solicitors to obtain the autopsy reports so that the concerns of a group of properly interested medical specialists can be answered.”
Norman Baker MP uncovered information showing there were no fingerprints on the knife the scientist apparently used to slash his wrist, even though he was not wearing gloves.