11/09/07 - CAROLINE BEASLEY-MURRAY – A CORONER NOT IN A HURRY
by Les Balkwell

It will be Caroline Beasley-Murray who will hold the Inquest into my son’s death which occurred in the early hours of 18 July 2002. The Inquest is to take place on 4 October 2007 - well over 5 years after my son died. By the time it opens, it will have been 1,904 days since my son died. That’s a long wait - longer than almost anyone else has had to wait, I believe, apart from the Inquest into Princess Diana’s death.

Here I will explain why it has taken so long to hold the Inquest into my son’s death, and will make a few comments about the suitability of Caroline Beasley-Murray to hold this Inquest.

Inquests should normally be held as soon as possible after a death. I am not saying that Inquests should be rushed, if the Police are genuinely not ready, or if evidence still needs to be accumulated and evaluated. But, equally, they should not be unreasonably delayed either, otherwise, for example, memories fade, and for example witnesses may be dead or difficult to trace.

Here’s a time-line of events:

18 July 2002 - death of my son, either as the result of a tragic accident in a concrete-mixer, or - as I believe - because he was violently done to death shortly beforehand and then his body placed in the mixer to make it look like an accident.

18 July 2002 - Police investigations start under Superintendent Graham Bull. But key witnesses are not interviewed, key DNA and forensic evidence is not taken, and Lee’s clothes destroyed soon afterwards.

Autumn 2002 to March 2003 - Based on information received from a number of sources, who told me that my son may have been murdered before being placed in the concrete-mixer, I conducted my own enquiries. In particular, I got hold of my son’s belt (which his former partner had been keeping safe) which I believe contains or contained relevant evidence about my son’s death. It may have been used to carry him from the place where he was attacked to the concrete-mixer.

3 March 2003 - I received a joint approach from Detective Superintendent Simon Coxell, Head of Reviews for Essex Police and responsible for reviewing investigations into suspicious deaths, and Detective Inspector and Acting Superintendent Peter Hood, a senior officer in the Professional Standards Department of Essex Police, which investigates allegations of misconduct against senior officers. They told me that they wanted to thoroughly investigate the claims I was making. As a result, Caroline Beasley-Murray decided to postpone the Inquest, pending further Police enquiries.

March 2003 to July 2004 - Investigations carried out by Coxell and Hood which in effect went nowhere. Key witnesses are again not interviewed and the whole case drifts on and on with no serious attempt made by police officers to get at the truth.

2004 - I complained to the Police Complaints Authority, now the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). And my allegations are investigated there by Tom Moody. The IPCC investigation is not probing and after a year they decide they can only find limited misconduct by officers, for which they are ‘given words of advice’ (police jargon for the mildest of slaps on the wrist).

January 2005 - IPCC decides to cease its investigation of Essex Police.

January 2005 to 6 July 2006 - Nothing very much seems to happen. The police drift on taking witness statements, but seem all along to have accepted that this was just an accident and seem to want to wrap things up with an Inquest finding of ‘accidental death’. There is no questioning under caution of those present at Baldwins Farm when my son died, except for a police interview back in August 2002 when the police interviewed Simon Bromley and told him right at the start of the interview that they were treating this as a tragic accident - no way to get at the truth.

5 July 2006 - I set up my website: ‘Justice for Lee Balkwell’

6 July 2006. Within 24 hours, the Police say they are going to conduct a re-investigation into my son’s death. They appoint Detective Superintendent Keith Garnish. Once again, however, a very limited re-investigation is undertaken which has gone nowhere.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I would like to explain a bit more about this incident. Late on 5 July 2006 - nearly midnight - my website went live, with a great deal of detail which undermined Essex Police’s claim that this was only a ‘tragic accident’. Before 10.00 the following morning, the Head of Professional Standards, Peter Coltman, ’phoned me to tell me that he was ordering a complete re-investigation onto Lee’s death. It was a strange co-incidence, I thought at the time, but I took it as good news and actually thanked him (I now wish I hadn’t). Not until August this year was I told by Superintendent Keith Garnish that he had been ordered by the then Assistant Chief Constable only to carry out a limited investigation into my allegations. I had been led up the garden path a third time - thinking there would be a full investigation when there was only an intention to cover up earlier failings.

What makes this whole incident highly suspicious is what happened to poor Terry Lubbock when he complained to the Chief Constable about the appalling failures of the original, first investigation by Essex Police into his son Stuart’s death at Michael Barrymore’s home.

His then Solicitor Tony Bennett wrote many letters of complaint to Essex Chief Constable Roger Baker. Whilst Tony Bennett was successful in getting Essex Police  to re-investigate the case (for more details visit www.thelubbocktrust.org.uk), his many requests for alleged misconduct to be investigated by the Police was apparently   ignored.

That is, until Sunday, 21 January 2007, when the News of the World published a dramatic news story, serialising Tony’s book on the case, in which the News of the World mercilessly exposed Essex Police’s bungling of the case. Surprise, surprise! Guess what happened next? Head of Professional Standards Peter Coltman’s sidekick Peter Hood sent an e-mail to Tony Bennett just hours after the News of the World article appeared, promising his allegations would now be investigated and asking to meet with him as soon as possible.

Can you see a pattern here? Essex Police Professional Standards are not there to carry out serious investigations. Instead, they react to adverse news reports or other  developments and arrange cover-ups. One of many reasons I do not have confidence in Essex Police].    

September 2006 - Caroline Beasley-Murray decided to set April 2007 as the date for the much-delayed Inquest. For reasons that are not at all clear to me and which she refused to explain to my and my lawyers, she decided to drop her Essex County Council Coroner’s Officer, Philip Sitch, from his role as the Coroner’s Assistant. Philip Sitch is important to my case because he was on the scene of my son’s death within a couple of hours. She decided to appoint a Mr Derrick Bines to be her Coroner’s Assistant for the Inquest.

Derrick Bines turned out to be a retired police officer from the Metropolitan Police who does freelance work covering Coroner’s Inquests. He was mysteriously pulled in to give assistance to the Oxford Coroner to deal with delays and queries over the Inquest into the death of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was mentioned in Hansard in connection with his role there.

In March 2007, Bines spoke to an Essex police officer, Ian Rayner, whilst I was present, on a mobile telephone. I heard him say to Ian Rayner that he was going to run the Inquest as a typical accidental death and that this would help the police get on with other work. I could not believe my ears and insisted through my then lawyer Chris Bowen that he be dropped. Caroline Beasley-Murray had no option but to sack him as he could not demonstrate that he would hold a fair inquest. Another Coroner’s Assistant, John Lester, has been appointed.

Caroline Beasley-Murray then fixed a 6-day Inquest on my son’s death from 4 to 11 October 2007.

At no time have I ever sought to delay this Inquest. To wait 1,904 days for an Inquest, knowing all along that the Police have been doing nothing to mount a proper enquiry into the facts, has imposed an unbelievable strain on me and members of my family - and obviously, on Lee’s former partner, Lorraine. The news that the Coroner had appointed the unknown Derrick Bines for the Inquest and to hear him say to an Essex Police officer that he was going to treat Lee’s death as a ‘simple accidental death’ only increased that strain.

All I want is the truth, and as I shall now explain, I do not have confidence that Caroline Beasley-Murray will hold the ‘full and fair’ enquiry that she is supposed to hold in order to get at the truth - and which should be the true business of every Inquest.

Why do I say I do not have confidence in Caroline Beasley-Murray? Partly because I have now read Solicitor Tony Bennett’s brilliant book* ‘Not Awight: Getting Away With Murder’, which analyses the death of Stuart Lubbock, who without any doubt was violently assaulted and died as a result of that attack at Michael Barrymore’s home on 31 March 2001. This was a cover-up by both those involved on the night and by Essex Police. Caroline Beasley-Murray failed to spot this and therefore failed to hold a thorough Inquest.

* ‘Not Awight’ by Tony Bennett and Terry Lubbock; available direct from the author for £9.00 including P+P, cheques payable to ‘Tony Bennett’, 66 Chippingfield, HARLOW. Essex, CM17 0DJ

Here is what I discovered about that Inquest into Stuart Lubbock’s death, run by Caroline Beasley-Murray, as a result of reading Mr Bennett’s book:  

1. The main witness - or so it was claimed - to Stuart Lubbock’s death and rescue from a swimming pool was Simon Shaw, who said he had dived in on his own and brought up Stuart when he was lying at the bottom of the pool. It was a highly improbable account and in any case contradicted by the accounts of other witnesses. Yet Caroline Beasley-Murray merely had his statement read out at the Inquest and neither she nor anyone else asked him a single question. He was not for example challenged about why he initially told Essex Police a pack of lies about how he found Stuart in the pool, and then completely changed his story 2 days later
2. She allowed P.C. Richard Jones to make the following statement at the Inquest: “Later that same morning, Stuart Lubbock was found in the pool at the premises”. What P.C. Jones should have said was this: “Three witnesses claimed they found Stuart Lubbock in the pool at the premises”. She should then have robustly probed the claims of those witnesses, which were, very clearly, highly contradictory. Today, Essex Police admit that Stuart Lubbock was not found in the pool; their official line since November 2006 has been simply that he was ‘found at a house in Roydon’. I hope Caroline Beasley-Murray doesn’t make the same mistake at the Inquest into my son’s death. I am expecting that, unlike in the Lubbock case, all those at Baldwin’s Farm that night when my son died will be rigorously cross-examined about their inconsistent and unbelievable stories of how my son was supposed to have died.
3. She failed to realise that most of the eight witnesses present at Michael Barrymore’s house that night were lying about what really happened.
4. She failed to properly cross-examine Michael Barrymore, James Futers, Simon Shaw and Jonathan Kenney in particular about their highly contradictory accounts of how Stuart was supposedly found. One said he was found face up, another face down, one said he was floating at the top of the pool, another at the bottom. They couldn’t even agree on who was present when Stuart was found, and so on.

These are the problems I have observed so far in how Caroline Beasley-Murray has conducted my son’s Inquest:

1. She has never insisted on the two pathologists in the case, Dr Michael Heath and Dr Rouse, being asked the simple question: “Were Lee Balkwell’s injuries consistent with him being violently attacked and then placed in the concrete mixer to make it look like an accident?”
2. She accepted the advice of her then Coroner’s Assistant, Derrick Bines, that Dr Heath, who carried out the original autopsy on my son, should not be called to the Inquest, giving as an excuse that ‘he was no longer a Home Office Pathologist’
3. She has also failed to recognise the importance of including as witnesses at the Inquest as many as possible of those who attended the scene of my son’s death including the officer in charge at the time, Jason Weald, and all of the 34 or so members of the three emergency services who were on the scene in the first  three hours
4. She will not say why she appointed Derrick Bines in the first place
5. She has tried to severely limit the number of witnesses called, to such an extent that if her decisions are allowed to stand, the Inquest will fail to be a ‘full and fair’ enquiry into the truth as it is supposed to be under the law
6. There are significant photographs taken of my son during the morning after his death - which showed the position in which he was found and show the extent and character of his injuries. The photographs reveal other significant information which could be used by the Inquest jury to build up a picture of events that night. But she has told the police to produce computerised images of these photos. I have now examined these (at a meeting with Essex Police on 17 August 2007). It is clear that these computerised images have both falsified  the information - in other words they do not faithfully reproduce what is in the photographs - and equally, additional vital information has been omitted from them. To give just one example, the position of the fleece jacket in which Lee was found is wrongly drawn - much further down his back than was actually the case. To give another example, the all-important blood lines on the concrete-mixer have been omitted on the computerised images the police have  produced. Why?  The photographs are real and true. The computerised images are ‘false’ and lose all sorts of vital information. I want the jury to see the actual photographs. Why has Caroline Beasley-Murray authorised these unsatisfactory and misleading computerised images?

I want everyone present at the Inquest who can help find out the truth of what happened to my son and I want all witnesses properly questioned about what happened to my son, especially David Bromley, Simon Bromley, Scott Bromley, Simon Bromley’s partner Susan Lawrence, and Linda Bromley, all of whom were present when my son died and all of whom I believe know exactly what happened to him. Plus Nicholls the that night night. Inconsistent statements.

The Beasley-Murray family

Caroline Beasley-Murray is the wife of Mr Paul Beasley-Murray, who is Senior Minister of Central Baptist Church in Chelmsford. He has been described by his book publishing company as “A prolific and widely respected author, describing himself as 'first and foremost a people-centred pastor'. A dynamic Christian leader, who has ‘turned Christian institutions around’ and ‘enabled them successfully to face up to the challenges of today’. A creative thinker, he is constantly sparking new initiatives. Life is never dull when he is around!” His books include: ‘Transform your church’, ‘Joy to the World’, and ‘The Message of the Resurrection’.

I am told that he is the son of George Raymond Beasley-Murray, former Professor of New Testament 1973-1980, who was born on October 10, 1916 in London, England, and became a Christian in 1932 through the preaching of a student from Spurgeon’s College in South London. He apparently enrolled in Spurgeon’s College in 1936 to study the subject and quickly displayed an aptitude for leadership.
 
For a while he taught the New Testament at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Rüschlikon, Switzerland.

Caroline Beasley-Murray’s husband Paul Beasley-Murray wrote a book about his father’s life in 2002, called; ‘‘earless for Truth: A Personal Portrait of the Life of George Raymond Beasley-Murray’.

All I can say in response to all this information about the Beasley-Murray family is that I trust and pray that Caroline Beasley-Murray’s conduct of the Inquest into my son’s death will be equally ‘Fearless for truth’.

At the Lubbock Inquest, from what I have learnt, she showed herself to be more ‘fearful’ than ‘fearless’. I would be very happy to be proved wrong, and hope that just like her father-in-law, she will be, from now on in this case, and at my son’s Inquest in October, ‘fearless for truth’