By all means talk about books but you have let Steve UK drag you away from the topic. He is quite good at that. This a forum about JB and his MOJ. It is not to be a book club or a place for literary reviews. If you want to talk about books why not have a book thread?
I have pointed out before that PV may have already been in the pocket of the police. I quoted the Tomlinson case and the use of Mr Patel.
Have you ever wondered why a pathologist was sent from London? I cannot believe that there was no suitable pathologist at, Chelmsford, Colchester, Ipswich, Cambridge etc. who would have been closer and no ballistics expert was summoned.
A lot would depend on how pathologists were assigned to cases at that time.
Was there a register of pathologists from which SIO’s could pick.
Did they have to work through the Home Office who would allocate an available member.
Did Senior officers (who were Masons) have a list of pathologists who were also Masons.
In such a case I believe they would have sought an already compromised pathologist. Was/is he a Freemason. It is clear from his CV that he was a man with vaulting ambition eventually rising to the very highest level at the Home Office. At the start he may have seen this as an opportunity, a kind of early version of ‘Linkedin’. Access to police top brass. Called on for the more notorious cases that would raise his profile, etc.
Over the years he has become a ‘celebrity’ pathologist and regularly appears on TV documentaries.
He has no Wikipedia entry but his ‘majestic’ CV is on his website. We do not know his background. Some personal facts can be found on his Desert Island discs’ episode. (BBC sounds).
Membership of the Masonic order is by invitation only, you cannot apply. PV qualified as a pathologist in 1972 so had 13 years’ experience by the time of the WHF incident. I have no doubt that during this time he would have met many Masons at all ranks of the police force and may have been invited/asked to join. Do not forget that Maggie T had been PM for 6 years and she turned the police into her foot soldiers. Levels of Masonic membership within the police was very much higher than it is today and questions about Masonry and police membership was from time to time subject to scrutiny in the media.
If he was a Mason, he could not say no. ‘Clan’ members must help fellow brothers if it is within their gift.
If he said no he could have been invited to join the Masons.
So long as he had not put pen to paper they had time to get some ‘dirt’ on him or a relative to persuade him. Did he or his family have skeletons in the cupboard which would have adversely affected his reputation. Part of their methodology is to have intimate knowledge of members and public figures so that they can use this to blackmail and pressurise others to achieve their objectives.
They may just have appealed to his emotional side. Young officer distraught, likely to lose his job for a single understandable reflex action. Police under extreme pressure etc.
Even if they could not persuade him, all he had to do was state the facts. In this situation I am sure they would have managed. If he had not made erroneous changes to his findings to cater for the so called first shot and Sheila being able to shoot June, along with the head shot to June we would be none the wiser.
After all he may have seen the situation at that time the same as DCC Simpson, that it was a closed situation and it would just be him and the EP who really knew what had happened.
Like him however he reckoned without the Boutflour family.
This is my example of a possible reading of events. I could be wrong. He has made too many changes that I have spotted and he has had to clarify too many issues such as the cleanliness of SC’s hands for my liking.
