The logs are never going to establish anything significant. One can imagine what they like due to the ambiguous nature of the logs. But at the end of the day all they establish is the following.
Jeremy - West 3.23am
West - Bonnet 3.26am
West - Saxby(Witham) 3.30am
West - Jeremy 3.33am
Bonnet - Witham 3.35am
CA7 - Bonnet - 3.48am
Notes
West puts JB on hold - 3.25am
West takes JB off hold - 3.33am
Jeremy calls the police. Police dispatch a car to WHF.
I think you probably underestimate just what can be discovered through ESDA,David.
http://www.unask.com/website/printing/IndeterminacyLecture/ESDA.htm It is long, but an interesting and informative read. Whilst it mostly refers to interview notes and how ESDA testing establishes where edits and fabrications have occurred through indentations from pages above it's relevance is apparent.
From the above article the following is of particular interest:
From the point of view of ESDA analysis, which, it will be remembered, depends entirely on impressions indenting through from a top copy on to sheets placed beneath it, there is one crucial item to be added. The entire success of ESDA in the analysis of interview notes derives from one simple human preference: the fact that people do not like to write on a hard surface. Particularly the hard and not utterly flat surface of the tables found in interview rooms, which have normally seen a good deal of wear and tear. Some form of pad makes a much more satisfactory basis for writing, and, since the pre-printed interview forms come in loose stacks rather than bound pads, the obvious thing to do is to make a squared pile of these sheets and write on them from one to the other, down through a stack. The end result is that while the note-taker was transcribing the interview he or she was also, unknowingly, leaving an invisible duplicate of the written text of each page on the page beneath. From the point of view of this invisible record, then, the following scribal habits are of vital importance. The usual practice is that when the interview begins, the note-taker will take a first page and place it on a stack of continuation sheets. Each page is then filled in using the rest as a pad to support the writing page. When the interview is finished, the normal pattern is for the topping and tailing to be done with all of the sheets in a pile, so that, like the text, the headings, page numbers, and signatures will indent through from one page to the next, though the text writing represents one consecutive writing sequence, and the addition of the details another. Last of all the end time is entered on the first page, often, but not always, while it is resting on a stack of continuation sheets.
Whilst this passage is about interview notes( also required for ESDA testing), the "human preference that the writer refers to, of people not liking to write on a hard surface, is equally valid for the message logs. I am sure that everyone can work out what ESDA testing on original logs and statements could reveal.
Having recently read much more about ESDA generally, but also specifically to cases where ESDA provided the breakthrough in overturning the conviction, I was amazed at just how many cases it has been crucial in overturning the verdict and so will anyone else if they delve a little.
Roch recently started a thread about police corruption where he posted the recollections of a former police officer. The sheer scale of police corruption is clear for all to see the more you read about specific cases where ESDA testing has exposed the criminality of the police and the recollections posted by Roch seem apposite.
