its all covered in the appeal basically some officers admitted the raid team did it and others said they did not. Take your pick .
Nothing else on the table broken though .
249. We have considered the potential impact that Action 94 might have had on the jury. We think it is wholly unrealistic to suggest that the jury might have been persuaded by it that there had not been a violent struggle in the kitchen. Even if one discounts the evidence of the overturned stools and chairs and the broken sugar bowl, there was sufficient other evidence to suggest a violent struggle. Mr Bamber's body lay across an overturned chair that can have had nothing to do with the actions of the TFG, the light fitting was broken, there were the injuries apart from the shot wounds to Mr Bamber, there was the piece broken off the rifle stock, there were score marks under the mantelpiece where it had been struck by the sound moderator attached to the rifle, and there was Mr Bamber's watch lying damaged under a rug on the other side of the room.
250. DI Cook's comments on the Action 94 are unsatisfactory in themselves. The words "There was no sugar on the floor it was all confined to an area under the table and if it was, officers would have been walking in the same. Sugar was later found because the table was moved and sugar swept around" are in themselves potentially contradictory depending upon how they are read. It should not be forgotten that DI Cook was one of the officers who had supported the murder/suicide conclusion and that at the date of Action 94, different officers had taken over responsibility for the inquiry and concluded that the original investigation had missed significant evidence. In such circumstances DI Cook had every motive to seek to support his original view by reading into matters that had been reported to him more than was the reality of the situation.
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Offline mike tesko
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Re: 2002 appeal judgement...
« Reply #5 on: May 07, 2013, 10:47:PM »
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251. We find that there is nothing in the hearsay comments recorded in the Action 94 that even if they could have been introduced into evidence could realistically have been thought to lead to a conclusion other than that there had been a violent struggle in the kitchen.
252. Looking at the Ainsley Reports, we consider that the comment "there is of necessity a certain amount of disturbance" was entirely in accord with the evidence of the TFG officers. A sledgehammer was taken to a door, a window opened, a door unlocked, a chair moved, stools moved, a cellar door forced, a window unlocked and the door opposite the children's room forced. We reject the submission that Ainsley's reports in any way support the appellant's submission that the firearms officers "knocked over the chairs, stools, and a sugar bowl".
253. As to the Essex Police Report, we can find no evidential support for the hearsay suggestion that "It is now believed the stools were possibly knocked over by members of the TFG". By the time of that inquiry, there must have been a number of officers who had every motive to down play the failure to spot important factors in the early stage of the inquiry and the situation was such that just such a proposition might very well be floated. However there is nothing to cause us to believe that it originated from anyone who could give first hand information about the matter.
254. As already explained Ann Eaton's recollection years after the event of what she had been told cannot be factually right whether or not she correctly recalled that which she was told.
