Thursday 13th July 2006

WHY WAS THERE NO ARTERIAL RAIN ON DR KELLY'S CLOTHING?

Consider the following and send me your comments.
If you have medical training/experience all to the good but logic also welcome.

Above is a 3"- 4 " Sandvik pruning knife like the one Dr Kelly is alleged to have used. To understand the scenario on Harrowdown Hill better one has to imagine how, if the official account of his death is correct, Dr Kelly's wrist was slashed and what effect it had.

Dr David Halpin considers how it might have been had Dr Kelly's wrist been slashed by an assailant:

'If that person was standing/kneeling at the head end of the victim and on its left, and if he was right handed, the forearm would have been grasped with the left hand. The deeper cut that divided the ulnar artery would have started on the outside ie radial side and finished with the knife (of uncertain sharpness) being arrested by the flexor carpi ulnaris tendon just as it divided the artery. Tendons are very difficult to cut without a very sharp scalpel or tenotome. The 'hooked' nature of this pruning knife would explain then how the artery was cut. This tendon would have 'guarded' the artery to an extent. Perhaps the other party wanted to replicate the sort of cuts Dr K would have made.'

This draws us into the picture. Tough tendons make the ulnar artery hard to reach, but because the blade on this particular knife had a hooked end, this would have gouged down into the wrist, cut through the tendons and transected the artery.

David Halpin again:

My main point is it preposterous to propose that this punctilious man would have chosen such methods with which to kill himself,..... I reiterate that he knew all about the 'biology of death' as I have coined it. To have picked an 'unsharp' pruning knife would have been ridiculous (such blades are difficult to sharpen anyway ...

But let's say Dr Kelly did this to himself, how might it have happened? According to two of his daughters Dr Kelly habitually took this knife with him on his regular walks to cut back undergrowth. It is not surprising that this knife was blunt -- as indicated by the crushed and notched edges on the wounds. Mr Halpin tells us it is VERY DIFFICULT to cut through tendons, even with a very sharp scalpel. Consider then how much FORCE would have been required to make that kind of cut with a blunt knife. That's one point.

But say Dr Kelly did that. If you replay the action of cutting your left wrist on yourself with the knife in your right hand (and yes, Dr Kelly WAS right handed) by miming it, no matter how you do it, there would be a SHARP JERKING ACTION where the left arm would jerk BACK and UP TOWARDS THE BODY. Since the knife was blunt, and the tendons were very tough, that jerking action would have been even more pronounced. How then was there no BLOOD SPLATTERING (note it's the spray effect, not blood per se, that is important here) on Dr Kelly's clothing?

Note the arterial rain was said to have been found ON THE NETTLES and mostly ABOUT A FOOT FROM THE GROUND. The forensic biologist (see below) does not report ANY spray effect on Dr Kelly's clothing.

Does anyone with medical or forensic training have any idea what would happen to the blood when an ulnar artery is cut with this kind of knife in this way? If Dr Kelly did this to himself can you conceive of a reason why it would NOT have sprayed onto his clothing ?

Consider the alternative: Dr Kelly is lying on the ground, unconscious or semi-conscious. An assailant picks up his left arm, holds it up and towards the nettles, about a foot from the ground. With the knife in his right hand he slashes Dr Kelly's left wrist, putting in the hesitation marks as an assassin would have been trained to do, and makes one final cut. Blood sprays out, but because the left arm is held up and away from the body it does not reach Dr Kelly's clothes -- it sprays only the nettles.

Was arterial rain on the nettles the key piece of 'evidence' that would supposedly convince the public Dr Kelly had died from his own hand? In fact it does the opposite: the fact that the arterial rain was found on the nettles and not on the body may be one of the strongest indications we have that Dr Kelly did not die by his own hand.

In 2004 Vanessa Hunt and Dave Bartlett, the paramedics attending Dr Kelly's body on Harrowdown Hill, the scene of his deatg, attended a press conference to voice their doubts about the official cause of death. See their account in an article in the Observer below. Crucially, they report no blood on Dr Kelly's right hand -- the hand that is supposed, in the official account to have held the knife, -- and no arterial spray on his clothing.

How do you see it? Please comment below or privately, in an e-mail.

Rowena Thursby
Kelly Investigation Group (KIG)
RowenaThursby@onetel.com
Tel: 01425 638409 -- please leave a message on the answerphone.

Roy Green, the forensic biologist testifies to the Hutton Inquiry:http://www.hutton.softblade.com/transcripts.php?action=transcript&session=29&witness=59#wit59

MR DINGEMANS: Did you find anything around the body area of interest?
MR GREEN: Yes. There was blood distribution.
MR DINGEMANS: Where had the blood come from?
MR GREEN: It appeared that the blood had originated from Dr Kelly's injured left wrist.
MR DINGEMANS: Right. I think we have heard from an extract that Mr Page has read out to us that the ulnar artery was severed. Did you understand that to be the case at the time?
MR GREEN: Obviously injuries are a pathologist's domain. However, the blood distribution was what I would expect to see if an artery had been severed. There was bloodstaining typical of that sort of injury.
MR DINGEMANS: What do you expect to see in such circumstances?
MR GREEN: Well, when veins are severed the blood comes out under a low pressure, but when arteries are severed it comes out on a much higher pressure and you get spurting of blood, you get a phenomenon known as arterial rain, where you have a great deal of smallish stains all of about the same size over the area.
MR DINGEMANS: Did you find that arterial rain?
MR GREEN: Yes.
MR DINGEMANS: On what?
MR GREEN: On the nettles -- there were nettles alongside the body of Dr Kelly.
MR DINGEMANS: And did you look for the distribution of blood?
MR GREEN: Yes.
MR DINGEMANS: We have heard from some ambulance personnel, and they said they were not specifically looking, for obvious reasons, at the distribution of blood but they noted, just on their brief glance, not very much blood. What were your detailed findings?
MR GREEN: Well, there was a fair bit of blood.
LORD HUTTON: There was -- I beg your pardon?
MR GREEN: A fair bit of blood, my Lord. The body was on leaf litter, the sort of detritus you might find on the floor of a wood, which is -- and that is very absorbent, so although it may not have appeared to them there was that much blood, it would obviously soak in.
MR DINGEMANS: A bit like blotting paper in some respects?
MR GREEN: Yes.MR DINGEMANS: What else did you see around the body?
MR GREEN: There was a bloodstained watch and a knife to --
MR DINGEMANS: Was the knife bloodstained?
MR GREEN: Yes, it was, yes. There was a Barbour hat/cap near Dr Kelly's left shoulder and then out from that there was an Evian water bottle, the cap of which was just a bit further along. These were -- the bottle was about 25 centimetres from the shoulder.
MR DINGEMANS: Did you examine the vegetation around the body?
MR GREEN: Yes.
MR DINGEMANS: Did you form any conclusions from that examination?
MR GREEN: Well, the blood staining that was highest from the ground was approximately 50 centimetres above the ground. This was above the position where Dr Kelly's left wrist was, but most of the stainings were 33 centimetres, which is approximately a foot above the ground. It was all fairly low level stuff.

Kelly death paramedics query verdict
Special report from The Observer, by Antony Barnett
Sunday December 12, 2004

In the cramped office of an Oxford law firm, Dave Bartlett's solicitor turns to him and asks if he is happy to stand by the dramatic comment he has just made about the death of Dr David Kelly.

Bartlett's eyes do not waver. 'Yes. I have always said that had it been a member of my family I wouldn't have accepted what they came out with.'

Sitting next to Bartlett is his colleague, Vanessa Hunt. Like him, she has been a paramedic for more than 15 years. She does not hesitate either.

'There just wasn't a lot of blood... When somebody cuts an artery, whether accidentally or intentionally, the blood pumps everywhere. I just think it is incredibly unlikely that he died from the wrist wound we saw.'

On 18 July last year Bartlett and Hunt received an emergency call to attend a suspected suicide. Over the years they have raced to the scenes of dozens of attempted suicides in which somebody has cut their wrists. In only one case has the victim been successful.

'That was like a slaughterhouse,' recalls Hunt. 'Just think what it would be like with five or six pints of milk splashed everywhere.' If you slit your wrists, that is the equivalent amount of blood you would have to lose.......

But this was not the scene which greeted the two paramedics when their ambulance arrived at Harrowdown Hill woods in Oxfordshire, where the body of Dr Kelly, the weapons expert, had been found.....

......The paramedics parked their ambulance. Carrying their resuscitation equipment, they followed two armed-response police for about a mile until they reached a wooded area. In a clearing, they first saw Kelly's body.

Both saw that the left sleeves of his jacket and shirt had been pulled up to just below the elbow and there was dried blood around his left wrist.

'There was no gaping wound... there wasn't a puddle of blood around,' said Hunt. 'There was a little bit of blood on the nettles to the left of his left arm. But there was no real blood on the body of the shirt. The only other bit of blood I saw was on his clothing. It was the size of a 50p piece above the right knee on his trousers.'

Hunt found this very strange. 'If you manage to cut a wrist and catch an artery you would get a spraying of blood, regardless of whether it's an accident... Because of the nature of an arterial cut, you get a pumping action. I would certainly expect a lot more blood on his clothing, on his shirt. If you choose to cut your wrists, you don't worry about getting blood on your clothes.
'I didn't see any blood on his right hand... If he used his right hand to cut his wrist, from an arterial wound you would expect some spray.'

.....Bartlett recalls being called to one attempted suicide where the blood had spurted so high it hit the ceiling. 'Even in this incident, the victim survived. It was like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the guy walked out alive. We have been to a vast amount of incidents where people who have slashed their wrists, intentionally or not. Most of them are taken down the hospital and given a few stitches then sent straight back home. But there is a lot of blood. It's all over them.'