22/05/2025
The Summing Up (p2)
Tuesday, 6th January 1998
They had retreated from the Range Rover so as not to interfere with any marks. His own Wellington boots were taken. Their vehicle had not been down the track after 7 o'clock on the previous evening. The next morning they had to defrost it. There was no frost or snow anywhere on the roof or the windscreen of the Range Rover. No steaming up of the interior. He would have expected it to be frosted up if it was there for many hours. In cross-examination by Mr Lederman he said there was enough frost to need to defrost his own vehicle. His own vehicle had been parked since 5 PM the previous night at the farm yard which was fairly open to the weather.
Barry Knights, a police constable, and Sergeant Christopher Atkins were those first two police officers who arrived in a police car at 8.17 on the Thursday morning and were there for about 5 hours. They saw and spoke to the two farmers, Mr Theobald and Mr Jiggins, and then walked down the track which was a single vehicle route and had about 2.5 centimeters, about an inch of snow on it. They saw that what was obviously Mr Jiggin's vehicle had made two tyre tracks down the track. As they rounded the right hand bend Mr Knights immediately saw the Range Rover and later the registration F424 NPE.
He asked Jiggins and Theobald to stop when they were 25 yards from the vehicle. The Range Rover was quite dirty and the only area he could see through was the rear windscreen wash and wipe. The gate was about 5 yards in front of the vehicle. He saw the two bodies in the front seats and walked to the off-side of the vehicle and saw 3 blue shotgun cartridges lying in the snow beside the driver's door in photograph 2.7.
You might find it useful to have your photographs with you members of the jury. 2.7 is the view looking at the front of the Range Rover. On the far left you can see the blue cartridges though they are clearer seen in other photographs. The driver was sitting in a normal position with his head leaning on his left shoulder. You can see that. The front passenger had his chin on his chest. There was a third person sitting in the back that you can see from other photographs. Sitting slightly slumped, leaning forwards against the nearside passenger window with his head against the window which was actually smashed.
Mr Knights walked around the rear of the vehicle and stood at the rear nearside corner and saw a blue shotgun cartridge on the ground outside the rear passenger door. You can see that in photograph 9. That is the rear nearside passenger door. He could see the large wound clearly visible in the rear passenger's head which was leaning against the broken window. After a brief conversation with Sergeant Atkins it was Knights that was left by the scene by the others. Sergeant Atkins went to call for assistance from other police and he stayed in a small turning off the track. It was his job to protect the scene (Mr Parkins asked him, and he agreed in cross-examination) and make sure nobody approached until senior officers could assess the situation. He looked for a pattern of anyone walking down the lane but there were no signs except for the vehicle going down. There were points to indicate people had been up to the scene. Atkins and he were very careful not to disturb anything and not to let things be trodden on. He tried not to tread on the footprints. His own boots were taken for testing and he would have expected any footwear of anyone who went near the vehicle to be taken to be tested. He was the first person there apart from the farmers. He could not define what footprints there were but they were in different directions around the vehicle. He could not define who made them. To the rear of the vehicle and on the off-side there were two marks he saw himself. He did not touch any cartridge case. He only noticed the three on the off-side and the one at the nearside. He got bomb tape from his vehicle and put it down to make a track on one side. Nobody wandered down the track. He was in the turning area and he did not see anyone where he was.
He looked at other photographs. You have them members of the jury. 10 you can see the cartridge case by the wheel, 11 likewise you can see two cartridge cases, 12 you can see one. 12 in fact is of course expanded on later and I will briefly refer to it when I move on in a minute or two. You know that 12 is Exhibit 34 which was an enlargement and was another enlargement of the same part of the scene but from a different angle which is now our Exhibit 108. 13 is the gate with its padlock. 15 is a view inside the car to show a door pocket. 16, if you would look now, is Exhibit 108 which you have in greater scale in what I am holding up.
He said he definitely would not of put his police boot near any cartridge that you see in those photographs. In re-examination he told you that as the snow was melting he informed the other officers further away what was happening. They were at the A130 end of the track. From his position nobody could come past without his seeing it. Nobody did, whether a member of the public or a reporter or whatever.
There for the first time, members of the jury, you have an insight as to what was happening in the investigation - it was starting from the far end of the track down at the A130 and it was Mr Knights who drew attention to the fact that the temperature was up because the snow was melting and things were changing.
Sergeant Christopher Atkins had come down the track with Mr Knights and had seen Mr Jiggins and Mr Theobald. When he looked at the Range Rover he saw no obvious snow on the roof and he saw the bodies. There was about an inch of snow on the track but no snow in front of vehicle. The windows were not iced up. He went from the back driver's side to the driver's window and then to the back and then down the passenger's side of the vehicle. He walked down the nearside and then went back to the track and he put tape across the track which you have seen and do not need to look at again in photograph 5. Then PC Morris joined him and they went down the track and kept a log of those attending at the A130.
He said in cross-examination it was in the middle of a cold spell and all vehicles out for a length of time would have had ice or snow on them. He had Doc Martins type boots but not Doc Martins with a block pattern. He said, "Once we were aware of what we'd got," meaning the sight he had found in the Range Rover, "we were very careful where we put our feet." There was quite a covering of snow at that time, about an inch. Foot marks can be a valuable assistance. He walked halfway down the nearside of the car and did not remember any cartridge case on that nearside. He would have recorded it if he had. He was taking great care bearing in mind what he was looking at. He said there are a thousand and one things on his mind when he was looking inside the vehicle.
You remember Dr. Janki Persaud who was the police surgeon. He first attended the scene at 9.30, but he did not see much then because he was kept back from the vehicle. He said it was a cold day and there was snow to about the thickness of a centimeter when he first arrived and frost on the ground. Overcast weather. He went nowhere near the scene on his first visit, but did so when he returned at 11.30 when he was escorted to the driver's side of the vehicle. He saw empty cartridges on the ground on the offside which was the side from which he approached the vehicle. He was asked not to contaminate the scene by touching anything. He saw the bodies of the three men. He described the injuries he saw which were afterwards more clearly described by the pathologist and so I will save the description for then.
He saw that the glass from the nearside window was shattered. He thought that the gun shot wounds appeared to have caused massive disruptions to the skulls of the three victims and he certified them as dead.
In cross-examination he said he walked behind Superintendent Disley to the scene. Mr Disley guided him. He actually saw four cartridge cases. He thought those were on the offside of the vehicle, but he did not count them and he could not remember how many there were really. He was clear in his mind that he saw one cartridge case away from vehicle. He produced his little diagram, Exhibit 100 at page 100 which is not to scale - there is no need to look at it now.
Then it was asked about the time of death. He said there are various methods to ascertain the time of death which you needed to be an expert. It is fraught with difficulty. He did not take the body temperatures or take any active steps because there was a danger of contamination of the bodies by taking temperatures. He did not know what an expert would do to estimate the time of death and he did not make his own estimate.
DC Peter King attended the scene about twenty to eleven and took a number of the photographs we have just been looking at which were all marked PLK, his initials. He did not take the first five in our bundle.
At 7.45 in the evening at the scenes of crime garage at South Woodham Ferrers Police Station he took further photographs showing the three deceased inside the vehicle. The next day he took a series of post-mortem photographs during the post-mortem of each of the accused. You have got those further photographs further on, members of the jury, from 18 onwards. You have seen them before and they got added to one by one as questions were asked in cross-examination. I need not refer you to any of them at this stage.
When we get to cross-examination he was asked to look at photograph 25. He said that no cartridge was apparent near the front passenger door. You remember that this as a reference to Exhibit 7 if you turn to the exhibit bundle for the moment. I shall try not to get you to hold two volumes in front of you as I go through this, but it may not be possible I am afraid. At page 7 of the exhibit bundle you will remember that the original drawing of Inspector Huges had what is clearly accepted as a mistake on the left-hand side of the Range Rover in that the two cartridge cases on the left-hand side were not in the position shown in Exhibit 7 but were in the position shown in 7 (a) You have got that. Nothing was by the front passenger door but there were two level with what would be the boot on the near side. He was asked to look at the difference in shading in the two photographs that you have here, Exhibit 34 and Exhibit 108. I will hold them up so that you do not have to rummage for them. There are A's and B's on them, members ef the jury, and you can see one is darker than the other, but you can also see in the enlargement that these are positions which look like the prints at various places as I indicated.
He said 108 was a lot closer than 34, less light on 108, but he was using flash in his camera. There are stud marks in Exhibit 34. The mark A on 108 could be a bend. He took 108 at a later time. 34 was originally 212 in your album; 108 was 216. He thought there was a cartridge found further to the back behind the nearside wheel and not in 34. As far as he could recall there was another cartridge further back. He had not drawn the diagram and had nothing to do with it. It would be wrong to remove the cartridge from where it was to somewhere else.
He had been asked to photograph the interior of the vehicle and he did photograph the interior of the vehicle. He could not remember that there was no cartridge all in the rear footwell in 54 and 61, but then he looked at them and of course you have seen those photographs and as you know there is no cartridge in 54 or in the other photograph 61. There were shown in those photographs a crisp bag and 61 might show some wadding. He said that the deceased were removed from the vehicle and then he took the photographs that you have been looking at taken at South Woodham Ferrers that night. He saw no reason why a cartridge should be removed. There was no photograph anywhere of the cartridge and it should have been in the footwell.
He said that photograph 17 was beyond the Range Rover as you approached it and 18 was taken on a rise behind the photographer. He said common sense would tell you that there would be an air of disturbance but there was not. 112 was the original of photograph 17. You also have an enlargement of that, 17. 112 was the enlargement. There were no foot prints there. He would say there were no foot prints that he could see in 112. I will break off there until 11.50.
(The court adjourned for a short while)
JUDGE HIDDEN: We come to the forensic scientist John Burns. He has been a forensic scientist since 1966 and has worked exclusively in that time in examination of fi****ms since 1977. He works at the laboratory at Huntingdon and is an (inaudible) chemist. He did a threefold examination: the scene first, then the garage at South Woodham Ferrers police station and then the post-mortem. The scene is shown in photograph 7 of two that you have seen already and in 7(a) which was the corrected sketch which I asked you to look at just now. He examined the scene with Inspector Hughes and Dr Lannas who you remember was the lady pathologist who attended who I will remind you of in a moment.
The Range Rover was at the end of the farm track, as Mr Burns described it, it was fringed by bushes and small trees. Blood had dripped from the vehicle particularly on the nearside and run downwards in puddles of water towards the farm gate. There were five 12-bore cartridges on the ground by the vehicle - one near the front off-side wheel, two some three feet from the vehicle's mid-point on the off-side and two in the region of the nearside rear corner. So that is the position which is in fact shown on Exhibit 7 (a) which I am just holding up so you can see it. The dots are there. The three deceased were in the positions that he described. The rear nearside window of the door had the rear portion fallen out. The vehicle was taken to the police garage for further examination. Removal of the bodies revealed they had all three suffered head injuries consistent with being caused by a shotgun. Those are the head injuries that he mentioned, the further shotgun wound observed in the right side of Tate's torso. He spoke of blood splattering on the inside of the vehicle and of close range shotgun damage from within 2 feet, he put it, caused to the front off-side edge of the driver's head rest. You remember seeing that in a photograph. It was consistent, that damage, with the pellets continuing on their course and causing injury to the driver, Rolfe's, head or face. There were two fired shotgun cases in the vehicle - one on the floor near the rear off-side door, and the other in the front off-side door pocket. You saw a photograph of a little earlier.
There were fragments of plastic cartridge wadding present and several pellets in various areas of the front of the vehicle. He spoke of the gun shot wounds to each of the passengers saying those to Tucker were at close range from 18 inches to 2 foot 6. The cartridge cases all came from seven 12-bore vantage cartridges with a loading of seven and a half size shot lead shot. Then importantly he examined the firing marks on all of those cartridges microscopically and was satisfied that all seven were fired using the same firearm which he said was almost certainly a pump-action or self- loading 12-bore shotgun. The wads and pieces of wadding were derived from 7 plastic wads of the type that is loaded into 12 bore vantage shotgun cartridges and thus could have emanated from those 7 cases.
The sample of hair from Tate, the back seat passenger, indicated that the shot which caused the injury to his head, the actual injury, had actually passed through glass prior to causing the injury. The only broken glass was of course on the nearside.
He concluded that 8 shots from a 12-bore shotgun appeared to have been fired at the scene: 2 into the right hand side of Tucker, the front passenger, 1 into the back of his head; 2 into the right side of the head and face of Rolfe, the driver; and 3 at the rear passenger Tate - 1 into the right torso, 1 across back of the head and 1 into the left side of the head. He thought that most of the shots appeared to have been fired from close range through the open rear off-side door of the vehicle. One of the shots to the head and face of Rolfe having first passed through the right hand corner of the driver's head rest as you see in the photograph. The shot fired across the head of Tate appeared to have passed through the glass on the rear nearside door. The shot into his head appeared to be fired from the nearside of the vehicle through the same glass. The angle of the shot into his right torso suggested that he was in a position similar to where he was found when the shot was fired. All 7 cartridge cases had been fired using the same weapon; probably a pump or self-loading gun having a large capacity magazine. He could not discount the use of a gun with a lesser magazine capacity, that that would have required reloading. The likelihood of a large capacity magazine and the appearance of the fired wads suggested the use of a gun with a full length barrel. It was not possible to state with any certainty what order the shots were fired in, but then he made an assumption -- not particularly scientific you may think, and he said that later -- it was a reasonable assumption that one shot was fired at each victim in turn before the other shots were fired. He said from the relaxed positions of the deceased three it appeared to have happened very rapidly. There was not time for special movement or something to move them from their comfortable positions. He told you a bit more about the positions later on.
Then he moved to tell you about how a shotgun is fired. Some of you may have known already and some may not. He said a shotgun cartridge is fired by the bottom half inch of the cartridge containing the propellant and the base being fitted with a primer in the centre which was of soft metal. If the primer was struck a very sharp blow the chemicals ignite and those chemicals in the primer ignite the main propellant. It is the firing pin that causes the sharp blow. Different weapons leave different marks. The pump action has a single barrel with a magazine below it and a wooden (inaudible). The mechanism of an ordinary shotgun as opposed to a self-loading or pump was that you loaded a cartridge from a magazine into the chamber by pulling to the rear and then back to the front. The self-loading was very similar but this time with a tubular magazine. He said in this case of a self loading gun or a pump gun the energy from the discharge was used to transfer the cartridge into the chamber - one was ejected and one was transferred.
As to the ejection of a cartridge in each case he said for a pump-action you get quite a variable distance. That is a variable distance on how far the ejected case is thrown. The longest being between 5 and 6 feet, but sometimes the cartridge would just drop out of the gun. In the self-loading gun there would be a little difference but there is a tendency for the cartridges to eject somewhat further.
As to the damage to Tate's head he said he thought the offside shot struck Tate's head first before striking the window, but the other nearside shot into the head was fired through some of the glass in the window.
Then he moved entirely from everything he had been saying before, and I cannot make that distinction more clear, onto the shotgun found at Meadow Cottage, Exhibit 1O3. He said that was a Mossberg New Haven 600 18, 12-bore pump-action shotgun in working order subject to the requirements of Section 1 of the Fi****ms Act 1968. You have heard the admission that it is a firearm governed by the Act.
Cross-examined by Mr Parkins Mr Burn said this: he agreed that a defence expert, a doctor at Remshore, was experienced in the field of fi****ms and had attended at Mr Burn's laboratory on 19th August 1997 being afforded all facilities there, and there was nothing between the two experts except for one or two details. Having heard anything about those details they clearly are not important. Mr Burns said that whoever carried out the killing it was a reasonable assumption that they were well versed in the use of such a shotgun. It happened very quickly, probably so quickly the two in front did not have time to appreciate what was going on. The suggestion he had made that each deceased received a disabling shot before the other shot was his opinion based on the findings of the scene. There would be a very loud noise and a total of 8 shots. He would expect a rapid succession and anyone hearing the shots would hear a quick succession of discharges. They could be heard for a distance certainly greater than a mile. Whether someone would hear any whimpering would depend on how quickly the shots came. There would be a gap between the shots.
He had arrived at the scene at five minutes to midday. He went into the field and there was some tyre marks which had led through the gate at some time, but all he could say was there was some tyre marks there. He never saw a spent cartridge in the position on the nearside in diagram 7. He turned to diagram 7(a), the diagram that Mr Bettis had remarked from Mr Hughes' diagram, and he said 7 (a) was in general the position where he himself had found the cases. There was a foot mark visible possibly at the open door. Most shots were discharged from the rear off-side door. Hughes' diagram correctly shows Tate's position. Rolfe had a wound at the side of his face. Then he was asked about the possibility of Tate's head being turned to his right and he said this: Mr Burns could not exclude that Tate's head was turned to the right as the shot was fired and he tended to support the view that his head was somewhat to the right. He was asked about the grazes on Tate's head and he said this: he did not think he could entirely exclude the possibility that that round then went on to hurt Tucker, but having said that he said (although he could not entirely exclude the possibility) the three injuries to the head of Tucker did not show any dispersion of elements which he would expect if one shot had first gone across Tate's head, nor any deposits of blood and hair which he would expect. He said, "It is less likely, but I cannot exclude it." A pump-action gun ejects to the right.
He conducted an examination with scenes of crime officers who were present both before, during and after the removal of the bodies. Somebody had found a cartridge case in the floor well. He considered how it was found there. He excluded the shot from the nearside as getting there because that was very unlikely. If it ejected normally he could not explain the two cartridges found in the car. Hughes cannot agree entirely with the deposit of cartridges. He would normally only expect one cartridge case at the nearside. The angle of discharge to the right varies, and it just failed to go out through the opened rear door and fell into the front door pocket. He said if the gun is sufficiently far into the car the cartridge case would end up in the vehicle.
Turning to a different topic he said the seven and a half size is popular in clay pigeon shooting. He had examined a number of other weapons that had been brought in, several shot guns, none of which fired those cartridges. He examined a revolver and ammunition found at Tate's home address at Gordon Road, Basildon. The revolver was in working order and well capable of firing ammunition. There was also a machine gun from an address at Mill Green (?) Basildon -- you will remember that is the one in connection with Donna Evans that we shall hear about later -- and other weapons which he mentioned having examined. None of those other guns had fired the cartridges he examined.
He was at the post-mortem which was full and comprehensive. He was asked about the time of death. Again he did not come to getting any evidence of it. He said his own explanation would not indicate the time of death conclusively.
He would expect it to be the invariable practice for doctors to attempt to estimate the time of death. Tucker had 3 fatal wounds; Rolfe 2, certainly 1, maybe 2; and Tate 2 fatal wounds and 1 superficial. He could not discount the possibility that one of Tate's wounds went on after hitting him to hit Tucker. All the cartridge cases had got the same marks and they came from the same gun.
In re-examination he said there was no way for him to distinguish from the wounds themselves whether a long barrel or a short barrelled gun was used. That was being asked about wounds themselves could you tell, he had of course already said that the likelihood of a large capacity magazine and the appearance of the fired (inaudible) suggested the use of a gun with a full length barrel.
He said the car door would be open when the majority of the shots were fired and the door would be an obstruction to the right. But the shot that grazed Tate's head to have gone on to hit Tucker, Tate's head would have had to be between the open door and Tucker. If a shot strikes a glancing blow the pellets would be disrupted. At close range the body of the shot goes in the same direction. If there is a glancing impact the pellet ceased to remain as a closed mass and become disturbed and there is no sign in the wound to Tucker of that. There is nothing to indicate any material from Tate's head in relation to what was found in Tucker's head. So that was his evidence in relation to the ballistics of wounds and the shots fired in and about in, that is the Range Rover. The cartridge case is found in and about the Range Rover.
Detective Inspector David Hughes took charge at about 10 o'clock as scene manager with the duty of overseeing, preserving and examining the scene and calling in the experts. Sergeant Holloway took the first photographs before Mr King arrived and took over that task. Mr Hughes supervised the removal of the Range Rover from the scene where he directed at South Woodham Ferrers Police Station the examination of the vehicle. Sergeant Hamestley was his deputy. Mr Hughes showed the area he wanted photographs to be taken. He supervised the removal of the Range Rover with the bodies inside in their final positions from the scene. It was transported to be examined elsewhere because it was too narrow on the track to remove the bodies. He was responsible for the search at the scene and was present and directed the officers as to what was required.
He was also present at the post-mortem on the bodies. He produced a sketch, Exhibit 7, which was not to scale of a schematic diagram. As to the car he said the Range Rover was automatic and was set in drive with the hand break off. The tank was a third full when it was checked. The vehicle was taken in the afternoon off to the police station and examined then. He talked about his blobs on Exhibit 7, a plan he made at the police station as an aide-memoire, and he did not expect it to be used in court.
He said by photographs and measurement you can pinpoint the position of the cartridges. The place marks of the cartridges were purely his memory. The interior of the vehicle on the plan showed two black blobs which indicated shotgun cartridges discovered in the vehicle. He spoke of taking on a different occasion well forward, that is to say 14th May 1996, 130 the Meadow Cottage shotgun from an officer to Huntingdon Laboratory. He said that shotgun could be seen in photograph 13.4. If you would like to go on to it, members of the jury, because I did not want to ask you to look at it earlier. 13.3, as you can see from the key which is the first page of that tab 13, shows the location of the shotgun was found and shows it in its case. 13.4 shows the case having been taken out of the position where it was found and the gun taken out of the case. Mr Hughes said photo 13.4 would be the shotgun. He spoke of giving instructions for photographs to be taken which became Exhibit 112 and photograph 7. He said that the disturbance appears to be a disturbance of some description. He examined the area of the disturbance. "From experience something had been there but what I don't know." It was an area 6 foot by 4 foot, something like that. As you can see some disturbance from the area on the track.
In cross-examination by Mr Parkins he said there is no snow in the area. The disturbance was not found until after the pathologist and the fi****ms and the forensic people had left at about 2 or 3 o'clock. He had two suggestions that the area had been disturbed after the snow or someone had stood after the snow had melted.
He did not concentrate first on the Range Rover. Here again you have a little bit of insight into the way investigation was first carried out. There was a common approach to the plan, but there was a change of function when the snow began to melt and they were therefore losing evidence. He told his officers to concentrate on the scene. He had to consider that 24 hours before from point of view of weather there was light snow and it was frozen overnight. He said a mark takes a better pattern on a soft surface than on a hard surface. Footprint photographs were taken in black and white and in colour in scales of millimeters. They looked for the foot and tyre marks. At the top of the lane at the A130 there was an examination for motor oil. The vehicle was parked at the scene of photograph 2 in tab 2. "We didn't really check the immediate area of the police vehicle." He could not say why no photo was taken of the cartridge case at the front nearside door. There was no reason. He could not think of any reason either why there was not a photograph taken of the
