Deepcut Massacre

Four British Army recruits were shot and died while on guard duty at Deepcut near Aldershot. One was a woman. Civilian police are pushing the idea that they were not murdered. Frank Swann takes the position that suicide was highly unlikely which leaves murder as the obvious cause.

If there was no gun powder on them, the shots were fired from at least three feet away and more probably six feet. That would rule out suicide but not murder. The families of the victims hired Frank Swann to investigate. He did a six week investigation then got written out. Was this because they did not like his evidence? Cause and effect? We are unlikely to ever find out. Frank was in the army and the police so he knows how these things work.

Police Criticize Deepcut Investigator
QUOTE
The police force probing the deaths of four recruits at Deepcut said it was "deeply unhappy" with the independent investigator hired by their families and accused him of discussing his findings with the media, rather than the official inquiry team. Surrey Police said Frank Swann had sent them just a single page with only a brief outline of the conclusions of his six month investigation, with no details of the evidence he had to support them. The single sheet arrived on Friday just days before the force was due to announce the findings of its year long investigation into the deaths of four soldiers at Deepcut, all of whom died of gunshot wounds at the Army barracks between 1995 and 2002..........

But Mr Swann told PA News that he thought it was "highly unlikely" many of the fatal bullets were fired by the recruits themselves. That appeared dramatically at odds with earlier statements by Surrey Police, in which the force had said it had yet to find any evidence of third party involvement in any of the deaths.
UNQUOTE
Frank was not telling the police what he knew. He would have had reasons.

 

Army Rumour Service -- Frank Swann And The Deepcut Job
QUOTE
I believe Mr Swann was convinced that, despite members of the guard force witnessing the sad event, it was impossible for a young soldier to shoot himself 5 times in the chest with a service rifle. I also understand that he is particularly well thought of in forensic circles for allegedly using his kids to search a scene whilst basing his efforts from the family caravan (his mobile ballistics lab). I believe he started out on his epic journey as an expert witness via a gun dealership. Love the web site (and really must visit his jeweller at some point):
www.legalforensics.co.uk/index.html [ Broken link sadly - Editor ]
It is also my understanding that the BKA were brought in to act as an 'independent' forensic agency who are internationally well respected and have no axe to grind i.e. not Surrey bill who were heavily criticised for their handling of the case and not Mr Swann, who (and I hope I am being fair to the man here) has risen to the top of his particular dung pile by obtaining certificates from a relatively small number of short duration seminars. If my apparent flippancy seems to come to the fore here, I apologise, however please take the time to run his 'quals' past someone who is familiar with the world of forensics to see if they would employ him (on a 1 pound nominal retainer, as he is on the Deepcut job) as an expert witness in the death of a loved one. I am and I wouldn't touch him with a forensically examined barge pole!
UNQUOTE
Someone has taken against Frank. The BKA is the Bundeskriminalamt
= German police authority.

 

Doubts over suicide claims [ 30 December 2003 ]
QUOTE
The families of the four soldiers, who were shot dead at the barracks between 1995 and 2002, hired Mr Swann, an independent forensic expert, to carry out his own investigations into how the four died. The army initially suspected they were suicides but the families have always disputed this. Mr Swann revealed earlier this year that he believed that three out of the four recruits had not shot themselves, contrary to findings by Surrey Police that there was no evidence of third party involvement. However, he did not at that time produce the evidence to back up his claims and the police report was handed to the Surrey coroner on its own. Just before Christmas, Mr Swann finally produced all his findings and presented each of the families with a copy of his full report.

Geoff Gray, father of Pte Geoff Gray, 17, who was found dead with two bullet wounds to the head in September 2001, explained what was in the report. “In Geoff’s case it said that the bullet wounds could not have been self-inflicted,” Mr Gray said. “The firearms experts that were working with Frank Swann could not replicate the wounds on themselves. “It also says that the powder burns on his face are not consistent with a suicide.”

The report also claims that Pte Cheryl James, 18, who was shot dead at Deepcut in 1995, was trying to push the gun away from her face when she was shot. According to the BBC, Mr Swann said: “It is my expert opinion based on the evidence, the nature of the wounds and the tests and experiments I carried out that Pte Cheryl James did not self-inflict the bullet wound that killed her.”

Mr Swann’s report finds that it would have been physically impossible for Pte Sean Benton, 20, Pte Gray, and Pte James, to have killed themselves. His findings on the fourth and most recent death, of Pte James Collinson, 17, in March 2002, were inconclusive. The report has been passed to Michael Burgess, the Surrey coroner, and the families hope that this new evidence will force him to reopen the inquests into their children’s deaths, and pave the way for a public inquiry.
UNQUOTE
A straightforward summary.

 

Deepcut - So who is right?
QUOTE
Pte Cheryl James is one of four soldiers at the Deepcut barracks who were found shot dead since 1995. An original investigation by the MoD ruled the deaths were suicides, but a catalogue of errors, including missing evidence, has since come to light, prompting calls for a public inquiry. Surrey police were due to publish the result of a year-long reinvestigation into the deaths this week, but delayed it after independent investigator Frank Swann concluded the fatal wounds were “highly unlikely” to have been self inflicted..........

A police spokesman said: “The original ballistics examinations in this investigation were undertaken by the Forensic Science Service. “Mr Frank Swann disagreed with their findings. As a result the German Bundeskriminalamt were asked to undertake further independent tests.... “There appear to be differences between the findings of Mr Swann, the Forensic Science Service and the Bundeskriminalamt.”........

The interim report from Mr Swann, which was shown to the families as well as the police, said in the case of Sean Benton, it was possible that two bullet wounds were self-inflicted, but it was “highly unlikely” that three on his torso were. And it was unlikely that bullet wounds to the underside of Pte Collinson’s chin and head were self-inflicted, but it was possible they were the result of an accident.... Mr Swann did not know why the police had not reached the same conclusions, nor could he say how the recruits had died...... Mr James said that Mr Swann’s investigation had much more credibility than the one carried out by Surrey Police due to the six weeks he spent doing tests at the barracks, and he could not understand why the police had not hired him themselves. 
UNQUOTE
Army policy is that the dead take the blame so that the rest can carry on.

 

Expert 'solves' Deepcut deaths
Frank Swann was hired by the families of the soldiers, who all died from gunshot wounds at Deepcut barracks in Surrey. He left the barracks on Thursday.

Frank Swann
Frank Swann says he knows how they died

Frank Swann was hired by the families of the soldiers, who all died from gunshot wounds at Deepcut barracks in Surrey......... Four soldiers died from gunshot wounds at the barracks between 1995 and 2002.  In each case the Army attributed the deaths to suicide, but the families of all four victims have disputed that verdict and accused the Army of a cover-up. Mr Swann has tried to reconstruct the exact circumstances surrounding each of the deaths to assess whether the gunshot wounds could have been self-inflicted. 
UNQUOTE
Frank had himself hired for £1 in each case. It was a nominal price which gave him the status of a paid investigator rather than an outsider meddling in other people's affairs.

 

New report suggests Deepcut recruits were murdered
QUOTE
An independent report into the deaths of four recruits at the Army's Deepcut barracks in Surrey, which suggests they may have been murdered, was described as "devastating" yesterday by the father of one of the soldiers. The findings by Frank Swann, an independent ballistics expert hired by the families, prompted Surrey police to delay publication of their report into the deaths. It had been planned for Tuesday. The Independent  four soldiers all died from gunshot wounds between 1995 and 2002. The Army has maintained the deaths were suicide.
UNQUOTE
The Independent is a ghastly left wing rag but this seems about right.

 

 

Deepcut Play Aims To Force Public Enquiry
QUOTE
Eight hours before the army officer turned up on the Gray’s doorstep, Geoff’s body had been found lying next to the perimeter fence of the barracks. He had two gunshots to his forehead. The officer told Diane Gray that her son had committed suicide.

Geoff’s death, in September 2001, was the third ‘suicide’ at the army base in six years. In June 1995, Sean Benton, 20, was found with five bullet wounds to his chest. Five months later the body of 18-year-old Cheryl James was discovered just outside the camp with a fatal bullet to her head. Later, in March 2002, 17-year-old James Collinson was found dead near the perimeter fence of the camp with a gunshot wound.
UNQUOTE
Five rounds rapid leave powder residue it it suicide. It is that simple, that straightforward. Forensic found the residue if they looked, if the evidence was not destroyed, if they were ordered to ignore the evidence. If they didn't it was murder.

 

DEEPCUT INQUIRY ex Private Eye 1236/27
QUOTE
Secret Army
THE Army Board of Inquiry conducted two years ago into the deaths of Geoff Gray and James Collinson, two of the four young recruits who died of gunshot wounds at the Deepcut barracks, is at last ready to report. Armed forces minister Bob Ainsworth is due to make a statement in the Commons on Thursday.

The reports should have been published by Christmas 2007. But after a draft was circulated among the higher reaches of the army and the Ministry of Defence, there was an extraordinary delay. Eventually the board reconvened to allow Colonel Ron Laden, who took over command at Deepcut a few months before Geoff Gray's death, to comment upon it and make changes (see Eye 1225).

Eighteen months later and eight years after the deaths, the two families will finally get to read the reports. But they hold little hope of gaining any new insight into what happened to the youngsters in the army's care at the Surrey barracks: how 17-year-old Geoff Gray ended up with two gunshot wounds to the head, one above each eye, while on guard patrol in 2001; and how, six months later, James Collinson, also 17, died from a single shot.

Police and army investigations into their deaths, and into the earlier deaths of Cheryl James, 18, and 20-year-old Sean Benton, were a travesty. The most basic forensic procedures were ignored and crucial evidence lost.

In the case of Geoff Gray, for example, no fingerprints were ever taken from the weapon found near his body to show whether it was his or whether he had fired it; no bullets were recovered to verify if indeed the weapon found was the one that had been fired; and no explanation has been provided as to why the weapons log - which would have shown which soldier was allocated which gun on the night in question - was removed and shredded, or who removed it. Ballistics experts who gave evidence to the board into Geoff's and James's deaths were unable to say whether they were the result of suicide or murder.

Inquests returned open verdicts and the "Deepcut Review" conducted by Nicholas Blake QC in 2006, which was conducted in private and simply reviewed all the material gathered in the flawed police and army investigations and reviews, only served to raise more questions about the deaths in the eyes of the families - although Blake himself performed some wonderful leaps of logic to conclude that the deaths were, "on the balance of probabilities", suicides.

He did, however, conclude that the deaths took place in a training establishment that was out of control. Deepcut, with its culture of bullying and neglect, left raw young recruits vulnerable to both sexual predators and tormentors. It was understaffed and underfunded, sexual activity was rampant, hard drinking commonplace, and bullying and arbitrary punishment by sadistic NCOs went unchallenged.

Blake explained at length the litany of failures over the years at Deepcut that left the young recruits vulnerable, but he found no one to blame - not the ministers who pushed through changes and drastic spending cuts; nor the army chiefs in charge of training and recruitment; nor those at the barracks under whose watch things had run riot; nor those who failed to act on repeated reports and warnings.

In a special report, the Eye took apart the Blake review, highlighted a number of serious shortcomings and concluded that Blake singularly failed to get to the source of the stink that surrounds Deepcut and the deaths; that there was a negligent failure to address glaring problems at the base that lasted for years.

No one has been held accountable for the appalling treatment of young volunteers who sign up to serve their country, or for the failure to investigate properly the deaths of four young people. Indeed, the bulk of the evidence gathered over the years to this day remains secret. The inquiry reports are unlikely to change that, but they may yet provide further material in the families' fight for a proper public inquiry.
UNQUOTE
They were in cover up mode. The killers walked.

 

Expert 'solves' Deepcut deaths

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Updated on 07/09/2011 09:52