Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Dunblane : The Cullen Report Disregards...


* off-duty police officer Grant McCutcheon, who unwittingly appeared at the crime scene while taking his children to the school, he was the only police officer to see Thomas Hamilton dying. In his statement (not submitted to the Inquiry) he says he saw two pistols beside Thomas Hamilton (the official report says there were two pistols plus two revolvers and that Thomas Hamilton shot himself with a revolver).

* Jamie Cook, the pupil whom Hamilton repeatedly asked about directions to the Assembly Hall and to confirm that assembly begins at 9.30 (which on this day it didn't - the pupils went to the gym instead);

* David Scott, the student teacher who supposedly witnessed Thomas Hamilton's act of suicide but, despite his enormous significance, did not appear before the Inquiry and bizarrely is not even named in the official report (every other significant staff member at the scene is named; this one however is only identified anonymously as "a student teacher");

* the unidentified man who drove off after talking to Thomas Hamilton outside his house between 8.00 and 8.40 a.m.; or the neighbour Cathleen Boswell Kerr who witnessed this;

* Acting Detective Constable Graham Capes, who supposedly saw Thomas Hamilton's van setting off half an hour earlier than the official version and taking a road which leads to Bannockburn, not Dunblane.

* Ambulancewoman Alison Irvine, who arrived at 9.57 to see no uniformed police officers or marked cars at the school (moreover, the official report states the exact time of almost every event except the arrival of the police).

* DCS John Ogg, who states emphatically that headmaster Ron Taylor called the police on their non-emergency Stirling number at 9.41 (the report states he made an emergency call to the police at 9.41; Ron Taylor himself states emphatically that he dialled 999);

* Neighbours Grace and Jim Ogilvie, who saw regular visitors at Thomas Hamilton's house right up to his last days (while no witness at the Inquiry admitted visiting him during the last months of his life);