On 17 July 2003, David Kelly allegedly committed suicide by swallowing 29 co-proxamol tablets and cutting to his ulnar artery (wrist) with a blunt pruning knife. He was writing a book exposing high level corruption at the time and had given no indication of depression. An official inquest was commenced but never completed.
Former orthopaedic surgeon David Halpin has long campaigned for a full inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly. Following Halpin's death on 14 August 2026, Crispin Flintoff wrote this email:
On Sunday I uploaded a video of the late Dr. David Halpin. David spent more than 20 years trying to secure a proper inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly.
He was like a dog with a bone on this subject. Every time one route was closed to him he looked for another.
I have now downloaded all of David Halpin's archive relating to Kelly from his website and it is being shared so that this extraordinary record is not lost. It contains more than two decades of letters, legal documents, medical arguments, correspondence and appeals. I'm even considering setting up a website called "The Dr David Kelly archive".
Read as a whole, the archive tells a remarkable story of repeated obstruction. The original inquest was displaced by the Hutton Inquiry, the coroner did not later resume a full inquest, Attorney General Dominic Grieve refused the doctors' request for a new one, Halpin's attempt to challenge that decision in the High Court failed and his later appeals were told they could only proceed with substantively new evidence. For more than 20 years, every route Halpin pursued ended without the full coroner's inquest he was demanding.
Halpin's archive shows all this in great detail.
For Halpin the first fundamental problem was the Hutton Inquiry itself. A proper inquest could hear evidence on oath, compel witnesses and allow evidence to be tested through cross-examination. The Hutton Inquiry did not operate in this way. Key witnesses were not called and only half a day was spent examining the medical evidence surrounding Kelly's death.
Halpin and a number of other doctors kept identifying evidence that they believed demanded proper examination. They questioned whether blood loss from the severed ulnar artery could have caused Kelly's death. They raised questions about the position of his body, the search operation, his clothing and the absence of fingerprints on the knife found beside him.
They also found that important evidence had not been presented to Hutton. Medical and post-mortem records were then placed under restrictions lasting for decades.
Still they kept going.
The doctors produced a detailed Memorial and Addendum and presented their case to Attorney GeneralDominic Grieve. They argued that there had been an "insufficiency of inquiry". When Grieve refused their request in 2011, Halpin pursued judicial review with the support of hundreds of members of the public and was prepared to put his own savings at risk.
His attempt failed at the High Court but even that did not stop him. More than a decade later he returned to the Attorney General and once again asked for a full coroner's inquest. Halpin's position remained that important evidence had never been properly tested in the first place.
Halpin clearly became a concern to the security services.
He described what he called "gross interference in my communications". His post was opened, telephone calls became faint and distorted, voices appeared in the background of calls and communications were cut off.
One particular incident concerned a recording of a meeting with lawyers about challenging the Attorney General's decision. The recording was posted to David but the package arrived opened and part of the franking had been torn away. David reported the incident to the police.
I also had the privilege of witnessing something very strange when I made a Zoom call with Halpin in 2023 to talk about Kelly (see below). The call became almost impossible. The audio separated from the video, Halpin's speech echoed and the picture at my end repeatedly disappeared.
David later recorded the incident in his archive and said they had used "every trick".
He had a phrase for the whole subject: "Kelly is high voltage".
He believed the Kelly case was something the state desperately wanted to keep a lid on. His determination to keep pursuing it lasted for the rest of his life.
Perhaps those in power hope that the issue will disappear with the passage of time. David Kelly died in 2003 and David Halpin has now passed away. But the questions have not disappeared.
Kelly was Britain's leading expert on biological weapons and his death came at the centre of the controversy over [Iraq]] and weapons of mass destruction. Halpin believed Kelly may have been killed because of what he knew and that a proper inquest was the place where the evidence should have been examined.
We should also remember the enormous human consequences of the 2003 Iraq War. Estimates of the death toll vary widely but major studies and casualty projects put the number in the hundreds of thousands, while some estimates of excess deaths have exceeded one million.
Halpin said: "I will continue to speak up for the general good until my pulse stops."
On Sunday morning's (30 August 2026) The Crispin Flintoff Show (10.30am-12.30pm), I am joined by Craig Murray to examine how the original inquest was stopped, the limitations of the Hutton Inquiry, the evidence David Halpin believed was never properly examined and the repeated attempts to prevent the Kelly case returning to a full coronial investigation. More than two decades after David Kelly died, this country has still never held the proper inquest that David Halpin fought so hard to secure and now that David is no longer here to keep asking why, the rest of us must keep asking.
An official inquest into David Kelly's death was suspended before completion and over 10 years later, there are no official plans to complete it.[1] The official narrative is represented by the 2004 Hutton Inquiry, which concluded that depressed and under strain by the media attention focused on him, David Kelly committed suicide. He died from bleeding after ingestion of 29 co-proxamol tablets and self-inflicted cuts to his ulnar artery (wrist) done by a blunt pruning knife.
"Suicided"
Several people believe that Kelly was suicided, including Susan Lindauer who has suggested Tony Blair ordered the assassination.[2] Retired surgeon David Halpin led a small group which used legal means to try to change this verdict.[3] MP Norman Baker stepped down from the Shadow Cabinet for a year to spend a year researching Kelly's death. He challenged the purported inquiry, stating that it "blatantly failed to get to the bottom of matters... the more I look into it the less convinced I am by the explanation and the more unanswered questions appear which ought to have been addressed properly by the Hutton inquiry or by the coroner." Baker appeared in George Galloway's hour-long documentary "Killing Kelly" which premiered in July 2025. Other contributors include former BBC Director Greg Dyke, author of "The Strange Death of David Kelly", Middle East Eye columnist Peter Oborne, former MI5 Officer Annie Machon and vascular surgeon Dr John Scurr MBBS BSc FRCS.[4]
Unanswered Questions
{{#Display_map:51.68685866536838, -1.4322996139526367~Top of Harris's Lane ~ Meets & talks with Ruth Absalom;
51.67980534644966, -1.428045630455017 ~ Dr Kelly's House ~ Corner of Farringdon Road and a cul-de-sac lane;
51.70268598794699, -1.4391231536865234 ~ Body found ~ @70 metres from the eastern edge of the Wood on Harrowdown Hill and a similar distance from its NW perimeter.|width=400px|height=340px||type=satellite }}
As at May 2011
Operation Mason, the police code-name for the search for Dr Kelly, was officially started before his family had reported him missing. The official explanation is that operation start times are often made retrospective to cover any preceding period relevant to the operation; but if this were the reason in this case, then the start time would need to be weeks, not hours earlier. Who authorised the opening of documentation on the operation and at precisely what time?
Why were there no fingerprints on Dr Kelly's knife, pill packets, water bottle, glasses, mobile or watch? He wore no gloves. Police knew this when they gave evidence to Hutton but the absence of prints wasn't mentioned.
Lord Hutton said photographic evidence showed Dr Kelly's body was found propped against a tree, yet the first paramedic to reach the scene said he was originally flat on his back. Who moved the body and why?
Detective Constable Coe of Thames Valley Police, who guarded Kelly's body after it had been found, has admitted to concealing the presence of an unidentified man at the scene. His evidence indicates, in unambiguous terms, that he was with just one other person (DC Shields), whereas those who met him as he arrived at the scene say he was with TWO others. The report itself also numbers DC Coe as one of three plain clothes police officers to arrive before the official search-tasked uniformed officers. Evidence from those other officers (notably PC's Franklin and Sawyer) describe DC Coe as being with two UNIFORMED officers (Related - Item 10). These are serious anomalies which were not explored by the Inquiry and which require explanation.
In 2003 Dr Kelly's friend, Mai Pederson, told police Dr Kelly couldn't cut steak because of an old injury to his right arm. How could he have slashed his left wrist? She also said he had a pill phobia.
Former MP Robert Jackson has said Dr Kelly's GP, Dr Malcolm Warner told him he saw the corpse immediately after its discovery. When Dr Warner gave evidence to the Hutton Inquiry he failed to report this. Why?
All medical and scientific reports, and photographs of Dr Kelly's body were secretly classified for 70 years by Lord Hutton after the death. On what legal basis was that done and why?
The death certificate does not state where he died, as it should, but was registered midway through the Hutton Inquiry anyway, before Hutton concluded how he died. Why?
According to Dr Kelly's widow, police stripped wallpaper from their sitting room on the night of his disappearance. Why?
Several key witnesses did not appear at Hutton. They include Paul Weaving, supposedly the last person to see Dr Kelly alive; DC Shields, one of the police first at the scene and described by other police witnesses as a 'Uniformed' officer, but by others as in plain clothes as would be expected of a DC (See item 4 above); Dr Eileen Hickey, the forensic biologist who attended Harrowdown Hill. Why?
A 110ft communications mast was erected outside Dr Kelly's house immediately after he was declared missing early on July 18. Was it used to communicate with Tony Blair (en route to [[[Tokyo]] from Washington) and/or his spin doctor Alastair Campbell?
What was the mission of the helicopter which landed at Harrowdown Hill about 90 minutes after discovery of Kelly's body and which was not mentioned at all in the proceedings of the Hutton Inquiry. According to the Daily Mail, the helicopter flight log, released under FOI provisions, shows that it was on hire to the Thames valley Police and has been 'heavily redacted' [5] so the 'Authorities' clearly have things to hide concerning its mission.
Whose fingerprints are on Dr Kelly's dental records file that went missing for just 24 hours from the surgery on the day of his death. Information confirming the existence of the fingerprints was released under an FOI request on 23 May 2011 and contradicts the evidence about them which was given to the Hutton Inquiry by Assistant Chief Constable Michael Page. [6]
Updates
13 August 2010. Experts urge full inquest into David Kelly death [7][8]
9 June 2011. Attorney General Dominic Grieve refuses a full inquest hearing [9][10]
Evidence submitted to the Attorney General by David Halpin FRCS
Documents sent to the Attorney General on 28 February 2011:
File:McGintyReportsHuntAllan.pdf - Corpse moved. 5 blood samples taken at PM but only one referred to at Hutton. 28 November 2010
File:McGinty2Heart.pdf - Contradictory evidence re. heart disease. Dr Hunt changes his diagnosis of the cause of death. 6 December 2010
File:McGThree.pdf - Insufficiency of inquiry. What clothing. Key witnesses not called. 16 February 2010
File:McGRachelK.pdf - Rachel Kelly. Dad deported from Kuwait 19 May. Hutton inquiry didn't look into this at all. 16 February 2011
File:McGGardinerDCA.pdf - Observations on correspondence between coroner and Dept of Constitutional Affairs. Dr Hunt had changed his diagnosis as to cause of death but failed to tell Hutton. 22 February 2011
