27 August - Inconvenient evidence
Trevor Lawrie is convinced that
Sadie Henry killed his grandson and Cameron Rose was charged with the murder to
shield Bexley council from the consequences of doing nothing when presented with worrying reports from health professionals and school teachers.
However there is unlikely to be any more in the evidence bundle to directly link the case with Bexley council and
it could be argued that it’s time to leave the subject. On the other hand the file makes fascinating reading and maybe
illustrates the lengths to which police are prepared to go to protect their establishment friends.
An almost unnoticed line in the police statement by Sadie Henry, mother of
Rhys, is that her teenage boyfriend Cameron Rose did not have a mobile phone. It
struck me as rather odd that any teenager would not be equipped with a mobile
phone, especially one conducting an intense affair with a woman who undoubtedly
did use one.
I am coming to the conclusion that
Sadie wrote her statement under the direction
of the police. It was not written until 24th May 2012. That is 16 months after
the murder and four months after the evidence bundle had been sent to the
prosecuting authorities. Sadie’s statement belatedly but neatly plugged all the
holes in the case against Cameron. Had someone spotted that the evidence cast doubt
on Cameron’s guilt and an antidote was called for? The statement so carefully
addresses those doubts that it is almost too good to be true. Maybe Trevor is right
and Sadie’s statement was written to order months after everyone else’s.
The fact that
an ambulance officer saw
someone fitting Cameron’s description come home with Rhys’s elder brother a little while after they arrived
to attend to Rhys but wasn’t called as a witness looks suspicious and so does the statement that
Cameron had no mobile phone. Was he really the only teenager in Erith who did not own a phone?
The answer to that is a clear No, Sadie’s statement is wrong. The police recorded in some detail how
they analysed the phone records of both Cameron and Sadie. They impounded both phones on 26th January
2011 and transcribed all the text messages. Page 1 of their analysis was mysteriously redacted or
otherwise lost from the evidence bundle completely. For that reason the date of the police
report is unknown but the remaining three pages reveal that Cameron had several girl friends.
In particular, after being sent away by Sadie when he returned from school with the older
brother (the ambulance officer’s evidence) the first thing he did was call one of them, Chloe,
to cancel their date for 7 p.m. that evening.
Cameron’s
messages appear to show more concern for Rhys than his mother did. After Rhys’s ‘accident’
on 17th January which resulted in X-rays at Queen Elizabeth
Hospital, Sadie had texted “they thought he had a fracture but his oka just badly
bruised, miss you, love and thinking off u xxx”. Cameron replied “u sure coz his
face looked fucked babez, n if let me knw how he is babez”.
The police transcribed a number of text messages from Cameron to various females
in the two weeks before the murder, an average of five messages per day they said.
Shortly after the murder Cameron texted Chloe “got 2 go hospital babe” and in reply to an enquiry,
six minutes later said “coz my cousins heart stopped beatin n the ambulance r takin him
hospital”. ‘Cousin’ being an obvious reference to Rhys. Telling girl friend 2
about the son of girlfriend 1 might not be a good idea.
Sadie Henry claimed that when she came home from school with her oldest son and found Cameron
with Rhys lying gravely injured or dead she questioned Cameron about when Rhys had a
seizure. “15 minutes after you left” was the alleged answer and she excuses Cameron’s
failure to phone for help in her police statement. “Cameron did not have a phone on
him as he had lost his phone sometime just before Christmas. I did not leave a phone.”
Why would the police use that statement as evidence but not their own report
that Cameron used his phone regularly from Christmas right through to the day of
the murder and beyond? Why did they discount the evidence of the ambulance officer who
said Cameron arrived at the murder scene after he did?
Trevor Lawrie says it was part of a conspiracy to protect Bexley council from a Baby Peter
style scandal. Whatever the reason they certainly appear to have had an agenda to nail
Cameron whatever the evidence.
Why did Cameron’s defence barrister not rake out this evidential conflict? Trevor Lawrie says it is because she usually worked with the CPS and was in cahoots with them.
Maybe delving further into the pile of papers will provide more clues.
The Rhys Lawrie blog index.