Wednesday, 14th January 1998
SUMMING-UP (Continued) Page 2

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because his account was not made up. Members of the jury, that was his evidence in relation to what he said he did at a date that he did not identify and at a time which he gave as about midnight, but you remember first of all said an hour plus or an hour minus when he was (inaudible). It is a matter for you what you conclude in relation to that witness. You are aware, of course, that there is no evidence from a pathologist or from a doctor who attended at the time of death and that evidence may be partly directed to suggest a time of death as around midnight.

You will remember the other evidence as to the occupants of the Range Rover to the effect that they were all going out that night to dinner in Romford and you remember the note which Tate had left, as to which there is an admission; the evidence of Diane Evans being taken to buy a new dress for the night out; you will also remember the evidence in relation to the two passengers who were not driving in that Range Rover, of their contact with their own mobile phones, one with it between his legs and the other having his middle finger through the lead to it. Equally, you will remember the evidence of the scientist of the mobile phones throughout that evening up to midnight and thereafter. It is entirely for you to judge the evidence of Mr Jasper to see where it takes you, but you will want to take all the evidence into account in that case, just as you will want to take all the evidence into account in relation to the conclusions you come to on any other evidence.

Again, you do not take against Mr Jasper just because he is at present in prison and deals with his evidence of his character in relation to his association with other criminals. You look at his evidence when he starts giving it entirely objectively and he comes before you just the same as any other witness. It is for you to make up your mind about it. Members of the jury, I said that I would remind you of the evidence of Mr Clayton who unaccountably I missed out when I went through the Cellnet expert evidence, moving through him although he was in my notes in the typed up version but missing him on the hop between Mr Collins to Mr Taylor. I said I would correct that by reminding you of his evidence and now at the end of Mr Steele's case is the right time to do it.

Before this, can I ask you to have in front of you tab 5 of the telephone schedule. It is a long time since you have seen this document, Exhibit 180, and it does not have printed on it what it is but you know, and you may have made handwritten notes, that it is a schedule in relation to the calls of the mobile 978 of the defendant Steele with at the top various keys to what the columns are and it is the caller that is 978, the called number was under the column "dialled digits". Dennis Clayton of Cellnet told you there were two individual types of mobile telephone system run by Cellnet: the analogue system is the older one and the digital system the modern one. When someone is connected to Cellnet the person switches the phone on and the phone will automatically scan and connect with a cell site which is usually, he said, the nearest one to it, but it depends on the strength of the signals.

He produced a map of cell sites, which were really beacons, and he said he would expect to pick up the main Raydon cell site if he was standing in the Raydon area. He said when a phone makes contact with the strongest signal no record is made electronically of the fact of that contact. If a number is dialled, however, that fact would be recorded. Mr Clayton had prepared flag 5 which you are looking at in the telephone schedule from a database of his company's records. He said: "If a mobile phone is connecting with another system, Cellnet to Vodaphone, Cellnet to Orange, that sort of thing, then it would go through a land line." He identified the UK system with numbers starting with 44. You will see all the numbers do in the dialled digits in the middle column. He said that is just the UK country code. Further along in the title of the columns "EMX" over to the right stands for electric mobile exchange.

You see these have come from EMXs that are basically on that page, either 27 or 30. 27 covers Clacton, Manningtree, Colchester, Ipswich and Raydon. It is only Childerditch which is EMX 30. The EMX is the exchanges. Some are the size of counties and some are the size of Scotland or Ireland. He said it depends on the amount of traffic. The column for zone next to it, ones and twos, all twos except for Childerditch which is a 1. He said if it is inside the M25 it is a 1; if it is outside it is a 2. He said the trunk group originating and terminating over towards the end gives the originating cell site and the terminating point where it leaves the Cellnet network. 0099 is a cell site number and the numbers 0651 indicate that is where the traffic went out of the Cellnet network into a BT land line. For his part at that stage he said: "Those are all calls dialled on 978", but they do not have information on the calls received by 978. The terminating columns are the gateways into the land line system.

He said the words ESO that he had used were short for an electronic serial number, that was transmitted to the network along with the mobile phone number. "It was in order to make sure the ESM is compatible with the mobile phone number and the two go together and it was designed to prevent cloning. The network checks make sure they are the correct numbers to be together and allows the call to go through. The information is recorded on a data capture sheet and is stored until down loaded at the control computer bank which is our database for sending off information to the service provider." Looking at that plan, flag 5, he said examples 12 and 13, 0098 is the number, it is Raydon, and in 14/15 0044 is Childerditch. He said: "Thus we provide the data for which the charge can be made.

I've no reason to believe the computer document was inaccurate in any way." In cross-examination, you have had this from other witnesses but I will still remind you of it coming from him because it is cross-examination. He said: "A mobile phone is a radio transmitter and receiver. Its characteristics are more like radio. The digital method gives better service than analogue in that it is more secure and there is less chance of calls being overheard. Cellnet, Vodaphone and Orange are three of the principal call providers. Each of them has a variety of different services to attract customers. In some parts of the country the coverage is good; in some it is less good. Each provider has different areas of strength or weakness of signal."

He said when the phone is switched on the signal is picked up by the provider and is periodically relayed to the provider. . The network can quickly establish where the phone is and that is called "registration". The network knows the information but does not keep or store it. When the signal is sent out each provider has hundreds of beacons to pick up the signal. The beacon is the cell site and the cell is the actual area the beacon is covering. You may remember it was Mr Clayton who gave us the example of signal strengths being different by taking various parts of this Court Room, indicating what might be the strength of one coming from a particular place and what might be the strength of another in relation to a different part of the Court Room. He said as to a cell site, there are areas where sometimes there is a whole swathe with no coverage and then there is a bit where there is coverage. He believed quite often different beacons overlapped but he said Mr Taylor is the witness to take that from; you have heard what Mr Taylor said.

He said the mobile phone process was a complex business. He concluded by saying it depended on which provider there was, where you were, where it was you were calling and when you were calling. There were answering facilities to which the caller could be directed in which case both the caller and receiver paid and he gave you the strange news that calls inside the M25 were dearer than calls outside.

We move now, members of the jury, to the case of Jack Whomes. He gave evidence. He told you he was born on 13th February 1961 and he is 36. As to his physique, which you have seen, he said he is 6 foot 2 inches, eighteen and a half stone. He denied killing any of the victims of these murders and denied being guilty of conspiring with others in the dock to smuggle cannabis in November 1995. He gave you his family history, of which I will remind you. He was born in Plaistow, moved with his family to Suffolk when he was 10; by then from the age of 8 he had been interested in things mechanical. It was when he was 8 that the first thing he took to pieces was a heater from a lorry. His father was a mechanic and had a yard in Stratford originally buying and selling commercial vehicles.

When Mr Whomes moved to Suffolk his interest in things mechanical continued. He became involved with Caterpillars, loading shovels, JCBs and so on. He went back to school and did not pay a lot of attention; that is why his education suffered. He did not concentrate because his obsession with mechanical things led to him taking things to pieces in his mind when he should have been concentrating on the lessons. He first met Gail, his wife, at Clacton Modern School and had a schoolboy schoolgirl sweetheart relationship; he eventually married her on the 31st August 19-85. When the family were at Cox Place there was a 14 foot tractor pulled by a 32 tonne Mercedes.

From the age of 13 he got into lorries but he had been working in the yard before that. He started to become good at welding and gas then moved on to artwork. He built a go cart out of a Thames trader van. He progressed into banger racing with old Morris Minors, (inaudible). He helped his father rebuild a Scammel breakdown vehicle in 1981. As to the shotguns, he said his father had a twelve bore shotgun and an antique sixteen bore. His father and his eldest brother Terry used them from shooting rabbits in the field and even shooting branches off trees. There was a Volvo truck that was used for shooting at night in the light of the headlights. He used to (inaudible) for his father and brother.

He thought he himself was an average shot. He left school at the age of 16 and had work experience of scammel trucks and different places and then at 16 he started work at the Willow Cross service station for nearly a year. After that he began to buy his own vehicles. At 17 he successfully applied for trade plates and became the youngest person in the country to have them. At the age of 20 he moved to Mendlesham and started with repairs to vehicles and plants. Then he moved on to Ipswich docks working for G and T Contractors driving six wheelers and maintaining them from 1982. That was the B and G Contractors not G and T. In 1986 he started to work for Scarlet Edgar and Brian Gray.

He had his own lorry, a Volvo F10. Scarlet Edgar bought Brian Gray out around about 1987. Scarlet and he were then working together. They were doing road haulage, ordinary haulage and dock shunting. The road haulage foundered and they concentrated on dock shunting where you needed no tax or MOT and you could use second-hand tyres and red diesel for your vehicles. They sold the road haulage and ploughed the money into dock shunting. He first got interested in boats just before he got married, which would be about 1985. He repaired a propeller for his brother and he went to see the effect on the water. He got hooked from then on. He bought his first boat which he first said was the Maria and he then corrected himself to the Bay Liner.

He said in the years up to his arrest his interest in boats was very close to his obsession with mechanics. Boats interested him first because of the way they perform in water and because of their engines. They are also a family affair and everybody can enjoy themselves. He told you how his whole family chipped in to buy their various boats, the running costs being paid for by the whole family and the outlay by him and another family member. He took you through the various photographs, Exhibit 298, of his workshop pointing out the contents and also the work clothing such as the yellow splash gown and other items of clothing. He dealt with a conviction in 1985 and in 1993.

Let me remind of the warning I gave both at the beginning of my summing-up and in relation to Steele that you do not in any way let your knowledge of those convictions prejudice you against him and that it is no indication at all as to the likelihood or otherwise of his committing these offences and you should not for a moment take it that way. It goes only to the question of whether he is telling the truth and it is up to you entirely whether you take those convictions into account in coming to that conclusion or whether you leave them out.

The conviction in 1985 was for assault occasioning actual bodily harm in relation to an occasion when he said he drove past the premises of a farmer with whom the family had fallen out. The farmer threw something at the side of the Land Rover, turned round and Mr Whomes turned round to ask why that had been done. The farmer took a swing at him. He retaliated and hit him once. The farmer's workers became witnesses and Mr Whomes went to court and was found guilty and was fined either £300 or £100.

He then told you about his conviction on the 19th February 1993 at the Ipswich Crown Court for obtaining money by deception which had happened about a year and a half before. It also involved his brother Johnny. There was his brother, Johnny, himself, and two different women and two different vehicles involved. They all got caught and he was sent to prison for 16 months for his part in the crime which involved changing the identity of his vehicle. So that survey of his life got us to the point where he was at Hollesley Bay in prison. He said while he was in prison there he met Darren Nicholls.

It was a category D prison and it was therefore the lowest category. He met Mick Steele, Pat Tate and Darren Nicholls, all of whom he had never met before. He met them all at the same time. Pat Tate was on a different stair from Whomes and his brother, Steele, Nicholls and Francis Reid who was there. Though Pat Tate was on a different stair it was an open prison and you could meet in your rooms, the TV room, three times a day at meal times. Whomes became friendly with Mick Steele. They had the same interests in the same sorts of things, like boats and planes. Whomes had an interest in building planes from kits. He also became quite good friends with Darren Nicholls and built a galleon, HMS Endeavour, with him. Pat Tate was not at Hollesley Bay really long enough for Whomes to get to know him, but whilst Tate was there there were no problems and Whomes found him all right. He never saw a lot of Tate because Tate would get up early and go straight to the gym where he was an orderly. Tate left about 15th April 1993 and that left Steele, Nicholls and Whomes still in the prison. Mick left about May or June and Whomes left on 15th October 1993.

When Whomes left Hollesley Bay he went straight from prison to his workshop at Barham, actually in T Commercials. From then until his arrest in 1996 Whomes's occupation was as a commercial vehicle fitter doing repairs, dock shunting and buying and selling vehicles occasionally. There were not many weeks when he would have two days off work. Saturdays and Sundays he would be down in the yard. His earnings was £250 to £300 a week depending on what he asked Scarlet for. It would depend on whether he was there all week or whether he did a job for himself. Working for himself was mainly on lorries and vans. He would buy and sell vehicles. People would know that they could bring their vehicle to him no matter what it was and he would repair it or spray it or do it up. Mr Whomes then moved to the incident with his Uncle, Dennis Whomes.

Dennis brought the Citroen to him and in talking about Dennis Mr Whomes first explained the time when he called on his uncle early in the morning for tunnel money was not money for the Channel Tunnel but for the Dartford Tunnel. It was sometime in the 1980s and he remembered knocking his uncle up. As to his financial situation he classed it in 1994 to 1996 as reasonable. He was earning a decent wage. After he had come out of prison in October 1993 he and Steele kept in touch by telephone. Their main interest was making things, anything to do with metalwork. Whomes used to get Mick Steele to make up bushes for hydraulic valves and spring hangers. Mick used to make them up for him because he had a milling machine.

Steele also joined in the water sports such as parascending and he had borrowed Whomes's jet ski when Whomes was still in prison. Steele was involved in building and converting two tipper lorries. Whomes took him to SPS, a big commercial breakers at Hindlesham, looking for a hydraulic pump. Steele converted Leyland road runners into tippers. Steele developed the tipping equipment, picking Whomes's brains as well as his own. Steele built trailers: a little galvanised one with a long mesh tailgate and a blue tipper trailer. Steele did work for Scarlet, driving down there at Ipswich docks and worked in the yard. Steele acquired the RIB in this case and Whomes was first aware of it when it was picked up from what he called "the factory" just after the end of May 1995.

Whomes's interest in it was because it was a boat and because it had to be put together. It had a big outboard that came with it and that was Whomes's interest in putting it together. In particular, he was interested to see what Steele was going to design and make; that was, for example, the console. Whomes was interested in getting the Yamaha engine out of its packaging, taking the cowling off and seeing what was under it. Whomes said he did not have a specific role in building the boat. Mick Steele built the boat. Originally Mick was building it to sell it. He did not sell it though and he approached Whomes to see whether he was interested in buying it too. They each put £3,000 into the boat. The boat was for diving. Whomes and his brother John were going to go on a diving course, a kind of "suck it and see" course involving the demand valve.

Whomes went on the course in January and February 1996 and qualified as what was called a buddy diver; that was because you did it in twos. - He was asked when he first went to sea and he said: "I haven't been to sea. The sea is scuba diving and that is my next stage." Then he said Johnny had also put £3000 into the boat. He said that the money he and Johnny had put in the boat, £3,000 each, came from what they accumulated from the family sporting fund. They used to put in so much per week to get a jet bike for the girls to use; they were saving for that. Whomes had to put some extra in from the repairing money he had. The RIB was virtually a diving boat, Whomes said. He compared it with his Moria and said, "You'd ruin the Moria getting in and out diving because it's higher off the water whereas the RIB is closer to the water and you can fall into the water.

There's room inside the RIB for equipment for diving." He then gave a specific description of the performance of the RIB. He said: "It was built for diving. There's an added fuel tank and you can get more people in as well. The people sit on two seats which are sprung, sit on the sides, pontoons at the side. It sticks to the water. I'm making that assessment in driving it and comparing it with my boat. In a rough piece of water my boat jumps up and leaves the water more than the RIB does." Then he turned to the sea trip which ended on the 8th November when they were all arrested. He said: "The RIB was completed and subject to testing by sea trials was completely finished. That was September when Mick galvanised the trailer. That was about the time the boat was finished." He identified the trailer which is in photograph 61. He said one of the last things to have done was to have the trailer galvanised because if you put it in the water with mild steel it would go rusty.

The boat was constructed by then. It was put together in a workshop at Brightlingsea. Mick built the console at home in his garage. Whomes assisted in putting the console on to the boat which happened at the Brightlingsea workshop. Whomes lifted it on to the boat at Brightlingsea. That was done a month or a month and a half before the galvanising of the trailer, so it was done about the beginning of August. He produced Exhibit 299, his diving certificate, and Exhibit 300, a collection of photographs. He took you through, identifying the particular boats, the particular localities and the people in the boats and the water and describing various years to them from the mid-1980s onwards. He said he was very well-known in Felixstowe, Levingston and Old Felixstowe, mainly because of the size of the Whomes family. He gave another reason: a chrome exhaust which when on a boat could put out over two decibels and he said he was well-known because of that. He identified in photographs 56 a Range Rover which David Whomes bought from a Peterborough farmer at the end of October in 1995.

Speaking of Felixstowe, he said the only person he knew there who had a boat was Gordon Stevens who was old-fashioned and was a bit of a hippie, as Mick had described him. Gordon Stevens was a bit tight with his money but other than that was a nice person. His boat was a 50 foot pinnace, which was like a tug with a funnel, an old-fashioned ocean river craft. He spoke of an occasion about a week before his arrest on the 8th November when Gordon had his boat lying over at a 45 degree angle on a single bank. The tide had gone out and left the boat there. He was worried that when the tide came in the boat would fill up with water because the rear of the boat was towards the incoming tide. Mick and he got there, tried using the Range Rover and the Toyota with a rope between them to pull the boat off, but it was 25 tonnes and far too heavy. He was panicking and called the fire brigade who put a pump inside the boat to pump the water out as it came in.

He got there about 9 pm and work did not finish until 6.30 or 7 in the morning. He said the people there included another Stevens: we know that was Kevin Stephens, the landlord at the time of the Ferry Boat Inn at Old Felixstowe who gave evidence before you about it. That man was no relation to Gordon Stephens. The other people there were the firemen and a ferryman called Brinkley who ferried people from Old Felixstowe to Broadsea directly across the water. We have heard his name mentioned before as being what was called "the customs snoop. " Mr Whomes turned to the events on the day before his arrest and said: "I can remember the day. It began with me in the workshop working on David's Range Rover which he had in for service for work on the ball joint and rear axle." The day before he had spoken to Mick about going out on the boat and had to use the yard phone, a land line which was in his name which was at the premises at G and T. Mick came over at 1 pm on the 7th November.

They set off about five past one from the yard at Barham to go to Felixstowe. They had got their wet weather gear and they put the boat in the water. Mick and Peter stayed with the boat while he parked the trailer and Range Rover up where he always parked, a little further on down the riverbank from a pub called The Fox. There was an old village hall there, parts of a skiing club. That is where he parked up. He went back to Mick and Peter got in the boat and set off. The purpose was actually to test the boat because they had experienced fuel troubles. He had not been in the boat in the water before and this was the first time he had travelled on the boat at sea. He was wearing a wet suit, so was Mick Steele. Peter had splash downs in two parts. They set sail about two to half past and fuel the problems had been mentioned by Mick before they set out. Whomes said: "It was my idea to get on the boat. I had invested in the boat and I wanted to test it".

Mick was the navigator and they were going to the Goodwin Lights. He said: "The actual spot we didn't get to but we turned round and came back. It's not a spot known to me. Anything past the river Orwell meant I didn't know where I was going." They went out on the front tank with no problems but just before the destination they changed the main tank. On the way back they started to get fuel problems. They got starvation. There was an in line filter and behind it a hand primer, like a doctor's blood pressure device. It sucks the fuel to feed the engine before you start. Obviously it was pegging out. The engine was sucking but could not get enough fuel. The engine slowed down and then it stopped. It was asking for more fuel and not getting it. It died at least three or four times. "The first time we checked the hand primer because that was obvious. The inline filter had first baffled me.

I couldn't work out what was wrong. Mick said there was a proper piece of fuel line which had bent and blocked the pump and so cut off the fuel." Whomes ended up pressurising the tank by blowing into it. The engine was sucking and he was blowing. The fuel cap was made of nylon and there was a tyre valve on top and the tyre had a quick release cup. There was a yellow piece of pipe, a breather pipe and he blew through the breather pipe. That had the effect of slightly getting over the problem and you could get more fuel in and it got us back. "We got back at the end, but I had been at the front of the boat squeezing the pipe over and having to play the trumpet on it to pressurise it and set it up. Sometimes it stopped and the worse place it stopped was in the mouth of the deep end off Felixstowe."

He described how the current was coming out. It was a vast current which washed them on to a shingle bank. They had to trim up the engine, and you remember there were two positions on the trim, trim and tilt. They drifted on to the shingle. Steele and Corry got the paddles out. They got over the ridge and took another shot at coming in. As they were coming in a warning buzzer came on because the engine had taken in small stones. They got the boat back to the ferry. Whomes got out and walked over to the Range Rover, got it down to the boat and backed it to the water. He had turned round at the bus stop to back down to the water. Mick drove the boat up to touch the trailer and Whomes used the remote control winch to pull the boat in.

He and Steele were still in their wet suits and Corry in his two part outfit. Once that happened he would have to tie the boat on with two straps which would take him more than five minutes and then there was no reason why they could not have driven off. He was getting the boat out and driving up the slip road and he saw someone near the bus stop and when he got into the car park he could see someone over near the bus stop, the ferry. There were no police cars there at that stage. The three of them then walked off to Gordon Stevens' house and woke him up. Mick and Peter wanted a cup of tea. Stevens did not mind being woken up. He had rung me up when I was sitting in the boat on the passage back from the Good Winds. He was on the telephone on about buying diesel for his boat. It was a long-conversation. I said, "We'd better talk later on. It was about the diesel.

I had an abundance of it and access to a vast amount, about 24,000 litres, but the dock shunters run on red diesel and still we put white diesel we wanted for our metre. I could sell red diesel to Steele who would buy it cheaper than White. "We sat at a little table in Stevens' front room or dining room and we were not there for long. We could see lights and hear car doors banging and I went out to investigate. I'd left the Range Rover with its side lights on and the keys in the ignition. As I went over the brow of the hill which is the sea bank there were two policemen standing at the driver's side of the Range Rover: one tall and one small. I was ten to fifteen yards from them. I said I thought someone was knocking off my Range Rover. They asked whether it was mine and I said, no, it was my brother's. I told them the reason for the particular registration number and they asked where I'd just come from and I said, 'the Good Winds'.

They asked if the boat was mine and I said, yes. They wanted to know where I'd been and I said I was out testing the boat and got stuck on a shingle bank." You remember there is a conflict there between what Mr Whomes is saying and what the Customs officer is saying he said when they asked him questions. "The smaller one walked over to Gordon's house and I was left with the taller one. I explained I do water sports throughout the year because I was curious of the lateness of the boat coming out. I said I was the one who did the parascending at old Felixstowe. "He asked what the boat was for and I said it was for diving. I'm a diver. I was not cautioned. It was just a normal conversation as if anyone came on the beach and asking what's going on on the beach and can they have a go on something.

They searched the Range Rover after a while. By that time Mick and Peter joined us. I had been talking to that officer for 15 to 20 minutes before they did that. In the search of the Range Rover they looked everywhere: the glove box, the central parcel bit, the

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