Court

Police Admit Failures in Golf Course Body Search But Deny They Should Have Sectioned Victim
Thur 28th August 2014, Yellow Advertiser

A MAN’S body was left decomposing for five weeks due to a series of errors by Essex Police, an inquest has heard.

The force this week admitted ‘failings’ in its search for Michael Redmond.

Mr Redmond, 47, of The Vale, was discovered on Basildon Golf Course on August 12, 2013 – five weeks after he was first reported missing.

He was last seen alive on the course on July 5, but multiple searches failed to locate his body. He was eventually found in an area which had already been searched, by which time he was so decomposed that none of his internal organs could be tested.

Entomologist Dr John Manlove told the inquest Mr Redmond’s body was so infested with insects that he believed he had been on the course decomposing from the day of his disappearance.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) ordered Essex Police to investigate nine complaints filed by Mr Redmond’s family. Six were upheld, the inquest heard on Tuesday.

Senior officers failed to properly supervise the searches, the investigation found. Accurate records were not kept of which areas had been searched and the number of officers involved in the searches was ‘insufficient’. Some officers were not properly trained.

But police denied an officer should have sectioned Mr Redmond the day before he disappeared.

The denial came as the inquest heard police had attended 11 incidents involving Mr Redmond in the three weeks before his death.

He had been exhibiting ‘paranoia’, telling police that people were following him and trying to break into his home.

Police found no evidence of the alleged crimes Mr Redmond reported before he went missing. Family said he suffered mental health problems after witnessing a colleague commit suicide.

In total, seven officers encountered Mr Redmond in the weeks before his death and noted his ‘paranoid’ and ‘agitated’ behaviour – but none used their powers to section him.

They included an officer called by Mr Redmond’s mother Maureen on July 4, 2013. She was concerned by her son’s ‘erratic behaviour’ and asked the officer to section him, but he refused.

She told the inquest: “I feel that he could truly have helped and he refused without even seeing Michael. I was just dismissed.”

Essex Police marked the complaint as ‘not upheld’ but promised to offer improved mental health training for officers. The force also promised to hire more search officers, improve search training and improve management of long-term investigations.

Mr Redmond was supposed to meet friend Emma Smith outside Club Kingswood on the night he disappeared. She said she noticed his strange behaviour in the week before he went missing.

She told the court: “He was scared he was being followed. He was really scared for his life. He wouldn’t tell me who.”

Ms Smith saw Mr Redmond inside the club on July 5 and agreed to meet him at the front of the building, but he is believed to have instead left the premises through a fire exit. A witness saw him ‘sprinting’ barefoot across the golf course as though he ‘couldn’t get away fast enough’.

Police said last year that a post-mortem examination by Dr Nat Carey had ruled out suspicious circumstances.

The court heard on Tuesday that Dr Carey had concluded it was likely Mr Redmond made his own way to the wooded area where his body was discovered hidden under a bush, but that it was ‘not absolute’.

He found no skeletal injuries but said death by ‘compression of the neck’ was ‘not absolutely excluded’.

Tests on Mr Redmond’s calf muscle found traces of amitriptyline, prescribed for anxiety, and cocaine. Both readings were low, but Dr Carey said the combination could cause irregular heartbeats, dangerously high blood pressure and excessive heat in the body.

Coroner Caroline Beasley-Murrayruled the death was ‘an accident’, concluding Mr Redmond had mistakenly taken a fatal cocktail of the two drugs.

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