I accept what you are saying but as much as people are speculating with regards to LL, you are also speculating and have done so on more than one occasion, in your own words, since page 3 of this thread, about miscarriage of justice. This is a discussion forum that is very well moderated and therefore people are allowed to speculate and state their opinions and views provided they stay within TOS.
You nor I know what the evidence is and we don’t need to know. The way in which an enquiry like this is carried out, leans itself towards a substantial amount of time required to complete such an investigation, ensuring that all lines of enquiry are followed up on, wether it supports the evidential case or wether it supports LL. This is comprehensively documented and produced to the CPS for them to ascertain if the charging standards have been met. These are set at a very high benchmark and therefore, it may have been that LL was required to attend the police station on more than one occasion, which is what happened in 2018 and 2019 in order for her to be interviewed to secure and preserve evidence by questioning and ascertain the relevance of lines of enquiry and information that may have come to the attention of the investigation team since her last appearance and it gives LL the chance to clarify certain details and instances and may even explain sufficiently, the reasons behind certain information that has come into the Police domain and thereby assist in LL’s defence as it’s important to get to the truth of what happened and that only factual details are included in the file of evidence. I have written a previous post which I will try to find which explains what goes on behind the scenes of a major investigation enquiry, of which this falls under , to enable fellow WS patrons to get an understanding and a feel for all what is required when running and investigating major crime. So to conclude, yes there have been miscarriages of justice in the past and I have no doubt there will be again in the future albeit as time marches on, they are becoming few and far between in the UK because the level of accountability and record keeping is of such a high quality standard, that it’s highly unlikely that this will be allowed to occur in this day and age. Be rest assured therefore, the Investigation team and the SIO will have sufficient evidence pointing to the involvement of LL in the deaths and attempt deaths of these poor vulnerable defenceless children, otherwise, the file of evidence would not have passed the CPS threshold test . As to the guilt or innocence of LL, that will be decided upon by 12 true good men and women in a Crown Court in front of a Judge using our tried and tested time immemorial adversarial justice system of which I have faith in being amongst the best , if not THE best in the world. All MOO
FAO@Supernovae
This is the post that I was referring to which goes someway to explain the happenings within an MIR ( Major incident investigation room ) and headed up by the SIO ( Senior Investigating Officer). Maybe this will help you to understand the time taken to undertake an investigation as exhaustive as this one and the reasons as to why LL is only now being charged / indicted to appear before the Crown Court. Only when the trial is underway, will you find out the evidence which underpins the prosecution case as the UK has very strict subjudice laws with severe custodial sentences for those who breach them.
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I don’t know if the following post will help my fellow Websleuths members with regards to how a major investigation is run . I have tentatively mentioned this in a previous post but I have had quite a few questions privately in response so I decided to tidy up and expand my previous post ...
Here goes ....
With any major enquiry wether that be a murder / Homicide or a missing person , a dedicated team of detectives is set up with a SIO ( senior investigative officer) as the lead .
Certainly in the UK, a policy book is commenced and everything that you know , everything that subsequently happens, every decision taken , every line of enquiry considered but not followed up and the justification for that and every action followed up, is written into the policy book . Every decision made by the SIO and the justification behind such a decision, has to be written into the policy book .
I was responsible for leading a number of murder investigations and Missing persons investigations and I would lead teams of detectives and forensic experts etc
A twice daily briefing would be held where everyone has an input as to what has happened that day , any evidence found , any witnesses spoken to etc and a summary of the day’s investigation would be written up by the SIO.
Each investigation has a strategy and that strategy is followed from the Murder and Major Crime investigations Manual .
So at the start of the investigation, there will be various strategies drawn up to encompass all of the different strands of the Investigation.
They are :
1.Victim - what do we know ?
2. Suspect - Do we have any?
3. Circumstances of last seen
4. Intelligence - What do we know ? What can we find out?
5. Cell phone analysis
6. Forensics - what do we have ? How are they to be prioritised? Submissions to laboratory and cost?
DNA evidence
Fingerprints
7. Search parameters and recovery of evidence to include continuity of retrieval
8. CCtv - What’s available ? How do we prioritise it?
9. Cell Phones - Victims, Suspect’s, Family etc
10. Family History
11. Actions - those raised that need investigation and those that are considered but not deemed to take the investigation further ( but it still all needs recording )
12. Forensic mapping
13. Witnesses
14. Interviews - suspect/s?
15. Exhibits/Property Officer - to record everything brought into the enquiry and the continuity of that evidence
16. File of evidence - Who will create the file of evidence for submission to CPS/DA
17. Warrants - allocated officer to swear all warrants
18. Disclosure - Officer allocated to start a disclosure record ( court process )
19. Family liaison officer - Officer allocate to be the go between for the family and SIO
20. Media strategy - controlled release of information to press
I could go on but I think that you get the drift that any investigation of this type is massive and takes time and has to be that way to get it right so that by the time it gets to the Court process, there’s no room for doubt or for weaknesses in the investigation to allow the accused to get off on a technicality or procedural issue .
Then if there is a suspect you need to start thinking of who will do the suspect interview and the downstream monitoring and alibi checks .
And on top of all that, the biggest and most onerous task besides cell phone evidence retrieval, is CCTV ! And that is a biggie ... it takes Detectives hours upon hours to go through and watch CCTV to enable them to ascertain if there is anything of evidential value on each individual recording and that can be CCTV from the street , from a shop, car park, toll booth , buildings, churches , Public CCTV along a route and individual CCTV in peoples driveways or on their mobile phones etc
You start to get the idea of just how much work is involved in a major investigation and that’s before you go to a judge to swear out warrants and arrest the perpetrator. Once an arrest takes place, you then have interviews and downstream monitoring in real time of the interviews and then liaison with the CPS in UK and DA/attorney general I think maybe in the USA? And then putting the whole file of evidence together and ensuring full disclosure to the defence ... it’s massive workloads and it goes on and on ...
Cell phone data is also massive because of pings of location and subsequent searches and data dumps of all cell phones active within a specific MAST area and tracing who those numbers belong to and ascertain what they were doing in the area. And I can tell you that the evidence from one cell phone alone can run into thousands of pages for my detectives to read through and decipher what, If anything, is relevant to the case . So can you imagine when you have numerous people involved in an investigation, wether it to be rule them in or out or as an alibi or a victim, just how onerous this task is? And it is just one small part of the investigation.
In the UK we have HOLMES ( home office Major enquires system ) and everything is entered into the system and looked at by three officers working with admin staff and any actions deemed necessary as a result of those 3 officers painstakingly going through every piece of information, item, cell phone number, cctv , search recovery evidence etc and allocating actions ( work ) to officers to compete before they are resulted and given another action . And some officers are individually given specific roles for example CCTV, Cell phones, Intelligence, Statement takers , Family liaison .
So this gives you an idea of just what is going on behind the scenes .
And the information released has to be protected and provenanced to ensure accuracy and the SIO doesn’t want information released unless absolutely necessary because the perpetrator may slip up and say something that hasn’t yet been released to the public and that then becomes dynamite to the investigation. The integrity of the evidence must be protected at all times so that only factual information is evidenced and that’s wether it helps the prosecution or wether it hinders the prosecution but helps the defence. This is all subject to disclosure from the Police and Prosecution to the defence so that LL has reasonable chance to answer to and if necessary, explain the evidence before her as it may assist her in her defence. But either way, if it assists the prosecution or the defence, it all has to be disclosed in fairness to the accused.
I hope this helps you all to understand the process , procedures and time for any major investigation to bear fruit .
Regarding technology- People do not realise just how much electronic tracking there is in our everyday lives and the footprint that we leave . Let’s take for example the obvious ones like public CCTV and residential / business CCTV and street CCTV , shop and bank and fuel CCTV, road surveillance CCTV to monitor traffic flow and speed camera CCTV etc The list is endless! Then there are tracking devices on the car if there is one , then there is the cell phone and text message/social media footprints alongside Pings
But - there are some footprints that we either don’t think about or are not aware of for example I own a luxury ( ish ) brand of car and I don’t have a key , I have a black plastic fob that I carry around which activates the car but without inserting it anywhere within my car console. Now when my car has a problem and I go to the dealership, this fob is inserted into their computer and it tell you every journey I have made and the status of the car throughout that journey, if the fuels low , if the seatbelt warning is activated, if any warning lights come on , if tyre pressure is low etc
I was gobsmacked just how much information that could be obtained and to be quite honest, I am a law abiding citizen but it scared even me , just how much we are being monitored. Then there is ANPR both mobile and static and lets not forget that it’s not only your cell phone that can be pinged and calls traced but LE can go to any mast and triangulate all mobile cell phones that ping off a particular mast at a given time and they can cross reference the data from this to any of the contacts in your phone and see if there are any patterns . So just from this you can start to see how many avenues are open for LE to look at. And then we have instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp and snapchat and Twitter and email and fit bits and apple watches and you start to get my drift .....
Then we have Amazon Alexa and Smart devices ... The list is endless! But the workload involved in a major investigation is of massive proportions and of the upmost integrity in terms of provenance, disclosure and protecting the whole case and ensuring that there is no unauthorised leaks or release of evidence or procedure that can be subject of subjudice.
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