Identified! UK - David Lytton, South Pennines, 'Neil Dovestone', 65-75, Dec'15

Yes, you're probably right about youth groups, I just thought a pagan ceremony could have been a possibility. The branches against the tree certainly suggest den building. The small shapes on the ground might conceivably be demonstrations of how to contain a small campfire from spreading by forming a barrier with logs or rocks.
 
"Since David's "arms were across his chest" when first spotted by the cyclist (ref: Podcast Episode 1, 07 Jun 2016 @ 4:05 - 4:09 min), perhaps Crowther searched David's trouser pockets first, followed by his jacket, thereby moving David's arms from the classic "coffin posture" to his sides."

"In any case, I find the instructions unusual. Is it standard protocol for UK's emergency services to advise members of the public to search a victim in the absence of a specialist party ? What if evidence were inadvertently contaminated, lost or destroyed ?"


I was surprised the cyclist was asked to search his pockets for any identity. I was talking to someone who once found a dead body and the emergency services asked if he was sure the person was dead but instructed him not to touch the body.
 
According to Manchester Evening News' report about the 15 Mar 2017 inquest ...

14:31: "Keen cyclist Stuart Crowther discovered Mr Lytton’s body at around 8.30am on December 12 2015. He called 999 and was asked to stay with the body and check his pockets for identification but found none. He said the body was ‘pale and still’ and the man was lying with his head towards the peak of the hill."

Since David's "arms were across his chest" when first spotted by the cyclist (ref: Podcast Episode 1, 07 Jun 2016 @ 4:05 - 4:09 min), perhaps Crowther searched David's trouser pockets first, followed by his jacket, thereby moving David's arms from the classic "coffin posture" to his sides.

In any case, I find the instructions unusual. Is it standard protocol for UK's emergency services to advise members of the public to search a victim in the absence of a specialist party ? What if evidence were inadvertently contaminated, lost or destroyed ?

As for the crossed arms & straight legs posture, I've often seen the exact same posture in someone who has pressed the snooze button on the alarm clock but wants more time to doze. It is as if the posture is supposed to act as reminder to wake up later.

Fantastic well referenced post.

2 points I would like to raise

1) In no way would GMP ask a member of the public to search a corpse in such circumstances. At such an early stage in the investigation foul play cannot be ruled out.

2) Rigor mortis. Say David's arms were moved from straight to crossed or vice versa this would be hard to do and take tremendous effort. I believe rigor begins to set in after 4 hrs. David was found 10 hours after his death. Rigor will have well and truly set in. I think the discrepancy here may be witness error or even media error. You have to remember we are not relying on direct witness testimony here. It is essentially hearsay evidence via a journalist or Bobby.
 
Interesting post BrokenBrick and many thanks for the links to the podcasts. I've not listened to any of these before.

Good point about how the English currency could have been obtained in Pakistan.

I have read that there is cctv from Heathrow here.

'Images recovered from Lahore and Heathrow airports, as well as images from a 10 year old passport, were used to finally identify Mr Lytton.'

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co...avid-lytton-saddleworth-inquest-live-12738557
 
According to Manchester Evening News' report about the 15 Mar 2017 inquest ...

14:31: "Keen cyclist Stuart Crowther discovered Mr Lytton’s body at around 8.30am on December 12 2015. He called 999 and was asked to stay with the body and check his pockets for identification but found none. He said the body was ‘pale and still’ and the man was lying with his head towards the peak of the hill"

2) Rigor mortis. Say David's arms were moved from straight to crossed or vice versa this would be hard to do and take tremendous effort. I believe rigor begins to set in after 4 hrs. David was found 10 hours after his death. Rigor will have well and truly set in. I think the discrepancy here may be witness error or even media error. You have to remember we are not relying on direct witness testimony here. It is essentially hearsay evidence via a journalist or Bobby.

RSBM

I cannot find anywhere that states what time of death or how long he had lain there before he was found. How do you get to the figure 10 hours?

DC Coleman says on the podcast Episode 1 that the call came through at 10.47am.
It was reported similar here.

'The next morning, at 10.45am on a Saturday, a walker found his body lying down'

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....don-to-the-pennines-to-die-on-a-hillside/amp/
 
I was surprised the cyclist was asked to search his pockets for any identity. I was talking to someone who once found a dead body and the emergency services asked if he was sure the person was dead but instructed him not to touch the body.

In no way would GMP ask a member of the public to search a corpse in such circumstances. At such an early stage in the investigation foul play cannot be ruled out.

I myself found that somewhat unusual, hence my initial query. Or might a layperson be allowed to search a victim under certain circumstances ?

For instance, note that I state "search a victim" above & also in my previous post, as opposed to "corpse" or "dead body". Based on David's position & posture beside the path, I wouldn't have immediately concluded that he was dead or described him as such to 999. If I were the caller, I might have said that there was an elderly man lying on the ground, that he was not responding (I reckon I probably would have tried talking to him & then shaking his shoulder), but that he didn't seem outwardly injured or in pain.

In fact, the police &/or paramedics had initially suspected a "cardiac arrest" case who was still alive. Perhaps it was a medic officer who requested the cyclist to search David for any ID or items (eg. heart medication) that might shed further light on the situation. See below.

Ref: BBC Radio 4 'Body on the Moor' Podcast Episode 1 (07 Jun 2016)

@ 4:24 - 4:32 min
Jon Manel (reporter):
"And the ambulance people, when you spoke to them on the phone, they ... they were worried in case he was ..."

Stuart Crowther (cyclist):

[interrupting] "That's right, they were concerned that he might still be alive."


@ 4:50 - 5:25 min
Rick Beswick (Oldham Mountain Rescue team volunteer):
"That morning, I got a call around 10 or 11 o'clock. It comes by a text message to our phone. And we were actually told it was a male cardiac arrest, so we had enough time."​


In the same podcast, DS John Coleman also said that both the medics & Oldham Mountain Rescue team were already at site & attending to the situation prior to the arrival of the police. So presumably, quite a number of people might have manhandled David (eg. checking for signs of life, tilting or turning him to check for injuries on his back/ sides, attempted resuscitation, etc.), before forensics procedures were carried out & the scene duly documented by the police photographer.
 
Rigor mortis. Say David's arms were moved from straight to crossed or vice versa this would be hard to do and take tremendous effort. I believe rigor begins to set in after 4 hrs. David was found 10 hours after his death. Rigor will have well and truly set in. I think the discrepancy here may be witness error or even media error. You have to remember we are not relying on direct witness testimony here. It is essentially hearsay evidence via a journalist or Bobby.

I cannot find anywhere that states what time of death or how long he had lain there before he was found. How do you get to the figure 10 hours?

Do the UK authorities provide transcripts of inquest proceedings & coroner's hearings ?

So far, I had not come across any reports regarding the time of death either. It could be that the police were not able to provide an estimated time of death due to the apparent lack of significant rigor mortis when David was found.

Rigor mortis typically sets in 2-6 hours after death, & starts spreading down the body (starting from the eyelids). The process is completed within 20-30 hours under warm conditions.

However, the progress of rigor mortis is greatly delayed by cold conditions. In other words, the stiffness spreads much more slowly. Under chilled or freezing conditions, the entire process can take days to complete (small muscles to large muscles, head to toe).

The temperature at Saddleworth Moor was "2°C overnight" (ref: DS John Coleman) -- excluding windchill, plus the fact that David was lying on wet ground & his clothing was "soaking wet", all of which likely add to the chilling effect. It would be as if David had been lying down with maximum exposed surface area inside a wet & windy chiller (for who knows ... 13 hours ? 30 minutes ?) before he was spotted in mid-morning (10.40-10.50 am). And it was still raining sideways on that morning of discovery.

Further info on rigor mortis ...

http://www.exploreforensics.co.uk/estimating-the-time-of-death.html
"Rigor normally occurs in the smaller muscles such as those in the face and neck and will work its way down through the body as the muscles become larger. The process normally begins roughly two hours after death and can last for anything from twenty to thirty hours."


http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/death-dying/rigor-mortis-cause2.htm
Warm conditions speed up the onset and pace of rigor mortis by providing a hospitable environment for the bacteria and processes that cause decay. Cold temperatures, on the other hand, slow it down. If someone dies outside in freezing temperatures, [progress of] rigor mortis can last for days. Investigators might abandon it entirely as a tool for estimating the time of death.


In addition, as mentioned in my previous post, cyclist Stuart Crowther (who supposedly searched David upon instruction) described the latter as "pale and still" during the inquest. There was no mention of stiffness in reports following the inquest. Neither do I recall any of numerous earlier media reports mentioning it.

Last but not least, the cold & wet conditions meant that the usual decomposers weren't out & about to do damage to David's body. As such, I suppose it wasn't possible to use clues from these agents to estimate the time of death either.
 
Is there any lighting on saddleworth? If it was pitch black how could he see where he was walking?

I thought that the emergency services would only ask you check for a pulse, and to stay with the body. Why should it be left to a stranger to ID him? It's the polices job, to find out who he is.




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RSBM

I cannot find anywhere that states what time of death or how long he had lain there before he was found. How do you get to the figure 10 hours?

DC Coleman says on the podcast Episode 1 that the call came through at 10.47am.
It was reported similar here.

'The next morning, at 10.45am on a Saturday, a walker found his body lying down'

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....don-to-the-pennines-to-die-on-a-hillside/amp/

Could be my mistake. I thought I read it somewhere on here.
 
I would like to know why David Lytton aka Neil Dovestone left his tube driving job on the London Underground around the time of the London Underground and bus bombings in London on the 7th of July, 2005. And he was a Muslim convert. At that time he did a runner to Pakistan. Then came back 10th December, 2015 from Lahore, Pakistan, to Heathrow, London. And was poisoned by strychnine on Saddleworth More, 12th December, 2015. I think he could have been connected to the four Luton Muslim terrorists. And he was bumpt orf.
 
I would like to know why David Lytton aka Neil Dovestone left his tube driving job on the London Underground around the time of the London Underground and bus bombings in London on the 7th of July, 2005. And he was a Muslim convert. At that time he did a runner to Pakistan. Then came back 10th December, 2015 from Lahore, Pakistan, to Heathrow, London. And was poisoned by strychnine on Saddleworth More, 12th December, 2015. I think he could have been connected to the four Luton Muslim terrorists. And he was bumpt orf.

I'm not sure he HAD converted to Islam? Do we know for sure either way?

We (as in the general public) know very little about David's life in Lahore, maybe his brother Jeremy knows more about what he did and who he knew there. I doubt there's any connection to terrorism though.
 
Do the UK authorities provide transcripts of inquest proceedings & coroner's hearings ?


No, the records are closed for 75 years. People with reason to request info (generally relatives) can apply to the coroner.
 
I'm wondering if the structures on the ground could possibly be pagan or wiccan perhaps? I think they use circles and sometimes construct altars in woodland. Just a thought.

There's nothing there that says pagan or Wiccan to me. It's too organised.

A formal Wiccan coven is traditionally no more than 13 people (usually quite a few less) and the circle is 9' in diameter. These groups want privacy and even those that worship out in a place like this prefer to leave no real trace because they don't want to attract the idly curious.

Informal groups, just people meeting for a very loose or largely impromptu ceremony, are bigger but then want to sit around a fire and pass the booze and spliffs around, maybe do a bit of drumming.

Neither group is going to burn down a living tree like the one at the centre of the circle of logs.
 
Neither group is going to burn down a living tree like the one at the centre of the circle of logs.

Yeah, the above-mentioned & other structures look like woodland dens, fire pits, etc. built by scouts & brownies, either for practice or to achieve some kind of Survival Proficiency badge.

As for burning, it's illegal to start fires (much less burn down a live tree) at a protected National Park, which also happens to be a flammable moorland. Not that it prevents inconsiderate people from doing so ... as recently as last weekend.

On 25 Mar 2017 Saturday evening, a group of 5 or 6 kids reportedly started a fire at around 6.30pm between Dovestone Reservoir & Indian's Head Summit, before being seen walking down the hill.

As the fire expanded from its centre along the underground peat, it later became a huge "ring of fire", which was further fanned by strong winds into a giant blaze that stretched up to 3 miles across on 27 Mar 2017 (Sun). The heat was intense enough to melt the boots of firefighters attending to the blaze.

Fire Service eventually managed to extinguish most of the fire at around 8pm on Sunday night, before leaving the site at 2.30am on Monday morning.

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View from M62 motorway on 27 Mar 2017 (Sun) night:
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I would like to know why David Lytton aka Neil Dovestone left his tube driving job on the London Underground around the time of the London Underground and bus bombings in London on the 7th of July, 2005. And he was a Muslim convert. At that time he did a runner to Pakistan. Then came back 10th December, 2015 from Lahore, Pakistan, to Heathrow, London. And was poisoned by strychnine on Saddleworth More, 12th December, 2015. I think he could have been connected to the four Luton Muslim terrorists. And he was bumpt orf.

Welcome to Ws Ed2!
Intriguing post, wondering if David was witness to any of those horrors, perhaps profoundly affecting him?
Thinking of the traveling.
imo, speculation.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/20/schuster.column/
The side entrance of Luton station is instantly recognizable -- through that freeze frame of terror about to happen, thanks to the closed-circuit television picture showing the four young men and their bomb-filled backpacks, seemingly ordinary except with the hindsight of history.
Through the station, down to Platform 1, the 7:40 pulls in. Waiting passengers are as incurious on this morning as they must have been days earlier when Mohammad Siddiq Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain and Germaine Lindsey took this train south from suburbia, giving no indication to the commuters around them of their mission.
Only when we trudge up the stairs of King's Cross, and head across the street to the Tube, London's subway, does reality begin to set in. The flowers and flags at a makeshift memorial cause at least a few commuters to stop their journey for a moment or two.

The route of these bombers seems to go from the north of England to Pakistan and back again before the trip from Luton to King's Cross and onward.


 
Is there any lighting on saddleworth? If it was pitch black how could he see where he was walking?

It seems Saddleworth Moor is unlit, except for key areas like near Clarence pub ? See also the photos in my earlier post about the huge fire that occurred at the moor last weekend.

Sunset on that 11 Dec 2015 evening occurred at 3:48 pm. In clear weather, one should be able to see quite clearly without artificial lighting all the way till onset of civil dusk (4:31 pm that day), followed by being able to discern only indistinct shapes & outlines until onset of nautical dusk (5:16 pm), after which one can't really see much if at all.

However, due to the clouded-over sky that day, I reckon it could be too dark to see even outlines by around 4:45-5:00 pm. And since the area is rural, urban skyglow probably won't be of much help in providing illumination.

So if David was still wandering along the tarmac path after 5:00 pm, I suppose it might be possible for a determined person to slowly feel one's way uphill & downhill in the dark by putting one's hand on the upper embankment slope along the path.

Alternatively, one could crawl (using the feel of the tarmac as a guide), but this is probably too tiring. I'm assuming David wasn't carrying a torch (& subsequently lost it or threw it away) that day at Saddleworth Moor.


Timeline Summary

11 Dec 2015 (Fri)
  • 2:00-2:03 pm: David walked into Clarence Pub to enquire about route to "top of the mountain"
  • 3:48 pm: Sunset
  • 4:00 pm: David passed 2 RSPB (Royal Society for Protection of Birds) members coming downhill
  • 4:31 pm: Civil dusk
  • 5:16 pm: Nautical dusk

12 Dec 2015 (Sat)
  • 6:47 am: Nautical dawn
  • 7:32 am: Civil dawn
  • 8:15 am: Sunrise
  • After 10:30am: David discovered lying on verge beside Chew Track (tarmac path between Dovestone Reservoir & Indian's Head Summit), below Rob’s Rocks formation, almost 2.5 miles from Clarence Pub
  • 10:47 am: Oldham Police received call about David

Ref: Sunrise/Sunset & Twilight Time at Oldham, Manchester, UK for Dec 2015
Ref: Visibility during civil twilight (dawn/dusk) & nautical twilight (dawn/dusk)
 
I would like to know why David Lytton aka Neil Dovestone left his tube driving job on the London Underground around the time of the London Underground and bus bombings in London on the 7th of July, 2005. And he was a Muslim convert. At that time he did a runner to Pakistan. Then came back 10th December, 2015 from Lahore, Pakistan, to Heathrow, London. And was poisoned by strychnine on Saddleworth More, 12th December, 2015. I think he could have been connected to the four Luton Muslim terrorists. And he was bumpt orf.

David came back to UK from Pakistan in Dec 2015 because he was unable to get his visa extended. I don't know how it works between UK & Pakistan, but elsewhere, after one's visit pass has expired & can't be extended, people are known to exit the country for a short "holiday" (it can be a mere half-day trip) across the border, before returning to get their visit pass automatically renewed.

My impression is that David might have moved to Pakistan in 2006 due to a woman (read: romance), which could perhaps explain why he never even told his former close girlfriend Maureen that he was leaving. Apparently, there is no evidence ascertaining that David was a Muslim convert, other than what David allegedly told his Pakistani neighbour. Who knows if David might have claimed as such, so as to better his chances with a Pakistani lady ...


'A lovely man': The Woman who dated the Man on the Moor (BBC Magazine - 14 Mar 2017)

Another [neighbour at Hassan Town, Lahore] said that he was a Muslim and that David told him that he had converted in 1996.

"Now, I don't know whether he said this in view of the treatment meted out to Christians here, as they are made to eat in separate pots from us, Muslims, but he definitely told me that he was a Muslim."

The police say there is no evidence to suggest that he had converted to Islam.


Edit: Interestingly enough, based on the 2nd para above, David's neighbours in Pakistan thought he was Christian.
 
David came back to UK from Pakistan in Dec 2015 because he was unable to get his visa extended. I don't know how it works between UK & Pakistan, but elsewhere, after one's visit pass has expired & can't be extended, people are known to exit the country for a short "holiday" (it can be a mere half-day trip) across the border, before returning to get their visit pass automatically renewed.

My impression is that David might have moved to Pakistan in 2006 due to a woman (read: romance), which could perhaps explain why he never even told his former close girlfriend Maureen that he was leaving. Apparently, there is no evidence ascertaining that David was a Muslim convert, other than what David allegedly told his Pakistani neighbour. Who knows if David might have claimed as such, so as to better his chances with a Pakistani lady ...





Edit: Interestingly enough, based on the 2nd para above, David's neighbours in Pakistan thought he was Christian.

It doesn't say anything about him having a Muslim name, he didn't know the language and he probably didn't go to mosque. If he wanted a woman there are plenty in the uk


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Hi, the pics I took may not be relevant but they are interesting and thought they were worth sharing. I don't have any knowledge on paganism and was just trying to show the scene as I saw it. Still a few more pics to put up.
There were feathers on some of the wooden structures and I will get back up there and take some more detailed pics.
At the top reservoir there was a stone laid by some king around the time of the 1981 royal wedding but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of him being there. Surely at least one journalist would have got a pic or even local news should have picked up on it. Again it's not necessarily connected but poses more questions.....


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