Michael Barrymore and the Tragic Death of Stuart Lubbock Part 3: The Post-mortems

My heart breaks for Terry Lubbock

As promised, more investigative discussion on the mystery surrounding the death of Stuart Lubbock, this time focusing on the four post-mortems, using statement analysis and logic. This is my third blog on the case. The first one covers the 999 call made by Justin Merritt. The second lays out the basics of the night Stuart Lubbock died.

Dr Heath’s words are in blue.

Professor Chris Milroy’s are in red.

Dr Calder’s are in green.

Professor Crane’s are in purple.

Dr Michael Heath

POST-MORTEM 1: Dr Michael Heath

This takes place at 16.40 on 31 March 2001, the day Stuart's body was discovered. Dr Heath's work in another case has been discredited. Link here.

A person has been found in a swimming pool and he’s dead. We now need to know what the cause of death is. My conclusion was that there was no third party involved in the death. Therefore I concluded that, as there was fluid in the air passages, fluid in the lungs ...

Ok, let’s Hyatt it, i.e. break the passage down.

A person has been found in a swimming pool and he’s dead.

So far, so good although we only have the party-goers’ words that Stuart was found in the pool. This sentence presupposes that the person was dead at the time he was discovered in the pool otherwise the pathologist might say ‘A person has been found in a swimming pool and later died’. This fact cannot be verified from witness reports and statements from Michael Barrymore himself as they are all inconsistent, with James Futers saying that Stuart Lubbock was still breathing when he was pulled out of the pool but Justin Merritt asserting ‘A geezer’s drowned in the pool’, which assumes death had already occurred (see 999 call analysis). The pathologist did not attend the scene. So, has he made an assumption based on what he’s been told? Yes, he might very well assume that if someone is found unconscious in a swimming pool, drowning is the cause of death. However, it’s not his job to make assumptions. It’s his job to look at the facts, at the evidence in and on Stuart’s body.

We now need to know what the cause of death is.

He states this as the primary purpose of the post-mortem. It seems reasonable but he then goes onto:

My conclusion was that there was no third party involved in the death.

So before determining cause of death, he’s jumped to a conclusion about who was involved. But, first, as he said himself, he needs to ascertain cause of death. Then this should lead him to an answer on the question of whether anyone else was involved. But Dr Heath seems to have got this backward. He’s decided that no one else was involved and then:

Therefore, I concluded that ...

Do you see what I’m getting at? His conclusion is based on something he hasn’t yet proved. It’s based on a belief he hasn’t backed up. This ‘therefore’ is rather worrying as it shows he’s not a logical thinker.

View of the pool at Barrymore's

… as there was fluid in the air passages, fluid in the lungs.

This is expressed as secondary to his first conclusion, when it should be his primary focus. Although this finding could be indicative of drowning, none of the other usual signs are found or mentioned in this post-mortem. He seems to have accepted an account of the situation and then looked for evidence to prove it, in other words, he’s entered into the whole process with a predisposition based on what the police told him and working it backwards, what the witnesses told the police.

Small abrasions that’d [he] got when Stuart was removed from the pool.

These ‘small abrasions’ are described by the next pathologist as horrific injuries. Do we assume that this pathologist did not look closely at Stuart’s body so did not notice any of the more serious injuries? Or do we assume that these injuries weren’t there at the first post-mortem? As to the latter, more later.

When I went through the whole post-mortem with the police.

Going through it with the police suggests that the police had some input into the findings or were consulted in some way but it is possible this merely means that he explained it to them.

It was my opinion that no third party was involved in the death.

This seems to lead from his conversation with the police. It is not my intention to imply that the police put pressure on the doctor to come to a particular conclusion. They were working under the assumption that, as they’d been told, a man had drowned in a swimming pool, that it was a terrible accident. But again the first statement does not lead to the second. There’s no cause and effect here.

As a result of that it was my opinion that this was a case of immersion. Drowning.

Again, this is backward. He’s saying that once he’d concluded that no third party was involved, he believed this to be proof that Stuart drowned. But why? And he doesn’t go through how he determined there was no third party involvement, i.e. We don’t get to see his workings out. It simply doesn’t follow. He could have died of a heart attack or a stroke without the input of a third party. The two aren’t necessarily related at all. Was he told to overlook the other injuries or was he just not very thorough?

Professor Chris Milroy

POST-MORTEM 2: Professor Chris Milroy

Chris Milroy, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Sheffield conducts the second post-mortem and says water can hamper investigations. He requests another post-mortem, to make sure the cause of death is correct because:

There were some findings that were clearly abnormal.

He means with a typical drowning.

He explains:

There’s petechiae, which would be evidence of choking or strangling and wouldn’t be found in drowning.

So then someone needs to investigate further to ascertain what actually happened. Choking or strangling might be used as a means of enhancing sexual gratification or could even be the cause of death. I’m not sure but I believe that suffocation might also produce petechiae. Was it a sexual game that went tragically wrong? It seems unlikely that Stuart would have willingly engaged in this.

POST-MORTEM 3: Dr Ian Calder, an expert in drowning

The reason for the third post-mortem is given as:

They wanted to be sure that this was actually a drowning.

This shows that the police had misgivings about the result of the first post-mortem.

His first observation is that:

Stuart’s lungs did not show the classic appearance of drowning.

Dr Calder is concentrating on the body and what it reveals. By ‘classic appearance’, he means the typical signs of drowning weren’t present. He elaborates very specifically about what he would expect to find but didn't:

Stuart's lungs were pretty heavy. Much heavier than I expected.
Sometimes people inhale their stomach contents but there was no stomach contents inhaled.
No typical froth in the lungs.

This evidence makes him suspicious about the cause of death. He's doing it the right way, examining the body and basing his assertions on that.
It didn’t add up to a classical drowning.

Then he speculates:
What makes a perfectly fit and healthy man drown?

This is really a rhetorical question as he doesn’t believe Stuart did drown. Stuart did have MDMA and cocaine in his bloodstream (we learn from the toxicity report) but we also know from witnesses that he was swimming and dive-bombing into the pool at one point so was fine then. One thing that is unclear to me is whether the drugs, together with the alcohol in his system, would have affected his ability to remain conscious.

Dr Calder's diagram, from Channel 4 show

As I was watching the documentary, I paused the video to examine Calder’s drawing of Stuart’s body. I was able to enlarge it to read the annotation. What I saw in this drawing appalled me and I’m surprised that no one seems to have mentioned it. There’s an arrow pointing to Stuart Lubbock’s groin with the label ‘Incontinence pad’. Who would have put this there if he’d merely drowned? Where did it come from? Was it a sick joke? Did someone put it there to soak up the blood? Why would he be wearing such a thing in a swimming pool? Was it inside his underwear? This strongly suggests a third party was involved either before or after Stuart died. Or is it possible that someone put it there between the two post-mortems? 

It was apparent there was a lot of blood on the cloth that he’d been wrapped in.

No one explains where the cloth came from and why it had blood on it. Why didn’t the first post-mortem comment on this? Was the cloth put there afterwards?

And that was around the pelvic region and that showed that there was extensive haemorrhage from the region of the anus. There was clear dilation of the anal canal. There were clear injuries and abrasions around the anus. They included bruising. They included tearing of the anal wall. I would describe the injuries to the anus as horrific.

What really amazes me about this is how the first pathologist either didn’t see all this or didn’t deem it relevant. Unlike Heath, Calder’s findings all follow logically. He hasn’t at this point speculated on how Stuart might have sustained these injuries although I don't think you need to be an expert to conclude that he wouldn’t have inflicted them on himself.

Despite Dr Calder’s report, no criminal charges are brought against anyone who was at the house although logic tells us that someone there caused these horrific injuries.

POST-MORTEM 4: Professor Jack Crane

The assumption he had drowned in the swimming pool and circumstances in my view (uncertain re cause of death) was [sic] based on rather tenuous, flimsy evidence. Where we were agreed was Stuart had been the victim of a serious sexual assault. Photos show the widening of the anal canal and lacerations highly suggestive that some large object had been forcibly inserted in the anus.

So, first off, Professor Crane refutes the drowning conclusion of Dr Heath. He agrees with Dr Calder that Stuart had been sexually assaulted. This is the first mention of the photos and I would hope that Stuart Lubbock’s relatives have been shown these, distressing as they might be. I would like to see them myself.

The jacuzzi, showing pool thermometer in situ

A bottle or a dildo that sort of thing could have caused those sort of injuries.

Of the pool thermometer, an item witnessed in the crime scene photos but later missing, he says:

An object like this could have produced the injuries I identified on Stuart's anus. If that had been passed into the anal canal a number of times.

In case we’re in any doubt:

I could not contemplate any circumstances where this was a consensual act.

Do you think that Stuart was raped?

I think that's a very likely scenario.

This young man had suffered a very serious and very violent sexual assault.

This really couldn't be clearer.

And this sudden assault could have caused him to have a cardiac arrest.

What I’m not sure about is whether the post-mortem would reveal that Stuart had suffered a heart attack or would be able to categorise this as cause of death.

So, what can we conclude from this? It would make sense to assume that the three pathologists who concur are correct and that Dr Heath, for some reason, didn't notice or chose not to notice Stuart's injuries. If we accept that Stuart sustained these injuries at Barrymore's house, we need someone at the party to tell us what they know, to break ranks in order to gain justice for Stuart and to provide answers and some sort of closure for his poor father. It isn't only a question of hiding something. People are lying or at the very least lying by omission.

At the inquest, Barrymore insisted that he did not know how the injuries were sustained and was adamant that they could not have happened at his home. He declined to answer some of the questions put to him.

The coroner can come to no conclusion while people are not saying what they know.

She has to render an open verdict. More on the inquest later.

Justice4Stuart

My heart goes out to Terry Lubbock, Stuart's father.

Always remember the victim

Stuart Lubbock, RIP