Appendix 1 a Personal Account of the Murders of Julia and Will Pemberton and the Subsequent Domestic Homicide Review
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Appendix 1 A Personal Account of the Murders of Julia and Will Pemberton and the Subsequent Domestic Homicide Review ‘You are causing the police angst. You could lose the coroner his pension’. I knew the man saying this to me on the telephone. It was only three months after my sister Julia Pemberton and her son Will Pemberton were murdered. It was not a threatening call but it was my first realisation that responding to tragedy by establishing what happened leading up to these horrific acts and using it to influence change was not necessarily a universally agreed first response. The caller later became a supporter of our enquiries. On the 18 November 2003, Alan Pemberton, Julia’s husband and Will’s father, fatally shot them both and then turned the gun on himself. My family was pressuring the authorities because this tragedy occurred despite my sister seeking assistance from Thames Valley Police. After the murders, my family campaigned for around five years to identify the actions and inactions of relevant agencies in the lead up to these murders. Three months after the tragedy, we had a meeting with the police which proved unsat- isfactory. Then we had an inadequate inquest from which vital information was withheld. There followed more meetings with the police at which they started to reveal more information but ultimately they would not accept that there had been system failure. We lacked confidence in their resolve to change. Eighteen months after the murders, in 2005, we secured a domestic homicide review, a pilot for the domestic homicide reviews (DHRs) anticipated in the 2004 Domes- tic Violence Crime and Victims Act and made law 13 April 2011. Five years after the murders, in November 2008, the publication of the Pemberton Homicide Review (PHR), revealed detailed findings, matching our thoughts that the bodies set up to protect us had failed. The Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police noted that her force had been criticised “in the strongest possible terms” (Letter, Chief Constable to Family of Julia and Will Pemberton, 5 December 2008). The review found that a “lack of strategic direction manifested itself in an inconsistent service approach depen- dent upon individual officers often ill-informed, isolated and poorly supervised 157 158 Appendix 1 or supported” and that “the provision of services to Julia and William as victims of domestic violence was undermined by a lack of individual and organisational competence that ultimately eroded the confidence of the victims they sought to protect” (Walker et al 2008:41). This acknowledgement of failure to protect Julia and Will followed many years of campaigning and this chapter is a fairly brief summary of that time. It was an important campaign and hopefully the DHRs that now follow will go some way to ensuring that lessons are not just learned but applied so that more of these tragedies are prevented. In September 2002, six years before this review was published, Julia told Alan, her husband of twenty years, that she wanted a divorce. Alan replied that he would decide whether or not the marriage was working and that if she left him he would kill her and take his own life. Julia knew that Alan would not accept a split. He had been very controlling and psychologically abusive for much of their marriage. Julia was clear that these threats to her life, made fourteen months before the murders, were very real and she believed Alan was capable of carrying them out. The following morning, Saturday, Alan ostensibly went to Spain for a few days. As soon as he had gone, Julia called me and told me of her fears and the threats. I went to Julia’s house straightaway and throughout that Saturday and Sunday we kept calling the police, making increasingly desperate attempts to get them to come to the house because we believed there was a real possibility that Alan might return at any time to carry out his threats. I was making the telephone calls asking for help, with Julia coming on the line at times too. No officer came to the house, despite promises to do so. It felt like a siege atmosphere as we triple checked that doors and windows were bolted. My family later discovered that the police command and control log (minute by minute record of police interaction with caller or of a ‘live’ incident) of that time, records that further calls from me, on behalf of my sister, need not be responded to fast time. Death threats can attract a lengthy prison sentence but the police did not take these threats from husband to wife seriously. Despite the Home Office recom- mending that all police forces develop a domestic violence policy in 1990, in 2003, Thames Valley Police did not have one. However, a few days later, a judge issued an injunction with power of arrest, ordering Alan (still in Spain) to move out of the house and to keep a certain distance from it. Many times during the next 14 months, Alan continued threats by text and phone to Julia. Each morning as she opened her front door she imagined Alan was in the bushes about to shoot her. I remember being in the kitchen listening to Julia describe her fear and her certainty that Alan would attempt to kill her. I felt a sense of outrage that these threats were causing her such terror, while the instigator remained free to carry on life without fear. This seemed so unjust and I wanted Alan to be challenged. In April 2003, seven months before the murders, Julia and William returned home from a weekend away to find the locks of the front and side door to the house glued up. Julia was distraught and phoned me and the police. I phoned the police too and told them of the historical, continuing and escalating threats. However, despite both of us having referred to the injunction and power of arrest being in place, my being given assurances that Alan would be interviewed, that a copy of the power of arrest had been lodged at Newbury Police Station and Appendix 1 159 the warning flag present on Force control room systems, no investigation was conducted. A few weeks later in May, a copy of Julia’s first affidavit to the court to get the original injunction, was posted through her letterbox. There were comments scrawled over it written by Alan and Julia was in no doubt they amounted to death threats. We were standing in the kitchen and Julia raised the document in the air and exclaimed ‘Frank, this means my murder is imminent.’ We both took the document to the police station. We felt extremely anxious and Julia was also very frightened. I made clear to the officer how important it was and I connected it up to earlier and on-going threats. After the murders, the documents were found in the archives. No investigation had taken place. Almost exactly six months before the murders, it is recorded in Julia’s diary of 13 May that William had remarked “Dad will never let us lead a normal life all this will end up with you being killed. Dad could even kill me.” However, Julia and me felt William was not at risk, but Julia was certain Alan would make an attempt on her life and wherever she went she would not be safe. In the following month, June 2003, a panic alarm was fitted in the house. A couple of weeks before the murders in November, Alan wrote to Julia asking that she contact him either directly or via William. Ten days before the murders, Julia reminded me that Alan was coming for her. My lack of understanding of risk was evidenced in my reply ‘He won’t do it while I am alive’. At around 3 a.m. on the 19 November 2003, my younger sister called me with the devastating news that Julia and Will had been shot. For a long time after, each day became a family conference informed by regular visits from the police family liaison officers from whom information came in dribs and drabs. We wanted to fully understand the inadequate police response to Julia’s calls for help, spanning the fourteen months following the initial threats to kill and including on the night of the murders. We were astounded to learn of a gap of nearly 7 hours between Julia calling 999 and police entering the house. We decided we needed a solicitor to help us and were fortunate to acquire the help of John Latham who greatly impressed with his knowledge and conviction around the role of the police and other public servants. John died on the 13 Jan- uary 2010 six years after I first met him. He had become a good friend and trustee of a charity AAFDA (Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse – www.aafda.org.uk) I had established. My family’s efforts to get answers were supported by many friends, politicians, academics and organisations active in the domestic violence sector and eventu- ally resulted in a Domestic Homicide Review. The purposes of these reviews are to identify and apply lessons to help prevent domestic homicides and improve ser- vice responses for all domestic violence victims and their children (Home Office 2011). But first we tried a direct approach to the police. The following two paragraphs are from my second statement to the Pemberton Homicide Review and they show some of the difficulties we had in trying to get answers from the police. Although in my name, John Latham constructed it.