Coincidence or conspiracy?

Press, 10 February 1988, Page 10

Coincidence or conspiracy?

By

Marcus Eliason

of Associated Press

(through NZPA) London When the body of a young nuclear lab technician was found halfway down a cliff in western England, it came as a jolting reminder to some Britons of a puzzle that has intrigued the nation for 16 months. There has been a baffling string of deaths, suicides and disappearances of scientists working on defence-related projects. Was it coincidence or a conspiracy? Nothing has surfaced to suggest that it is more than just a bizarre chain of events. There is no known information linking the latest death to the previous ones. The police began searching for Russell Smith, aged 23, in mid-January after he vanished from his parents’ home, where he lived. He had previously asked for a day off from his job at the Atomic Energy Authority in Harwell, 80km west of London. Last week, the police found Smith’s car, containing a note, at a clifftop parking lot at Boscastle, Cornwall, 240 km

from Harwell. On Monday, they found Smith’s body down the cliff.

The cause of death and the content of the note have not been disclosed. The Atomic Energy Authority says it knows of nothing to link Smith to the previous deaths. The police refuse to speculate on whether his death was related to security, crime, or a personal matter. The mystery of the dead scientists goes back to August 5, 1986, when Vimal Dajibhai, aged 24, was found dead in the gorge below Clifton Bridge near Bristol. Suicide was suspected but the inquest left the verdict open. Dajibhai was a junior software engineer checking torpedo guidance systems at Marconi Underwater Systems, Watford, near London. It is not known why he travelled to Bristol, 170 km west of London.

On October 28, 1986, Ashhad Sharif, a computer systems analyst working for another Marconi unit near London was found strangled in a park near Bristol. The inquest ruled he killed himself by tying a rope to a tree, looping the other end round his neck and then driving off at speed. A computer design expert, Richard

Pugh, was found dead in January, 1987, at his home in Essex county. The Essex police said the circumstances of his death were never explained. A spokesman at the Ministry of Defence said at the time, “We have heard about him but he had nothing to do with us.” On February 22, 1987, Peter Peapell was found asphyxiated lying under his car with the engine running and the garage doors shut. The 46-year-old lecturer at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham, 110 km west of London, was happy and there was no reason why he should have wanted to kill himself, his wife said. The Defence Ministry said it did not employ Peapell but that he worked for the Cranfield Institute of Technology. A Defence Ministry statement said: “He was working on an unclassified project studying recent trends in beryllium metallurgy in the U.S.S.R. He was using open (freely available) literature.” Then, on March 30, 1987, David Sands drove his car, its trunk loaded with tanks of gasoline, into the front of a vacant restaurant and was incinerated. Sands was working on an air defence systems contract for Easams, a Marconi sister

company. Sands’ death prompted an Opposition member of Parliament, John Cartwright, to demand an investigation, saying the circumstances of the deaths “stretch the possibility of mere coincidence too far.” The Government admitted that the spate of deaths was “odd,” but said an inquiry was not “desirable or necessary at this time.” Last April, the Sunday “Today” newspaper advanced the theory that the deaths were due to stress brought on by overwork. Underwater defences are vital to Britain, whose independent nuclear arsenal is submarine-based. Since at least some of the dead scientists were working on underwater systems, no-one was surprised when Sunday “Today” reported that MIS, the domestic secret sendee, was investigating. A Defence Ministry spokesman, bound to anonymity by Civil Service regulations, said the Ministry still sees no reason for an investigation. He said the deaths were investigated by the police and coroners and satisfactorily explained, and attempts to link, them into a conspiracy were “newspaper hype.”