The so-called IT Expert

“Things are seldom what they seem. History and literature hold many examples of deception imposed on credulous people by the production of artificial facts posing as circumstantial evidence.”

– The Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred Bucknill, The Nature of Evidence, 1953

Lyndsey Farmery

The police IT Expert showed impressive zeal in examining the data on Vincent Tabak’s computers. Testifying in court for the prosecution (on 19th October 2011), Lyndsey Farmery spoke only to confirm the identity of each of the images displayed, as the jury was shown dozens of internet pages said to have been viewed by Vincent Tabak. She succeeded in finding on her list the URLs of a lot of incriminating websites that Counsel for the Prosecution Nigel Lickley QC, who was not under oath, would allege Vincent Tabak had visited at specific times during the crucial weekend.

“Things are seldom what they seem” wrote the Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred Bucknill in his 1953 book The Nature of Evidence. “History and literature hold many examples of deception imposed on credulous people by the production of artificial facts posing as circumstantial evidence. We need not go further than the Old Testament for good examples of that kind of deception. Thus Jacob deceived his father Isaac when he was old and his eyes were dim, by wearing his brother’s clothes, putting the skins of the kids upon his hands and upon his neck, and telling his father that he was Esau.”

Prosecuting Counsel
Nigel Lickley QC

The judge, Mr Justice
Field, did not intervene

Lyndsey Farmery does not seem to have told the jury anything about her qualifications or skills as a computer analyst. Nor does searching the internet reveal much about her, except that she has the status of a “Criminal Intelligence Analyst”, an officer who would normally be assigned to organised crime and terror cases. This too was kept from the jury. The task she performed in court during the trial of Vincent Tabak could have been performed by anyone with only the most basic computer skills, and no prior knowledge of the case. Her own testimony contributed nothing to the case. She knowingly allowed her “evidence” to be led by Mr. Lickley – and the judge, significantly, did not intervene. Any one of Chief Constable Colin Port’s officers could have played the part Lyndsey Farmery played, so she presumably agreed to take on this compromising role as the lesser of two evils, as an alternative to e.g. being sacked or assigned to traffic duty.

Any one of Colin Port’s
officers could have
played her part

Avon & Somerset Constabulary’s list of expenditure on “Operation Braid”, published on 31st March 2011, included an item of £3,468 for interpreters’ fees and other costs. Vincent Tabak was fluent in English, but some of his computer searches and some of the material on his laptop computer would certainly have been in Dutch. Is Lyndsey Farmery able to read, and perhaps also speak, Dutch, and is this why she was assigned to this case? Was she the interpreter who took the oath, but played no part, in Vincent Tabak’s hearing before the Magistrate’s bench on 24th January 2011? The artists’ impressions published by some news media at the time portray a young woman strongly resembling Lyndsey Farmery. Was Lyndsey Farmery the unnamed colleague at the Schiphol interview on 31st December 2010, assigned to interpret any conversation that Vincent Tabak might have carried on with his sister? Was she on hand during his interrogation at the police station after his arrest on 20th January 2011?

If Lyndsey Farmery really does have computer skills that did not emerge in court, then she may also have been the police officer who allegedly found on the defendant’s computer a collection of legal commercial pornographic videos that could be expected to be found on the computers of lots of other ordinary people. Neither she nor any other witness testified to these under oath, however, as it was Mr Lickley who described them at some length for the sensation-hungry journalists (and he was not under oath), while the jury were not present. There were also alleged to be audit trails of internet adult porn sites that had been opened.

Images of child abuse

It would be very surprising if the so-called IT expert, with her investigative zeal, did not also quickly find on Vincent Tabak’s hard discs the photos of young children that A & S Constabulary nine months later anonymously would allege constituted illegal Group 4 images of child abuse.

If these child images really were found on any computers used by the defendant, why did this Prosecution witness not testify to the jury this irrefutable evidence of his bad character?

The serious failure of the IT expert to instigate efforts to identify the children so that steps could be taken to protect them against further exploitation and round up the paedophile ring responsible detracts from her credibility as a witness. The fact that a charge for possession of this material was not included with the murder charge suggests, however, that the IT expert did not look closely enough at these pictures to ascertain that they were in fact innocent legal photos of Vincent Tabak’s seven nieces and nephews.

The IT Expert and Mr Lickley did not mention that the adult pornographic scenes depicting strangulation, blondes tied up in car boots etc. allegedly on Vincent Tabak’s computer were the result of searches he had made after he became aware that his next door neighbour suffered that fate. It could have been nothing more than natural curiosity. Some of the websites containing these lurid videos may even have opened automatically without any intention on Vincent Tabak’s part, as it is not uncommon for the designers of all kinds of websites to earn extra money by triggering the opening of further windows promoting something else entirely.

Joanna Yeates

It can be conjectured that the IT expert was too busy showing adult porn videos to her male colleagues to pay much attention to the timestamps of what she found on Vincent Tabak’s hard discs. Indeed, it is possible that she became so excited that she did not get around to documenting the timings of these URLs. That is why it was left to Mr. Lickley (who was not under oath) to tell the jury the times when they were viewed in relation to Joanna Yeates’s death, to the reporting of her disappearance, and to the discovery of her body.

It was subsequently alleged in Court and in the media, bizarrely, that the viewing of ordinary everyday adult porn videos turned Vincent Tabak into a sexual pervert with a strangulation fetish, so people who think like that should not find it surprising if the IT expert did not also develop similar propensities which she felt an urge to try out in practice.

If Vincent Tabak really had committed the crime, then the police would have shown a clear track record of his times. They would have their computer expert to show that he went offline from 9.30 p.m. to, say, 10.30 p.m. on the evening Joanna died, and then came back online at whatever.