Someone must be to blame

THE brother-in-law of Janet Scott – the woman killed by a convicted murderer out on licence – says the inquiry into the circumstances of her death is “too little, too late”.

Keith Thomson says that if the powers-that-be had done their job properly then Janet would still be alive.

It is difficult to argue against what he says given what happened. The killer, Simon Mellors, had beaten and strangled his previous partner Pearl Black to death at her home in Bramcote while her two young daughters slept next door.

That was in 1999. Less than 19 years later he was out and free to kill Ms Scott who had ended a relationship with him.

The Home Office says the review will not seek to “lay blame” but will will “consider what happened and what could have been done differently”.

This is the very least that should be done but it does beg the question, why won’t it look to lay blame?

Are officials in the Ministry of Justice not responsible for their actions? It may be, although this seems unlikely, that nobody outside of the killer is to blame for what happened but surely we should seek to publicly find out if anyone was.

The Home Office may well argue that if it was trying to “lay blame” it could not get to the truth as all those who played a part would be protecting themselves rather than giving full and frank evidence about what happened.

If this is the case let us hope that it works and we really found out if any key pointers were missed that would have stopped Mellors being freed to kill again.

Nobody would want what happened to Janet Scott to happen again.