Shot soldier’s father accused of squandering police time

THE father of Pte Cheryl James has been accused of distracting a police force as it hunted for Milly Dowler’s murderer and the M25 rapist.

The claim was made as Des James was repeatedly challenged during a second inquest into his daughter’s death over his outspoken attacks on the Surrey Police investigation into the Deepcut shootings.

Mr James, a retired company executive, has regularly accused the 2002 investigation of being cursory, and has complained that officers were too close to the Army and had assumed from the start that his daughter had committed suicide.

He told the inquest: “It felt rushed. They rang to say they were reopening the investigation into my daughter’s death. They didn’t tell me they were lumping it together with Sean Benton’s death.”

In sometimes testy exchanges at Woking Coroner’s Court, John Beggs QC, counsel for the police, said Mr James had been unfair and subjective in his criticism.

He said at the time the force was also investigating the murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the M25 rapist.

Milly disappeared in March 2002 when she was on her way home from school in Walton-on-Thames, giving rise to an major police hunt. Her body was found dumped in woodland 25 miles away in September that year.

Meanwhile, Antoni Imiela, known as the M25 rapist, attacked seven women near the London orbital during 2001

‘Did it ever occur to you that you may have been distracting Surrey Police during that intense period?’

and 2002. Mr Beggs asked Mr James: “Did it ever occur to you that you yourself, with your masses of letters and emails that you sent in that period, that you may have been distracting Surrey Police during that very intense period?”

Coroner Brian Barker QC interrupted: “I’m not happy with that question.”

Elsewhere in his evidence, Mr James said his daughter had been badly affected by the suicide of her 18-year-old cousin, Rob, when she was 15.

Mr James said at one point she was taken to hospital after an apparent overdose when she took “six to eight paracetamol” in what was assumed to be a “cry for help”.

She was also the victim of an alleged rape by two boys, the inquest heard, though Mr James did not hear about the allegations until after his daughter had died.

In 1993 she left home for 16 or 17 days. She then left again in 1994 and ended up living in a flat in Wrexham before she returned home again. One friend from that time said she was “intrigued” by death and often spoke about it.

She had also talked about “packing it all in” in one tearful conversation on Boxing Day in 1994 and had asked, “What’s the point of carrying on?”

Soon after she returned home, she decided to join the Armed Forces.

She seemed to enjoy Army life and appeared healthy and happy after basic training.

In her last call home, three days before her death, she had said she could not come home because she was on guard duty, but she had talked with her mother for some time about her plans for Christmas.