Keen Responds
First, some general thoughts about sceptical criticisms of the supposed paranormal: it is prudent and rational to look for normal explanations, and both fair and desirable to follow the general precept that extraordinary claims require extraordinary levels of proof. And there can be no disputing that the Jacqui Poole case is extraordinary, although not for the reasons most sceptics would accept. It is extraordinary in the abundance and impressiveness of the evidence of paranormality, and the poverty of alternative explanations. It is not extraordinary as apparent evidence of discarnate communication, since the literature supporting this is vast, and widely ignored or neglected.
Secondly, the methods used by determined sceptics to criticise such cases have been recognised and exposed for 120 years: they are to ignore the best and concentrate on the least impressive pieces of evidence; to disparage the competence or sometimes question the sanity of the investigators; to misrepresent or distort what they cannot accept or account for, and to divert the issue into one of their own choosing, which is what has happened in this case, as I will show.
What makes their task so difficult to square with the norms of rational debate and scientific objectivity, to say nothing of plain honesty and integrity, was apparent a century ago when the deceased George Pellew, communicating through Mrs Piper, recognised and gave intimate details about a very large number of his earthly friends and relatives: here the critics were forced to dismiss as mere telepathy what appeared to be evidence of survival.
No such option is allowed to the determined sceptic. If it were, we could have a civilized debate evaluating the competing merits of the two hypotheses: communication from the dead or telepathy from the living. But since this admission is not allowed it follows that the critic must account for all the information transmitted by a medium as based on prior knowledge or cold reading, or both. A study of the evidence in this case exposes the absurdity of any such claim. Hence the critics' subtle twist of the plot, so that the debate turns on the extent to which, if at all, the retrieval of the murderer's pullover was or was not a factor which influenced or even determined the successful prosecution of Ruark. This is clearly of great interest, but the outcome in no way affects the principal issue: did Holohan give genuine and meaningful evidence about the circumstances of the murder which she could not have acquired normally.
Now let me come to specifics:
Tony Batters was a detective for many years both before and after the Poole case. and is currently a civilian detective employed by the police. There was a brief period when, for administrative reasons, he was in uniform while attached to a CID murder squad, but this makes not the slightest difference to the role he played during the investigation.
Batters was principal in the sense that he was the officer deputed to investigate when the victim's non-response to calls was first reported to the police; it was he who broke into the apartment and spent five hours making notes; it was he, accompanied by Detective Andy Smith, who responded to Holohan's offer to provide information and kept notes of the interview. It was never suggested that he was actually in charge of the murder squad, but he worked closely with Lundy, the officer in charge who (contrary to the firm belief of "Stumpy", aka Detective Adrian Shaw, of whom Tony Batters and his colleagues have never heard, and who had nothing to do with the murder squad involved in the case), interviewed many of the suspects himself.
Furthermore, it was Batters who kept his fingers on the huge volume of papers which accumulated, and it was he who was in the witness box at the eventual trial for two days. He was the only police officer to be in attendance throughout the trial. DCI McKinlay, who, of course, had nothing to do with the original inquiry in 1983, and could not have been expected to know anything about Holohan's evidence (which is what our Report is about), was not regularly at the trial, and had no need to be.
My statement that Batters recovered the pullover was a minor error which I immediately corrected, as Professor French will confirm. It is difficult to believe that Youens was unaware of this — not that it matters one whit who collected the pullover.
I never asserted that Batters' notes were part of the evidence at the trial. On the contrary, it is obvious that, since a deceased entity cannot give evidence, statements made by a medium would be regarded as inadmissible. It is therefore astonishing that Youens should have asked why the evidence obtained from Holohan was not discussed in the court proceedings. I was not aware that the notes from the Holohan interview were typed up and "submitted to the enquiry" but perhaps this was just routine. Whether "enquiry" refers to police records or to the court proceedings 18 years later is not clear, and doesn't really matter.
Nor is it clear what is meant by "Officer X" having denied any knowledge of the notes scribbled by Holohan. Officer X is presumably Detective Sergeant Andy Smith who accompanied Batters and who has signed a statement confirming the accuracy of our account. That account refers to and reproduces the single page on which the medium wrote when in semi-trance. There were no "notes" made by her. This was the page containing, among other matters, the name "Pokie" which Smith, with local knowledge, recognised as the nickname of Ruark.
The issue of the pullover is another red herring. Despite Detective Superintendent Lundy's recollection of what took place twenty years earlier, the facts are that Ruark, one of a large number of suspects who were male and likely to be known to the victim (since there was no sign of forced entry), had provided the police only days before the Holohan interview with a persuasive alibi, when the crucial matter of times was backed by a couple of his drinking partners. Although well known as a thief, Ruark had no record of violence.
Despite any current, and understandable, claimsby police to have been completely self-sufficient in the decision to focus on Ruark, it was at least partly in consequence of the profound affect the Holohan interview had on the two police officers that Lundy, who was otherwise satisfied with Ruark's alibi, ordered a search to be made of Ruark's apartment, where the discarded pullover was removed. Had he not acted promptly the pullover may well have been lost to the rubbish tip. As for the relevance of the pullover in securing a conviction, see below.
Further evidence that this was the order of events is seen from Lundy's order for gardens to be dug up, presumably in the hope of retrieving the missing jewellery. This arose entirely from the scribbled message written in semi-trance by Holohan in response to further questions by the police officers. As will be seen from the facsimile we shall be reproducing in our report, in addition to the word "Pokie", the medium had written "garden" , as well as a number and a name which, at the time, meant nothing to the detectives. Only eighteen years later, when puzzling over his retrieved notebook and the mysterious message, did Batters conclude that this might well have been the medium's attempt to identify the place where the jewellery was temporarily hidden (there were good reasons why Ruark would not have wished to take it home, or to hand it to his usual fence). What transpired was a brilliant piece of detective work which confounds those who argue that Holohan's message was valueless. But you will have to await details in our paper.
It is said that Lundy has refuted the statement that Pokie was not at the time of the Holohan interview a prime suspect. He has done nothing of the sort. Refutation is disproof. He has relied upon a less than perfect memory to deny the statement. For someone whose proud claim it was never to have failed to solve a murder, it is perfectly understandable that recollection of these events should have been slightly remoulded. There is still a strong dislike of acknowledging that mediums could ever play any role in a police investigation. The report that DCI McKinlay also refutes this is even more misleading: the fact is that he was not involved in the case in 1983 and would be most unlikely to have any knowledge of the details of interrogations of scores of people as part of the murder squad's duties.
As for the value of the evidence from the pullover, it is in no way material to the question of the accuracy of statements made about the murder by the medium. However, contrary to the suggestion put about that either there was no pullover or that, if it existed, it played no part in the evidence, forensic witness Nick Boyall, who at the time of the pullover-retrieval was Jim Fraser's assistant, gave evidence relating to the pullover, and Jim Fraser confirmed it.
Now for Batters' notes. They were made during the interview, as Holohan was speaking (It is barely conceivable that they would have been put together in any other way). They were in his writing, using abbreviations as normal when shorthand is not used, and have been inspected by Guy Playfair, my wife and myself. They played no part in the trial.
I have made no reference to what appears in the public files and court records. We have not reviewed any such records. They seem to me to be of little if any relevance to the issue under discussion: did Holohan convey accurate evidence to the police which she could not have known by any normal means
There is clearly some dispute about Ruark's status as a prime suspect before the Holohan interview. While I prefer to rely upon the evidence of the man most intimately involved - and for a lengthy period - in the minutiae of this case, I must emphasise that it really has no bearing on the case, even if it suggested that the CID publicly voiced their suspicions within days of the murder, so that they came to Holohan's ears and thereby enabled her to discover, e.g. that he had a tattoo on his body, or that he had been recently engaged in an insurance swindle — a fact which remained unknown to the police until long after the event; or that the dead woman had visited her boyfriend in "bird" a fortnight previously, the boy friend also being a friend of Pokie .... - or indeed scores of previously unknown details which sceptics have been unable to explain.
Detective Shaw, your insatiable correspondent, appears to assume that "everyone is now in agreement that the information provided by Holohan in no way contributed to the conviction of Ruark." I have previously explained, and must firmly reiterate, that there are good reasons why it may well have done. Without it, there would have been no reason to retrieve the pullover. Remember that Ruark, unlike the other twenty four or so suspects, had not only gone voluntarily to the police but had an alibi supported by two witnesses, and no record of violence. The pullover was a garment retained for forensics, and it showed exchanges of blood and saliva from her to him. This was strongly suggestive of an act of violence, as opposed to the consensual intimacy, which was Ruark's defence claim at the Old Bailey trial. This evidence was aided both by the failure of the two original alibi supporters to give evidence in Ruark's favour, and by his claim to have had an earlier sexual relationship with Poole at a date when the police were able to show that he was at a football match.
In sum, the detailed information given by the medium, some of it unknown to the police at the time, and some of it not confirmed until 18 years later, is impossible to write off as cold or hot reading; and it is an affront to common sense to go on pursuing that vain argument or seeking to divert interested readers away from the essential issue of paranormality.
