Bad Blood

A RUGBY-playing fitness fanatic, born and bred in the Gants Hill area, who lived off his 'hard man' reputation, the co-defendant and Rob Darby had known each other for about 10-12 years and it’s fair to say that they had history.

 

Several years before the stabbing, they had words over a mobile fast food/beverage unit on the Isle of Dogs.

There is also plenty of very credible anecdotal evidence provided by witnesses for both the trial and Jason Moore’s Appeal that there was serious animosity between them.

 

The co-defendant’s girlfriend at the time of the incident, said when interviewed by DS Simon Hassell (13/9/2005): "***** did not like Rob and thought he was a bully."

Asked in court what he thought of Darby, ****** obviously tried to play down any historical bad blood between them. He merely told the barrister that he knew Robert as someone who went into Hobnobs bar in Gants Hill and said: "When Rob was drinking heavy and doing his drugs and everything, he was a complete and utter nuisance."

When asked if he mentioned to his girlfriend that he had arranged to meet Darby (at Gants Hill Café) on the Monday, two days before the incident, ****** also accepted that he "might well have done".

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The Incident

***** admitted in court that he DID physically clash with Darby at the crime scene. He said he received a "clump" on the head from Robert’s Stanley knife, which knocked him "semi-conscious". Moore had NO physical contact whatsoever with Robert.

***** admitted when questioned in court by his QC Michael Bromley-Martin that he approached Robert (1st day transcript, 9/12/2013, p36-37), although he tried to persuade the jury that he was somehow "distracted" and did not actually see Robert strike him with a yellow-and-black Stanley knife. 

***** said: "Yeah, I go towards him, yeah. As I am going towards him, I mean, I am a sportsman so I must have been distracted because as I’ve walked towards him I must have turned my head slightly, because the next thing I’ve got a clump on the top of my head, which I now know was from a weapon . . . I just got knocked senseless, yeah."

***** continued: "I now know it was a Stanley but I don’t think it was the blade because I think it was the bottom half of the Stanley . . . I had a golf ball (lump) on top of my head but it wasn’t a blade cut. It was more of a graze kind of cut, you know. I believe he has come down on the top of my head."

****** confirmed that Moore brought a newspaper (Racing Post) with him and, while viewing his new apartment, JM was "ringing his sister (Rhonda) to put on bets and telling her what horses to watch, prices and things like that."

This last comment is further indication that when Moore met ****** that day, he had absolutely no intention of becoming involved in any meeting that might turn violent. The fact that his sister Rhonda drove him to meet ****** in the car park of McDonald’s at Newbury Park also tells you that his meet with ****** was, as far as he was concerned, innocuous. If he really had expected any kind of trouble, why would he involve his sister? Jason suggested to her that she should to go shopping (she went into a nearby Sainsbury’s and began to load up a trolley) to kill time and he would call her a little later to come and collect him. 

Moore thought he and ****** would be going to Redbridge Sports Centre for a game of racquetball. As usual, though, his mind was on studying race form and which bets to place that afternoon. 

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Co-defendant fits witness descriptions

****** liked to work out regularly at the gym and took great pride in his strong, muscular physique. He played rugby, was said to have weighed around 16st at the time of the incident and he fits the description of the stabber that both eye-witnesses, Abdul Ahmed and Sally Palmer, gave police to a tee.

The words Mr Ahmed used to describe the stabber were: "BULKY, STRONG, PHYSICALLY FIT."

Ms Palmer remembered the stabber as being "STOCKY, ABOUT THE SAME HEIGHT AS MALE 1 (ROBERT DARBY, who was 6ft) BUT STOCKIER BUILD."

In terms of height, Ahmed described the stabber as "about 6ft". Palmer estimated him to be "about 5ft 10ins, approx same height as Male 1 (Darby), or an inch shorter."

At 6’5, Jason Moore is SEVEN INCHES TALLER than his Co-defendant (5’10)

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Suspect’s clothing

Three days after the crime, police who raided ******'s penthouse flat at Memorial Heights, Newbury Park found a navy blue jacket discarded on the bedroom floor. 

Ahmed said that the stabber wore a blue top.

It has never been explained to us why ******'s friend and business associate Warren Mitchell went to ******'s flat and removed a black suitcase containing ******’s clothing, which was subsequently found by police at the offices they shared in Cranbrook Road.

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Co-defendant's Car

When forensic experts examined ******'s BMW after the crime, the only palm/finger prints they discovered were those of Jason Moore . . . on the passenger side. None of ******'s prints were found either inside or outside HIS car, even though he had driven it to and from the crime scene.

Moore testified that, after getting back into the car, ****** was dabbing his left ear with a white cloth to stem bleeding from a slight wound probably inflicted by the Stanley knife. So why did DNA testing not reveal any sign of ******'s blood or fingerprints, or Darby’s blood? Did the car drive itself to and from Perth Road? Or is this another example of incompetent policing – a failure to test for trace evidence?

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It is a fact that ****** drove his BMW to the premises of an Essex car sales business. Is that where the car was cleaned of incriminating evidence?

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His relationship with girlfriend

****** and his girlfriend both did all they could to downplay their long-term relationship, although she did tell DS Simon Hassell (his statement, 13/9/2005) that she "loved him (*****) to bits."

She told police that she was not having a sexual relationship with ***** and, more importantly, that she had not seen or spoken to him since the week before Darby’s death. ***** admitted in court that they had had sex at least "half a dozen times".

She even denied having *****'s mobile number even though call logs show that SHE phoned ***** FIVE MINUTES before the stabbing. Even ***** had to admit in court that he DID receive that 11:47 phone call from her.

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She provided police with only one of her mobile numbers, withholding details of the other she had in her possession.

She was the second person (after a male friend) ***** phoned after the incident, at 12.06. She called him back and they had a three-minute conversation.

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As he had to admit in court, 20 minutes after this call ***** turned his phone off so that he could not be tracked by police.

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Court testimony

Having had plenty of time to compile his Prepared Statement in September 2013, a couple of months ahead of the trial, and knowing what Moore had already told police in his Prepared Statement, ***** was the last of all witnesses to give his court evidence. Naturally, this put him at a massive advantage over Moore. Having heard the testimony of all other witnesses, he could easily align his own evidence accordingly.

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Throughout *****’s testimony, he didn’t mention seeing witness Abdul Ahmed anywhere, which is further proof Ahmed was a considerable distance from the actual incident, saw little of what went on and his evidence was therefore unreliable.

***** was asked in court: ‘When Darby knocked you out and you both struggled to the floor, could Darby have fallen on his own knife?’

 

Bearing in mind ***** had claimed Moore saved his life (by getting out of the car and chasing Darby away from an apparently grounded *****).

 

But ***** replied: ‘No, I don’t think he could have fallen on his own knife’.

 

Tim Darby, who attended every day of the trial, observed: "This was an unbelievable answer, as a ‘yes’ reply from ***** would have helped clear both of them. Besides, if ***** really had been knocked out, how could he have known one way or the other whether Robert fell on his own knife?" 

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Moore ‘can’t fight’

In the witness box, even ***** agreed when questioned by his QC Michael Bromley-Martin that Moore is not a violent man by nature. Their exchange (1st day transcript, 9/12/2013, p50-51) went:

Q (Bromley-Martin): Jason Moore never showed any signs or predilections of violence, far from it?

A (*****): No, far from it, far from it . . . I know Jason can't fight.

Under cross-examination by Jason's QC, David Howker (1st day transcript, 9/12/2013, p74-79), ***** admitted that there was no love lost between him and Rob Darby.

 

Yeah, there wasn’t. He wouldn’t be the person I would call up to say, 'Let’s go out'.

Q (Howker). Were you wary of each other?

A (*****). Wary? I mean, I wouldn’t want to fight someone. I wouldn’t want to be in an argument with him and I don’t suppose he would want to have an argument with me.

Q. Did you, yourself, regard him as a dangerous man?

A. More of a pest.

Q. A pest?

A. Yeah.

Q. A pest that you could deal with, do you think?

A. As I say, I don’t go looking for fights, so I wouldn’t be wanting a confrontation with the man. I wasn’t worried to the extent that I’d be going out of my way to avoid him or anything like that.  I’m not that kind of person.

Q. You weren’t frightened of him?

A. I wouldn’t say I was frightened of him, no.  I would be wary of him, you know.

Q. You certainly weren’t frightened of him?

A. No.

Q. And although you wouldn’t go looking for trouble, you were pretty confident if it came to it that you could handle yourself. Is that a fair observation?

A.  I’d say it’s quite fair, yeah.

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