The Mystery Of A Man Who Shot Himself / The Mystery of the Marconi Deaths / The Marconi Murders

 

The Mystery Of A Man Who Shot Himself

•  http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/08/the-mystery-of-a-man-who-shot-himself/
•  August 20, 2015
•  Nick Redfern

Back in June of this year I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe titled “The Mystery of the Marconi Deaths.” It began as follows (QUOTE): “To many, it might sound like the ultimate plot-line of the equally ultimate conspiracy-thriller: dozens of scientists and technicians – all working on highly-classified programs, and all linked to one, particular company – dead under highly controversial and unusual circumstances.
“It’s a controversy that ran from the early 1980s to 1991 and remains unresolved to this very day. And it all revolves around the top secret work of a company called Marconi Electronic Systems, but which, today, exists as a part of BAE Systems Electronics Limited. Its work includes the development of futuristic weaponry and spy-satellite technology.” (END OF QUOTE.)
As well as the huge number of deaths that occurred over approximately a decade, there was yet another odd and mysterious Marconi death. It’s one that occurred years earlier and often gets overlooked. Even by those that have addressed the wave of the 1980s-1990s. It’s a very strange story focused on a man named Robert Wilson. By 1971, Wilson had carved for himself a successful career with Marconi. Specifically at its facility in Chelmsford, Essex, England, as a “technical author.” Also by that time, however, Wilson was ready to move on and take his work to a new level. And to a new company. It was a decision that may very well have spelled his doom.

One Sunday afternoon in the following year, 1972, Wilson decided to finally get around to tidying up the attic of his home. As he did so, and to his concern, he stumbled upon a stash of files from Marconi. Classified files, no less. He could not imagine how on earth they got there. Number one: he was not someone accustomed to taking confidential material to his home. Number two: he had no recollection, at all, of ever placing any Marconi files in his attic, classified or otherwise. Deeply worried, Wilson wasted no time at all in contacting Marconi. A major, internal investigation was quickly launched.
Marconi’s security staff – after interviewing Wilson at length – were seemingly satisfied this was simply a case of Wilson having misplaced the files and forgotten about them. The story, however, was about to turn both tragic and sinister. And quickly too. Less than twenty-four-hours later, Wilson put a bullet into his chest. No, I am not joking. It wasn’t a suicide attempt, though.
Wilson had been cleaning a gun – a loaded .45, no less, and one which had the barrel pointing directly at him as he cleaned it. Suddenly, it accidentally discharged. He later stated that the whole thing gave him the chills, and he had no idea how such a disastrous and unlikely thing could ever have occurred.
He actually seemed to be very confused by the whole situation, too; almost as if his mind was in a fog. Indeed, Wilson was actually a member of a local gun-club. So, he should have known – all too well – that pointing a loaded gun at oneself is never a good idea. Luckily for Wilson, the bullet missed his heart, as well as his vital arteries. He survived. Not for long, however.
In May 1973, Wilson was no more. His body was found in his garage. It was a case of death by carbon-monoxide poisoning. The verdict was accidental death, caused by exposure to carbon-monoxide as he serviced his car. With the engine running. And with the garage door shut. Right…

As an aside, Wilson’s death was quickly followed by the passing of yet another employee of the very same Chelmsford facility: Gerald Jack Darlow. Wilson had first shot himself in the chest, and then went on to die from the effects of deadly carbon-monoxide. Darlow, however, had apparently knifed himself in the chest with a long, sharp blade. Death came quickly. Just like Wilson, Darlow had a previous brush with death: an alleged, earlier suicide attempt. There was then a lull, until 1982. That was when the odd deaths at Marconi restarted, and with a vengeance – and which I describe in my article cited at the beginning.
I would be inclined to think that the deaths of both Wilson and Darlow were free of mystery. Except for one, glaring issue: the incredible number of Marconi (and Marconi-linked) deaths that began in the early 1980s, of course. That latter wave included several “suicides,” in which Marconi personnel were found dead in their cars, from carbon-monoxide exposure, and just like Robert Wilson years earlier.
The deaths of Robert Wilson and Gerald Jack Darlow may have occurred more than forty years ago. But, it’s never too late to undertake an investigation. Who knows what might surface…

The Mystery of the Marconi Deaths

•  http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/06/the-mystery-of-the-marconi-deaths/
•  June 3, 2015
•  Nick Redfern

To many, it might sound like the ultimate plot-line of the equally ultimate conspiracy-thriller: dozens of scientists and technicians – all working on highly-classified programs, and all linked to one, particular company – dead under highly controversial and unusual circumstances.
It’s a controversy that ran from the early 1980s to 1991 and remains unresolved to this very day. And it all revolves around the top secret work of a company called Marconi Electronic Systems, but which, today, exists as a part of BAE Systems Electronics Limited. Its work includes the development of futuristic weaponry and spy-satellite technology.
It was in March 1982 that Professor Keith Bowden, whose computer expertise made him a valuable employee of Marconi, lost his life in a car accident. His vehicle left a three-lane highway at high speed and slammed into a railway line. Death was instantaneous. In March 1985, Roger Hill, a draughtsman with Marconi, died of a shotgun blast. His death was deemed a suicide.

Just months later, the body of Jonathan Wash, an employee of a department within British Telecom that had extensive links to Marconi, was found on the sidewalk of an Ivory Coast, West Africa hotel. Wash fatally fell, or was pushed, from the balcony of his room. That Wash had told friends and family he believed someone was watching and following him, and that he suspected his life was in danger, added to the suspicions that his death was not due to accident or suicide.
As 1985 became 1986, the death toll increased dramatically. On August 4, 1986, a highly-regarded young man, named Vimal Bhagvangi Dajibhai, jumped from England’s Clifton Suspension Bridge into the deep waters below. He did not survive the fall. Dajibhai held a secret clearance with Marconi Underwater Systems, a subsidiary of the main company.
Only around eight weeks later, one of the most grisly of all the Marconi scientist deaths occurred. The victim was a computer-programmer, Arshad Sharif. Such was the terrible and bizarre nature of Sharif’s death, it even made the news thousands of miles away, in the United States. The Los Angeles Times reported that Sharif “…died in macabre circumstances…when he apparently tied one end of a rope around a tree and the other around his neck, then got into his car and stepped on the accelerator. An inquest ruled suicide.”
The coroner in the Sharif case, Donald Hawkins, commented wryly on the fact that Marconi was experiencing an extraordinary number of odd deaths: “As James Bond would say – this is beyond coincidence.”

As the months progressed, so did the deaths. The case of Dr. John Brittan was particularly disturbing, since he had two run-ins with death, the second of which he did not survive. During Christmas 1986, Brittan ended up in a ditch after his car violently, and inexplicably, lurched across the road. He was lucky to survive.
The Grim Reaper was not happy that Brittan had escaped his icy clutches, however. Less than two weeks into January 1987 (and immediately after Brittan returned to the U.K. from the States, where he had been on official, secret business) Brittan’s body was found in his garage. He was an unfortunate victim of the effects of deadly carbon-monoxide.
Also dead in January 1987 was Richard Pugh, a computer expert who had done work for Marconi and whose death the Ministry of Defense dismissed with the following words: “We have heard about him but he had nothing to do with us.”
Then there is the extremely weird saga of Avtar Singh-Gida. An employee of the British Ministry of Defense, who worked on a number of Marconi programs, he vanished from his home in Loughborough, England right around the same time that Dr. John Brittan died. His family feared the worst. Fortunately, Singh-Gida did not turn up dead. Quite the opposite, in fact: he was found, in Paris, fifteen weeks later. He had no memory of where he had been, or what he had done in that period.
The deaths of Brittan, Dajibhai, and Sharif – coupled with the odd case of Singh-Gida -prompted a Member of Parliament, John Cartwright, to state authoritatively that the deaths “stretch the possibility of mere coincidence too far.” Cartwright’s words proved to be eerily prophetic.
On February 22, 1987, Peter Peapell, a lecturer at the Royal College of Military Science, who had been consulted by Marconi on various projects, was yet another figure whose death was due to carbon-monoxide poisoning in his own garage – in the English county of Oxfordshire.

In the same month, David Skeels, a Marconi engineer, was found dead under identical circumstances. Victor Moore was attached to Marconi Space and Defense Systems at the time of his February 1987 death, reportedly of a drug overdose. At the time, he was said to be under investigation by MI5, the British equivalent of the FBI.
One month later, in March 1987, one David Sands killed himself under truly horrific circumstances. He was in the employ of what was called Elliott Automation Space and Advanced Military Systems Ltd – which just happened to have a working relationship with Marconi at the time. Sands, whose family and colleagues said he was exhibiting no signs of stress or strain, loaded his car with containers of gasoline and drove – at “high voltage,” as the police worded it – into an empty restaurant. A fiery death was inevitable.
In April 1987, there was yet another death of an employee of the Royal College of Military Science: Stuart Gooding, whose car slammed head-on into a truck on the island of Cyprus. Colleagues of Gooding expressed doubt at the accidental death verdict. On the very same day as Gooding died, David Greenhalgh died after falling (or being pushed) off a railway bridge at Maidenhead, Berkshire. Greenhalgh just happened to be working on the same program as David Sands.
Just seven days after Greenhalgh and Gooding died, and only a short distance away, a woman named Shani Warren took her last breaths. Warren worked for Micro Scope, a company taken over by Marconi just weeks later. Despite being found in just a foot and a half of water, and with a gag in her mouth, her feet bound, and her hands tied behind her back, the official verdict was – wholly outrageously – suicide.
May 3, 1987, was the date on which Michael Baker was killed – in a car accident in Dorset, England. He worked on classified programs for Plessey. Twelve years later, Plessy became a part of British Aerospace when the latter combined with Marconi. Ten months after, Trevor Knight, who worked for Marconi Space and Defense Systems in Stanmore, Middlesex, England, died – as had so many others – from carbon-monoxide poisoning in his garage.

There were other unexplained deaths in 1988: midway through the year, Brigadier Peter Ferry (a business-development manager with Marconi) and Plessey’s Alistair Beckham both killed themselves via electrocution. And, finally, there was the mysterious 1991 death of Malcolm Puddy. He had told his bosses at Marconi he had stumbled on something amazing. What that was, no-one knows. Within twenty-four hours Puddy was dead. His body was hauled out of a canal near his home.
Were all of the Marconi deaths the results of nothing stranger than suicide, accident, and ill health? In my view, no. I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I have a deep sense that there is much more to this story than we will ever likely know. Unless someone out there, reading this, can fill in the blanks…  

The Marconi Murders

Was there a plot to murder Marconi scientists in the 1980s?

  http://theunredacted.com/dead-scientists-the-marconi-murders/

Between 1982 and 1990, a cluster of strange and often grisly deaths amongst scientists and computer experts working in Britain’s high-tech defence industry baffled investigators.

Many of the deaths were so bizarre they left coroners unable to determine their cause. Others were judged to be suicides and accidents despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Most of the victims were computer scientists working for Marconi Electronic Systems and related companies on top-secret defence projects, including the US Strategic Defence Initiative.

Due to the nature of their work and the oddness of their deaths, by 1987 the national and international press had latched onto the story. Were the deaths sabotage by a foreign government or some kind of Cold War plot?

President Reagan announces the Strategic Defence Initiative

Tony Collins, a correspondent for the UK’s Computer Weekly, started to receive reports of deaths amongst computer scientists and engineers in the mid-80s. Over the next few years he would file a serious of stories on the deaths, eventually finding 25 cases he felt were connected.

In 1990 he wrote a book, ‘Open Verdict’, which concluded the spate of deaths were suspicious. Collins suspected some kind of plot but was unable to come up with any firm conclusions as to its true nature.

Was there really a plot to murder the scientists?

Evidence for

1. Suspicious circumstances

The story began in March 1982 with the death of senior computer scientist Dr. Keith Bowden, then a contractor for GEC Marconi — Britain’s major high-tech defence company.

One night after attending a social function in London, Bowden drove his car across a dual carriageway and plunged off a bridge, down an embankment and into an abandoned rail yard. He died instantly.

The police said Bowden was drunk and was driving too fast, but his wife and solicitor believed otherwise. Friends who were with Bowden that night denied he had been drinking.

Bowden’s solicitor hired an accident investigator to examine the wreck. Somebody had swapped the normally pristine tires on Bowden’s Rover with a set that were worn and old.

3 years later, radar designer Roger Hill killed himself with a shotgun at his home. Later that year Jonathan Wash died after plunging from a hotel window. The coroner returned an Open Verdict.

More puzzling still was the death of Vimal Dajibhai, 24, who jumped off the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol in August 1986. Dajibhai had been working at Marconi on computer control systems for Stingray torpedoes.

Another open verdict was returned. Dajibhai was found with his pants around his ankles and a needle-sized puncture wound on his buttock. The Bristol coroner was concerned by this — “it was a mystery then and remains a mystery now.”

Left to right —Vimal Dajibhai, Arshad Sharif, Keith Bowden, Alistair Beckham, John Ferry and John Whiteman

Perhaps the most disturbing of all the deaths occurred 2 months later. Arshad Sharif, 26, another computer scientist who worked on satellite guidance systems at Marconi died in the oddest circumstances imaginable.

Sharif also travelled to Bristol, tied one end of a ligature to his neck, the other end to a tree, then jammed his foot on the accelerator of his car and decapitated himself.

The day before his death, Sharif had been acting oddly and was seen paying for accommodation in a rooming house with a bundle of high denomination bank notes.

A relative summoned to identify the body noticed something suspicious about his car. What appeared to be a metal rod was lying on the floor of the car next to the accelerator. Had it been used to wedge down the pedal?

The coroner wasn’t happy. “This is past coincidence…I will not be completing this inquest until I know how two men with no connection to Bristol came to meet the same end here”.

Some of the men worked on computer guidance systems for missiles

He never did find out why, but both men were suspected to be working on a top secret project called Cosmos, which involved underwater guidance systems, establishing a further connection between the pair.

Thousands of people worked in the UKs defence industry in the mid-80s, and these deaths — spread out over 3 years, could easily be dismissed as coincidences. Indeed, nobody at the time made any connection.

But moving into 1987 and 1988, the pace of deaths massively increased, and the UK press and some MPs began to join the dots.

2. The cluster of 87–88

1987 started with the death of Richard Pugh. Another computer expert in the defence industry and consultant to the MOD, Pugh’s body was found in his flat — his feet bound, a plastic bag on his head and a thick rope coiled around his body. The coroner’s verdict was an accident due to sexual misadventure.

Just days later, another scientist engaged in top secret work for the MOD — Dr John Brittan, died in his own garage of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The next month, another Marconi engineer, David Skeels, also died of carbon monoxide poisoning, found in his car with a hosepipe connected to the exhaust.

Also in February, two more defence engineers and scientists died — Victor Moore from an overdose, and Peter Peapell, yet another victim of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Peapell’s death was particularly troubling. Having spent an evening with friends, he and his wife returned home and Peapell went to put away the car.

The next morning his wife found his body jammed underneath the car with his mouth next to the exhaust pipe. Police were unconvinced it was suicide because it seemed impossible he could have manoeuvred his body into the odd position it was found. An open verdict was ultimately returned.

John Whiteman supposedly drowned himself in his bathtub, the body surrounded by pills and empty alcohol bottles. Yet the autopsy revealed no trace of drugs or alcohol in his body.

In March, David Sands, a senior scientists working on computer-controlled radar at a Marconi sister company, made a sudden u-turn in his car and crashed at high speed into an empty cafe.

His vehicle was inexplicably loaded up with cans of petrol, causing the car to be completely consumed by a fireball. Sands was only identified with reference to his dental records.

SANDS, David https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_x05K_Xdw4

In April, in almost identical fashion to Richard Pugh at the start of 1987, Mark Wisner, 24, was found dead with a plastic bag on his head and clingfilm wrapped around his face. The verdict was death by sexual misadventure.

The previous year Marconi purchased defence electronics firm Plessey. Within a month between May and June 1987 two of its scientists were dead — Michael Baker, 22 in May and Frank Jennings, 60, in June.

At the start of 1988, lab technician Russel Smith, 23, jumped off a cliff in Cornwall. A senior computer engineer at Marconi — Trevor Knight, was the victim of yet another suicide by car exhaust pipe.

Marconi purchased high-tech firm Plessey in 1987. Within a year, two of its scientists were dead

In August, there were two gruesome electrocutions of senior figures at Marconi that are some of the most suspicious of all the deaths.

Alistair Beckham, 50, was a computer engineer who it’s believed was working on top secret pilot programs for America’s Strategic Defence Initiative.

After some light Sunday afternoon gardening, Beckham retired to his shed, attached wires to his chest, pushed them into a power socket and, with a handkerchief jammed in his mouth, hit the power.

Beckham’s wife was entirely unconvinced her husband committed suicide. Beckham was highly secretive about his work and just hours after his death men from the Ministry of Defence arrived at the scene and took away several documents and files from Beckham’s home.

In similar but even more gruesome fashion, Marconi director John Ferry, 60, jammed stripped wires into his own tooth fillings and electrocuted himself.

Could all of these grisly suicides really just be a coincidence? By now several stories in the press had appeared questioning whether there was actually some kind of KGB or Eastern bloc conspiracy to kill the scientists.

Several MPs and trade union leader Clive Jenkins called for an inquiry into the deaths. Jenkin’s wrote that the deaths were — “statistically incredible” and spoke of the concern amongst his members over “these clusters of suicides, violent deaths, or murders.”

The conservative government of Margaret Thatcher dismissed calls for an inquiry, claiming the deaths were not statistically unusual and were just ‘coincidences’, perhaps exacerbated by high levels of stress in the defence industry.

3. Untypical suicide methods

Professor Colin Pritchard, a noted expert in mental illness and suicides, thinks at least some of the deaths were statistically uncommon.

Whilst its true suicide is one of the most prevalent causes of early death in men, especially young men, Pritchard believes factors in some of the cases make the suicide verdicts unlikely.

Pritchard cites the cases of at least 4 of the men that share unusual elements. All 4 men had complained to friends and family that they had been tasked ‘strange’, ‘impossible’ and ‘unscientific’ tasks by their employers.

All 4 men committed suicide in incredibly violent and bizarre ways. Pritchard has studied numerous suicide cases and thinks such extreme suicide methods are normally only associated with people suffering severe mental breakdowns, to the extent they would be unable to even hold down jobs.

Yet the men were all employed up until the day of their deaths and none had shown any sign of mental illness or other disturbance.

All of the men had also recently found new jobs and were preparing to leave within days of their deaths. Likewise, all 4 men had recently arranged appointments with their MPs.

What were the strange ‘unscientific’ projects that the men were complaining of, and why had they all booked appointments with their MPs? Had they stumbled on something in their jobs that had worried them — something that led to them been silenced?

4. Sexual misadventure as method of murder

Several of the deaths were put down to sex games gone wrong. But intelligence expert Conrad Black says death by sexual misadventure is a common method of disguising murder in the world of espionage.

Black told the Daily Record — “Disposing of an enemy and making it look like a perverted fantasy gone wrong is in the training manuals of every spy agency from MI6 to Mossad.

The sex game cover is a very useful mechanism in a murder. Not only does it provide a disguise for the actual means and method of death, it trashes the reputation of the victim and blunts the energy of any subsequent investigation.”

5. Foreign Sabotage

The Marconi deaths weren’t the only unexplained, violent or unusual deaths amongst defence workers in Europe in the 1980s.

In West Germany in 1986 there were several incidents involving individuals associated with America’s SDI — the Strategic Defence Initiative dubbed ‘Star Wars’ by the press.

The Strategic Defence Initiative was an ambitious programme to create a space based anti-nuclear weapon shield which would have rendered Soviet nuclear capability useless.

Karl-Heinz Beckurts was killed by a car bomb in 1986

In July, Karl-Heinz Beckurts, a director at Siemens and an SDI contractor was killed by a car bomb in Munich.

Later in ‘86, Gerrold von Bruanmuhl, a senior advisor in SDI negotiations was killed. There were other attacks on firms related to SDI and German prosecutors believed they were been targeted.

Similar deaths and disappearances amongst defence figures in Sweden and Italy occurred at the same time, giving rise to the suspicion that there was an Eastern Bloc plot to attack Western defence capability and the SDI.

Attempting to undermine an enemy’s defence capabilities by murdering their scientists is not uncommon. The US, UK and Israel have all been known to strategically stage accidents to remove high-ranking enemy scientists for political ends.

In recent years at least 4 top Iranian nuclear scientist have been killed by Israel’s Mossad in an attempt to derail Iran’s nuclear programme.

Killing targets in a foreign country is also not uncommon. In 1978, dissident Georgi Markov was murdered on Waterloo Bridge in London by agents of the Bulgarian secret police aided by the KGB.

Many of the Marconi scientists were involved either directly or peripherally in the Star Wars programme and other related projects.

Could their strange deaths actually have been a series of Russian or East German orchestrated murders designed to scuttle the SDI?

Evidence against

1. Stress

The British government, Marconi and many in the press blamed stress in the high-pressure defence industry for the cluster of suicides.

Stress has often been cited as a problem in the secret defence industry and may have been a contributing factor to the cluster of suicides.

Suicide is the most common form of death in men aged 20–49 — the age bracket into which almost all the Marconi scientists fell into.

It would therefore not be unexpected to find a fair number of suicides in a male dominated occupation, especially one that operates under such tight secrecy.

Some of the widows commented on how their husbands were unable to talk about their secret work. If they were having trouble with the jobs, the fact they may have been unable to discuss the situation with their loved ones may have been another contributory factor.