THELAWPAGES.COM

Country

England & Wales

Hearing Date

15 April 2015

Court Location

Blackfriars Crown Court (CLOSED)

Judge

Mr Justice Spencer

Case Number

T20147464

Name

Data Anonymised

Gender

Male

Age

28

Co-Defendant/s

Yes

Offence/s

Sentencing Considerations

Undertaken in a group

Yes

Sentencing Details

Total Sentence

3 Years

Likely Release / Eligibility Date

14/10/2016

Sentenced Upon

Conviction After Trial

Distinguishing Features / Details

He was found guilty of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in Dagenham, Greater London, on 13 March 2014. Sentencing remarks of Mr Justice Spencer Elvis Kwiatkowski and Chas Quye, I have to sentence you for the murder of Neill Buchel, and for your part in a conspiracy to pervert the course of public justice by avoiding any police detection of his body. Scott Hunt, Alan Quinn and Bradley Andison, I have to sentence each of you for your part in that same conspiracy. For murder there is only one sentence , life imprisonment, and that is the sentence I shall pass in due course upon you, Elvis Kwiatkowski and you, Chas Quye. I am, however, required to de termine the minimum period which each of you must serve in prison before you are eligible even to be considered for release on parole. This was a brutal and callous murder. Ne ill Buchel was 39 years old when he died. He was a harmless and inoffensiv e man. He and his wife had come to this country from their native South Afri ca in 2001 with their young daughter. Their second daughter was born here two years later. They wanted to make a better life for themselves. Neill Buchel ha d strong links with this country. His grandfather had been a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain. Sadly Neill Buchel’s working life disintegrated when he descended into alcohol addiction, and the family eventually sp ilt up. It is clear on th e evidence the jury heard that his wife and his children never fo r a moment stopped loving and caring for him, even in the most difficult of circumstances. I have read the moving impact statements from his mother and from his wife. The family’s loss is immeasurable. The girls have been depriv ed of their father, and of the chance that the family would one day get to gether again, as they all hoped. Neill Buchel was befriended by you, Scott Hunt, and you, Chas Quye. He thought you were his friends. By the time of the fateful events in March last year Neill Buchel had become a vulnerable and pathetic figure, largely dependent on you, Scott Hunt, for his accommodation and on the two of you for his daily living. His life seems to have revolved around you and your activities. He was in reality incapable of independent living. On the afternoon of Thursday 13 th March you, Scott Hunt, got yourself arrested following a disgra ceful display of drunken a ggression in public on The Green near to your home. You, Chas Quye, came to Scott Hunt’s assistance when he called you to say that he was under attack by some lads. Neill Buchel did not come to Hunt’s aid. That supposed failing on Neill Buchel’s part seems to be the only expl anation for what followed that evening. Neill Buchel had been drinking all day. It is also plain on the medical evidence that he must have been suffering from some degree of brain injury caused a few days earlier, although none of you were to know that at the time. On your own admission, Chas Quye, at your flat that evening you subjected Neill Buchel to degrading and humiliatin g violence and aggression. By now he had become the victim of almost casual violence on your part. You admit that a day or two previously you had struck him to the knees with a mallet, leaving him limping and in pain. On this occasion , in the flat that evening, you had him kneeling on the floor, with a cloth over his head, whilst you threatened him with violence. He must ha ve been terrified. Although you deny it I am quite sure that you were reinforcing thos e threats by holding close to his head the same mallet you had used previo usly on his knees, as Amber Aires described. A little later you struck him two forceful blows to the top of his head with your fist, as described by Claire Sacco. You told the jury, as you told her on the night, that you did this be cause he was bleeding on your floor. You, Elvis Kwiatkowski, had arrived in Dagenham that afternoon for a drinking session. You were already drunk, and got even drunker as the day wore on. You were also taking drugs. You had never even met Neill Buchel before that day, but on the evidence yo u joined in with Chas Quye’s verbal abuse and threats. You, Scott Hunt, arrived at the flat later on and, according to your own evidence, witnessed Kwiatk owski using some physical violence towards Neill Buchel, apparently on th e pretext that Neill Buchel had done nothing to help you when you were involv ed in the confrontation with the lads on The Green that afternoon immediately pr ior to your arrest. I am sure on all the evidence, including the evidence of Hunt, that you, Elvis Kwiatkowski, were taking your lead from Chas Quye in abusing Neill Buchel in this way and that you did use some physical violence towards Neill Buchel in the course of the evening as Hunt described, albeit no more than with a punch or a knee. It is a measure of your attitude toward s Neill Buchel that night, Chas Quye, that you assert that you deliberately st ruck him on the top of the head with a full beer can, causing the gaping woun d which was noted at post mortem. You could give no explanation as to why you struck him such a serious blow, suggesting that it must have been pa rt of the so called “jackass” style behaviour that you had indulged in wi th him previously, which had included the knee episode. I seriously doubt whether that is how he came by the wound to the top of his head. It is difficult to see how th at double laceration could have been caused by a single blow from the rim of a can. But it matters not. What your evidence demonstrated is the level of your admitted aggression towards him that night, even before the fatal attack, and your willingness to inflict serious pain and injury upon him. The precise circumstances in which Nei ll Buchel met his violent death later that night will forever remain un clear. What is certain, however, is that he was subjected to a brutal and merciless attack in the course of which he was stamped on and/or kicked repeatedly and with such force that he suffered 25 separate fractures of the ribs, with some of the ribs fractured in more than one place. His right leg was stamped on with such force that the tibia was broken. There were blows to his head as well. Th e result of these crushing injuries to his chest and abdomen was also to cause severe internal bleeding. The overall effect of the injuries was so serious as to cause his death within a matter of minutes. This attack took place in the sitting room of your flat Chas Quye. You were not asleep in bed when it happened, as you claimed in evidence. Far from it. You, Elvis Kwiatkowski, were also fully involved in the attack. It is not possible on the evidence to determine the precise ro le which each of you played in that attack, or to be sure which of you did the kicking and stamping, if it was not both of you. By the jury’s verdicts, ho wever, each of you either took part actively in kicking or stamping on Neill Bu chel, or at the very least took part in the attack upon him, physically or by encouragement, realising there was a serious risk that the other would kick or stamp on him with intent to do him really serious injury. It was a classic jo int enterprise. It matters not in the end which of you did what. You bear joint an d equal responsibility for the injuries that were inflicted, and for the outcome. I have no doubt that both of you were heavily under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or both, at the time of the attack but that affords no excuse whatsoever. It merely aggravates the seriousness of your offending. Both of you must have realised straightaway that Neill Buchel was very badly injured and in need of urgent medical treatment. Neither of you did anything to help him. You Alan Quinn had also been present in the room when this attack took place, drifting in and o ut of consciousness through alcohol and drugs. You did nothing to assist Neill Bu chel either. I make it clear that in sentencing Quye and Kwiatkowski I di sregard your account in interview of how the attack began, in so far as it im plicated the two of them. In particular I cannot be sure on all the evidence that a hammer was used in the fatal attack. Your account was not repeated from the witness box, and is not evidence against them, and there are features of your own account which do not square entirely with the rest of the evidence. Next morning, when the three of you saw the battered and bruised body of Neill Buchel in the cold light of da y, common humanity demanded that an ambulance be called in case there was anything that could be done for Neill Buchel. You, Alan Quinn, promptly left the flat, although not as quickly as you would have the police and the jury believe in the account you gave in interview. You remained at the flat for fifteen minutes or more before deciding to leave. At that stage the full detail of the plan to dispose of Neill Buchel’s body, and to conceal his death from the police, had not been formulated. But by the jury’s verdict you joined the conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by avoiding any police detection of his body. By your conduct thereafter, if not by express words, you agreed to play your part in achieving the object of that conspiracy. I do not accept for a moment that you were mo tivated solely by fear of Quye. That is disproved by the fact that on the Sunday you voluntarily contacted him by phone, asking him to call you, and you voluntarily associated with him on 29 th March as the covert surveillance demonstrates. I shall return to this. I observe, however, that it would have been very easy for you to have made an anonymous phone call to the police to report or even hint that a man had died at the flat. That would at leas t have ensured that those you knew to be responsible for Neill Buchel’s deat h would be apprehended, and his body preserved. Within half an hour of Quinn leaving the flat that morning you, Chas Quye, and you, Elvis Kwiatkowski, set about disposing of Neill Buchel’s body. You first tried to contact an old friend, Colin Bushaway, who you hoped would be able to take the body away in his van. Yo u were both active in trying to contact him by phone, calling and texting him. When Bushaway came to the flat next day, Saturday 15 th March, and refused to help, you turned instead to Bradley Andison. Disposing of the body intact would ha ve been bad enough. What makes this part of your offending so much more serious, Chas Quye and Elvis Kwiatkowski, is the way in which you desecrated Neill Buchel’s body by dismembering it. On your own evidence to the jury, Chas Quye , the two of you methodically cut and sawed up the body into ten pieces. This, in my judgment, was for the sole purpose of maximising the chances of the body never being found once it was dumped. The anguish that this final indignity has caused Neill Buchel’s family is summed up in his mother’s statement: “Not only did they kill my son, but the awfulness of knowing they ruthlessly chopped his body into pieces, this child who I had lo ved, watched grow from a baby into a man, whole in body and soul, the absol ute horror of this is indescribable. What they saw, what they touched an d handled, what they desecrated so callously, was a living human being, wo rthy of respect even after death”. I do not propose to dwell on the detail of how the two of you dismembered the body. Suffice it to say that it must have been a considered decision by both of you, and it was a long drawn out and st renuous business, taking several hours. No doubt you gave yourselves Dutch cou rage to do it by consuming large quantities of alcohol but you were fu lly in possession of your senses. The evidence of Professor Black, the bone expert, confirms your evidence, Chas Quye, that an attempt was made to re move the jaw from the head, hence the stray saw cuts to the jaw, and you admitted that your intention was to smash the teeth so there could be no dental identification, although you abandoned this attempt. You told the jury, Chas Quye , that you had no choice but to act as you did in dismembering the body. That suggestion is as outrageous as it is offensive. What makes matters even worse in your case, Chas Quye, is that on the Saturday afternoon, around the time you were dismembering the body, and despite the alcohol, you were exchanging texts with Neill Buchel’s daughter Megan. Throughout the weekend you were in contact with her, and on the Sunday with Neill Buchel’s mother as we ll, pretending to be concerned for his welfare and offering your help to try and find what had become of him. You even descended to the depths of making calls to Neill Buchel’s phone to lay the ground for the pretence later on, should it be necessary, that you still believed at that time that he was alive, and th at you were trying to contact him. You, Elvis Kwiatkowski, played a full part in this gruesome dismemberment. H aving seen Quye give evidence, however, I am satisfied that he was the more dominant personality of the two of you, and that he took the lead in deciding what must be done with the body. You mu st have been involved with the clean up, or at least with its initial stages, before you returned to Royston on the Monday. The only mitigation in your case is that you played no further part after that and that you at least pleade d guilty to count 2 before the trial started, if only minutes before the jury were sworn. In your case, Scott Hunt, I am unable to conclude with certainty that you participated in the dismemberment of the body, and do not sentence you on the basis that you were physically involv ed in it. I am, however, quite certain that you were well aware of what had taken place and played your part in cleaning up Quye’s flat, as you let sl ip in the conversation that was covertly recorded in the probe evidence. That was a two day clean-up, probably over the weekend the body was dumped. I reject as wholly implausible the suggestion that you knew nothing of the circumstances of Neill Buchel’s death. I am also quite satisfied on all the evid ence that you were in regular contact with Quye over that weekend. You were together on the Friday afternoon at around 4 o’clock when the two of you visited the shop. Your suggestion that this came about when you had gone roun d to Quye’s flat and called out to him from the street was plainly untrue an d did not even accord with Quye’s own evidence. It was an invention to avoid ad mitting that you had been into his flat that afternoon when the body was there to be seen. It is also an aggravating factor that you as well, Scott Hunt, went through the pretence of calling Neill Buchel’s own phone that Friday afternoon. It is significant, in my judgement, that yo u renewed phone contact with Quye at lunchtime on the Sunday, by which time Bradley Andison had already driven over to the flat and made the first trip to the lake. At 14.39 that afternoon you and Quye were together at the shop ag ain, buying alcohol. It beggars belief that you would not h ave discussed the progress that had been made in the attempt to dispose of Neill Buchel’s bo dy. At 15.54 you were on the phone to Quye. At 19.05 on the Sunday evening you called Quye for nearly three minutes. That was only 10 minutes befo re the start of the evening journey to the lake in Andison’s vehicle. I accept that you were not present at and took no part in the deposition of the body in the lake that evening. You were on your phone for half an hour at precisel y that time, trying to sort out your contract. But I have no doubt whatsoever that you were fully aware of what was going on and fully approving of it. It is also an aggravating factor that at 15.19 that Sunday afternoon, when you and Quye must have been together, you were again trying to cover your tr acks by sending text messages to the dead man’s phone to lay a false trail that you both thought Neill Buchel was still alive, You told the jury you loved Neill Buchel, and that you were as close as that. Those were hollow words in view of your involvement in this conspiracy. You, Bradley Andison, had the sense to plead guilty to count 2, well in advance of the trial. There was an overwhelming case against you, of course, because Neill Buchel’s blood was found in your vehicle and there was no conceivable innocent explanation for this. More over the CCTV evidence pin-pointed almost every move of your vehicle on the Sunday, to and from the lake. I strongly suspect, but cannot be sure, th at you knew from the start what was being asked of you when Quye first contacted you and you agreed to help. You certainly knew when you first arrived at the flat that Sunday that you were being asked to move a body, and it must have been explained to you that this was the body of someone who had met an unnatural death in which Quye and Kwiatkowski were involved. You knew, ther efore, that you were taking part in a plan to prevent the police discoverin g the evidence of what had happened to Neill Buchel and to prevent the police from bringing his killers to book. On your version of events, and Chas Quye ’s version in his evidence to the jury, there were two separate trips to the la ke, one in the morning and one in the evening. I seriously doubt whether the three of you would have been foolish enough or brazen enough to dump any of the body parts in the lake at 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning, when anglers were bound to be fishing in the lake, rather than under the cover of da rkness in the even ing when the lake was likely to be deserted. But the very fact that you were prepared, on your own version of events, to return to the flat later that day, in order to dispose of further body parts, travelling again all the way from Kent, demonstrates all too clearly the extent to which you were willi ng to involve yourself in this very serious conspiracy, and to do so willingly and not under any threat or duress. You, Chas Quye, and you, Scott Hunt, th ought that you had got away with it when the body had been dumped and the fl at had been cleaned of all traces of the murder. Both of you made false wi tness statements to the police on 20 th March, once the missing person investigation began. In your two statements, Scott Hunt, you kept up the pretence that you had seen nothing of Neill Buchel since the Thursday afternoon on The Green . You, Chas Quye, claimed you had last seen Neill Buchel on the Th ursday evening in your flat, and that by the time you woke up next morning he had left the flat and you had no idea where he had gone. In the same way you both kept up a cruel pretence with Neill Buchel’s family, to the effect that neither of you had seen Neill Buchel since the Thursday when he was alive and well. You, Alan Quinn, continued to stay in touch with Quye, despite your assertion that you were terrified of him. Your pa rt in the conspiracy was to agree not to say anything to anyone about seeing Nei ll Buchel’s dead body in the flat, or how he had died. In law th ere was no positive duty on you to report to the police what you had seen, but your involvement in the conspiracy went far beyond that. When in due course you were seen by the police in June you put into practice what you had always agreed to do, and that was to say nothing of the true circumstances surrounding Nei ll Buchel’s disappearance. You made a thoroughly dishonest witness statement. On 29 th March, within a day of Quye’s release from custody following his initial arrest on suspicion of murder, you were quite voluntarily associating with him again. The evidence of the probe confirmed that you were offering him hospitality at your mother’s home. You were speaking of your undyin g loyalty to him as a friend, not just in his presence but in conversation with Amber Ayres when he was not present. You joined in the pretence that Neill Buchel was still alive. You knew or strongly suspected that the flat wa s bugged and I am quite sure that this pretence was for the benefit of the poli ce you knew would be listening. You were doing this in order to help out yo ur friend Quye and, to a lesser extent, Hunt. It is significant that you arrived wi th Hunt at the flat that day. Had it not been for the fact that you were even tually arrested yourself, in August, you would never have told the police about what you had seen at the flat that night and about the body you had seen the following morning. Quye and Kwiatkowski I deal first with you, Chas Quye and El vis Kwiatkowski. You are both 36 years old. Parliament has decreed that for a murder in circumstances such as these the starting point for the minimum term you must serve is 15 years. I have to consider whether there are aggravating or mitigating factors which make it appropriate to depart from that starting point. There are several aggravating factors, some of which are to be found in paragraph 10 of the schedule, some of which are more general aggravating factors to be found in guidance applicable to serious offences of violence. This was a joint attack, of great brutality and ferocity, against a man who was quite unable to defend himself, although ther e are signs he attempted to do so. You were both under the influence of alcohol and drugs. You showed him no mercy. He was stamped on and kicked. Such use of a shod foot is to be equated with the use of a weapon. He was vulnerable, for the reasons I have already explained, even if not because of age or disability such as to amount to a statutory aggravating factor. From the fe rocity of the attack and the extent to which he clearly attempted to defend himself, it is to be inferred that he must have endured severe physical sufferi ng before death. That is a statutory aggravating factor. Whilst there may not have been an abuse of a position of trust in the sense envisaged in the sta tutory aggravating factors, you, Chas Quye, had promised Neill Buchel’s daughter that evening that you would look after him when she asked you to do so. That was because you recognised how vulnerable he was that night. Within a short time you had grievously broken that promise by abusing him in the wa y I have outlined, including on your account striking him f orcefully to the head with a can of beer to cause that serious head wound. Within a matter of hours from making that promise you had taken part in his murder. All thes e aggravating factors in themselves justify a significant increase in the starting point for both of you. The most serious aggravating factor, however, is the concealment and dismemberment of the body. It is commo n ground that the appropriate way to reflect this aggravating fa ctor is to add substantially to the minimum term, commensurate with the determinate senten ce that count 2 would merit on its own in the case of each of you. In relation to count 2, I have considered carefully a number of authorities which have been cited by counsel, including in particular Godward (1998), Skinner (1993), Swindell (1981,) Lang (2002) Downey (1994) and Stretch (2014). As was said by the Lord Chief Justice in Godward, where the intention is to obstruct the course of justice by disposing of or concealing a body, making it difficult or impossible for the prosecuting authority to bring home a charge against the defendant, then a sentence at the top end of the appropriate range is called for. And as was said by the Lord Chief Justice in Downey , in such a case a deterrent sentence is called for. Here the conspiracy was to pervert the course of justice in relation to the most serious offence of all, murder. Had the body parts all sunk to the bottom of the lake and remained there, as you hoped, it might never have been possible to bring you to justice. This was as bad a case of its kind as it is possible to imagine. In my judgement the appropriate determinate sentence fo r each of you, following a trial on count 2, would have been 9 years imprisonment. You each pleaded guilty, albeit it at a very late stage. Nevertheless, those guilty pleas did have a significant impact on the trial. I therefor e propose, for each of you, to make a modest reduction of 1 year. The appropriate concurrent sentence on count 2 would therefore be 8 years imprisonment. But the additional criminality from this aggravating factor alone will be refl ected in an appropriate increase in the minimum term by half that figure, an increas e of 4 years in the minimum term being the equivalent of an 8 years determinate sentence. As for mitigating factors, there is in my judgment, only very limited mitigation in the fact that there was here an inte nt only to cause grievous bodily harm rather than to kill. The relentless ferocity and persistence of the attack, with the use of a shod foot as a weapon, make s it one of those cases where there is, in my judgment, no justification for any significant reduction. Similarly, although the murder itself was not prem editated, that lack of premeditation counts for comparatively little in this ca se bearing in mind the build up of abuse, aggression and violence in the earlier part of the evening. This case is to be distinguished, for example, from a sudden and spontaneous explosion of violence during an incident in the street. After the most careful consideration I se e no reason to make any distinction between the two of you. I take into account that each of you has little against him by way of previous offending, and ce rtainly not in the recent past. I take into account the matters of personal mitigation that have been advanced on behalf of each of you. In particular, El vis Kwiatkowski, I take into account the progress you have made in prison, and the remorse expressed in the letter you have written to me. Balancing all the aggravating and mitigating factors, in my judgment the appropriate minimum term that each of you must serve is 21 years. Stand up, Chas Quye, On count 1, I sentence you to life imprisonment. You will serve a minimum term of 21 years, less the 347 days you have already served on remand or whatever the correct figure proves to be. When you have served that period in custody it will be for the parole board to decide whether, and if so when, you should be released , and if released you will remain on licence for the rest of your life. On cou nt 2 there will be a concurrent sentence of 8 years imprisonment. Stand up, Elvis Kwiatkowski. On count 1, I sentence you to l ife imprisonment. You will serve a minimum te rm of 21 years, less the 347 days you have already served on remand or whatever the correct figure proves to be. When you have served that period in custody it will be for the parole board to decide whether, and if so when, you should be released, and if released you will remain on licence for the rest of your life. On count 2 there will be a concurrent sentence of 8 years imprisonment. Scott Hunt Scott Hunt, you are 41 years of age. As I have already made clear, I do not sentence you on the basis that you were physically involved in dismembering the body of Neill Buchel. However, I ha ve no doubt that you were fully aware that his body had been dismembered, and I have no doubt that you knew or believed that he had died in Quye’s flat as a result of foul play. Such was your relationship with Quye that it is quite inconceivable, in my judgement, that he would have been able to keep the truth from you. You helped with the two day clean-up, and that in must have take n place, or begun, over the weekend when the body was dumped. I am sure that you knew full well that the plan was to dump the body parts in the lake. There was no need for more than two people to accompany Bradley Andison on the journey on either occasion. For the reasons I have already explained in reciting the history of the offences, I am sure that you were well aware of wh at was going on and fully assented to it. You were doing everything you could to protect your friend Quye, and to prevent the finger of suspicion falling upon him, and indeed upon you. You lied to the police in your two witne ss statements. In making phone calls and sending a text to a man you knew full well to be dead you laid the ground for a false story that you believed Neill Buchel still to be alive. Your culpability is considerably less than that of Quye and Kwiatkowski, but it is still a very serious offence that you have committed, and all in relation to a man you claimed was someone you loved. I accept that you feel remorse for his death, and your failure to prev ent it. Although you have a serious conviction for supplying drugs, it was a long time ago. You have done a great deal whilst in prison on remand to a ddress your alcohol and drug addictions, and you have an excellent prison report . There is of course no credit for a guilty plea. Taking all these matters into account the sentence on count 2 in your case is 5 years’ imprisonment. Bradley Andison Bradley Andison , y ou are 47 years of age. Your involvement in this conspiracy was short lived and very specific, but it was absolutely vital. Kwiatkowski and Quye had already failed to persuade Bush away to help them dump the body of the man they had killed. You were perfectl y willing to do so. It may well have been out of loyalty to Quye, who was your half brother, but I am satisfied that you knew perfectly well not only that it was a body you were helping to dump, but also that it was a body which had been dismembered, hence (on your account) the need for a second trip. If as I suspect, and contrary to your account, the body parts were taken to the lake all in one go on the Sunday night, they would have had to be taken in several parcels. In that event again you would have been bound to realise that the body had been dismembered. You must have known or believed that the man whose body you were helping to dump had met a violent death, otherw ise there would be no reason for the others not to have reported his death to the police. You must have known the purpose of dumping his body in the lake was to prevent it ever being found, and to prevent the police from bringing his killers to justice. These all make your involvement in the offence very serious. On the positive side, you pleaded guilty. You did not do so at the first opportunity but you did so early enough to avoid the need for the trial to be prepared with you still as a defendant. Had you pleaded guilty at the plea and case management hearing, you would have been entitled to credit of 25%. In my judgment the appropriate level of cred it in your case is 20%. Although you have some convictions many years ago, I ignore them for present purposes. Since then you have led an industrious life, doing well in your trade. I also bear in mind the progress that you have made whilst in custody and the attempts you have made to improve your self and to give something back to society. Taking all those matters into accou nt, had you been convicted after a trial the sentence would have been 5 years imprisonment. You will receive credit of one fifth for your guilty plea. I sentence you to 4 years imprisonment. You will serve half in custody and you wi ll remain on licence for the remainder of your sentence following your release. Alan Quinn Alan Quinn, you are 28 years old. You do not have the mitigation of a guilty plea but you did at least tell the police eventually and in frank terms what you say happened in the flat that night. In particular you told them what you saw of the body the next morning. It is a great pity you did not have the moral courage to speak out at the start, if on ly by making an anonymous call to the police. Instead, on the jury’s verdict, you willingly agreed to become part of this conspiracy to avoid any police dete ction of Neill Buchel ’s body. I do not accept that you joined the conspiracy only through fear. As I have already spelt out in reciting the history, the very fact that you remain ed in contact with Quye, by phone and by going to his flat on 29 th March, shows where your loyalties lay. On 29 th March you went along with the pretence that Neill Buchel was still alive, in order to put the police off the scent. You were doing your utmost to help your friend Chas Quye. I bear in mind that the false witness statement you made to the po lice was outside the period of the conspiracy and that the statement was ma de when the defendants had already been charged. To that extent it did not hamper the police enquiry. However, the making of that false statement was the merely culmination and the natural consequence of your agreement, as part of the conspiracy, not to reveal anything to the police if you were asked questions. Had it not been for your own arrest in August I am quite sure you would have remained silent. You have been remanded in custody since the end of the trial. I take into account the positive side of your char acter, although you have had regular brushes with the law. I take into account the efforts you have made to address your addictions to alcohol and drugs. You are fortunate to have the support of your partner and your parents here at court. I have read the references from other members of your family, and your own letter to the Buchel family which I accept was well intended. It is a shame your remorse could not have been reflected in a guilty plea. Even in your case, however, this remains a serious offence for which a substantial cust odial sentence is inevitable. For this offence of conspiracy to pervert the course of public justice the sentence in your case is 3 years imprisonment. You will serve 18 months of that sentence in custody and will remain on licence for the remainder of the sentence, and you will be liable to be recalled to serve the balance if you breach the terms of your licence or you commit any further offence.

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Legal Teams & Authorities

Prosecuting Team

Authority

CPS London

Chambers

Furnival Chambers

Barrister

Sally Jane O'Neill KC

Police Area

Metropolitan Police Service