Alice Gross

I'm always tempted to track down people (not usually that hard online) who use the phrase "no smoke without fire" and send letters to their employers/acquaintances etc. alleging some kind of paedophile/sex offender history, and see how long they think it's a useful phrase.
 
Hang on isn't he from an EU country. Meaning he can go anywhere in the EU. Thats the benefit of us being in the EU.
And very handy it is as well, having visited quite a few European countries and needed nothing more than my passport.

Certainly wouldn't want to apply for a visa every time I wanted to go on holiday.
 
I'm always tempted to track down people (not usually that hard online) who use the phrase "no smoke without fire" and send letters to their employers/acquaintances etc. alleging some kind of paedophile/sex offender history, and see how long they think it's a useful phrase.

Whilst I tend to agree with you regarding "no smoke without fire", I think in this case it doesn't apply. Our friend from Lativia would appear to be a person of interest to the police. He may even be now be the prime suspect in a murder case, should this turn out to be Alice.
 
Whilst I tend to agree with you regarding "no smoke without fire", I think in this case it doesn't apply. Our friend from Lativia would appear to be a person of interest to the police. He may even be now be the prime suspect in a murder case, should this turn out to be Alice.

It doesn't apply to this guy at all. He is a convicted murderer, the applicable phrase would be 'no fire without...err...fire'.
 
It doesn't apply to this guy at all. He is a convicted murderer, the applicable phrase would be 'no fire without...err...fire'.

I think that was the general thrust of my post.
 
It doesn't apply to this guy at all. He is a convicted murderer, the applicable phrase would be 'no fire without...err...fire'

So much for the idea of innocent until being proven otherwise.

Being a suspect isn't a finding of guilt, no matter what his past is.

He may even be now be the prime suspect in a murder case, should this turn out to be Alice.

I would have thought it obvious that he has been a suspect in a murder case for the past couple of weeks. It was reasonably self evident she was dead, or it was to me. But at the moment, there's not a great deal of evidence against chummy, apart from he was in the same place as her at the same time, give or take a few minutes. That in itself proves nothing at all.

There might be, with luck some forensic material on her, but if there's not, even if he is ever found there's not a whole lot of evidence against him.
 
So much for the idea of innocent until being proven otherwise.

Being a suspect isn't a finding of guilt, no matter what his past is.



I would have thought it obvious that he has been a suspect in a murder case for the past couple of weeks. It was reasonably self evident she was dead, or it was to me. But at the moment, there's not a great deal of evidence against chummy, apart from he was in the same place as her at the same time, give or take a few minutes. That in itself proves nothing at all.

There might be, with luck some forensic material on her, but if there's not, even if he is ever found there's not a whole lot of evidence against him.

His failure to materialise doesn't shine too brightly for him though.
 
So much for the idea of innocent until being proven otherwise.

Being a suspect isn't a finding of guilt, no matter what his past is.



I would have thought it obvious that he has been a suspect in a murder case for the past couple of weeks. It was reasonably self evident she was dead, or it was to me. But at the moment, there's not a great deal of evidence against chummy, apart from he was in the same place as her at the same time, give or take a few minutes. That in itself proves nothing at all.

There might be, with luck some forensic material on her, but if there's not, even if he is ever found there's not a whole lot of evidence against him.

...nor, for that matter, obvious motive at this point either - like you say, being in the same place some 15 minutes later is precious little to go on. Although vanishing himself a week later probably hasn't helped his case.
 
...nor, for that matter, obvious motive at this point either - like you say, being in the same place some 15 minutes later is precious little to go on. Although vanishing himself a week later probably hasn't helped his case.

It certainly hasn't, and the comments here show that he's already been found guilty by some.
Disappearing again proves not very much. So for example, if he run into her, and knocked her into the river, by accident, panicked, not unreasonably given he has previous for murder, and hid the body before having it on his toes then while it's not what you'd call reasonable, but he wouldn't be guilty of anything much legally, furious riding perhaps, but even that would be difficult to prove.

Of course the possibility that there's an alternative explanation, or that he may have absolutely nothing to do with it doesn't seem to have occurred to some.

As usual, the Court of Armchair in front of the internet is in session!
 
It certainly hasn't, and the comments here show that he's already been found guilty by some.
Disappearing again proves not very much. So for example, if he run into her, and knocked her into the river, by accident, panicked, not unreasonably given he has previous for murder, and hid the body before having it on his toes then while it's not what you'd call reasonable, but he wouldn't be guilty of anything much legally, furious riding perhaps, but even that would be difficult to prove.

Of course the possibility that there's an alternative explanation, or that he may have absolutely nothing to do with it doesn't seem to have occurred to some.

As usual, the Court of Armchair in front of the internet is in session!


Equally possible he never clapped eyes on her, just saw the news reports of last known movements and got frightened he would be prime suspect anyway and just scarpered.

I have no idea whether he is involved or not, I do question why a convicted murderer was not only out of prison such a short time after, but in this country at all, however, that is another matter entirely. I fear the whole guilty until proven innocent society we seem to live in these days, remember the landlord in bristol initially suspected of the christmas murder a few years ago - the press went tonto on him because he looked a bit odd, when in actual fact he had nothing to do with it,.
 
It doesn't apply to this guy at all. He is a convicted murderer, the applicable phrase would be 'no fire without...err...fire'.
Seemingly at the moment there isn't enough evidence to successfully request an European arrest warrant. Who'd have thunk it, smoke isn't enough after all :shrug: Of course that may very well change with the discovery of the body and evidence may very well be found to incriminate. On the other hand if your of a certain religion and are prone to unkempt beards it seems smoke is enough to incarcerate you for over 6 months in our top security prison. Who'd have thunk that too.

Edit: Please give us back the shrug smilie
 
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I do question why a convicted murderer was not only out of prison such a short time after, but in this country at all, however, that is another matter entirely.

Thorny subject of spin there. Murder in the UK means one thing. In other countries it can mean a number of things. I don't know the full circumstances of his conviction, much less the law in Latvia, so I can't comment too much on that, something that people should consider, they know very little in reality, and the media doesn't know much more.

As for being in the UK. Welcome to the EU. I don't doubt we have a few murderers wandering around in other Countries.
 
Seemingly at the moment there isn't enough evidence to successfully request an European arrest warrant.

Ah, now there's a problem with a warrant. I assume it's the same criteria needed for a European one, but in the UK the very last thing you would want at this point is an arrest warrant.

To follow why you need to know what a warrant is for. It's an order by a Judge to detain and bring before them for prosecution the person named in it. It follows therefore that to have one, you would have to have sufficient evidence to charge with the offence.
If you have a warrant, you cannot question someone about that offence, as once you have sufficient evidence to charge (and you must do to have a warrant), you cannot ask further questions, so used to say Judges Rules and PACE.
 
FWIW i agree.

however playing devils advocate, where do you draw the line? what about convicted UK citizens who have served their sentence? should they not deserve to get on with their lives?

also what if the murder conviction was a self defense case that went wrong? do we know the details of that?

If we can keep people out for the opinions they hold or having previous offences then I'm sure we could keep out convicted murderers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7886237.stm

Regards...
 
If we can keep people out for the opinions they hold or having previous offences then I'm sure we could keep out convicted murderers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7886237.stm

Regards...
But as was discussed on radio earlier, the border agency was not privee to the information of his conviction anyway. Apparently very few EU countries share this info.
 
I'm always tempted to track down people (not usually that hard online) who use the phrase "no smoke without fire" and send letters to their employers/acquaintances etc. alleging some kind of paedophile/sex offender history, and see how long they think it's a useful phrase.

I suspect you'd find they think 'defamation of character' is a more useful phrase if you did that without any kind of proof.

as said its not the same thing because this guy has been convicted of murder before , that's not 'no smoke without fire , that's a f*****g great fire under a huge cloud of smoke being ignored because immigration authorities are scared of not being PC
 
Body of a man has been found about 1 mile from where Alice was found.
 
It's certainly a twist.
Be interesting to see how long he's been dead (if in fact it's him of course).
 
It's certainly a twist.
Be interesting to see how long he's been dead (if in fact it's him of course).

Body is reported to be badly decomposed. Police have sent a family liasion officer to his partner. Reckon they would need to be pretty sure of the id to do that.
 
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