unsolved-murders.co.uk
Unsolved Murders
Tags

Lee Balkwell

Age: 33

Sex: male

Date: 18 Jul 2002

Place: South Ockendon, Essex

Lee Balkwell was found dead in a cement mixer in a lane in South Ockendon.

He was found with his head and shoulders wedged in the cement mixer on 18 July 2002.

It was claimed that Lee Balkwell and his employer had been working with the cement mixer at the time and that his employer had got into the cab of the vehicle whilst Lee Balkwell was outside of it and switched on the rotating drum and that for some reason Lee Balkwell had then got in and was crushed.

The police were called to the scene at 1am.

His injuries where consistent with him being crushed and his employer was later, in 2014, convicted of failing to ensure the health and safety of his employee but cleared of manslaughter by gross negligence.

However, his family think that he was murdered, stating that his death could not have happened as it was described and that it was murder staged to look like an accident.

Lee Balkwell was found wedged between the chassis and the drum of a cement mixer at a farm inside of which it was said that he had been working. However, it was noted that it would have been about 1am when he was supposed to have been killed and that there were no lights inside the mixer. It was said that Lee Balkwell had been drilling out drying cement in a Hymix cement mixer at the time.

His family said that Lee Balkwell had been murdered by an organised crime group and that there had been corruption within Essex Police over the investigation.

A report published in 2012 by the Independent Police Complaints Commission found that the initial investigation into his death was seriously flawed and had been undermined by the police’s assumption that his death had been accidental and which resulted in the police not preserving crucial evidence, adding that the police had not approached his death with an 'open mind'. The report stated that eight senior police officers made 25 errors and made 60 recommendations for the future. It was also noted that 9 police officers were found guilty of 27 misconduct matters.

One error included the fact that the police failed to collect the clothes and other items from people that had been at the scene at the time and that statements were not taken and that no phone records were obtained. It was also heard that Lee Balkwell's clothing had been destroyed the day after he was found dead, before police forensic experts had had a chance to examine them.

It was also heard that of the three paramedics that had been called out to the scene, that one of them wrote in his notebook, '?foul play', whilst another had said that she had thought that she was looking at a suspicious death and the third had said that they had been reluctant to touch the body in case they damaged evidence.

It was heard that one allegation made by the Independent Police Complaints Commission was 'too serious' for the police to investigate unsupervised to which it was observed that the police did not trust the people around them and that they wanted the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate in secret.

It was noted that in September 2016 that a senior officer at Kent Police had sent a 'covert referral' to the Independent Police Complaints Commission after investigating corruption allegations linked to the case.

Lee Balkwell's relatives said that they had not been allowed to see all of the case files, stating that some of the text from the original incident report, the STORM record had been removed and that the crime scene page was a photocopy and that the police had refused to show them the original. They also said that in the extraction video they received had 35 minutes of it removed.

It was also noted that the Independent Police Complaints Commission had recommended an independent homicide investigation in 2008 and again in 2012, and that in 2013 the police opened a new inquiry and Lee Balkwell's body was exhumed from Corbets Tay cemetery in Upminster where he was buried in September 2002.

Following the Independent Police Complaints Commission report of 2009 police then carried out a fresh enquiry called Operation Nereus although it was stated that it had not been treated as a re-investigation into the case but a process to discharge the recommendations of the West Midlands Op Abante Report. A Senior Investigating Officer in Operation Nereus was said to have said in a secret email, 'I had very clear instructions from the outset that this WAS NOT a re investigation, but a process to discharge the recommendations of the West Midlands Op Abante Report, and I have been at pains for over four years to emphasise this point. It is important because of the IPCC 2009 recommendations which recommended a re-investigation by an independent force, which was in effect ignored by ACC Bliss (Essex Police) in favour of what he asked me to do, which was explicitly NOT a re investigation'.

Lee Balkwell's inquest in 2013 then returned a verdict of unlawful killing through gross negligence. However, it was said that a later private investigation revealed that the Coroner had not been presented with all of the facts known at the time.

A 45-year-old man was then tried for gross negligence manslaughter in January 2014 but was found not guilty although he was convicted of failing to ensure the health and safety of his employee. The man had run a concrete business at the farm and employed Lee Balkwell as a lorry driver.

The man's family later said that they were sick of the insinuations that the man might have murdered Lee Balkwell and claimed that it was a tragic accident.

Following the conviction in January 2015 Lee Balkwell's family were awarded £12,000 in compensation by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. In making the award the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority said that they had considered all the facts and noted that a clause in their constitution said that it was 'not necessary for the assailant to have been convicted of a criminal offence in connection with the injury. On the balance of probabilities this action falls within the scope of the scheme'.

In 2016 Lee Balkwell's family were given permission to sue Essex Police for up to £50,000.

The police later closed their investigation in 2018 even though it was noted that a team of retired career homicide detectives had presented new evidence that pointed towards Lee Balkwell's death having been murder. It was heard that one retired police investigator said that marks on Lee Balkwell's body were consistent with having been inflicted with a stun gun, but said that the marks were never fully investigated. It was further stated that a stun gun had been seized during a major firearms and drugs operation in 2005 by the police which might have been used on Lee Balkwell but that the police had refused to allow the item to be independently examined.

It was noted that in 2005 the police had launched a covert murder enquiry and found that there was no evidence that Lee Balkwell had been killed due to a 'domestic' issue.

In July 2019 it was noted that a pathologist said that he thought that Lee Balkwell's death looked staged. He said that it looked 'too neat' to have been an accident. He said, 'There are features that are highly worrying and I am very concerned that his death in association with that vehicle has been staged. It looks like a staged scene because in some ways it is far too neat, far too organised and things don't happen that way. And also I simply cannot work out a way in what I have been told happened has resulted in Lee being where he is, it simply doesn't fit'. He added that he based his view on his opinion that the position of Lee Balkwell's body between the drum and chassis of the cement mixer did not fit with the description of the events.

In February 2022 Lee Balkwell's family went to the High Court to request that the judges order a new independent investigation into his death. The court heard that Lee Balkwell's father claimed to have information indicating that Lee Balkwell had been punished over a drug deal and that a new pathologist report alledged that Lee Balkwell had likely dead before he was crushed. However, the court concluded that the new evidence was insufficient and the case was lost.

Although Lee Balkwell's employer was tried for manslaughter by gross negligence and acquitted, it was noted that there was never a homicide investigation.


*map pointers are rough estimates based on known location details as per Place field above.