Talk:Mysterious deaths of GEC-Marconi scientists

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Contents 1 Probability 2 The full Computer News article 3 Article from The Independent

[edit] Probability

Excerpt from Gator Press.com (based on a larger list linked on the Marconi Scientists article:

The insurance industry uses scientific tables to accurately predict death rates. Based on the 1997 CSO Mortality Tables, the odds that all of these men could collectively die during a 30 month period is a staggering14,000,000,000:1 This makes it logically impossible for any reasonable personto deny that the world's leading microbiology researchers are being murdered, beginning with the anthrax attacks thru right now.

[edit] The full Computer News article

text of article from Computer News magazine April 30, 1987 (possibly before some of the later deaths had occurred):

DEFENCE DEATHS: THE FACTS BEHIND THE STORY

The mysterious deaths of two Marconi systems experts first reported in Computer News have sparked off intense speculation. Tony Collins clears up the confusion surrounding this baffling series of events:

Late last year, a Bristol coroner, Donald Hawkins, spoke of a possible 'James Bond' connection between the deaths of two computer experts involved in key underwater defence projects.

Since then the mysterious deaths of five other defence workers have come to light. In addition, another scientist has disappeared and a senior ICL employee is critically ill after an unexplained fall.

Most incidents have occurred after the men have successfully completed important projects or left one job for another.

Although there are police suspicions that many of them were depressed for different reasons, Computer News could establish no obvious motive for suicide in any of the cases.....

Four of the dead men were employees of the GEC group - three at Marconi and one at Easams. Two others worked at separate times at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham.

A Computer News investigation has established that most of the men were involved in computer simulation, arguably the key which opens the door to some of Britain's most secret defence technology.....

Marconi is Britain's only torpedo supplier and was last year awarded the Ministry of Defence's largest weapons order - £400m for advanced anti-submarine Sting Ray torpedoes. The Sting Ray's computer aided guidance system is so advanced it is being used in the development of Marconi's strategic defence initiative (SDI) programmes.

The Royal Military College at Shrivenham is also involved in a number of Britain's leading edge defence projects. The college develops new testing devices for the Ministry of Defence and is engaged as a sub-contractor to defence companies on research and development.....

All the men involved were ambitious and demonstrated a special ability in their particular field.

Marconi employee Vimal Dajibhai, 24, found dead beneath the Clifton Suspension Bridge last August, was about to leave Marconi for a higher paid job.

Ashad Sharif, another London programmer found dead in Bristol, was about to take over the running of a department at Marconi's Stanmore headquarters.

David Sands, who died in March as his car loaded with two cans of petrol exploded into flames as it crashed into a disused cafe, had just returned from a family holiday in Venice to celebrate the ending of a three year command and control systems project for Marconi's sister company Easams.

Marconi Space Systems employee Victor Moore (46) had just finished work on infra-red satellites at Portsmouth when he was found dead from a drug overdose. His death is said to have instigated an MI5 investigation, the results of which will remain secret.

There is also a separate investigation into Marconi based at Portsmouth by the Ministry of Defence Serious Crime Squad.

Early this year, two lecturers on top secret projects died in separate 'accidents' of carbon monoxide poisoning. Both had recently returned from America and had conducted research at the Royal Military College in Shrivenham.

The first, Peter Peapell, a lecturer and underwater acoustics expert, was found dead under his car and the garage door was closed. Although an inquest returned a verdict of accidental death, police are unsure how the accident happened.....

Despite reports that Peapell had no connections with electronics or computers he had in fact written a book on basic computers. He also had a paper published on underwater acoustic emissions.

The second, Dr John Brittan, a former computer science officer at the Royal Military College was also inexplicably found dead in his car this year. He too was involved in computer simulation.

A few weeks ago, Stuart Goody (23) a post graduate at the Royal Military College at Shrivenham was killed in Cyprus while on holiday. He died instantly when his hired car collided head on with a lorry. The lorry driver was said to be unhurt. At least one senior employee at the college considered that the death could be significant.

Avtar Singh-Gida, a researcher working on an important Ministry of Defence underwater project, disappeared just three weeks away from its successful completion.....

About two weeks ago, Robert Greenhalgh, a contracts manager at ICL's defence division at Winnersh near Reading, suffered multiple injuries after falling from a railway bridge on his way to work.....

The firm admitted he had been positively vetted and may have had access to secret UK and Nato data.....

After every death, police have given unofficial press briefings which provide journalists with plausible though unconfirmed explanations for the accidents or apparent suicides.

The major problem for police has been the lack of obvious signs of depression in any of the cases.....

Several MPs have demanded a government inquiry although there are no signs that ministers will agree.

The answer to the mystery may never be known, at least in the short term. As one policeman said: "We'll probably know all the answers when the papers are released in 30 years time."

[edit] Article from The Independent

text of article from The Independent newspaper, Friday 26 August 1988

DEATHS WHICH MUST BE INVESTIGATED

The police said it was suicide, and no doubt they were right. Ex-Brigadier Peter Ferry, a marketing manager at Marconi's Command and Control Systems centre at Frimley, Surrey, had apparently killed himself by inserting mains electric wires into his mouth and then turning on the power. The method chosen was perhaps marginally more grisly than in the case of several other Marconi employees. In 1986, for example, Ashad Sharif, a computer analyst who worked for Marconi Defence Systems in Stanmore, Middlesex, tied one end of a rope around his neck, another to a tree, and put his car into gear. Two months earlier, the body of Vimal Dajibhai, a software engineer responsible for checking the guidance systems of Tigerfish torpedos for Marconi Underwater Systems, was found under Clifton suspension bridge at Bristol. In March 1987, David Sands, a project manager working on secret satellite radar at Marconi's sister company Easams, in Camberley, drove up a slip road on his way to work and into a cafe at an estimated 80mph. A year later Trevor Knight, a computer engineer at Marconi's space and defence base in Stanmore, died in his fume-filled car at his home in Hertfordshire. Earlier, two other Marconi employees, Victor Moore, a design engineer, and Roger Hill, a draughtsman, had killed themselves, both seemingly as a result of work pressures.

There have been at least half a dozen more untoward deaths among defence scientists and others working in the defence field. Marconi is not alone, but it is well in the lead. The best efforts of investigative journalists have failed to establish a link either between the various deaths or between the deaths of the Marconi staff and the Ministry of Defence inquiry, now two years old, into some (pounds)3bn worth of defence contracts awarded to GEC-Marconi. No doubt in several instances pressure of work was the main factor: in a field where millions of pounds hang on the securing of contracts, it can be intense, especially if the Ministry of Defence investigators are hovering, as they had been at Frimley, Brigadier Ferry's base. It is hard to believe, however, that other factors have not also been at work. The pressure of work is also fierce in the money markets of the City, where equally large sums are at stake. Yet the suicide rate remains unremarkable.

Mr Ferry's death on Tuesday must add to the concern already aroused by the alarming sequence of deaths in the defence industry. He had apparently been depressed since his car collided with a lorry a month ago; but suicide seems an extreme reaction. In such instances where no foul play is suspected, the inquiries of both police and coroners are likely to be brief, partly for the sake of the distressed relatives. They will not be concerned with establishing a connection with comparable deaths in different counties. Since these cases have been spread wide, there is now a case for pulling the threads together. It may be that there is no conspiracy and no concerted skullduggery. But these have been talented men. To allay anxieties, a senior police officer should be appointed to head a coordinated investigation into the underlying causes of so high a death rate.

--Stewart Robertson 12:08, 24 July 2006 (UTC)