Experts say Lee Balkwell's murder appears to have been staged
33-year-old Lee Balkwell was found trapped between the drum and the chassis of a concrete mixer on a farm at South Ockendon, Essex, England on July 18th 2002, the time was 0100 hours.
The first and most obvious question is; what was a man doing on a farm, with a huge cement truck at that time? Okay so I understand work goes on late into the night sometimes but, logic says if a cement truck is mixing and tipping at that time of night then a worker or two would surely be around to spread the poured mixture. Maybe it was the depot and he was unloading, loading or cleaning but he would have other men there too.
Very oddly, there were apparently no lights on, in or around the truck, so how was Lee Balkwell seeing to do his work, if it were just a simple work accident?
Essex police have always treated the incident as a "tragic accident", but it doesn't seem quite that clear cut to me and I am aware that lee's 73-year-old dad, Les Balkwell believes that in fact his son was murdered.
Reports from a team of Metropolitan Police detectives, hired by Lee's father to review the case and a pathologist, Professor Dick Shepherd say that the accident couldn't have happened in the way that it described and it looked "too neat" to have been an industrial accident.
Essex police have already admitted to failing to investigate the death of Lee Balkwell properly and failing to preserve evidence correctly.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said in their report in 2012 that Essex Police's initial investigation had been "seriously flawed" and undermined by the assumption that death had been as a result of an accident. They recommended an independent homicide investigation in 2008 and again in 2012.
Les Balkwell said "I believe that all the evidence points to murder. I have fought all these years to get to the truth and to bring justice to those responsible for Lee's death. This has taken a terrible toll on the physical and mental health of me and my family. I feel that time is running out".
A team of retired career homicide detectives presented Essex police with new evidence yet the investigation was formerly closed down in 2018 and despite pressure from Lee Balkwell's family and the detectives, police refuse to re-open the case.
On March 25th 2013 Lee's body was exhumed from his grave at Upminster Cemetery and re-examined by Home Office pathologist in a two-hour review, curiously the examiners declared that there was "no evidence of torture".
Whilst Les Balkwell had somehow expected there to possibly be evidence of stab injuries or ligature markings still visible, violent and obvious physical marks are not necessarily the only signs of a murder.
I would very much like to scrutinise any toxicology reports and maybe any close examination evidence of skin that was made at either autopsy examination, particularly the one made soon after the death. Let's consider such methods of murder as injecting poisons, insulin or even air if the "bubble" is big enough.
It interests me that the pathologist was clear that there was no evidence of torture, yet the body had been compressed between the drum and the chassis of a massive concrete mixing truck suffering considerable crushing injuries, I believe. I will picture a concrete truck similar below just so that you can imagine the damage that would be done should you become trapped between the mixing drum and the base of the lorry.
A concrete mixer, similar to the one in this report
Now whilst I accept that pathologists are extremely good at their job, I fail to see how any medical examiner could be so absolutely sure that none of the injuries sustained by a man whose body had been stuck in the way that Lee Balkwell's were caused by any sort of physical torture.
Interestingly, the pathologist that carried out the autopsy on Lee Balkwell (Dr Michael Heath) has since been discredited and disciplined for bungling the post-mortem examinations of two women which led to their respective partners being tried for murders that they simply did not commit.
Another point in relation to examinations of Lee Balkwell's body, a separate pathologist, Dr David Rouse, who originally said that there was no evidence of assault, restraints or grip marks on the body, later said in a report that "It was not possible to rule out the idea of the victim suffering an assault and being dragged across the yard". Why wait some five years to say that? Had he been "silenced" perhaps? After all, as I will demonstrate a little later, one of the possible "culprits" was by late 2006 locked up in prison.
To be fair and honest a report published by The Guardian newspaper stated that "The emergency crews called to the concrete firm lorry on a farm in Essex in the early hours of a summer morning met a scene that will stay with them forever. Mangled between the drum and chassis of a concrete-mixer lorry was a torso of a man, his legs twisted and lying on a pile of dried cement".
I would be happy for a pathologist or coroner to contact me and convince me otherwise, feel free if you are qualified in such a profession.
My opinion on the way that the second autopsy was carried out is much the same as Les Balkwell in that he held "serious concerns", particularly when an inquest in 2008 had already ruled that the verdict was "unlawful killing" possibly manslaughter! As far as I am aware the results of the second autopsy have never been made public by the police, why if the death was caused by "a tragic accident"?
One very curious point here is that Lee's mobile phone was buried with him and the police did not do an examination/assessment on the sim card. They still didn't carry out an examination of the phone or sim card despite exhumating the body, they then returned the phone to the grave when the re-burial was carried out.
A very relevant point of this story is that when ambulance paramedics assessed the scene, one wrote in his pocketbook the words "Foul play", another stated that she believed that she was looking at "a suspicious death" and the third noted that he was "not keen to touch the body because he did not want to damage or destroy evidence", yet the police just took the death as an accident, really? Why not make a thorough investigation and ask questions of people connected?
The fact is that the police totally contradicted themselves as they say that they treated the death as suspicious for the first 35 days but then why did they destroy Lee's clothes on the same day that he was found, without even having them examined by a pathologist first?
Now comes somewhat of a twist in this messy story; Lee worked for the Bromley family at their company "Upminster Concrete", The Bromley family were, to say the least, "known by the police" and some four years after Lee's death, Simon Bromley was given an eight-year prison sentence for what the judge described as "operating a cocaine business in a large way" and for attempting to sell a high-powered rifle with Titanium bullets, which he said would "destroy all the main organs".
David Bromley, father to Simon was also convicted of conspiracy to supply cocaine and was sentenced to three years in prison.
In 2009 Simon Bromley was back before Basildon Crown Court where it was said that he had benefited from £606,178 (Six hundred and six thousand, one hundred and seventy-eight pounds) from the proceeds of crime over the years, he was made subject to a confiscation order and told he must pay £210,158 (Two hundred and ten thousand, one hundred and fifty-eight pounds) or serve a further three years in prison.
A final point, in this case, is that Lee Balkwell had told his father Les, that he needed some £23,000 in cash in order to settle a debt, shortly before his death and had appeared distressed on several occasions. However, when his father pressed for the reason for him having such a large debt and why he was so distressed, Lee refused to enlighten him further.
It is my opinion that Lee may well have become entwined in the secret and illegal drugs business of the Bromley's and had maybe run up a debt of some kind in connection with that business. It is worth noting that Lee and his wife had a baby on the way and he may well have seen a little "investment" would bring him some well needed extra cash.
I will close by saying that over the years since Lee Balkwell's death his father has received death threats and has been given police protection on more than one occasion and so we are back to a question; Why would you threaten a man who simply wants answers concerning his son's death, if that death was just an unfortunate "accident at work"?
I will leave it there and you can draw your own inference.
If you do have any information in regards to this case then please either contact Essex Police 01375 391212 or contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111
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