UK UK- Joy Hewer, 50, Teacher/church volunteer, sexually assaulted & fatally stabbed in chest, apartment set on fire, Walthamstow, 17 Oct.1995 *REWARD*

[GTB72]

Maybe he was deciding whether to call it in, or just leave it for someone else to report, and after a minute or two his conscience got the better of him?

The first screenshot is the bus stop today. The stop has been moved 50 yards closer to Forest Road in the direction of Walthamstow/Leyton stone.

The second screenshot is where the bus stop and phone box was in 1996.

The third is from Crimewatch 1996 showing the phone box and bus stop at night, at 2A Fulbourne Road.

I like your theory of the driver's conscience troubling him and thus stopping to make the call but I am more inclined to think that since he was travelling in the Chingford direction, moo, that that was the first available phone box that he saw.

Very difficult to get into the driver's mindset here.

EBM.

 

[GTB72]

There's

It's a direct quote from one of the investigating officers about the phone caller being 6ft4 and slim.

I guess it's possible that DC McLeary was misquoted (the newspaper report contains some inaccuracies) or that he was quoted correctly, but mixed up his POIs.

It does seem a massive coincidence if the running man and the caller are both slim and 6ft4, but who knows?

The running man was seemingly seen at either 10.45pm, or at just after 10.30pm. The phone call wasn't until 11.18 pm, so there appears to be a big gap between the two sightings.

BBM.

Yep, I can't get my head around that at all.

 

[tes1984]

Surely if Joy had some kind of association with a 6ft 4 black man then it would of cropped up in investigations at some point?

AFAIK Joy had lived in Walthamstow all her life. She worked in the area as a teacher for many years, so presumably had a lot of formers students, grown up and still in the area in 1995.

She volunteered at the Mission, but was also active at her local church in Walthamstow. In addition she did volunteer work for a homeless charity, so she might have had a lot more associates than the typical retired woman, living alone.

 

[rvlvr]

Was a fire in a block of flats not too far from myself very recently, apparently it took 3 hours to be put out, fortunately the fire was contained within just the one flat, which is - as I understand it - how these things should play out, based on the way these buildings were designed and built. But would the fire starter have known this?

Photos reveal burnt remains of Glasgow flat after crews tackled blaze for 3 hours

A charred broken remnants of a window show the impact of a blaze which took hold inside a flat block this morning

www.glasgowtimes.co.uk

 

[Rookie D]

Was a fire in a block of flats not too far from myself very recently, apparently it took 3 hours to be put out, fortunately the fire was contained within just the one flat, which is - as I understand it - how these things should play out, based on the way these buildings were designed and built. But would the fire starter have known this?

Photos reveal burnt remains of Glasgow flat after crews tackled blaze for 3 hours

A charred broken remnants of a window show the impact of a blaze which took hold inside a flat block this morning

www.glasgowtimes.co.uk

This is a great example that I believe supports my point that the 2 separate fires in Joy's flat couldn't have been burning for too long before the fire service were able to access the flat.

The caller who made alerted 999 did so at 23.18pm, a 2:33 call duration which meant the call ended at 23.20 or 23.21pm.

If the person who made that 999 call genuinely witnessed seeing those "flames" up on the 6th floor, then he would have done so no later than 23.16pm (based on 90 seconds to 2 minutes to look up and see the flames, drive up to the traffic lights, turn left at the traffic lights, drive up Fulbourne Road to the phone box, to then park up, get out his car, cross the road, and then make the call at 23.18pm.

This means that the fire must have been started at or before 23.15pm.

But if the Fire crew arrive in 4 minutes after the call ends, that would mean they arrive at the flats at 23.25pm at the very earliest. Then we need to add another 5 minutes to access the building, secure the lower floors, ascend up to the 6th floor, risk access the situation on the 6th floor, and then proceed with a controlled entry into the flat.

This means that the fire service wouldn't have accessed Joy's flat until at least 23.30pm

And if the fire was observed just after 23.15pm by the passer by, then the fire must have been started before that time for the flames to have been observed in the first place.

Of course, the caller may have meant to say "smoke" instead of "flames," but that would mean the window must have been open for the man to have seen the smoke; which would have been harder to see compared to actual flames at the window.

So if the fire was started before 23.16pm and the fire service didn't start tackling the fires until at least 23.30pm, then the fire itself need to have been burning for a minimum of 15 minutes before it was tackled by the fire crew.

The science tells us that the average fire in a domestic high rise flat, should have taken around 5 minutes or so to become a totally devastating force capable of combusting physical objects in the room without the need for the flames to physically touch those objects. The combustion phase of a fire usually take as little as 5 minutes, but can indeed take longer depending on environment and accelerants.
Therefore a timeframe of 15 minutes between the caller seeing the flames, to the earliest possible point the fire was tackled by the fire crew, means that there's already at least TREBLE the time required for the fire to have reached a temperature and pressure high enough to spontaneously combust organic material and various other objects.

I believe that it strongly suggests that the fire could not have been started much earlier than 23.15pm, because even if the fire had been started at 23.00pm, that would be 30 minutes before the fire crew could even start to tackle the fire.

A 30 minute fire in a flat located on the 6th floor of a tower block, would have incinerated the entire flat and there would have been nothing left to save.

 

[Rookie D]

There is one elephant in the room that never seems to be addressed.


Where was the smoke?

If there had been 2 small fires started, then after just a few minutes the room would have been filled with smoke.

Not only that, why does it appear that only one person outside was aware of the flames , and nobody else called 999 to say that had seen black smoke bellowing from the building?

It's almost as though the only person to have seen and therefore known about the fire in the flat, was the man who made that 999 call at 23.18pm

Why is that?

If you look on Youtube and search for tower block flat fires, you see that they all have the same common feature... SMOKE!

The fire crew did state that the 6th floor was full of smoke, but AFAIK, there was no fire or smoke damage anywhere outside of Joy's flat. that's odd for a domestic flat fire.

And what about the communal smoke alarm system? I'm guessing it wasn't working? Or did the man who started the fires deliberately disconnect the smoke alarm in Joy's flat?

If not, and the smoke alarm was working, then why didn't the smoke alarm go off to alert all of the other residents in the building?

It seems that the 2 fires started in Joy's flat were the smallest and least destructive fires in flat fire history.

 

[dotr]

Were the fires started to hide evidence of some sort, or as an excuse to bring attention to Joy's murder?

 

[GTB72]

There is one elephant in the room that never seems to be addressed.


Where was the smoke?

If there had been 2 small fires started, then after just a few minutes the room would have been filled with smoke.

Not only that, why does it appear that only one person outside was aware of the flames , and nobody else called 999 to say that had seen black smoke bellowing from the building?

It's almost as though the only person to have seen and therefore known about the fire in the flat,

There is one elephant in the room that never seems to be addressed.


Where was the smoke?

If there had been 2 small fires started, then after just a few minutes the room would have been filled with smoke.

Not only that, why does it appear that only one person outside was aware of the flames , and nobody else called 999 to say that had seen black smoke bellowing from the building?

It's almost as though the only person to have seen and therefore known about the fire in the flat, was the man who made that 999 call at 23.18pm

Why is that?

If you look on Youtube and search for tower block flat fires, you see that they all have the same common feature... SMOKE!

The fire crew did state that the 6th floor was full of smoke, but AFAIK, there was no fire or smoke damage anywhere outside of Joy's flat. that's odd for a domestic flat fire.

And what about the communal smoke alarm system? I'm guessing it wasn't working? Or did the man who started the fires deliberately disconnect the smoke alarm in Joy's flat?

If not,

There is one elephant in the room that never seems to be addressed.


Where was the smoke?

If there had been 2 small fires started, then after just a few minutes the room would have been filled with smoke.

Not only that, why does it appear that only one person outside was aware of the flames , and nobody else called 999 to say that had seen black smoke bellowing from the building?

It's almost as though the only person to have seen and therefore known about the fire in the flat, was the man who made that 999 call at 23.18pm

Why is that?

If you look on Youtube and search for tower block flat fires, you see that they all have the same common feature... SMOKE!

The fire crew did state that the 6th floor was full of smoke, but AFAIK, there was no fire or smoke damage anywhere outside of Joy's flat. that's odd for a domestic flat fire.

And what about the communal smoke alarm system? I'm guessing it wasn't working? Or did the man who started the fires deliberately disconnect the smoke alarm in Joy's flat?

If not, and the smoke alarm was working, then why didn't the smoke alarm go off to alert all of the other residents in the building?

It seems that the 2 fires started in Joy's flat were the smallest and least destructive fires in flat fire history.

BBM.
High Rise flats in general are designed in such a way that any fires that start are contained to the specific flat so it's not really that odd for there to be no damage outside of Joy's flat.

There was a bad fire in my flats but other than the smell of smoke if the lift stopped at the landing you wouldn't even have known.

Edited by me.