Loading ...On the morning of 17 July 2003, Kelly was working as usual at home in Oxfordshire. Media coverage of his public appearance two days before had led many of his friends to send him supportive emails, to which he was responding. One of the emails he sent that day was to New York Times journalist Judith Miller,[20] who had used Kelly as a source in a book on bioterrorism and to whom Kelly had mentioned “many dark actors playing games.”[21][22] He also received an email from his superiors at the Ministry of Defence asking for more details of his contacts with journalists.
At about 15:00, Kelly told his wife that he was going for a walk as he did every day. He appears to have gone directly to an area of woodlands known as Harrowdown Hill about a mile away from his home where he ingested up to 29 tablets of painkillers, co-proxamol, an analgesic drug and to have then cut his left wrist with a knife he had owned since his youth.[23] His wife reported him missing shortly after midnight that night, and he was found early the next morning.[24] Questioned on a flight to Hong Kong that day, Blair denied that anyone had been authorised to leak Kelly’s identity.[25]