Another way is to look at electricity usage at the family home. The electric meters are all digital now so the electric supply company should have a record indicating when the power usage almost stopped. Same for gas usage if the house was connected to a gas supplier.
This is Mark’s response.
Just to be clear, there is no dispute that the house was empty between November 2009 and February 2010. It is the period between September and November 2009 that is contested. We believe that, out of the wider 6 month period, my father was alive for at least 6 weeks longer than the prosecution allowed for.
We had really hoped to find the kind of paper trail many of you have suggested following. In practice, however, that has proved to be extremely difficult to uncover thus far because of my father’s clandestine behaviour – as explained in earlier posts. He was quite meticulous in covering his tracks when he didn’t want people to know what he was doing or where he had been travelling. All his diaries over the years contain mysteriously blank periods where nothing is recorded at all, sandwiched in between periods where he seems to record everything.
Chasing up the utility records is a really good idea, so I am looking into that now. Thanks to whoever suggested it. I will let you know what they come back with. It was quite apparent that the house was empty when I visited in the New Year, and there was quite a lot of unopened mail – including unpaid utility bills and insurance renewal reminders – which I settled myself.
Looking at his Samuel Alexander account, apart from his direct debits (set up for his BT landline, mortgage payments, and investment funds), the last utility payment dad made after September 2009 was for electricity on 8th October – eight days before I last saw him alive