Detective Superintendent Mick Gradwell makes a point with the aid of an aerial picture of the Haut de la Garenne site. (Picture by Matthew Hotton, 0670624)

NO MURDERS took place at Haut de la Garenne, the former care home at the centre of the historic abuse inquiry in Jersey, it was revealed yesterday.

Jersey Police systematically discredited artefacts that had been central to the investigation when former deputy chief officer Lenny Harper had been leading it.

His role in the inquiry is now under severe scrutiny after his successor called a press conference yesterday in an attempt to put the record straight and end any further speculation.

It was revealed that:

• What Jersey Police had claimed were the partial remains of a child were in fact not bone, but probably coconut. It had been found lying in Victorian-era earth.
• ‘Shackles’ were just rusty pieces of metal with no evidence they had been used in committing offences.
• The ‘cellars’ were nothing more than floor voids.
• There was no evidence that so-called restraints had been used for anything suspicious.
• The ‘bloodstained bath’ had not been used since the 1920s. No blood was revealed in detailed forensic examinations.
• A wooden sign with the words, ‘I’ve been bad for years and years’, was not brought into the home until 2003.
• Of more than 170 pieces of bone found in the grounds, only three were possibly human. Two of those fragments have been dated at between 1470 and 1670, the other between 1650 and 1950.
• Pits next to the former care home were dug in the 1970s – they have been examined and nothing suspicious found.