FAILURES in the standards of "basic policing" let down a Hermitage mother and son shot dead by her estranged husband.
That was the conclusion of a long-awaited Domestic Homicide Review into the killings which horrified the nation.
It was in November 2003 that 48-year-old local businessman Alan Pemberton gunned down estranged wife Julia at the family home in Slanting Hill, Hermitage.
Minutes before, he had shot and killed their son Will, aged 17, as he tried to protect his mother.
Daughter Laura, then aged 19, was away studying at Cambridge University and survived the horror.
Mr Pemberton died when he turned the gun on himself.
At the subsequent inquest Berkshire Coroner Peter Bedford returned verdicts of unlawful killing and suicide but infuriated the extended family of Julia and Will when he said the deaths could not have been prevented.
The independent review into their deaths, embargoed until 3pm today (Monday) found “significant opportunities” to prevent their deaths had been missed.
The report states that Mrs Pemberton and Will were “let down by the standards of basic policing, record keeping and follow-up.”
It added: "There is evidence of instances when police officers did not attend the scene (after previous death threats), thoroughly investigate or link incidents or crimes which were reported."
The review also found that "opportunities were missed" to collect evidence after complaints of Mr Pemberton’s death threats were received.
The report went on to say: "Had the threat to kill been investigated as a serious crime in September 2002, the course of events that led to the death of William and Julia Pemberton in November 2003 may have been interrupted.”
In a statement, Thames Valley Police’s Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Taylor, said: "There is no doubt in my mind that Thames Valley Police could have, and should have, provided Julia Pemberton and members of her family with a much better service than the one they received.
"We agree with the report that they did not receive an effective police response and we apologise for the distress this has caused the family."
He added that the force was "not complacent" and that "significant improvements" in how it deals with such cases had been made.
The extended family of Mrs Pemberton and Will held their own press conference at which they welcomed the report whilst highlighting “serious and endemic system failures in (the force’s) leadership, policy, supervision, training, communication, management of information and public service.”
Earlier the extended Pemberton family complained that they had been barred “in very strong terms” from attending the review conference into the deaths of their loved ones.
Nick Carter, West Berkshire Council chief executive and chairman of the West Berkshire Safer Communitues Partnership which commissioned the review, had to fend off questions from journalists as to why the Pemberton family had apparently been barred.
He said: “We have been working with the family from the beginning and I’m not aware of any animosity or difficulty.”
In another reponse to reporters on the same issue he said: “I don’t accept that we have handled the release of the report in a cack-handed way.”
He denied that the authorities had been “dragged, kicking and screaming, to use your words,” to commissioning the review.
He also denied that it was the family’s five-year campaign that had brought it about, adding that it was done at the behest of the Home Office.

To hear the reaction of Julia's brother Frank Mullane and from Det Ch Supt Andy Taylor of Thames Valley Police and chairman of the West Berkshire Safer Communities Partnership, Nick Carter, click on the view video link above.