Ciara Doherty

I'm Ciara Doherty.

Jonathan Creswell was the partner of Katie's eldest sister, Christina.

He drove her to the hospital, concocting a story to shield his heinous crimes.

As a 21-year-old, he'd been convicted and jailed for serious assaults on his ex-girlfriend, Abigail Lyle.

Despite this, the authorities bought his version of events.

Now a really stark report has found officers failed to identify inconsistencies in Jonathan Creswell's account, neglected to preserve vital evidence, overlooked forensic scenes and opportunities and dismissed key witness statements.

The report also found that 37 people, both female and male, have come forward to say they were abused by Jonathan Creswell.

And just to say, this podcast will be discussing murder, rape and coercive control and won't be suitable for younger ears and may be triggering to some listeners.

Well, Alison Morris is crime correspondent with the Belfast Telegraph and has been covering this story for years.

Alison, I think to really understand just how serious the findings are of this review, we have to go back and we have to understand who Jonathan Cresswell was and who Katie Simpson was and how they knew each other.

What can you tell us?

Let's go back to August 3rd, 2020.

And Katie Simpson is living in Derry and she's brought to Alton McGelvin Hospital in Derry in a critical condition by Jonathan Creswell.

What story did he tell medics about what had happened to her?

And Katie never regained consciousness.

She died six days later.

And despite this sort of gradual build-up of red flags that made that original suicide attempt explanation hard to sustain, it did sustain within the police and indeed within the wider equestrian community for a long period of time.

What do we know now, Alison, about how Katie met her death?

So just a whole litany of failures there in those opening days after she was admitted to hospital.

What was it that forced the police to look at this case again, to re-examine the case and see if death by suicide was indeed the explanation for her passing?