Chapter 1: What is the focus of the discussion about Katie Simpson's murder investigation?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.
Hi, I hope you've been enjoying your Clare Byrne Show podcast this week. If you've liked what you've heard here, you might also be interested in the Newstalk Daily podcast with Ciara Daugherty. They've covered some really interesting stuff recently with everything from ozempic breasts, and the dark side of weight loss medications, to why the 90s are so back.
But my favourite piece this week was their discussion of the review into the Katie Simpson murder investigation, featuring Katie's aunt, Paula Mullen, and Alison Morris from the Belfast Telegraph. Take a listen. In August 2020, 21-year-old Katie Simpson was rushed to hospital in Derry with severe injuries. The explanation given at the time was that she had tried to take her own life.
But almost immediately, there were questions. Quiet ones at first, from those who knew her, from people who felt that something about the story didn't sit right. What followed was a case that would unravel layer by layer, exposing inconsistencies, missed opportunities, and one that would become the focus of a murder investigation and ultimately a damning review of the PS&I's handling of the case.
It's Newstalk Daily. 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?
So Katie was 21 at the time of her death. She was from County Armagh and she was a very accomplished horse rider. She had been a show jumper and was obsessed with horses and that was what she worked as after school and that was what she had been involved in all her life. And Cresswell was a horse trainer. He was much older and he was at the time of her death the partner of her sister Christina.
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Chapter 2: What were the initial circumstances surrounding Katie Simpson's hospitalization?
So rather than Detain him at the scene and seize the car as a crime scene. Police told him to follow behind the ambulance to the hospital. He didn't do that. He went back to the house. He changed his clothes and he showered and he gave his clothes to one of the three women who was later convicted of assisting offenders to take away and wash.
And then he arrived back at the hospital in a completely different outfit. And the officers failed to question, first of all, why he hadn't followed behind the ambulance and also why he was wearing different clothes than he had been when they had met with him earlier in the day.
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.
It did. You know, it wasn't until the following March that Cresswell was eventually arrested in terms of the murder of Katie. And up until that, numerous people were trying to whistleblow and were trying to raise concerns with the police, but they were dismissed. And it was very difficult then to start trying to investigate the murder at a later date, because when you talk about the failures...
You know, they didn't seize her car. They didn't examine it as a crime scene. They didn't treat Cresswell himself as a potential crime scene in terms of his own clothing, which could have obviously yielded information. When Katie was taken into hospital, she was covered in bruises. Her arms were bruised, her legs were bruised.
When the nurse went to try and insert a catheter, they realised that she was bleeding. and that her underwear was covered in blood. And yet there was no, again, no questions raised in relation to this. Criswell said she'd fallen from a horse the day before and that's why she was covered in bruises. Nobody checked this.
Nobody went to the yard where Kitty trained and worked to find out had she fallen from a horse. They just accepted his word for it. And even though the injuries weren't really consistent with a fall from a horse, nobody questioned this for the week. When the police showed up at the hospital too, the only people they spoke to was Cresswell and Christina Simpson, who was Katie's sister.
They didn't speak to her parents, even though her mum was their next of kin. And when the mum was let in to see Katie, and she should have been the only person allowed in to see her, Cresswell accompanied her at all times. So at no time was the family able to speak to police privately or alone, where they may have had some concerns.
And it also meant that Criswell got to the family first and was able to put this sort of suicide story in their heads and get his narrative across before any questions were asked. Her phone wasn't seized, her phone wasn't found until he was arrested the following year. And the report states that one of Kitty's sisters had noticed that the phone was active, that she...
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Chapter 3: Who was Jonathan Creswell and what was his relationship to Katie?
and someone had seen the two of them together and told us to Cresswell. He had went and picked her up from a horse show and driven her home, stopping repeatedly along the way to rape and beat her.
And this had went on until the next morning, when I think he must have panicked when he realised that he had this on this occasion, and he had clearly beaten and abused Katie multiple times over the years, but on this occasion he'd went too far and she'd went to the point where she had stopped breathing, was barely alive, and that was when he phoned Cresswell
the ambulance but they were injuries that were not consistent with his explanation. They weren't consistent with a fall from a horse or with the way he said that she was trying to end her own life and that is where they should have been picked up.
One of the body worn footage of the police when they did the first walkthrough of the house which again wasn't treated like a crime scene is four seconds long. A second clip available to when the report was being carried out is three seconds long and is blurry and shaky and so of no evidential value.
And that in itself, I suppose, is something, you know, you imagine attending the scene where someone says they found a young woman, a young woman who was in a state of undress and wearing, you know, bloodstained underwear.
You'd imagine the first thing would be to go in and do a walk through the crime, the scene that this was meant to have taken place with your body wearing camera on and assess if it fitted with the story. And none of that was done.
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?
There was a number of people who were raising the alarm. One was actually a journalist, a court reporter, Tanya Fowles. She had reported on Cresswell's earlier conviction for a very brutal assault on his former partner, Abi Lyle. He was jailed for that.
And yet, despite that, when he came back out, he was welcomed like a hero with a party by those sort of questions he set and went straight back to work again. And Abby Lyle waved her hand nimbly and told that story.
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Chapter 4: What were the police's initial responses to Katie's injuries?
Yeah, it was a big day. A lot went through my mind today, just about Katie and all the failures, but most of all, how we can still You know, the PSNI here can still stand by and let senior officers not take any accountability for what they've done and what they didn't do, actually, and why they were so determined to make it.
suicide that was the cause of death it just highlighted the fact that you know more needs done and there is 16 recommendations so hopefully you know there's going to be something changes you know because there's been a lot of women have went through the same
the hands of an abuser coercive control a lot of that just seemed to be a lot highlighted today and then I just sat and thinking you know we have started up a Katie Trust and Katie's sort of name and It is needed. You know, the Kitty Trust now at the moment have a hundred families, over a hundred families needing help.
Same sort of situations where their death wasn't taken serious and the Kitty Trust is helping them. So, yeah, so just a few things like that, you know, just the failures in the police and the doctors and social workers, everybody really.
I mean, you say there's these list of recommendations now and promises there will be meaningful change within the PS&A. Are you confident, given, as you say, there's a lack of accountability, as you say it, that that can happen?
Yeah, it's hard to have confidence. Like the senior officers being able to retire without any accountability is something that the Justice Minister is looking at. But too late for us. But, you know, really, like they should have been held accountable for what they'd done or what they didn't do.
The report talks about institutional misogyny within the PS&A. From your perspective, how did that show up in the way Katie was treated?
It did, you know, because it just, it is so real. Like when it comes to your own door, um, you know, they wouldn't listen to people, you know, that we knew her as a person that she would never have done that. Never. never have we took our own life, just full of life. You know, they just, I don't know, they just didn't want to take it on or what, I don't know.
There were so many missed opportunities identified in this report. Do you find yourself thinking about those what-if moments and how do you process that as her family?
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Chapter 5: What inconsistencies were found in Jonathan Creswell's account?
Why this? That's not real life. You know, like maybe before this, I maybe would have been the same. And I thought, God, you know, I thought she would have been a strong girl. She wouldn't have. went near him, but it can happen, you know, to anybody.
Do your family feel any sort of peace after this report? They feel now they can go and mourn Katie?
Yeah, I think it has, you know, full disclosure is a good thing, you know, and, you know, the police and everybody else would do the same, just full disclosure makes the way forward.
Paula, thanks so much for speaking to us on Newstalk Daily today.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Well, that's it for today's episode of Newstalk Daily. If you've been affected by anything that we've discussed here in the podcast, you can contact the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre on 1800 77 88 88. Until tomorrow, goodbye. or wherever you found this podcast.
The Clare Byrne Show. With Aviva Insurance. Weekday mornings at 9 on Newstalk. Conversation that counts.
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