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Chapter 1: What does the review of Katie Simpson's murder reveal about institutional misogyny?
A review into the murder of 21-year-old show jumper Katie Simpson has exposed institutional misogyny within the PSNI and total failure to follow policing procedures in the case of her death. Killer Jonathan Creswell almost got away with murder when he presented Katie to hospital in Derry, saying he had found her hanging.
But months later, a second investigation team arrested and charged him before the courts. Today I'm talking with Jenny Friel about the 200-page report and its damning conclusions. You're listening to Crime World, a podcast from crimeworld.com.
Published today is the report into the death of Katie Simpson and the PSNI investigation around it, which some of the headlines from it, there was profound failures in that PSNI investigation. It's exposed institutional misogyny within the police force and systematic failures were made throughout. Katie was failed in many ways. It's also found that Interesting points.
Jonathan Creswell didn't leave a suicide note. Secondly, there's 37 other victims have come forward or alleged victims have come forward. And in total, 16 recommendations have been made and they are police focused. So that's an overview. Now, this is 200 pages.
Chapter 2: How did Jonathan Creswell almost evade justice after Katie's death?
So we've done our best. I've actually gone goggle-eyed trying to read with my glasses on there for the last couple of hours to get through some of it. And I don't like... going through something like this as important as this really quickly.
Yeah.
So what we're going to do is kind of talk a bit about it and we'll come back to it later in the week when we read it properly. And undoubtedly we can see if we can have Tanya Fowles join us for that, who's the journalist who lifted the lid on all this. Do we need to...
rehash what was what happened i think we might do yeah uh jonathan creswell um was going out with christina simpson he um groomed her little sister from the age of 10 katie and by the time she was 21 he had um her under his complete coercive control he uh murdered her in the house where that she was living in with his wife his uh and his partner and her sister, Christina, their two children.
There was another woman, Rose De Monte. De Montmorency, right. It's a bit of a mouthful. And he staged it to look like a suicide. And it was a monumental cock-up of an investigation, to put it mildly.
And he almost gets away with it. And this report does detail that in detail. You know, there's a lot of timelines going on here. There's a lot of kind of communications being looked at. There's a lot of interviews being done. What is actually, what does the report state that, you know, in its opening?
I think ultimately what it's saying is that there was a, I think the thing, the line that jumped out at me was that there was a failure to follow established policing obligations. So they're admitting that it was...
Which was something that the former domestic violence officer, Nuala Lappin, told us in our podcast, Groomed, which is available on all platforms, is it? All platforms. Groomed is available on all platforms. It came along just before CrimeWorld.com was established, so it's there for everybody to see.
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Chapter 3: What are the significant findings from the 200-page report on the PSNI investigation?
or to hear but she did say that she said there was kind of like that the PSNI was a particularly you know there was a rule book for everything in the PSNI and she felt looking at it that every rule was nearly broken yeah you know
We will go into more detail, but some of the other things that I suppose jumped out was that there was great inexperience in the team that looked at this. So even though that the flags were being raised by Tanya and Nuala and by nurses who dealt with Katie when she came into the hospital, they were either willfully ignored or just people weren't...
experienced enough to understand what they were being told or what they should have been looking at.
Yeah.
So this review has gone out. There's already a report and an apology been done by the police ombudsman, PSNI. But this, I suppose, was called for the Northern Ireland's Justice Minister, Naomi Long. Yeah.
is, I suppose, a more forensic look, although they have stated that they're not looking at kind of, you know, naming individuals who would have been at fault, that it is more kind of like a general overview of where things went wrong.
Yeah, exactly. And it's up to other statutory agencies to go further with that. I think we have heard that a number of people that had been working on the case have since retired. They've left the police force. Is there anybody left?
I think there, I think, according to Tanya, is there anyone left? I don't think so.
I think anybody that has been kind of highlighted is. Now, there's another interesting sort of headline out of this, and I'm going to have to go back deep into the report to find it. But it talks about these two other alleged sex offenders who've been identified by the PSNI within the equestrian industry as part of this review.
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Chapter 4: What failures did the PSNI exhibit in handling Katie's case?
There's a lot of detail in this review about when she reveals that. And that's a kind of a slow drip, her revelations. She initially says she wasn't, and she initially, I've just read that, initially says that she was, then when she comes back again and she starts to reveal, she said she was scared of him, she was afraid of what he was going to do.
And in fairness to all of them, they've all kind of talked about that. He was violent to them. There was, you know, he played a lot of mind games. Whatever way he was able to do it and to, I suppose, dazzle them.
But I suppose the thing that Tanya and Nuala said to us over and over again, and which has, you know, come to bear with this report, is that they believed that there were many, many more victims. So 37 and there's a breakdown, 31 women, six men.
Chapter 5: What recommendations were made in the report regarding police conduct?
And some as young feel, believe that they were being groomed from the age of 10, 11, which is what they review established as well is that Katie, because obviously there was no court case. There was no trial because Jonathan Creswell killed himself after the first night, after the opening day incident. So, you know, we didn't get the full details of this case.
Now, I wouldn't say that's as if review has the full details either. You know, they're certainly not. They've reviewed everything that they've been told, but it's not a police investigation as such. No.
Chapter 6: How did Katie Simpson's past injuries contribute to the investigation's failures?
It has sort of concluded that Katie was let down at every step, is the quote, and that police inaction rendered her invisible in her own murder, allowing Creswell to maintain control even after death. Because, of course, he presented as chief mourner at that funeral and he actually carried her coffin to the grave, which is where we started that journey on the podcast series Groomed.
At her grave, he had lowered her into the grave that day. Yeah. I want to just pick up and I'm sure you do. You have certain aspects you want to talk about. I just took a note of the pages this is on because it has always been spoken about that Katie, you know, he had presented Katie to the Aldna Galvin Hospital in claiming that he had found her after she committed suicide.
And part of the story was that she was supposed to have fallen off a horse the day before at a show in Lurgan. And that would explain why she had injuries because she had very severe injuries, you know, inside her thighs and various other places that sort of would have been and should have been red flags that she had been, you know, attacked.
Well, they were described as fingerprints by people who saw them. And there was no clear hoof mark, which he had claimed had caused her injuries. Now, this is just interesting because, you know, and in the book Groomed as well, I was able to go back over certainly some of the times that she had presented to hospital that I was aware of, including one where she'd have broken back.
But this report has actually gained reports from the Southern Health Social Care Trust, and it shows that Katie attended A&E on five separate occasions from 2003 to 2015, between the ages of 11 and 15. Now, the report also states that she was 10 when he began to groom her. So in February 2020, at age 11, she sustained a minor injury and attended a medical unit in Armagh.
No concerns were raised at the time. October 2010, age 12, suffered a corneal abrasion. No further information or concerns were documented. February 2012, age 13, reported injury to the knee and hip. No follow-up details or safeguarding were recorded.
So April 2014 age 15 she gets a fractured clavicle attended only one out of three scheduled physiotherapy appointments and missed a follow-up appointment in the October. In January 2015 age 15 she sustained a shoulder injury no additional information or concerns were noted. Now
Onwards from that, there's reports from Belfast Health Social Care Trust, and it shows that Katie attended the Royal Victoria Hospital following the injury in which she broke her back in 2017. She was 18 at that time. So she was transferred from Altna Galvan at that stage in the April. In the May, she was discharged for a follow-up surgery.
plan with a fracture clinic and later that month she was said to be progressing well and there was an extra review scheduled in six weeks time. By the July she had continued to use the brace and a further review planned in six weeks But the August, she was weaned off the brace standing. But there's also reports that she attended the A&E.
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Chapter 7: What role did Jonathan Creswell's behavior play in the investigation's outcome?
And she's back again six months after her recovery. And on it goes. I mean, there is so many visits to the A&E. In August 2018, she's 19. She presents with left thigh and lower back pain. After, she says, being thrown from a horse. There's no head injury or loss of conscience, despite the fact she's, you know, coming off a big, tall horse. Again, she attends for...
a review she's had nasal injuries in another horse fall during which she does lose consciousness at 20 she presents with a shin pain after apparently you know hitting off a horse again during a jump and at 20 again a kick to the face Yeah.
I know hindsight, but it wasn't even hindsight, like it was right there in front of them.
Yeah, and there was no, there was nothing that was followed up in relation to that. You know, eventually she's admitted to Elkner Galvin Hospital on the 3rd of August 2020. when he says that he's found her hanging in the house they're sharing. He attends, he tells the story. That story is believed by the first police investigator.
Despite those questions that are there, including the fact that he returns home from driving or some of the way to the hospital, changes his clothes and comes back and behaves in a way that's very controlling, even within the hospital. Yeah. And his behaviour sort of sparked some concerns, particularly with the nursing staff, who raised concerns both to the consultants and they go to the police.
On the 9th of August, she passed away. And I note from this report that she passed away from pneumonia and That seems to have come on after the injuries. I'll find that again now exactly. There was three things mentioned in it, but it wasn't from cardiac arrest. It was pneumonia coupled with the cranial injuries and I'll find it to get it correct.
I don't know if you want to pick up something there that you spotted or that interests you in the review.
I suppose that at one stage, you know, the review points out that there was tolerance stroke support for Jonathan Creswell, which, you know, when you go back through his, you know, when you go back through his contact that he had with the guards, or sorry, the PSNI, from when he was very young for driving offences, like, you know, there are within this 200 pages, there are
you know, table upon table of interactions, they call them, with the, you know, initial police contact. So, for instance, you know, on 14th of June 2008, he stopped in Armagh. You know, the following month it happens again. Following month, a couple of months later... But these are all driving offences? These are all driving offences.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of the report for future policing in Northern Ireland?
The way Katie was treated felt abusive and deeply disrespectful. She was put into a car and left on the side of a road in an ambulance as if she did not matter. And then she points out a few interesting things that I suppose we hadn't been aware of before. When we arrived at the hospital, there were no police officers present.
No one was there to tell us what had happened to our daughter, when it happened or how. We stood in the corridor waiting for a nurse, hoping Katie would be okay. Creswell was allowed to sit with us and the idea that Katie had taken her own life was already being planted in our minds. Despite everything we knew about her, that narrative took hold. He had us convinced."
And Cresswell, just pointing out, was the father of her grandchildren at this point. I mean, he's not somebody who isn't welcomed into this family at this point. He has been welcomed into the family and he's very much part of the family. And him and Christina are seen as a very stable couple who Katie is allowed go and stay with and is sort of...
you know, when she, at one point, and it details this in the report, when she kind of gets away from him, goes over to Scotland to work. Yeah, that was really interesting. Very interesting. Yeah. I didn't realise she had been actually caught stowing away on a boat and was returned, but social services didn't
And the review pointed this out as well. That should have been flagged, reported, followed up that there was this young girl. Why was she stowing away? Nothing was asked of her. Was everything OK at home? So and then, you know, I suppose the other things that pop up that, you know, questions, you know, I suppose that come into your mind.
You know, when Craswell was in jail that time, Christina went to visit him. She was only 16 or 17 years old. She was apparently in the company of an older woman.
we don't know for sure who that older woman was yeah probably yeah so she was taking her into the prison to visit Jonathan Creswell now Christina's family will say that they didn't know why Creswell was in prison at the time which you know given the high profile nature of that case at the time
And given that he was working within their village. Yeah. He believed him. Exactly, because that is what she says. He had us convinced. Yeah. It's what she says to this report.
Yeah.
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