[narrator] A young woman in love with a man 12 years her senior.
I've almost sort of like... gone into a little bubble with him,
where it's just me and him.
[tense music playing]
[narrator] 21-year-old Katie Wilding is telling police
about her relationship with Mitchell Richardson,
her first serious boyfriend.
[tense music playing]
[Katie] He's got the most genuine heart ever.
And I love it. I get emotional.
[tense music continues]
We're so [beep] good together.
We don't even argue. We don't even bicker.
[narrator] Katie tells police he has a darker side.
[Katie] And he was like, "Well, let's see how fast they can get here
because by the time they get here, I'll kill you.
Whoever comes through the door, I'll do the same to them
with a knife."
[tense music continues]
I couldn't believe someone that I thought loved me would do that to me.
[tense music continues]
[ominous music]
[heartbeat thudding]
-[gentle music playing] -[birds chirping]
[keys clacking]
-[gentle music continues] -[birds chirping, cawing]
This was taken in her work,
and I think this was her 18th birthday.
It's one of my favorites, because she's looking right at the camera.
She could light the room up with her giggle.
It was just the most wonderful thing.
This just reminds me of really happy times.
Growing up, Katie and I were incredibly close.
I think, as a young child,
she was the one left at home while her bigger sisters went to school.
She was the only blonde, blue-eyed one.
She was absolutely spoiled rotten by everybody.
[upbeat acoustic music playing]
[Sue] Katie was very angelic,
very sweet,
a lot of fun, very giggly.
Yeah, just a really sweet little girl, baby of the family.
[Emma] Katie and I were very close.
Our older sisters were sort of very outgoing,
and we were quite shy and reserved,
and that kind of built a bond between us that we would stick together.
Katie was very shy as a child,
but just beautiful.
She always had a smile on her face,
and, as she grew up and became more confident,
she just became the life and soul of the party.
She just was so open and friendly,
and her bubbly personality kind of drew people to her.
Katie had lots and lots of friends. She was very popular,
and she was very easygoing, very giggly.
She liked to laugh.
She liked to get up to mischief.
[Emma] Katie left school at 15,
and she'd been doing hairdressing
on a Saturday as a job,
and just absolutely loved it.
So she decided to become a hairdresser,
and won many awards as well.
She was a really fantastic hairdresser.
[tense music playing]
[narrator] By Spring 2015, Katie Wilding, now aged 19,
has done some traveling.
She returns home from a trip to Australia.
[Julie] You can appreciate that after four or five months away,
moving back in with the old people
wasn't really what she was looking for.
So we managed to find her a nice little flat
just off the sea front.
It wasn't a huge flat,
so it didn't take a lot of tidying,
but I think she enjoyed having her independence.
[Emma] At this point in life, she really was happy.
She was just living life to the full,
and had lots to look forward to.
[Julie] Katie had had boyfriends, but no serious relationships.
She was enjoying her life too much, I think.
[Emma] She was quite happy being a free spirit,
and spending time with her friends and family.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] Within a few weeks, Katie meets someone new:
Mitchell Richardson.
[tense music continues]
[Emma] Katie told me one day when we met
that she had gone for lunch at a sandwich bar with a friend,
and this guy had come over to her,
and said that he would really like to get to know her.
[Julie] Mitchell's first words to Katie were,
"I've been watching you."
[tense music continues]
Katie was very flattered by that at this point.
When she told me about it, I was a little bit concerned,
not overly concerned, but it did seem a little intense.
Katie was 19, Mitchell was 31 when they met.
Mitchell was a lot, lot bigger than Katie,
both in height and in size.
He used to go to the gym a lot.
Katie was tiny compared to him.
[Julie] She was very excited when she was describing Mitchell.
[tense music continues]
She said he was tall, he was dark, and he was handsome.
It was the old cliché going here,
but she was excited.
She said he was a proper man rather than a boy.
That's what I think she felt quite frustrated with,
chaps of her own age
that she felt she was more mature than that.
So she was very excited.
♪ In the bluegrass ♪
He had a BMW car.
I think, at 19, she was a little bit,
"Oh, this is quite nice," to be treated, to be spoiled.
He took her to some very nice restaurants initially.
He bought her a new mobile phone.
He was really spoiling her.
And I don't think that's something she'd had
from previous relationships before.
♪ Wild flowers ♪
[Emma] During the first few weeks of their relationship,
she did fall head over heels for him.
She would send me text messages saying
that he'd bought her flowers,
or he'd bought her a new phone,
or he was taking her out for dinner.
And yeah, she seemed very much like
she'd fallen in love with him very quickly.
But I think someone who showed her that much attention,
she fell for very quickly.
[tense music continues]
At the very beginning, I would say she was happy,
but that very quickly changed.
[tense music playing]
The first time I met Mitchell was around Katie's flat.
And, at first, he was very pleasurable,
but he almost tried too hard.
It was quite intense.
And Katie was learning to drive at the time.
So we went out for a drive to a local car park,
so she could practice.
And quite quickly, I became a little bit uncomfortable,
because of the way he spoke to her.
He was very controlling.
He put her down quite a lot about the way she drove.
And I just didn't like his attitude towards her
at that point.
And he was already displaying controlling behavior.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] A few weeks into the relationship,
Emma visits her sister again
at the flat that her family had helped her find.
[Emma] I went round to help her build some furniture,
and I realized that throughout the flat
there was a lot of things that weren't hers,
and it was very much in a mess,
which, in some ways, was very unlike Katie.
And she told me at that point
that Mitchell had moved in with her.
[tense music continues]
[Julie] Mitchell came to Katie,
and said that he was being evicted from his home,
and asked if he could move in with her
just as a short-term measure
until he could find somewhere else to live.
[narrator] Katie is now living with a man she's known for only a few weeks.
Her family feel things are moving too quickly.
[Julie] We were very concerned.
We didn't know who this man was. We knew he was a little bit older.
We didn't know anything about his family or his friends.
So yes, we were quite concerned at this point
that we hadn't actually met him.
[suspenseful continues]
[Emma] His words at the time were he was being evicted from his flat
for not being able to pay the rent.
But we soon found out that there was a lot more to it than that.
[Julie] When he moved in with her,
Katie found out that he had violence in his past,
[suspenseful music continues]
because he had to tell her that he had a tag on his leg,
which was given to him by the courts.
This was for violence against another man,
which Mitchell had claimed was in self-defense.
[suspenseful music continues]
But Katie believed that he'd been misrepresented at court,
that he'd been misunderstood by the judge,
that nobody had listened to him, and she didn't believe him to be violent.
She said she trusted him.
[tense music continues]
It was a few weeks after they'd been living together
that we saw a change in Katie.
Katie was working at my friend's hair salon,
and my friend phoned me and said,
"Katie has been coming in in the last few mornings in tears.
She's upset about something."
And this particular day, about two to three weeks
after they'd been living together,
Mitchell walked into the hair salon,
[tense music continues]
and started shouting at Katie in front of everybody.
[tense music continues]
And he spat at her.
Mitchell threw a set of keys into Katie's face,
which caught her here, and left.
[tense music continues]
Katie was absolutely devastated.
When my friends, the owner of the salon,
he was talking to her and calming her down,
she said that it was entirely her fault,
because she drank the last of the milk that morning,
and hadn't left him any milk for coffee.
And that's why he was angry.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] Becky Mason is a detective and an expert
in uncovering toxic relationships.
[Rebecca] This is a scene of utter chaos.
But what is very apparent with this is he doesn't care
who sees this outburst of his.
It's like he goes into this complete red zone tunnel vision.
He is that angry
that he has blocked out everyone else around him.
He spits at her in public,
throws keys at her in public,
and creates this scene over milk.
What kind of person does that?
[Julie] I was devastated. This was my baby.
I wanted to challenge Mitchell, but Katie asked me not to.
She said it was okay.
She dealt with it, he'd apologized, and they'd moved on.
Katie was signed off work very soon after that
with anxiety and depression.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] A few weeks later, Mitchell and Katie
are spotted by her mum's friend Sue,
who's out with her husband in Torquay Harbour.
[Sue] A car pulled into the loading bay,
and Katie and Mitchell got out of the car,
and they started to walk back
towards the bars and the restaurants.
And another car pulled up right behind Mitchell's car,
and caused his car alarm to start going off,
at which point he completely lost his temper,
and started screaming and shouting
at the gentleman in the car behind,
and was getting very animated,
and shouting, screaming at him.
And Katie tried to calm him down,
and then he started shouting at her also.
And he got into the car and sped off.
It was a very shocking incident to see,
and made me feel very uncomfortable and very worried for her.
[tense music continues]
It was the quickness with which he lost his temper
over nothing.
My husband was very shocked by what he saw.
And he said to me that
if he was talking to her like this in public,
then what was he talking to her like in private?
How was he treating her behind closed doors?
[narrator] Sue tells Katie's family about the incident.
[Julie] We were aware of red flags all the way through the relationship.
We never thought that it would come to the outcome it did.
[tense music continues]
[tense music playing]
[narrator] As concern grows about Katie's relationship with Mitchell,
her family notice worrying changes in her behavior.
[Emma] This is the point where I started to see the change in my sister
from being that bubbly, happy, sort of outgoing person
to becoming very withdrawn, and hiding things from us.
Katie left her job, she went to the doctors,
and was signed off with anxiety and depression.
And that started her on a spiral.
[Emma] Very quickly into the relationship, Mitchell cut her off from her friends,
and I think that's was for control.
[Julie] Katie would tell us that Mitchell was adamant
that her friends were trying to split them up.
He would tell her, "Your friends don't like me.
Your friends are telling lies about me, because they don't like us together.
They're jealous of our time.
They're jealous of our love, of our mature relationship."
Slowly, but gradually,
she lost touch with all of her friends.
[tense music continues]
[Rebecca] Mitchell has seen this independent woman,
and made it his sole purpose to break her down to nothing.
He is stopping her seeing her friends.
The classic signs, in this case, of that coercion,
and just really sort of exercising the control that he has over her.
And the fact that the family are watching their daughter
almost disintegrate is heartbreaking.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] One year into the relationship,
Katie is isolated from her friends,
and living alone with an abusive boyfriend.
And now she's set to lose the home that she and her mother had found.
Katie was evicted from her flat,
-[tense music continues] -[engine revving]
because Mitchell had started to smash the flat.
Neighbors were starting to complain to the landlord that there was screaming,
there was shouting coming from the flat.
So all at the same time, she lost her job, she lost her flat,
she definitely started to withdraw from us, from her family.
[narrator] In an increasingly fractious relationship,
a worrying new ingredient is spotted in the mix.
[Emma] I became aware that Mitchell took drugs.
There were drugs all over the house.
He quite openly offered me drugs many, many times.
In fact, he would boast about the drugs that he had in the flat,
and he would often offer them to Katie.
Katie would say that she didn't want to take any,
but he would then laugh in her face,
and just really humiliate her for not wanting to take them.
The drugs made him extremely paranoid.
[tense music playing]
So from the beginning of the night
where he would very much be the gracious host,
you know, offering drinks, playing games,
and then as soon as the drugs came out, he would become paranoid and angry,
and try and control everybody in the room.
He would humiliate Katie,
he would call her names, he would spit at her,
and all because she didn't wanna take the drugs with him.
[Julie] I think drugs, and Mitchell, and alcohol were an incredibly bad mix.
The minute the drink, or the drugs, or the combination started,
he would become very aggressive.
He'd become very paranoid.
He'd check her phone three, four, five times a day.
He would always say, "Oh, are you wearing that?
What's that for? Who are you going to see?"
He accused her of sleeping with his friends.
Oh, always, he was paranoid, absolutely paranoid.
[Rebecca] That level of obsession is extremely dangerous.
That raises any stakes in an investigation to huge.
It is a huge warning sign.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] As Mitchell's apparent paranoia deepens,
the family believes that his grip on Katie's life tightens.
[Emma] Mitchell would control her money.
He would control what she was allowed to wear,
whether she could shave her legs,
whether she could buy new clothes,
whether she was allowed to drive her car.
If she stepped out of line,
he would do things like cancel her car insurance,
or smash her phone so that she couldn't contact anybody.
[narrator] And Mitchell insists
on knowing his girlfriend's location 24 hours a day.
[Julie] He put a tracker on her phone,
and he sold this idea to Katie, so that he would know that she was safe.
[Rebecca] It's the ultimate irony in this situation, isn't it?
He's put a tracker on her phone to keep her safe
when the only person she needs protecting from is him.
[narrator] Even with the tracker,
Mitchell continues to suspect Katie is cheating on him.
[Julie] Mitchell then lost his job,
because he was coming home to check where she was all of the time.
[Rebecca] This is a dangerous scenario, this is,
because all Mitchell is doing is making Katie his sole priority.
He's lost his job,
because he's spending all his time following her.
He is obsessed with her.
He's a dangerous man,
but a dangerous person that then forms this obsession with someone,
that is only gonna end one way.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] Katie's family tried to persuade her to leave Mitchell,
but she refuses.
[Julie] My husband and I quite often talked about kidnapping her,
taking her away, breaking that mind control.
But that would've been, we would've been making her choose.
And to make her choose between him and her, we would've lost.
As hard as this is to say,
it was better to allow her to choose to go back to him,
knowing that she'd be back a few days later
than to risk saying, "You have to choose, Katie."
We would never have seen her.
I wanted to keep some form of contact with her.
[Rebecca] He has got control over that whole family.
Julie, too scared to bring anything up,
in case that he stops the contact between Julie and Katie,
because he's already done that with everyone else in her life.
So why shouldn't she think she is next?
So not only is Katie treading on these eggshells all the time,
Julie is as well.
This man is affecting everyone like a parasite in her life.
[narrator] Just over a year after meeting Mitchell,
having suffered many months of isolation and abuse,
Katie tells her sister why she hasn't ended the relationship.
[tense music continues]
[Emma] During one night when I was around for a party,
and he'd flipped out,
I managed to get her on her own for about two minutes,
and she broke down, and she told me she was afraid of him,
and that she didn't know how to get away from him.
And when I asked her why she'd never told me this before,
she said that she was trying to protect me.
And I told her it was my job to protect her.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] 15 months into their relationship,
Mitchell takes Katie on holiday.
[tense music continues]
Her family hoped that a change of scenery
might make for a change in Mitchell's behavior.
[Emma] Mitchell took Katie to Egypt for her 21st birthday,
and Katie was very, very excited.
[Julie] I think she was looking forward to the holiday,
because she thought he would relax.
And when he was relaxed, they got on,
or, you know, the relationship was easier.
[narrator] It may have been a change of scene,
but it was the same old story.
[tense music continues]
That evening when they arrived on her twenty-first birthday
in front of other guests at the hotel,
he punched her in the face, and gave her a black eye.
She spent the majority of the holiday with thick makeup on,
trying to cover a black eye.
Again, she said that she'd moved. He hadn't meant to hit her.
That was a usual excuse.
He was aiming for the wall and she got in the way.
And then, after that,
the violence seemed to get worse and worse.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] On the evening of October 8th,
Mitchell finds a dress in Katie's bag that he thinks is nightwear,
making him suspect, wrongly, that she's cheating on him.
He's angry.
His use of alcohol and drugs is about to make for a dangerous cocktail.
[Julie] He started to drink and he started to take tablets.
He took a quantity of Valium,
drank a lot of a bottle of Jack Daniels,
threatening to throw himself off the balcony if she left.
[Rebecca] What he has taken this evening,
this cocktail of alcohol and illegal substance,
is a recipe for disaster.
And what follows is this unprovoked attack on Katie.
[tense music continues]
[Julie] It was in the early hours of the morning
that the neighbors called the police,
because they said for the first time they were frightened for Katie's life.
And he was arrested and taken into police custody.
[tense music continues]
[Emma] My mum actually informed me of what had happened,
and I was devastated, and angry,
and all of the emotions, really,
because I felt like, you know, she was my baby sister,
and I wanted to protect her, and I couldn't.
So yeah, it was really heartbreaking.
[tense music playing]
[narrator] During his police interview, Mitchell Richardson refuses to cooperate.
[officer 1] Can you tell me where you were last night?
No comment to that.
[officer] Okay, can you tell me who you were with last night?
No comment.
[officer] Can you remember what happened last night?
I'm just gonna say no comment.
I can't really remember, so no comment.
[narrator] Crucial to a case that police could build against Richardson
would be any evidence Katie could offer.
However, she decides not to take the matter any further.
[Emma] I believe she didn't make any formal complaint against him,
mostly out of fear.
At this point, you know, he was almost all she had,
or that's how he made her believe.
I still believe, at this point, she loved him,
and believed that he would change for her.
And I still believe, at this point, she had hope he would change.
[narrator] But whilst Mitchell is in custody,
Katie decides to move out of their shared flat,
and into her own place.
[tense music continues]
[Julie] I can't begin to tell you how amazing it was
to think that she was finally,
her decision, not being forced into it by anybody,
she was making the decision to leave.
It was incredible, and it was gonna be fantastic,
and the start of a whole new life.
[Emma] So when Katie first moved into her new flat,
it was kept a secret,
so that it was very much a safe house,
and a panic alarm was fitted at the flat.
And Katie did seem happier.
She did start seeing friends again,
she started messaging a bit more, and she was looking for work,
and just really looking to the future.
I truly believe that we had the chance to protect her and keep her safe.
[narrator] Mitchell Richardson is released by police on bail,
on condition that he must not contact Katie or her family.
Will he comply?
Is Katie now safe?
[Julie] He was released, and within hours,
he was on the phone to Katie...
[phone buzzing]
...demanding to know where she was.
So she blocked his number,
and he immediately started to phone me.
And he was desperate for information about where she was.
I said to him that I was really quite worried about her,
you know, if he stopped all of this and he got help,
then she might come back,
'cause I said, "She loves you, she loves you."
But he laughed, and he said that she would come back anyway.
I said I was worried, you know,
I said, "I'm frightened for you, for Katie, of you."
And he laughed, and said, "Well, you're probably right."
It was a horrible conversation.
And one of the last things he said to me before I ended the conversation was,
"Well, you know, I could easily kill her with drugs,
and you'd never prove it."
[tense music continues]
[Rebecca] What is concerning here
is not just that he's making threats to kill Katie now,
but he's describing how he's gonna do it in a way that he could get away with it.
[tense music continues]
[Emma] I truly believed he was going to kill her.
[tense music continues]
[birds chirping]
[narrator] Mitchell Richardson has breached
his bail conditions by contacting Katie.
So her mother alerts the police,
and demands that they find her daughter.
But neither Katie nor Mitchell can be found.
I tried all morning to get hold of Katie, and her phone was switched off.
So eventually I tried Mitchell, his phone was switched off.
Been to the flat, nobody there.
So I'd gone early to the police station,
and told them that I was genuinely worried.
I got a call from my mum to say that they were both missing,
and I was actually at uni at the time,
so I left uni, and we all went out searching for her.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] The search continues for two days.
[Julie] Everybody, the police as well, were out looking for them,
couldn't find them.
And I was convinced that something terrible had happened.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] Five days after Mitchell Richardson
was released on bail and told not to contact Katie,
police receive information that he's holding her hostage at his flat.
[tense music continues]
When the police forced the door open,
Mitchell had heard them as well, and he just sat in an armchair.
It was a tiny little room,
[tense music continues]
waiting.
[tense music continues]
Katie was on the bed on the pillows,
sort of all crunched up,
and they arrested him and took him away.
[tense music continues]
He'd held her there all night, beating her black and blue.
And when I got there, I barely recognized my own child.
Lots of bruises.
So the police officer said to her,
"Katie, we really need you to give some evidence to stop this."
So that's what we did.
We took her straight to the police station.
I've never ever been so proud of her as I was on that day.
And she was very brave enough to decide to do a video statement
of what had happened the night before.
He called me...
saying that he had nowhere to stay.
He said that he was really cold, and I felt sorry for him.
So I've said, "Come back to mine," in the end.
[Julie] She looked so young and vulnerable.
You can tell she's nervous,
but yes, it's emotional seeing her so vulnerable.
[narrator] Katie tells the police, that once inside her flat,
Mitchell began to accuse her of cheating on him,
and became increasingly angry.
He was spitting on the floor, he was spitting on me.
And then he actually passed me my phone,
and said, "Go call the police then."
And I was like, "Okay."
So I was about to do it, and he was like,
"Well, let's see how fast they can get here.
Because by the time they get here, I'll kill you."
And said, "Whoever comes through the door,
I'll do the same to them. With a knife."
I thought I was going to die, basically.
Because, obviously, him saying that he wants to kill someone
and that he hates me, I thought he could do it.
[Julie] She thought he could do it.
I am sorry, that's really hard to hear.
He went like that, and obviously blasted my nose
which made my nose completely pour blood.
And he held me against the bed for quite a while.
He was like holding me like that.
[interviewer] Okay.
And I couldn't breathe, basically.
[Julie] It's just really horrible to think that this 33-year-old man
could do that to my 21-year-old child.
I said to him, "Mitch, I'm genuinely scared of you now,
can you please get out of my house?"
I couldn't believe someone that I thought loved me
would do that to me.
[Julie] It's heartbreaking hearing her little voice,
telling of this beatings, and of how he controlled her,
and how he told her he was going to kill her.
And again, she's asking him to go, and he's just not listening.
[tense music continues]
Gosh, to see her, [coughing], sorry.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] Mitchell Richardson's threats don't stop there.
Basically, said that he's going to go round to my mum's
and kick the door down,
and, basically, well, hurt her,
and at one point, he said that he's going to slit her throat.
I just couldn't believe the way he was talking about my mum.
She's always, you know, been civil to him.
And I was genuinely scared at one point that he was going to go.
She's scared that he's gonna come and hurt me while she's being strangled.
[tense music continues]
She still wasn't thinking of herself, was she?
And that's when the police came.
And that was the biggest relief, it really was.
[Emma] If they hadn't arrived when they had,
Katie would've been dead.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] During the interview,
the police questioned Katie about her relationship with Richardson.
I've almost sort of like...
gone into a little bubble with him where it's just me and him.
And that's my normality, if that makes sense.
First relationship, my first proper boyfriend.
I've never let my guard down to anyone.
And I felt like he was the only one that understood me.
I still do love him, you know?
He's got the most genuine heart ever.
And I love it. I get emotional.
But, obviously, he has got a drug problem.
And when he is on drugs, he's just a different person.
And when he does take cocaine, he is very paranoid,
his, like, psychosis...
He'd hit me, and then he'd step back, and he'd hit me again
to teach me a lesson.
That's what he always says, to teach me a lesson.
[tense music continues]
Sorry, I have no words for that.
And to hit her to teach her a lesson, not just once, but over and over.
What sort of a man does that?
You know, he says, you know, "I'll buy you everything you want."
But I don't care about the money,
I like sort of just want like a healthy relationship.
I mean, like 90% of the time, he treats me well.
It's just when, it's just literally the drugs, that's it.
And his anger problems.
He has got anger issues, as well as drug issues.
[Julie] She's right.
I've seen him switch from towering over me raging,
to it was almost like a light bulb and it would switch off.
He was very much a Jekyll and Hyde.
[Emma] I knew that even though she loved him,
and this was probably the most hardest thing she'd ever done,
but she was so brave to speak out and tell the truth,
and just be honest about what was really going on.
[Julie] It was heartbreaking to see it and to watch it.
But I'm very proud of the fact that she did get her chance
to tell her story properly.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] A few hours later, detectives question Mitchell Richardson.
[officer] You've been arrested on suspicion of assault.
I thought to myself,
"She's obviously going off to sleep with someone."
And I was high and [beep] up at the time.
Sorry, just seeing that man's face.
Did you say you'll stab her?
No, I didn't say I'll stab my girlfriend.
-[officer] Sure? -Yes, I'm sure.
[officer] And you didn't say you'd stab anyone that comes through the door?
No, I just wanted to die, mate, to be honest with you.
I'll be honest with you, I wanted to [beep] die.
I wanted to take an overdose and die. I'd had enough of life, everything.
[tense music continues]
I still wanna die right now.
You know, you let me out, I'm gonna [beep] kill myself.
We'd have a perfect relationship if there was no cocaine in my system.
If we're sober, we're amazing together.
[tense music continues]
I love her so much.
[Julie] He's beaten her, he's held her overnight,
he's tortured her, he's strangled her,
he's cut her lip, and there is no remorse.
All he's thinking about there is himself,
that I haven't heard one thing where he's said,
"I'm sorry, I know I've done wrong. How is she?"
There's no concern about Katie whatsoever.
It's all about him and what's happening to him.
Just to see his face,
and to see the smirk on his face just makes me so angry.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] In court, Richardson pleads guilty
to causing criminal damage, resisting arrest,
and two counts of assault.
He will be sentenced six weeks later.
Despite previously breaching his bail conditions,
he is, again, released on bail.
[Sue] I can't see why he was given bail.
I don't understand why he was given bail.
If he was dangerous,
he should have just been held on remand.
I was always worried that Mitchell would have a hold over her,
but he had a sentence hearing not long after,
and he was going to prison.
And so I believe that if we could keep her safe until that point,
then after that, we could help her rebuild her life,
and she would be happy again.
[tense music continues]
[Sue] Julie was very concerned for Katie, very concerned.
She said to me, I'm so worried he's gonna kill her.
And it was one of those throwaway comments.
But you didn't actually think that anything would happen.
[tense music continues]
[suspenseful music playing]
[narrator] For two weeks after the arrest, all seems well.
[Julie] After he'd been released on bail from the court,
we believed that there was a time that they weren't in touch
and Katie was back to her,
or building herself back to her usual self.
She was starting to come back to us.
It was absolutely lovely to see that.
[tense music playing]
[narrator] But after a few weeks, Katie stops taking her mum's calls.
It's a deeply worrying development for the family.
Is Richardson back in her life?
I sent her a message to say, "I am starting to get worried.
You know, we haven't heard properly, haven't seen you for a few days.
Can we meet?"
"Yep, yep, we'll definitely meet, definitely meet."
And she canceled that one.
[tense music continues]
She kept assuring me she was safe.
So we got to Emma's birthday on the 14th,
and she'd still been in touch, but just very small, quick text messages.
[tense music continues]
And I spoke to Emma, and Emma hadn't heard from her.
And that's when at quarter past seven that evening,
the police knocked on the door.
[tense music continues]
And I don't really remember a great deal after that.
I remember bits until Andy picked me up off the floor,
and I remember I could hear this noise, and I've heard people say it before,
and I thought, "Stupid."
I could hear this noise. It was like a howling.
And it was me.
And he picked me up off the floor,
[tense music continues]
and the policeman left.
[tense music continues]
All we were told on that night
was that Katie and Mitchell had been found both dead.
[tense music continues]
[Emma] So this one police officer,
he put his arm out to stop me from entering the flat.
And I just cried, and said, "Is it my sister? Is it my sister?"
And his only answer, at that point, was,
"You need to leave,
because we're about to bring their dead bodies out."
[tense music continues]
Hearing those words just absolutely broke me.
I can't even begin to explain the pain that I felt.
Sorry, I'm gonna get emotional now.
But also the guilt that I felt, because she was my baby sister,
and I was supposed to protect her,
and I promised her that I would look after her,
and that nothing bad would happen to her.
And knowing that I couldn't keep that promise is always just hurt.
[tense music continues]
[Sue] Katie did leave him.
Eventually, she left him.
She did all the right things.
She got her own place,
she said she'd got her panic alarms.
She did everything that she should have done correctly,
but still, somehow, he managed to get to her.
[tense music continues]
[narrator] So what had happened?
Had Katie been killed before Mitchell had taken his own life?
There is a mystery to solve.
[Julie] Very soon afterwards, we were told that this was,
it was drugs overdose.
And when I asked about, What about the domestic violence?
What about the threats to kill? What about all of that?"
They said to me, "Julie, it's drugs.
That's it, that's the end of it, that's what it is, it's drugs."
They did an investigation,
but they did an investigation based on the fact
that it was the drugs that killed my daughter.
[narrator] As the news spreads through the community,
theories emerge as to why the couple might have taken an overdose.
[Julie] What was put on social media about Katie and Mitchell
was that it had been a "Romeo and Juliet" scenario
where they had been told by the police that they had to stay apart.
Mitchell was on bail.
They weren't allowed to spend time together.
So they decided, in their wisdom, to take their own lives.
Can you imagine how that felt?
How my daughters felt knowing the extent of how much he'd beaten her,
how much he'd hurt her,
how brave it was of her to leave in the first place.
It was heartbreaking.
[tense music continues]
[Emma] There's never been one point that I've ever felt
that it was a suicide pact, or that she chose to die with him.
Knowing my sister my whole life,
it's just never something that she would do.
Katie had left him.
She was trying to start a new life without him,
you know, she was looking to the future,
she was starting to be Katie again, and she didn't want to die.
That was not what she wanted.
[Sue] Katie would never have done it.
She would never have left Julie.
She would never have left Emma, or her sisters.
She just wouldn't have done it.
She had too much to live for.
[tense music playing]
[narrator] Katie's family don't believe that she died of an accidental overdose.
They suspect Richardson played a part in her death.
Just a few weeks earlier,
he had threatened to kill her with drugs, and we would never prove it.
And a few weeks later, they're both found side by side
in the exact manner that he told me he would do it.
In Katie's own interview, with her own words,
tells how Mitchell has told her he will kill her.
I thought I was going to die, basically.
And I thought he could do it.
I don't believe in coincidences.
[narrator] A coroner holds a joint inquest.
She concludes that both Katie and Mitchell died
from an overdose of cocaine and morphine.
But the coroner is unable to determine how and why they took the drugs.
So Katie's family begin a campaign
demanding that the authorities hold a domestic homicide review.
[Emma] So a domestic homicide review is
when agencies come together to review what happened
up until the point of death,
to see whether lessons can be learned,
and to see what went wrong,
and to make recommendations for the future.
[narrator] Such a review can only take place
when a death appears to have resulted from violence, abuse, or neglect
by a person to whom the deceased was either related
or had been in an intimate personal relationship with.
It's a codified part of the justice system.
Over the next two years,
the family's request for a domestic homicide review
is rejected three times.
It was extremely difficult to get a domestic homicide review,
because, at the time, they didn't see it as a murder,
and therefore told us that we didn't fit the criteria.
[narrator] But in December 2020,
a domestic homicide review is finally granted.
[tense music playing]
[Sue] For Julie to get the domestic homicide review was extremely difficult.
But she really did come out fighting for this.
And yeah, she was amazing, absolutely amazing.
So proud of her.
It just meant that finally people were acknowledging
that Katie died, and had been a victim of domestic abuse,
that might not have caused her actual physical heart to stop,
but she was a victim of domestic abuse.
[narrator] Katie's family is still waiting
for the outcome of the review into her case.
[Sue] It was getting somebody, the authorities,
to recognize that this hadn't simply been a drug death,
that there was something more to this,
and that it warranted being looked into.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Julie] My theory on Katie's death is that Mitchell knew he had lost control of her.
She'd left him.
And I think that, in the last week or two before her death,
he started to woo her again,
and started to get to see her again.
And I believe he planned to take my daughter's life,
and to kill himself.
[Emma] He was due to be sentenced only a couple of weeks later,
and knowing his previous criminal record
for violence against both men and women,
he was gonna go to prison for a long time.
And I believe he decided that he would rather die
and take her with her than face prison.
[Rebecca] I think the only two people that are gonna know
what happened that night are Katie and Mitchell.
We can speculate, we can assume.
You look at Mitchell's track record, you look at Katie's,
and I think there is a clear sign of what actually took place there.
But will it ever be proved?
[tense music playing]
I come back here
because this is the place that we sent Katie to the stars.
She was too young to go into a box in a dark hole in the ground.
So we put her ashes into fireworks,
and sent them off from the headland here.
So she'll travel the world around in the sea.
I bring these flowers because they're called baby's breath.
Katie was my baby.
So these flowers are for her.
[somber music playing]
Katie dying will never, there'll never be a reason,
it'll never be a good thing.
But if we tell her story,
and one woman listens and gets out,
that's a legacy. And that means that she'll live on.
There is a pattern for women out there, and if we can only recognize it,
I think we could intervene much sooner.
And if I had been aware of this, and been able to pick up the signs,
then maybe we could have intervened.
I've said it over and over, she was 21,
beautiful, young, loved, good job, hardworking.
If it can happen to Katie, it can happen to anybody.
[somber music continues]
[Emma] I miss everything about my little sister.
She really was my best friend.
So I feel like she lost her life far too early,
and she had so much to give in this world,
and there were so many things that she still wanted to do.
And knowing she'll never get the chance to do that,
just, yeah, it's really sad.
She was just on the cusp of adulthood,
and all the things that, you know, we've all experienced.
And she'll never have that.
She'll never get married, she'll never have children,
she'll never have that. It's all just been taken off her.
Do I hate Mitchell?
No, because I'm not gonna waste an amount of energy on him.
But I do hate what he did to my daughter when she was alive.
[somber music continues]
[exhaling]
Do I think Katie would still be alive if she hadn't met Mitchell?
Yes, absolutely.
[somber music continues]
I wish more than anything that I could turn back time,
and stop that initial meeting,
because then I'd still have my baby sister here.
[somber music continues]
[dramatic music playing]