Rapist-murderer showed chilling sign of evil after carrying victim's coffin to grave

Tanya Fowles watched showjumper Katie Simpson evolve from a happy little girl into an impressive equestrian star.

A close friend of her neighbour’s daughter, Katie was just 10 when Tanya first met her.

“She was always clowning about, giggling, she had this infectious laugh, even if you were in another room, and she’d start giggling, you would be too," she recalls.

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This made Katie’s death on August 9, 2021, aged just 21 - apparently by suicide - particularly hard for Tanya to accept.

In fact, the award-winning journalist refused to accept it and, thanks to her dogged fight for justice, Jonathan Creswell - a showjumper-turned trainer - was put on trial for Katie’s rape and murder, which he denied.

But he took his own life in April 2024, the day after his trial started.

in an exclusive interview, ahead of a three-part Sky documentary series, Death of a Showjumper, which starts on Sunday (Sept 7), Tanya says: "Katie at 21, lying in a grave in her riding gear - that tears me up, knowing that her secrets were put into the grave with her.”

Tanya, who is based in County Armagh, also held the police to account for failing to investigate Creswell immediately. The partner of Katie’s sister Christina, he had a history of coercive control and violence against women.

It was Monday, August 3, 2021, when Tanya received a call saying Katie - who she had lost contact with, but whose career she followed - was in intensive care after a suspected suicide attempt.

She says: “Then somebody mentioned that, as a court reporter, I would know the man who found Katie, as he had once threatened to drop his partner in a bath of bleach.”

Tanya remembered around 10 years earlier sitting in Dungannon Crown Court as Creswell, then a 22-year-old showjumper, was jailed for six months after admitting he had assaulted his former girlfriend, Abigail Lyle, who had been choked until she passed out, but survived.

"It was such a horrific case that I remembered him clearly," says Tanya.

Now Creswell was claiming he’d rescued Katie after finding her at the home she shared with him, Christina and their two children in County Londonderry. He said he’d put Katie - who worked at the couple’s stables - in the car, then set off for Altnaegelvin Hospital, where she died six days later without regaining consciousness.

Chilled by the similarities to the Abigail Lyle case, Tanya called Londonderry police.

She says: “I got the sergeant who took a lot of details and Creswell's previous record, and he said, ’I'll have the investigating officer phone you.’ But no call came.”

The next day, she called back and repeated everything to a different officer, but when she said she’d covered his court case, she was referred to the press office.

Despite eventually being told the investigating officer would call her, they didn’t.

“The next day, I called back and was told, ‘Leave it alone,’” she says.

At Katie’s funeral, Tanya was horrified to see Creswell helping to carry her coffin.

She says: “He moved to the very edge of the grave and looked in and he just looked up and broke into the most sinister smile. Then he strode back up the graveyard and proclaimed, ‘okay, fellas, who's for the pub?’ It was all wrong.”

Determined to get justice, Tanya contacted a detective she knew from a domestic abuse case she had covered in County Armagh and asked for his help.

Detective Sergeant James Brannigan, who also features in the documentary, spoke to Londonderry police, who said Katie had tried to take her life once before, a week earlier.

But checks of the police log by the now retired detective revealed police had wrongly logged the same incident twice - once when she was admitted to hospital and again when she died.

He says: “I couldn't put the genie back in the bottle.”

Sharing his discovery with Tanya, the pair then began a cloak and dagger investigation of their own.

DS Brannigan accessed Katie’s autopsy photographs. They showed a significant amount of bruising, which had been attributed to a fall from a horse in the days before she was hospitalised.

But it became clear a horse could not have caused her injuries and, eventually, an official police murder investigation was launched.

Creswell maintained that he returned home to find Katie after a suicide attempt and drove her part-way to the hospital, before she was transferred to an ambulance. He told paramedics and two police officers who had responded to a request for assistance from the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS), that she had attempted to take her own life.

Creswell said he stopped the car and was on the phone with a paramedic giving her CPR.

There was a phone recording sounding like he was doing chest compressions, but this was proved untrue and in March 2021 he was arrested in connection with Katie’s murder.

Tanya says: “I broke down in floods of tears when he was arrested and, equally, I broke down hearing him doing chest compressions, when it was played in court, which he wasn't doing. To hear that child's life was slipping away."

After his arrest, Creswell told police he had been in a sexual relationship with Katie for four years.

Text records showed that Katie had begun a new relationship and Creswell had found out.

Before his trial began, three women friends of Creswell pleaded guilty to charges connected to his offences.

Hayley Robb was convicted of withholding information and perverting the course of justice; Jill Robinson was convicted of perverting the course of justice; Rose De Montmorency-Wright was convicted of withholding information.

At their sentencing, the judge described Creswell as “a skilled and predatory abuser who regarded women under his influence as simply there to be used and abused for his own ends, including his sexual gratification.” He added that without Creswell’s “agency and control” none of them “would ever have stood in a dock.”

The police ombudsman later recommended misconduct proceedings in relation to six officers. Assistant Chief Constable Davy Beck said: “We did not act quickly enough in responding to some of the concerns that were raised around Katie's death.”

But Creswell’s suicide has left many unanswered questions surrounding Katie’s death.

And Tanya fears that her investigations still haven’t done enough.

She says: "People need to be afraid to injure any victim in a domestic situation."

*New Sky Original documentary, Death of a Showjumper will launch on Sky and streaming service NOW on 7 September