If looks could kill!
The body language says it all..
Tuesday 29th July 2008
They say the camera never lies. Well, it certainly captured David Kirsch's true colours that day. Have a look for yourself at the photo.
That picture was taken in June 2006. It was my mate Tasha's birthday, and we'd gone to The Spotted Cow pub in Larkfield, where Mum, Julie Butler, 48, was landlady. We'd dressed as St Trinian's girls and were looking forward to a great night. Only it wasn't. David, 42, my mum's boyfriend of three months, made sure of that. Can you see the way he's talking to her in that photo? That's Mum in the white top, taking the abuse. He looks so aggressive, doesn't he? Leaning forward, eyeballing Mum.
'The girls want me to go into town with them,' I heard Mum say.
'Well, you're not,' David hissed.
So Mum didn't come with us that night. It broke my heart. I was used to seeing her wade
into punch-ups between big, burly men and drag them apart.
'Respect me! Respect my pub!' she'd shout. So why was she acting so feeble with David?
I'll never forget the first time I met him. Mum and David were just friends at the time.
My boyfriend, Jim Lawson, 26, and I had organised a babysitter for our boys, Joshua, 3, and
18-month-old Lennon, and popped into the pub. David was steaming drunk, dancing round the tables.
'What a nutter,' I said to Mum.
'He's harmless,' she laughed.
The second time we met, David punched a guitarist from a band Mum had hired. But on our next visit…
'We're a couple,' Mum announced.
'What?' I gasped.
'He's OK,' she insisted. 'He has epilepsy, so he has a few anger issues.'
Since when did epilepsy make it OK to punch people?
'Give him a chance,' Mum begged. 'I love him.'
So I did.
She'd split from my dad, Malcolm Allison, 46, when I was 15, and a second marriage had
only lasted four years. She deserved some happiness and when David moved into the pub, they did seem happy.But then, I started noticing an atmosphere. I lived five miles away, but I often worked shifts for Mum. If David wasn't trying to boss Mum around, he was sitting at the end of the bar, face like thunder. Then, the St Trinian's night made up my mind. David was bad news. After that, things went from bad to worse.
First, David banned Mum's friend, Sharon, from visiting. Then he got drunk and trashed the place.
'Dump him,' I begged Mum.
'Stay out of it,' she warned.
Then, in June 2007, when they'd been together 15 months, the brewery sold the pub and Mum was relocated.
'I'm going to The Imperial Standard in Aldershot, Hampshire,' she sighed.
'No!' I gasped. Aldershot was 65 miles away. How was I going to keep an eye on her?
In those following weeks, Mum often phoned, and I could hear sadness in her voice.
'What's wrong?' I asked.
'It's him,' she said. 'He got drunk again last night. But I can deal with it.'
Could she? I wasn't so sure. They'd been in Aldershot for two months, when she phoned in tears.
'He grabbed me by the throat,' Mum admitted tearfully.
Earlier that evening, David had helped himself to cash from the till. When she'd tried to intervene, he'd almost throttled her.
'Call the police!' I gasped.
'I can't,' she sobbed.
'Well if you can't, I will,' I snapped.
I dialled 999, but Mum turned the police away.
I was baffled. Where was the strong, feisty Mum I knew?
When she visited, two weeks later, I realised that woman was gone.
'You know I love you, don't you?' she kept saying, over and over.
Mum was never slushy. What was wrong with her?
'You OK?' I asked.
Mum shook her head.
'I don't want to go back to him,' she sighed, voice trembling.
'Then don't,' I said.
'I have to,' she replied.
As David pulled up outside, I watched Mum run to the car and I felt frightened. How could I help her if she wasn't prepared to help herself?
Half-term was a few weeks away, so I planned to visit Mum with the boys.
'I'll persuade her to dump David,' I told Jim.
I counted down the days, and as the time for my visit grew nearer, I rang her mobile to check a few details, but she didn't answer. I tried Monday, Tuesday and now, it was Wednesday evening. There was no landline at the pub, and David's phone was going through to voicemail. That night, I turned in early. But as I drifted off, my mind was whirring.
Was Mum in trouble?
Suddenly, Jim's voice jerked me awake.
'Charlotte!' he called up the stairs.
Bleary-eyed, I glanced at the clock. 11.15pm.
Scrambling out of bed, I stumbled down the stairs. Jim was standing in the living room with two police officers.
'W-what's wrong?' I spluttered,
'There's no easy way of telling you this…' one officer began. 'Your mum's been murdered.'
'No,' I shook my head. 'You've got the wrong person.'
'I'm afraid not,' he insisted.
As he explained that Mum had been found in The Imperial Standard, I started to scream.
'We've arrested her boyfriend, David Kirsch,' he added.
'I knew he'd hurt her!' I shrieked.
After about five hours, the tears stopped and calmness descended. I was ready to hear the details. So, the following morning, I went to the police station.
'Your mum died in the early hours of Monday,' a female officer told me. 'Her body was found on Wednesday by the pub's area manager.'
I listened in horror as she revealed that David had strangled Mum in the bar, before beating her with a stool and dragging her body into the toilets.
'He covered her face in bar towels,' she revealed.
He'd left my beautiful mum to rot in a stinking toilet?
'They found notes from David, confessing to the murder,' the officer continued.
After the police had sealed off the pub, David arrived, holding a craft knife to his own throat. Officers arrested him. Horrendous. But nothing compared to the following day,
when I walked into Winchester Hospital's morgue, and saw Mum dead on that cold, grey slab.
A sheet covered her body and the left side of her face.
'It's too distressing to see,' the doctors warned.
'Oh, Mum,' I sobbed. 'How could he do this to you?'
I couldn't bring myself to touch her. Instead, I fled, overwhelmed with hatred for David Kirsch.
Back at home, I waited for news.
'The murder was caught on CCTV,' the police told me a few days on.
As evidence, we couldn't ask for more. But to think there was a film of Mum dying made me feel sick.
Two weeks after her murder, I travelled to The Imperial Standard with Jim's nan, Ann Wilkins, to collect Mum's belongings. The police liaison officer and the brewery owner were there to greet us. It took us all morning to pack everything away.
'Would you like some time alone?' the brewery owner asked afterwards.
I nodded. I needed to see where Mum had died. They hadn't told me the exact spot, but I knew she'd been dragged into the toilets. So, bracing myself, I peered into the ladies and gents. Imagining her lying on those cold tiles was too much. I collapsed at a table and sobbed.
On 14 December, two months after Mum died, her body was released. Regulars from her pubs packed into St Stephen's Church, in Chatham. Everyone who spoke to me said the same thing.
'We just can't believe it. Your mum was such a wonderful woman.'
Their words were a comfort, but only one thing would really help me move on. Justice.
While I waited for the court case, I learned more details.
'Kirsch has also been charged with two counts of sex acts with a corpse,' a police liaison officer revealed.
'No!' I gasped, distraught.
'It was caught on CCTV,' she said.
She wouldn't tell me the nature of the sex acts, and I didn't want to know. David was nothing more than a sick, twisted animal.
'The CCTV footage is going to be played in court,' the officer warned me.
'You're joking!' I gasped, sickened.
'It's evidence,' she explained.
I tried to imagine the court watching Mum's murder. All it needed was popcorn and it would be just like horror night at the movies. Hadn't I been through enough?
I thought long and hard about the CCTV evidence and, when I walked into Winchester Crown Court, in May this year, I'd made a decision.
'I'm going to watch it,' I told Jim.
I don't know why. I guess I just wanted to feel close to Mum again, to know exactly what she'd gone through in those final moments.So I took my seat in court, and watched David being led in. He was pleading not guilty to the murder charge. How did he think he was going to get away with it?
I thought I knew all the details, but I was wrong.The police had forgotten to tell me that David had stripped off Mum's bloody clothes and put them in the washing machine. Once he'd
dressed her in fresh clothes, the CCTV film captured him kissing her on the lips.
The intimacy made my stomach turn. The court heard how he'd covered her face with bar towels, before stealing money from the till to drink and gamble in other local pubs. I could tell the jury were just as horrified as me. And when the prosecution announced they were
going to show the CCTV footage, everyone's faces fell.
Suddenly, David's head whipped round and he stared at me.
'No!' he shrieked. 'Don't watch it, Charlotte!'
I looked away.
'Please don't let her watch it!' he screamed.
The judge ignored him, as the image flickered onto the screen. Mum was locking up. David was standing by the bar. There was no sound, but you could tell from their body language that they were arguing.
'Oh, Mum,' I gasped. I wanted to warn her. To scream: 'Run!'
Instead, I watched helplessly, as Mum pointed angrily at the door.
We'd heard from David's evidence what she was saying…
'I don't love you any more!' she was shouting. 'I want you to leave!'
My brave mum had finally stood up to him. David lunged, clamping his hand round her throat. He lifted her up, smashed her against the bar, then threw her to the floor. Next, David straddled her and squeezed her throat. I watched her struggle, her arms flailing, then she went limp. But she wasn't dead. Not yet. It made the next few minutes all the harder to watch. David could have called an ambulance and saved Mum's life. Instead, he punched her. The whole court gasped as he then picked up a bar stool and smashed it into her face. Once, twice…
'Please, no!' I sobbed.
Then David took off his T-shirt and lay it over Mum's face. Did he think she was dead? Surely not. You could still see her breathing. He turned out the lights and walked out of view. After five minutes, he came back, rolled up the T-shirt and held it over her face. Finally, her chest fell still. Mum was dead. The video lasted 21 minutes, but it'll be with me for life.
Over the following days, David's defence revealed the incident had started when Mum accused David of flirting with a customer, and that David had drunk six Jack Daniels and four pints of lager that night. The note he'd left at the scene was read out.I don't know what I've done, but I don't deserve to live… I let everyone down.
When the trial ended, it took the jury nine hours to find David guilty of murder. The judge sentenced him to life, with a minimum of 19 years. Justice, of sorts. The jury was never told about the two charges of sex acts with a corpse. The judge returned not guilty verdicts on these counts, because David had been found guilty of the more serious offence of murder.
It doesn't make sense to me, but then, none of this makes sense.
Why did Mum let him into her life? I'll never understand. Her death has torn my family apart. Jim and I have split and my sons are undergoing grief counselling. All I can do now is send out a plea to victims of domestic abuse. Get help, before it's too late. I only wish Mum had.