Murder framed as suicide: How a killer’s lies were exposed

When the sleepy, close-knit community of Tynan in County Armagh heard of the suicide of Katie Simpson, the village was shocked. 

A ‘rising star’ in the equestrian community, Katie was known for her bubbly, happy personality and sparky sense of humour. A fearless rider and dedicated worker, she took on multiple jobs in stables so she could pursue her dream of saving £10,000 to buy her own horse. 

Katie was just 21 when Jonathan Cresswell, her sister Christina’s partner, took her to Derry’s Altnagelvin Hospital in August 2020 and told medics she’d attempted suicide.

Jonathan later said to police that he’d found Katie at her home, so quickly put her in his car and called 999. En route to the hospital, they pair were met by an ambulance, which took Katie the rest of the way.

It later emerged that her phone was missing – claimed to have been lost when Cresswell gave her CPR – and her body was covered with bruises across her legs, inner thighs, shoulder and arms. 

Tragically, Katie died in hospital six days later.

Despite uniformed officers’ concerns that the death could be suspicious were overlooked by their seniors. The fact that she did not fit the profile of a suicidal individual was also dismissed and the Police Service of Northern Ireland logged her death as such.

Jonathan Creswell was a charismatic, well-connected showman, and talented rider. Many in the equestrian community respected him as an upstanding member of society, but local journalist and friend of Katie, Tanya Fowles, was immediately suspicious. 

Speaking on the soon-to-be released Sky documentary Death of A Showjumper, she recalls: ‘That man, Jonathan Cresswell, his name jumped out. I had a memory of being arrested in 2009 for attacking his then-girlfriend.

‘Everyone loved Johnny. He had some sort of magnetic charm; he could make people laugh and put them at ease… When I heard Katie was in hospital, I thought Creswell had something to do with it.’

However, even though she contacted the police in Derry with her concerns, Tanya was dismissed more than once.

“You’re nothing but a curtain twitcher, go back to your life. Leave it alone,” she remembers being told by a police officer.

It was when she spotted Cresswell smiling into the grave at Katie’s funeral that Tanya’s feelings were compounded, and she contacted Detective Sergeant James Brannigan, an experienced officer of 20 years who worked in the County Armagh Major Investigation Team.

Tanya had seen his success in solving the murder of Charlotte Murray, whose former fiancée had killed her in 2012, and asked for help. 

‘When you look at it at a macro level, there was a semi-naked girl in a car covered in bruises, and the driver of the car – a guy with serious offences for violence against women – says she’s hanged herself. You have to ask questions,’ James explains to Metro over Zoom.

‘I worked on my own for three days, meeting different people, looking at the autopsy photographs and getting a picture of who this guy was. Her family and friends needed these things answered: How did she do this? How did he get her down? How did he get her into the car? And where was her phone?’

James stayed up until 3am writing a nine-page report which he took to his seniors. However, like Tanya, he was dismissed. 

However, knowing that Katie had bought some expensive new boots, was excited about riding events coming up and was prank-calling friends a week before she died, James was not satisfied with the PSNI’s unwillingness to investigate further.

So when a member of the public reported that Katie had an unnamed boyfriend that the police didn’t know about, he went to meet him. The boyfriend handed James his phone and, reading through their messages, he came to see how scared Katie was of Creswell, and that she didn’t want him to find out about her new relationship.

James explains: ‘The text messages are just nice; wholesome between a young couple. Then, after they spent their first night together…The texts changed. He asked Katie why she needed to lie to Jonathan [about the relationship], that he wasn’t going to kill her. Little did he know, that was the fear Katie had.’

Seven months after Katie had died that James finally got the evidence he needed.

Initially, internal swabs taken from Katie’s body had not been not tested. But when, months later, a postmortem analysis came back showing Crewswell’s semen inside her body alongside vaginal injuries, James was shocked and sickened. Finally, he could arrest Cresswell for the rape and murder of Katie. 

‘When we went into the house and arrested him in March 2021, he wasn’t expecting it. You had the crocodile tears coming and when we asked where his phone was, he said he lost it. You just knew this f***** was lying,’ James remembers. 

Creswell was taken in for questioning, where he immediately tried to take charge of the process with ‘shocking and sickening’ statements, where claimed to have been in a relationship with Katie and they’d even had sex in the bedroom while his partner [Katie’s sister Christina] was next door.

‘He was saying that [just before her death] they’d been to have sex at a beauty spot and then on the bonnet of the car… He was trying to control the interview,’ James explains.

But there were two lies that proved to be Creswell’s downfall. One was to do with how he said he’d found Katie’s body at her home, which James was quickly able to disprove.

The second related to Katie’s phone – Creswell had claimed it was lost on the side of the road when he was driving her to the hospital. However, data analysis showed that in the minutes the killer had claimed to have been performing CPR on Katie, he’d actually been setting up flight mode so the phone could not be traced, before throwing it into a field. 

In April last year, Jonathan Creswell appeared at Londonderry Crown Court where he pled not guilty to the rape and murder of Katie. ‘His barristers were telling him to plead guilty. But he wanted to push it. He wanted to control the narrative,’ recalls James.

The following day, the detective received the news that Jonathan had been found dead at his home.  

‘I thought, “You bastard”. And I felt extreme anger. On the first day of the trial, we heard all the evidence against him, and it was hard to listen to. This was Katie’s voice, and he’d denied her that,’ he remembers. 

‘She wasn’t going to be heard and he’d escaped justice. He should be still alive, spending his time in prison with people knowing what he did. But this isn’t about him or me, it’s about what happened to Katie.’

Last November, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland found that the initial police investigation into Katie’s death was ‘flawed’ and had ‘failed the Simpson family’.

In a statement, PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Davy Beck, said: ‘I acknowledge that there were shortcomings in various stages of the investigation into Katie’s death and I unreservedly apologise for this. It is clear that we were not rigorous enough in our pursuit of all potential lines of inquiry, and we did not act quickly enough in responding to some of the concerns that were raised around Katie’s death.’ 

After the aborted trial, James realised he could no longer work for the police, and he handed in his badge in April. He is now setting up an organisation that he hopes will prevent abusers and other criminals from framing murder as suicide. 

‘The charity will consist of retired detectives, family liaison officers and police search advisors, and will replicate what I did in the first two weeks of the Katie Simpson incident, do a report where there’s questions outstanding, go to the police and say these questions need answering.’ 

Launching this month, James hopes they will not only answer loved ones’ questions when no foul play is likely, but also, more importantly, get justice for the voiceless when necessary. 

‘With the growth in hidden homicides, the reduction in police budgets and numbers, there is fertile ground for this to happen over and over again, especially in Northern Ireland which has one of the highest rate of domestic murders in Western Europe, he says, adding, ‘this work is needed and it will protect women from dangerous men.’

Death of A Showjumper will be launching on Sky soon