My twin brother was murdered – 16 years later I met his killer

Nick Dawson struggles to think back to his idyllic childhood growing up in the Lake District.

He and identical twin brother Simon lived with their parents and older brother, Richard, in the tiny village of Branthwaite, near Workington, in a house with an enormous garden populated by a cockerel and brood of hens.

With no shops or public transport in the village, the pair were each other’s world. They would spend their days barrelling through the fields, paddling in rivers, or loading a tent onto the back of their bikes so they could cycle to the lakes and camp on the banks of Ullswater or Buttermere.

’It was a wonderful, happy childhood,’ Nick, 56, tells Metro, a day after returning to Cumbria from his home in Weybridge, Surrey. He went there to visit his brother’s grave.

Three weeks after their 30th birthday, Simon  – who was  ‘funny, smiling with a big heart and beautiful soul’ in Nick’s words – was murdered on August 29, 1998. He had gone out with friends to a nightclub in Bromborough, near his hometown of Birkenhead, before leaving alone.

Walking through a park, Simon was robbed and brutally beaten by two young men who stamped on him, kicked him unconscious and threw him in a nearby pond where he drowned.

When Nick received the news, he remembers feeling ‘as if I was floating about the room, just watching the chaos unfold. It was this thick fog of grief and loss and horror.’

After the police officer spoke to his parents, Nick’s mum Joan ran into Simon’s bedroom, shut herself in his wardrobe and smothered herself in his clothes. As the news settled in, their father, David, would walk through the neighbourhood in the early hours, howling and sobbing.

The police discouraged Nick from seeing his brother in the mortuary, but he insisted, ‘he needed to believe it’.

It was raining hard on the day in early September when he went to see his twin. He remembers him black and blue, covered in cuts and freezing cold. ‘It was like looking at myself dead,’ Nick recalls. 

He threw himself into assisting the police investigation, carrying out press and TV interviews and taking part in a Crimewatch reconstruction where Nick retraced Simon’s last steps to jog the public memory. It was a success; the killers were arrested within days.

Craig Roberts and Carl Harrison were tried and convicted at Liverpool Crown Court in July 1999 and both received life sentences. Career criminal Craig had been inside for a range of offences including violence, burglary, grievous bodily harm and stealing cars, and had just been released from prison when, aged just 16 he killed Simon. Carl was 19 and a father.

Moving on without Simon hollowed out the family. Nick’s personality changed; he became withdrawn, less confident. The convictions provided no real closure – the family were left to get on with their lives, heartbroken and bereft. But things changed in 2012 when Craig was up for parole and Nick went along for the hearing.

He wanted to be Simon’s voice, delivering an impact statement that would drive home to his killer what he had done. He was also curious about whether he felt any remorse. At the hearing, Nick was shocked to see someone clearly deeply ashamed of what he had done.

Craig wasn’t permitted to speak, but two years later, he got in touch with the family, via his probation officer, to request contact. He wanted to instigate the restorative justice process, a system which focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims.

David, Joan and Richard weren’t interested but Nick was keen and they supported him. ‘I wanted to connect with Craig partly because I wanted to connect back with Simon in his last few moments of life. I was so shocked at my response when I saw Craig in that parole hearing, how I wanted to help him. It sounds really bizarre, but I felt sorry for him,’ he explains.

‘At first I didn’t think about the fact that I was an identical twin but then I realised he’s going to be meeting a living version of the person he murdered.’

The lead-up to the meeting was nerve-racking for Nick. He had questions, but he was terrified that Craig would be blasé, or say something to intensify his pain. He was also worried about what Simon would have thought.

 ‘Would my brother think I was betraying him by meeting his killer?’ he wonders. ‘I wanted to know about Craig and to get that insight into the last few moments of my brother’s life. I remember telling my mum that I was not going to tell her what I was going to learn in that meeting, because it’d be too painful for her. But it was important for me to know what was the last thing my brother said.’

The meeting in 2015 took months of planning. Nick had stated that he didn’t want to shake Craig’s hand, and officials had to ensure everything ran smoothly; working out who would arrive first, who would sit where and where attendees would go if it got too much.

As well as Nick and his wife Julie, a probation officer, victim liaison officer, a prison officer, two restorative justice facilitators and an independent observer were there with Craig at the meeting in the chapel at HMP Woodhill, near Milton Keynes.

Nick was the first to speak. ‘I’m not here to forgive you’, he told Craig as he sat down. Instead, he showed him photographs; of the twins’ 30th birthday, of the funeral and gravesite, and told him of his grief and loss. Then started asking questions about the last day of Simon’s life.

‘Craig was incredibly honest with me. I think he wanted to help. It was 17 years after the murder; an awful long time since the trial when I saw him as an evil monster. He had become a human being who wanted to face up to what he had done,’ remembers Nick.

‘He came across initially as quite ashamed and struggled to look at me. He was scared. My wife and I both saw a man who was desperately sorry for what he did.

‘While naturally it was tremendously difficult to hear the details of my brother’s murder, I appreciated that Craig had given me what I wanted, and not held back.’

It was a transformational moment for Nick, who had written in his diary on the day of the conviction that he hoped Craig would ‘rot in hell’ and never again see the light of day.

‘When he’d been put away. I never for a minute thought that I’d entertain even a conversation, let alone an apology. But when he expressed his deep regret, shame and sorrow, that was definitely a very big moment.

I also got to understand what had happened, from the way he talked about his childhood, which was horrific. He came from divorce, violence, abuse and foster care. All kinds of things had happened that made him a damaged young man who’d been taught that violence was the way – and that helped me. He had no role models, his father was an alcoholic, he fell into the wrong crowd and started a life of crime at the age of 11 that ended in murder at 16.

‘It’s not an excuse for what he did, because he still chose to do it. But for me, I was very lucky to be able to go through restorative justice, because many people may not get to that place.’

Craig is now doing ‘well’ according to Nick, and is on the straight and narrow. Meanwhile Carl will soon be eligible for parole, which Nick is ready for. He has no desire to meet him, but also feels no malice – the meeting with Craig was enough to answer all his questions.

‘Carl and Craig have done their time. Even though it hurts me to know that they will both be free, they can’t spend their lives in prison,’ he explains.

These days, Nick is living his life in Simon’s memory. He took early retirement and has visited around 50 prisons, speaking to hundreds of offenders, sharing his story to help them understand the ripple effect of crime and showing them that understanding, acceptance and connection are possible on both sides. 

Managing the loss is, of course, still a struggle. A few years ago out of curiosity he looked up Craig on Facebook and was shocked to see photos of him happy with his family, living his life.

‘It made me really upset and angry. It took me back to the point where he took that away from my brother. They didn’t give him mercy. They killed him when he was begging for them to stop,’ he remembers.

‘The anger and upset never ends, so it’s about finding meaning for what’s happened; trying to find acceptance and understanding. Does that journey ultimately mean that I get to the point where I actually shake Craig’s hand and say, “I forgive you”? I don’t know.

‘For me, it’s about trying to process and understand and accept it, and that has taken me a very long time. But I’m in a good place now.’

Face to Face: Finding Justice for my Murdered Twin Brother, By Nick Dawson, will be released on 3 July