A grieving father has pleaded with his daughter’s killer to reveal the truth about her speedboat death on the eve of his prison release.
Graham Brown has never believed Jack Shepherd‘s story that his daughter Charlotte had taken the controls of the vessel shortly before it crashed.
Mr Brown, 60, told Sky News: “Shepherd has never said what really happened that night. And what he has said conflicts with what we know did happen and what came out in the trial.
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“The pure fact that he took my daughter out on a dodgy speedboat at 10 o’clock at night, without lifejackets, on a very dangerous stretch of the River Thames and accelerated up to 30 knots, and then to turn around and say, it was her fault…”
Shepherd, 35, is expected to be freed automatically from jail next month after completing half of his 10-year sentence for Charlotte’s manslaughter and a separate, unrelated assault in a pub.
He has said in the past he did not believe he bore responsibility for Charlotte’s death in December 2015, claiming it was “ultimately her action” that caused the tragedy.
Mr Brown said: “My daughter would not have been driving that boat. In my own mind, I’m fairly confident that she thought it was just going to meander, turn around, and go back.
“She would have had no idea what he was going to do. She would have been absolutely terrified.”
Charlotte, 24, had met Shepherd on a dating app and he had wined and dined her at a Shard restaurant near London Bridge before taking her for a late-night ride along the Thames on his defective speedboat in December 2015.
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It was their first date.
The speeding boat hit a submerged tree, overturned and flung them both into the water.
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They were rescued, but Charlotte was unconscious and later died, while Shepherd survived.
Shepherd, a serial womaniser who had given rides to other women, told police they had drunk champagne and Charlotte had taken over the controls just before the collision near Wandsworth Bridge.
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After being charged with manslaughter by gross negligence, Shepherd fled the UK for Georgia, the former soviet state, but was sentenced in his absence to six years in jail.
He gave himself up to authorities in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, in January 2019 and was extradited and jailed at the Old Bailey in April that year for another four years for an attack on a pub barman in Devon.
Mr Brown, the father of three daughters, said he had no wish to speak to Shepherd on his release, but hoped he would offer a full explanation for what happened on the night Charlotte died.
He said: “I wish he would just be able to tell the truth and state clearly what happened. I feel that he will never do that.”
