In her final moments with her dying son, Sheila Blanco laid her head on his chest and made a vow.
“It was my last promise to him,” she remembers. “I said I would find out what happened at any cost.”
She could hardly imagine how strenuous this task would be – and how difficult it would be to complete it. Because although Sheila has long had a very good idea of what happened in her Cambridge-educated son Mark’s final moments, she has failed to get him the justice she craves.
Seventeen years ago, 30-year-old Mark died in tragic and mysterious circumstances after briefly attending a party in an east London flat hosted by self-proclaimed “literary agent” and drug addict Paul Roundhill.
Also present were singer Pete Doherty, then the notorious drug-addicted on-off boyfriend of model Kate Moss, whom he dated between 2005 and 2007, and a small number of acolytes, including Pete’s “carer” Jonathan Jeannevol, who is well known locally is as “Johnny Headlock”.
CAUGHT ON CAMERA: CCTV footage of Pete Doherty running from the apartment block where Mark Blanco died
Less than a minute after Mark entered the building for the second time – after briefly leaving it – he was found unconscious under a first-floor balcony.
CCTV footage subsequently showed Doherty fleeing the scene with another friend, 19-year-old Kate Russell-Pavier, and Jeannevol, recklessly avoiding Mark’s body.
Two years after Mark lost his life, after an initial botched police investigation, a senior detective tasked with reinvestigating the case admitted that the Met had ruled out an accidental fall or suicide – the latter of which police initially ruled Most likely scenario considered cause of Mark’s death. Leaving aside the unlikely possibility of what the officer called a “deliberate jump not intended to cause harm,” all that remains is a criminal act on the part of others present that night.
Sheila, like many others, was always convinced that Mark was pushed off the balcony. To prove this, she compiled many dossiers of evidence, knocked on doors and wrote letter after letter: to police commissioners, MPs, the mayor of London. She also hired independent experts, spending well over £100,000.
Nothing has worked – until now. In recent months, a Channel 4 film crew has revisited the case for a compelling new documentary in which, alongside an analysis of new CCTV footage, one of the six partygoers present that evening explains for the first time that she too has reason to believe Mark was killed.
Her name is Naomi Stirk and she remembers watching in an “eerie” atmosphere as Paul Roundhill and Jeannevol physically escorted Mark out of the apartment.
“From where I was sitting you could see all the way to the hallway and the kitchen, and there’s a point where I can’t explain where everyone was,” she says. “I don’t know what happened, but I know something terrible happened.”
In another major new statement, Grant Fredericks, an FBI trainer who has analyzed CCTV footage from some of the world’s most high-profile cases, says his new examination of footage of the fall shows that Mark was “thrown over the balcony.” .
Pictured: Kate Moss with Pete Doherty backstage at Glastonbury in 2007
Fredericks used 3D modeling and rear projection, which involves superimposing a new film over the original images to take “a trip back in time.”
“The rear projection clearly shows that there couldn’t have been just one person on the balcony,” he says. “What I would say is that Mark came out and someone took Mark and threw him over the balcony.” If the dimensions and distance are correct, Mark was thrown over the balcony. Mark was murdered.’
Sheila believes both developments will force the Met – which never formally concluded its investigation – to re-interview the witnesses present.
“I always believed that everyone who was in that apartment that night knew what happened,” she says. Sheila is a dignified and composed piano teacher and English teacher for foreign students who is now in her 70s.
In 2007, six months after Mark’s death, Doherty released the single “Lost Art Of Murder” with his group Babyshambles. He brazenly recorded a promotional video for it in Roundhill’s apartment.
Last year he published his autobiography, A Likely Lad, with a chapter about Mark’s death which Sheila said was “rife with inaccuracies” and in which he claimed he fled the scene to protect himself and his teenage girlfriend. He denied knowing how Mark’s body ended up on the ground.
Doherty, 44, lives in France with his singer husband Katia de Vides and their young daughter.
Earlier this year, Sheila threw a poster at one of his performances at the Royal Albert Hall that read: “Pete Doherty, Who Killed My Son?” – the title of the upcoming Channel 4 documentary. She says, “I have to do this so that what happened to Mark doesn’t happen to other people.” Every death like this deserves due process.
“The police really need to be held accountable. Not just for my son, but for everyone who has an unexplained death.”
Pictured: Mark Blanco, actor, with his mother Sheila on graduation day in June 1997
We’re talking at Sheila’s home in Guildford, Surrey, the family home of Mark and his younger sister Emma, now 41 and a classical violinist.
Sheila and her Spanish husband Antonio divorced many years ago but remain good friends. She says: “I think about Mark every day, but I’ve been trying to channel that sadness.” You can sit together and cry or try to do something. And for the first ten years, the adrenaline kept me going.”
She remembers her son being precocious from a young age. “He had this enormous intellect, but also an incredibly soft heart.” As a straight A student, he then studied philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. He worked for investment banker Goldman Sachs, but in his late 20s was living in an East End apartment and had his sights set on becoming an actor.
At the time of his death, Mark was preparing to perform a play entitled Accidental Death Of Anarchist at the East End Theater pub, the George Tavern. Sheila remembers him talking excitedly about it when he visited her the weekend before his death.
“I had no idea this would be the last time I would see him,” she says. It was the attempt to publicize the play that set Mark on a collision course that would lead to his untimely death.
In recent months Mark had become acquainted with Roundhill, whose flat in Whitechapel was a known drug den, although Mark was not looking for drugs when he arrived on Saturday evening, December 2nd.
After hearing from a fellow drinker at The George that Doherty was there, he decided to persuade the singer to attend his play to gain publicity. What is undisputed is that Mark – who had been drinking heavily but had no drugs in his system – quickly became an unwelcome guest upon arrival.
At the subsequent inquest into Mark’s death, Roundhill admitted punching Mark three times in the face, setting his tweed cap on fire and dragging him out of the flat.
CCTV footage shows Mark returning to the building a few minutes later. 58 seconds later he was lying on the ground outside. During this time, a neighbor reported hearing shouts and screams coming from the stairwell just before Mark’s body landed outside his window.
Another 15 seconds passed, after which Doherty, Russell-Pavier and Jeannevol can be seen leaving the area, turning Mark’s bleeding body over. The trio took a taxi to a local hotel, where Doherty trashed his room.
The first thing Sheila knew was when she was woken by a phone call in the early hours of Sunday morning telling her that Mark was in the Royal London Hospital. “I asked the intensive care nurse if he was dying because you don’t call anyone at 3 a.m. unless it’s serious,” she remembers. “And he said, ‘Mark is feeling bad, come as quickly as possible.’ ‘
When she arrived, she found her son lying in his hospital bed with a black eye. “He had this horrible cut on the back of his head that you couldn’t see, but he looked very peaceful,” she says.
Within hours, a neurosurgeon had broken the devastating news to Sheila and Antonio, who had flown in from Spain, that their son’s head injuries were not survivable. “That was terribly difficult,” says Sheila quietly. At the time, she had little idea of the circumstances of Mark’s death other than that he had fallen from a balcony at a party.
But after asking to view the crime scene, she was dismayed to discover that the place was not cordoned off, while a lens of her son’s glasses was lying in the gutter.
FIGHT FOR LIFE: Mark Blanco in the hospital after the tragic events unfolded
“When I pointed it out to the police officer, he almost jokingly offered it to me as a souvenir – ‘Oh, you can have that,'” she says. “It was unfortunate.” “And from that moment on I really felt terrible about the whole investigation.” It was the start of a litany of what Sheila considers to be many failures on the part of the Met.
“The investigating officer at the time called me a few days later and said he had seen CCTV footage and Mark had jumped from the outside edge of the railing. “Well, the railing didn’t have an outer lip – and at that point the CCTV footage hadn’t really been viewed,” she said.
She later discovered that an official police report stated: “The crime scene can be closed.” . There is no indication that this is suspicious.’
The time stamp on the police incident report is just four hours after Doherty was seen leaving the scene.
“From the beginning it was immediately assumed that Mark had committed suicide,” says Sheila. The forensic pathologist Dr. Andrew Reid then “unreservedly” rejected this statement and called on the Met to re-investigate and determine whether there were any questions of criminal liability.
Sheila later lodged a dossier with the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which upheld five of her eight complaints.
In early January 2007, Sheila, Emma and Mark’s closest friends had formed a committee to conduct their own investigation. Little did they know that a few weeks earlier, on Christmas Day, Jeannevol had walked into Bethnal Green police station and confessed to killing Mark.
A few hours later, he retracted his admission, blaming drug use and claiming he didn’t know how Mark ended up on the ground. “His confession was left out of the police report for the coroner,” says Sheila.
The same police report states that in CCTV footage “Mr Blanco appears to be seen jumping from the first floor balcony”.
“You can’t see it,” says Sheila. “It shows Mark falling to the ground and not jumping off.” The coroner recorded the verdict and ordered the police to reopen the investigation.
A Channel 4 film crew has revisited the case for a gripping new documentary revealing new CCTV footage analysis
Two further investigations followed, none of which revealed what happened to Mark, while Sheila continued her own search, assisted by a leading lawyer, Michael Wolkind.
In 2009, she commissioned a biomechanical injury study which concluded that Mark was likely pushed or dropped over the balcony railing. “When I took it to the Met they said it wasn’t relevant to the case,” she says.
Sheila’s hopes were briefly raised in February 2011 when Doherty, Roundhill and Jeannevol were cautiously interviewed for the first time. They were subsequently released without charge.
Three months later, prosecutors told Sheila there was “insufficient evidence” to bring a charge of manslaughter or murder.
“I was feeling pretty desolate at that point,” she says. “But I didn’t want to stop either.”
Now Sheila hopes she is one step closer to her dying vows. “No mother should have to investigate her son’s murder,” as she puts it. “But given the circumstances of Mark’s death, what mother wouldn’t?”
In a statement, the Met said: “Our condolences go out to the family of Mark Blanco following his death in Whitechapel in 2006.”
“Police have carried out an investigation into all available evidence.” . . This inquest concluded there was no evidence the death was suspicious – a decision supported by the pathologist.
“Following an investigation that concluded in October 2007, an open verdict was reached.”
Alongside an expert analysis of the CCTV footage, the statement continued: “Mr Blanco’s death was reviewed by the Met on multiple occasions; Where areas for re-investigation were highlighted, these were followed up by homicide detectives.
“The investigation into Mark Blanco’s death is ongoing and any new evidence or information will be reviewed by detectives.”
“We will keep Mr. Blanco’s family informed of any significant developments in this case.”
In a series of conversations, Roundhill said his sympathies were with Sheila. “Mark was my good friend.” . . “I wouldn’t protect anyone who was involved in his death,” he said. “Mark and his family deserve justice.”
Doherty told the show: “I’m sorry for the loss of Ms Blanco and I welcome any help that can be given to help her come to terms with what has happened.”
- Peter Doherty, Who Killed My Son? is tomorrow at 10pm on Channel 4.