The brother of a man found dead in a prison cell during a 25-year sentence for drug supply, has paid tribute following his death.
Johnny Gerrard Kock was found dead in his cell at HMP Berwyn in Wales on August 16, 2021. Kock was in prison serving a 25-year sentence after he was found guilty of importing cocaine - potentially worth up to a billion pounds at street level - from the continent to an Old Swan industrial site.
At an inquest held in Ruthin County Hall in Wales on May 25, heard the 75-year-old's body was found in his isolation cell by two prison officers at 11am. He had been dead for some time by this point with rigor mortis having already set in.
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A cause of death of heart failure was provided following a Home Office post-mortem and the coroner concluded it was "a death arising from natural causes". Johnny's brother, 60, who lives in Amsterdam, spoke to The ECHO about his brother and his time in prison.
He said Koch had a "difficult life" yet remained as a "big guy full of humour", even while serving his jail sentence.
He said: "When I was born, he [Johnny] was already out of the house and was sailing on big ships all over the world at that time. He had a difficult life, born just after the war in Germany, of a Dutch father and a German mother, they moved to Holland.
"He didn't finish school, but left at a young age to sail the great seas. Sometimes he came home and there I remembered him as a big guy full of humour with many interesting stories."
Kock got married to a Liverpudlian in 1967 and lived in the city for many years. When he was arrested in 2013 he as living in a semi-detached house in Willow Road, Wavertree.
Rob said: "The last years before he got arrested we had no contact at all. I had my own life with relatively young kids and he had his own business as we found out when he got arrested in 2013 and convicted in 2014.
"His sons came to Amsterdam to tell me about what happened. Because he was my brother, I wanted to know if he was interested in contact.
"I managed to find the address of the prison where they locked him up and sent him, together with my other brother, a letter to see if he was interested in contact. Which resulted in over two hundred letters sent by him to me and my brother over the years.
"In those letters it was clear despite the incredibly long sentence he got, he always stayed positive and full of humour. His letters were really fun to read and even made me feel proud of my brother.
"He accepted his fate, his sentence, did not complain, and through the lines I could read he was like a big father to all the prisoners and wardens in HMP Whitemoor. Everybody liked him, which I experienced myself twice, when I visited him in 2018 and 2019."
Rob said he knew his brother was a criminal, but described him as not being a "bad guy". He said his brother always mentioned how he disliked class A drugs, which surprised him when he was sentenced for importing up to 6,000kg of cocaine.
He said: "He ran a transport business, but transporting illegal stuff. He fetched the stuff and delivered it. He was long in this business and made a lot of money with it all those years.
"But as far as I know, he always ran his business alone and did not get involved in scenes you see in motion pictures. He always stayed low profile and didn't live an exorbitant life at all, he didn't show off.
"He was definitely not the big drug baron as mentioned in all those newspaper stories. In the years that I've met him I always had the feeling 'he had the heart in the right place' as we say in Holland.
"He disliked class A drugs, he always mentioned to us, so I was very surprised he was caught with Class A drugs. I asked him when I visited how this could happen, but he never gave a clear answer. Now I will never know why, but this must have had some reason."
Rob spoke of how the family had to read about Johnny's inquest in a Dutch newspaper and were not aware an inquest was taking place in the UK.
He told The ECHO: "As the closest relative, I wasn't even invited to the final inquest. My brother was 75, with a known heart condition -blood clot in his thigh due to thrombosis - which was a ticking time bomb.
"He was waiting for years to get an operation for this, but circumstances - possible repatriation and Covid - finally turned out that the blood clot got too big to operate. But when he got very sick, six days before he died, they put him in an isolation cell, probably, because of assumed Covid symptoms.
"The only thing worse than suffering is suffering in solitude'. That's exactly what happened to him."
The inquest heard that Kock - who had refused a Covid vaccination along with treatment for his longstanding cardiac issues during his time in prison - had tested positive for Covid-19, but this was not a factor in his death, according to Home Office pathologist Dr Brian Rodgers.
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