Dr Cas Shotter Weetman was steeling herself to face the man who killed her daughter. “All the fibres of your body are on high alert. The fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. Sometimes he looked at me for a good few seconds but I was determined to stare him out.”
In the dock at the Old Bailey, Mohamed Iidow appeared detached. He rarely flinched, even when grainy CCTV footage was shown to the jury as part of the prosecution case that his victim, Natalie Shotter, was orally raped by him “until she died” while she lay unconscious on a park bench. Some members of the jury could not hide their distress.
But every so often Iidow, 35, made eye contact with members of Natalie’s family who were sitting to the left of the dock. Cas, 63, a lead advanced cardiology practitioner who has worked for the NHS for 45 years and refers to Iidow as “the monster”, did not drop her gaze. Iidow was convicted of Natalie’s rape and manslaughter on 18 October, in a highly significant case that found oral rape as a cause of death. He had pleaded not guilty but chose not to give evidence in his own defence.
Natalie, 37, was found dead on a bench in Southall Park, west London, just before 6am on the morning of 17 July 2021. She was an NHS clinical admin worker who lived in Heston, a couple of miles from Southall, and a much-loved mother of three children – two teenage boys and a 21-month-old daughter. She adored them all and enjoyed a close relationship with other members of the family including her mother and her younger brother, Harry.
At the time of her death she was suffering from postnatal depression. She had given birth to her daughter during the pandemic and, like many others, struggled with the isolation. Because Cas was working on the NHS frontline during the pandemic, she was unable to visit her daughter and her new grandchild regularly for fear of infecting them with Covid.
Natalie was small in stature – about 5ft (1.52 metres) tall and weighing just 6½st (41kg). She had recently told the doctor that when she drank alcohol she would black out and fall into a deep sleep. She had not been on many nights out since the birth of her daughter, but on the evening of 16 July, she had arranged to go out with friends, while her partner and family members looked after the children.
Cas was in Yorkshire at the time, caring for her terminally ill father. She said she did not know that her daughter was in Southall that evening. Although it is not far from Heston, she did not think it was an area her daughter was familiar with. CCTV footage was shown to the court of someone playing drums on a street in Southall and Natalie dancing.
“If she heard music you couldn’t stop Nat from dancing,” says Cas. The footage showed Natalie looking well. After the dancing she was seen walking down the street and looking at her phone. A man who did not give evidence during the trial, but provided a statement, said he had met her that night and they sat together on a bench in Southall Park. It is thought that they took amyl nitrate “poppers”. He said she became unwell and lay down on the bench. At 11.56pm, he went to search for help after she appeared to become unconscious, and found two police officers outside the park. But they said they were busy dealing with something else and could not go and attend to an apparently drunk woman in the park. (The Metropolitan police says the officers “advised the individual to call police for additional support”.) The man returned to her briefly at 12.05am before leaving the park.
Cas feels certain that had the police, who were close to the park when Natalie became unconscious, responded to the request for help, her daughter would still be alive today. Meanwhile, criminal proceedings are ongoing against a different police officer accused of misconduct for allegedly possessing and sharing CCTV footage of Natalie’s and another woman’s case. The officer denies the charges.
According to the CCTV footage, at 12.16am, Iidow approached Natalie. He appeared to have been stalking her before he approached her as she lay unaware of him on the park bench. He orally raped her, moving her into different positions. He left her at 12.32am before returning briefly at 12.48, leaving again at 12.51 and driving away from the park. On his way home to his wife and children, he stopped off at a Shell garage to pick up some mouthwash and cat food.
Alison Morgan KC, prosecuting, told the jury during the trial: “[Natalie] was vulnerable because she found herself in a park late at night where the defendant was a man stalking the park looking for sexual services. She did not die of natural causes. She did not die because alcohol was consumed, she did not die because of a particular drug. She died because she was raped by the defendant again and again. He saw walking past her on three occasions that she was vulnerable. Natalie Shotter was deeply unconscious but alive when the defendant raped her.”
The following morning, Cas received a concerned message from Natalie’s partner, saying that a young female had been found dead in Southall. She wasn’t sure what to make of it because she had no idea her daughter had been in that area the previous evening. Then she received a call from a Metropolitan police officer breaking the news. “I felt sick. In those initial moments I was thinking about Southall because I didn’t know why Nat would have been there.”
The enormity of the loss and the circumstances of it have been unbearable. “I was absolutely in such horrific grief,” she says. “The level of shock I was in was unbelievable.”
Cas had been very close with her daughter and had been doing everything she could to support her through her postnatal depression. Natalie was due to see a counsellor about it the following week. “She was going through a really difficult time and she was so vulnerable,” says Cas.
Her daughter had always been creative and loved the performing arts. She understudied the actor playing Éponine in Les Misérables in the West End at the age of 12, had appeared in a few roles on TV as well as adverts, and attended the Brit school in south London.
“Nat was the most beautiful baby and a fabulous kid,” says Cas. “She loved everything outdoors, especially the beach and the water. If I was trying to hammer home that she should be studying some Shakespeare for her GCSEs she would just do a little dance in front of me. She was very creative, she loved to paint and draw and she was never afraid of laughing at herself.”
Before working in the NHS she had jobs with the British Heart Foundation and Alzheimer’s Society. “She was the most incredible person. She really did have the heart of a lion. She was completely selfless and would quite literally give her last pound to anyone who needed it,” says Cas.
When she met with the police after her daughter’s death and they discussed CCTV footage from the night, she told the officers: “I want answers and I want him found. If you can’t do it, I will. I’ll go out and search for him on buses and in shops.”
A few weeks later police found and arrested Iidow. When officers interviewed him he kept changing his account about what had happened that night. At one point he told police there was consensual sex between him and Natalie, then he said he had paid her £10 or £20 to give him a blowjob and then switched to saying she was already dead at the time of oral penetration. His DNA was found around her mouth.
But although police had arrested Iidow, Cas’s fight for justice for her daughter was just beginning. “I kept saying to the police: ‘Natalie was killed, Natalie was killed.’ I’m very tenacious and if I think something isn’t right I can’t let it go.”
Natalie’s death was initially treated as asphyxiation and the cause of death was found by the pathologist to be “unascertained”. Her heart was found to be healthy and no disease was found. Pathology determined that although she had high levels of alcohol in her blood, neither the alcohol nor the poppers would have killed her.
After a couple of months the police agreed to seek a review of the pathology. During the trial, the pathologist Dr Ashley Fegan-Earl gave evidence that he believed Natalie had died as a result of manslaughter because she had suffered something called cafe coronary syndrome, with the nerves in the back of her throat being overstimulated, leading to a fatal cardiac attack.
“The pathologist was so brave and his evidence was so compelling,” says Cas, who hailed the jury’s manslaughter conviction, which she hopes will help other women who have been subjected to oral rape. More commonly with this syndrome the culprit is food fragments, but she believes that the evidence put forward by Fegan-Earl could be vital in other cases where oral rape has led to the death or non-fatal cardiac arrest of the victim.
“I believe that what Iidow did was premeditated,” she says. “He was stalking her. He wasn’t dithering, he didn’t just come across her by chance. He was out that night purposely looking for someone to rape. He seemed to think he was untouchable. I keep thinking about his poor wife and children. I saw that every time the CCTV footage of him raping Nat was played during the trial, his father, who was in the public gallery, got up and left the court.” It was revealed after the trial that Iidow had a previous conviction for trying to groom young people online.
Shotter Weetman says the police team who supported her and other members of the family through the case were superb, but everything about the trial was gruelling. Their trauma was compounded when, on two days during the first week of the trial, Iidow was not brought to court due to administrative failures at Belmarsh prison where he was being held, causing delays to proceedings. Professionals at the court remarked that delays and failures to bring defendants to court were a common occurrence and not only held up many trials, causing distress to victims and their relatives, but also added significant costs to the public purse. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told the Guardian that while the department does not record data on these failures, “this is a truly heartbreaking case and we sincerely apologise to Ms Shotter’s loved ones for the delays caused by administrative errors”.
After a nerve-racking wait of just over 24 hours for the jury to give their verdict, the family were overjoyed when Iidow was found guilty of rape and manslaughter. “We are celebrating getting justice for Nat. This is a landmark case in terms of the medical evidence which helped to convict Mohamed Iidow. All of the family are jubilant and ecstatic about the verdict,” said Cas after leaving the courtroom. Iidow will be sentenced on 13 December.
Although Cas has welcomed the jury’s verdict, she has vowed to continue her fight for justice for her daughter. She wants to raise awareness of the new evidence brought forward in the trial about how oral rape can lead to manslaughter, by working with campaigners against violence towards women and girls. She is also determined that the two police officers who were near the park on the night her daughter was killed are held to account.
The Metropolitan police’s directorate of professional standards says it investigated a complaint made about the two police officers’ decision not to go to Natalie’s aid and concluded they should be referred to the Metropolitan police service’s unsatisfactory performance procedure, but that their actions did not amount to misconduct. Natalie’s family had a right of review to the Independent Office for Police Conduct of the investigation into the complaint and an IOPC spokesperson says that their review of this matter is “nearing conclusion”.
The family are struggling without Natalie. Her killing has left gaping holes in the lives of everyone who loved her. At the time of her death she had been planning celebrations for her children’s birthdays, but did not live to enjoy sharing these milestones with them.
“This is a tragedy which is playing out all the time. It’s the day to day getting on that is the hardest,” says Cas. “Everyone loved Nat. She was a guiding light, life and soul. She was a lovely mum, a great sister and daughter, a really good kid. We are missing a beautiful girl.”
