The day before it happened was the last good day of John Balson’s life.
It was Sunday 17 March 2024. He took his three-year-old daughter swimming, then came home and cooked lunch with his family. He drank some wine and played video games for a while, but it was hard to concentrate.
Balson was tired. The 40-year-old freelance TV producer had been working long hours on a new series of In the Footsteps of Killers, a true crime series hosted by the criminologist Prof David Wilson and the Silent Witness actor Emilia Fox, commissioned by Channel 4 from the production company Alaska TV. It was an investigation into an unsolved murder linked to an alleged paedophile ring in London in the 1990s.
From the start, the project had been challenging. The family of the victim weren’t on board. Sources close to the case warned Balson off looking into it. He told his family that he had received threats. Then there was the commute when he worked from the office a few days a week: a four-hour round trip from Balson’s home in east London to Alaska TV’s offices in Chiswick in west London.
Still, Balson was exceptional at his job. He spent hours poring over microfilm of news clippings in the British Library, dredging up leads. He knocked on doors. He put together the show. More than that – he was pretty sure he had solved the murder.
The next morning, Balson got up for work. He drank a strong coffee, then left the house at about 8am. At the office, he got up from his desk to use the toilet, walking down a long corridor towards the bathroom. As he did, the corridor appeared to tilt away from him like a fairground hall of mirrors. He hadn’t had breakfast, so he thought it was low blood sugar.
At his desk, he found it hard to look at his computer. His head hurt. He felt pressure behind his eyes. He told himself that he would feel better after a good night’s sleep.
When Balson woke up the next day, it felt as if his bed was on a boat; it roiled from side to side. The dizziness hadn’t gone away, nor had the headache. Balson had filmed riots in South America and made a documentary about a 175lb pitbull. But in that moment, he felt truly scared.
The GP thought it was an ear infection. When it didn’t get better, Balson paid to see a private ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor. He said Balson’s ears were fine.
The dizziness and headache were constant. Balson began to document his symptoms in a journal. He drew a picture to explain the dizziness: circles of furious ballpoint pen, with filaments floating out of the centre like the tendrils on a poached egg. When he closed his eyes, the orb flickered like a mirage, he wrote.
Maybe he needed a break, he thought. In early April, he went to Broadstairs in Kent with his wife, Yumeno Niimura, a 37-year-old stay-at-home parent who is pregnant with their second child, and their daughter. Niimura booked an Airbnb with a well-appointed kitchen. Balson was a talented cook who loved trying new recipes. “But he never cooked that week,” says Niimura. “Not once.” The constant dizziness triggered intense anxiety and feelings of dread. They had to leave an art gallery and a restaurant because Balson had panic attacks.
In text messages to his mum and in his journal entries, he asked: what is wrong with me? Is it a brain tumour? A stroke? He wrote that he was worried he would never get to meet his unborn daughter, that he would never get to watch his children grow up.
On 11 April, the family got the train back to London. Balson decided he would go straight to hospital and that he wouldn’t leave until he got answers. Someone had to know what was wrong with him.
***
When he was in Broadstairs, Balson texted his mother, Margaret Balson, a 70-year-old retired teacher. “I let my work-life balance get too out of control,” he wrote. “I’m not sure what pushed me over the edge, but maybe [it has] just been building up for years.”
Balson’s friend Jack McKay, 41, a writer from north London, says: “He told me that he broke himself from overwork.” McKay and Balson met in New York in 2014, where they both worked for Barcroft, a news agency that sourced unusual stories. “The things that made John so good at his job are what made him such a great person,” says McKay. “He was sensitive, he was empathic, he was witty, he was smart. He was good with people.”
In the mid-2010s, Barcroft began producing video documentaries. By 2019, Balson had enough experience to leave and launch a career as a freelance producer. He was now in a relationship with Niimura, whom he had met in 2018. When the pandemic began, Balson and Niimura, who is Japanese, moved in with Niimura’s parents in Tokyo. There, he worked on true crime shows for British production companies.
As a producer, it was Balson’s job to persuade bereaved families to tell their stories on camera. “The thing about factual TV is that the raw material is just people, and your relationship with those people,” says McKay, who has also worked as a true crime TV producer. “That puts massive stress on the people whose job it is to organise and wrangle them.”
Because his contributors were usually based in the US or the UK, Balson routinely worked 18-hour days across three time zones. “You spend all day looking at photos of dead bodies of people who have been murdered in gruesome ways,” says Rosy Milner, 30, a factual TV producer and former colleague of Balson’s from London. “You read about sexual abuse and crimes against children. And then a contributor in the US texts at 10pm, asking for a phone call. You book the Zoom at midnight and keep going.”
Milner worked with Balson on a show called Meet, Marry, Murder. “He was Mr True Crime at that point,” she says. “He’d done a few in a row.” Milner says he cared deeply for his contributors, often speaking to them for hours a day.
In April 2021, Niimura gave birth to their daughter and they moved back to the UK, living with Balson’s parents in east London so they could save money for a deposit. Balson worked relentlessly, booking back-to-back contracts with scarcely any breaks in between.
But as Balson plugged away, the industry around him started to collapse. Broadcasters were barely commissioning due to a collapse in advertising revenue, inflationary pressures, a freeze in the BBC licence fee and streamers grappling with reduced subscriber numbers due to the cost of living. “He would say to me: ‘Most freelancers are out of a job right now. I am so lucky I have this job,’” says Niimura.
In May 2023, the union Bectu, which represents TV freelancers in the UK, declared an emergency in the industry. In February 2024, the union published the results of a survey of more than 4,000 film and TV workers. The report said 68% were out of work, while 75% said they were struggling with their mental wellbeing and 37% were planning to quit the industry. “I have worked in television for over 25 years,” says Marcus Ryder, the CEO of the Film and TV Charity, which provides emergency grants to freelancers in need. “I’ve never seen this before.”
“There is zero work,” says Joe Jackson, 33, an experienced camera operator from Bath who has worked in true crime. He is now working in a bakery and is at risk of losing his home.
Freelancers who remain in work say expectations from their bosses are intense. “Production companies overpromise to get commissions,” McKay says. “And all that pressure rolls downhill.” Commissioners, who purchase shows on behalf of TV channels, also expect more for their money. In a medical history he put together for the doctors who were treating him, written after he fell ill, Balson wrote about the pressures of working as a contractor. “As the money in the industry dried up, I was required to do more and more hours and take on more and more stress.”
Even in good times, TV freelancers worry about being perceived as difficult. Many fear being blacklisted. “People feel that if they don’t deliver on a project, their reputation will be tarnished across the industry,” says Ryder. “The pressure on people can be unbearable, especially when work is thin on the ground.”
According to the terms of Balson’s contract with Alaska TV, if he fell sick and was unable to work for more than seven days, the company could terminate his contract. Alaska TV says that despite this standard contract, it “actively encouraged” Balson “to take his time and return to work as and when he wanted to – with no time limit at all because we so respected his talent”.
He had to find out what was wrong with him – and fast.
***
Balson went to the urgent treatment centre at Queen’s hospital, Romford, on 11 April 2024. Doctors told him that he had stress and anxiety and discharged him with some diazepam. “Feel stupid,” he texted his mum.
But the diazepam didn’t help. The dizziness was constant. The headache was acutely painful. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t walk into a supermarket without having a panic attack. “I just want to get treated and get better,” he texted Margaret. “I have a lot to look forward to.”
Balson spent more than £2,000 trying to get better. He bought new glasses and a new mattress. He tried massage, vestibular physiotherapy and talking therapy. He had a private MRI scan, which came back normal. He saw a private ENT doctor. He went to his NHS GP, an NHS psychiatrist and an NHS ENT doctor. He was prescribed vitamins, antidepressants, anti-migraine medication, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. Nothing helped.
Balson’s mental health deteriorated and he started to talk about suicide. On 19 April, he was seen by an NHS psychiatrist. He told the psychiatrist he felt suicidal. On 21 April, Margaret and Niimura woke up to find Balson attempting to kill himself. Margaret called an ambulance.
Balson returned to Queen’s hospital’s A&E. Two security guards watched him, for his safety. There were no beds, so Balson slumped in a chair with a coat over his head. Doctors gave him an anti-nausea injection. Margaret took a photograph of her son and emailed it to the health secretary. “If you want to see the state of the NHS please visit Queen’s Hospital Romford today and I am sure that you would be shocked and horrified at what you would find,” she wrote. She never received a reply.
A psychiatrist came to speak to Balson in A&E, wrote some notes down on a piece of paper and said he would return. Balson did not see him again. After 31 hours in a chair, Balson was exhausted. He told doctors he wanted to go home and they discharged him.
All of Balson’s days were bad now. He decided to resign from his job. He spent most of his time at home, where his thoughts turned to his past. “Why couldn’t I have focused on more uplifting stories?” he wrote in his journal.
***
Before he got sick, Balson immersed himself in murder. He made a show about a lawyer stabbed 40 times in her office. A husband set alight by his wife. A doctor pushed off a cliff for the insurance money. A boy kidnapped and dismembered by the mafia. A man who stabbed his girlfriend and their young children to death with an axe before painting over the bloodstains.
Production companies often say that these stories centre victims or get justice for families. Others take another view. “These shows are a cash cow,” says Alex Levitschi, 34, a producer-director from the Midlands who worked with Balson. While larger production companies chase down the next Making a Murderer or Don’t F**k With Cats, the Netflix megahits that are credited with the explosion of true crime factual TV, the smaller independent production teams tend to pursue cheaper, quicker turnaround stories that can be bought by commissioners on tight budgets. In these shows, contributors are seldom paid. Dramatic reconstructions use student actors or cheap extras.
“We’ll chase 50 stories and make 10 episodes,” says one producer. “When you’re getting towards the ninth episode, it doesn’t matter what the story is – you need to make it work. You’ll be chasing families who’ve said no, who’ve often been contacted multiple times by other production companies.”
Others are unhappy with how shows are edited after they have submitted their footage. “There have been shows that have been re-edited by commissioners after I’ve done my bit,” says one producer. “And they have clearly not taken into account the feelings of the families who are having to watch the film. It can be really upsetting for them.” Another producer says: “It’s bad journalism, bad telly. It’s not helping our industry.”
For many years, Balson tussled with the ethics of true crime. He told Milner about other shows he had worked on, where the broadcaster complained the women on screen weren’t glamorous enough. They wanted “glossy murder”, an industry phrase meaning true crime stories that are salacious and sexy. “These are real people in horrible situations,” Balson once texted Milner about a different production. “Having them turn up should almost be good enough.” After they had stopped working together, Milner received a text from Balson about a show he was working on: “Really not feeling good about how they’re treating [it] … It’s pretty callous.”
It took me six weeks to watch the many TV shows on which Balson had credits. As I worked my way through them, my mood noticeably darkened.
One episode haunted me. It was about a man who drowned his infant stepdaughter for the life insurance money. He pressed her hands into a birthday cake while staging the crime scene; the police photographs showed the imprint they made in the icing. They were so small, scarcely bigger than a cat’s paw.
Like Balson, I am a journalist. I have always been able to switch off from work. But I found myself thinking about those photos often, usually when I was wiping my son’s sticky palms. His hands are the same size.
It is clear from reading Balson’s journal that he spent a lot of time thinking about these stories, too. In one entry, he wrote: “I let in the darkness with my obsession with crime and murder in my career.” He told an NHS psychiatrist that the final project he had worked on for Alaska TV, about a missing woman called Georgina Gharsallah, brought up painful memories of his brother Michael, who died in 2011. Like Georgina, Michael went missing, although he was later found dead, having fallen out of a window. Alaska TV says Balson “did not share any of this information with the team”.
After he became ill, Balson told McKay he “had regrets about some of the stories he’d done”. Balson once told him that a contributor in a show he worked on had killed herself. There could have been a number of causes for the contributor’s death, but on Balson’s part “there was guilt in being involved in that world”, says McKay. “In this job, you need empathetic, sensitive people to get contributors on side. But, on the flip side, the thing that made John good at his job is what made the job unbearable, because he felt a responsibility to those people and he cared deeply for them. He did this for a really long time. It had a cumulative effect. I don’t think this would have happened if he’d been making a nature documentary.”
***
On 13 May 2024, Balson finally found out what was wrong with him. He was diagnosed with probable vestibular migraine, a complex disorder in which the neural networks in the brain relating to balance and vision become dysregulated. Sufferers experience attacks of vertigo, dizziness and loss of balance.
It is a testament to Balson’s research abilities that he was diagnosed after only two months. On average, says Dr Diego Kaski, a neurologist and expert on vestibular migraines, it takes four years from the onset of symptoms before patients present to his NHS clinic for a specialist diagnosis. Stress is a major trigger, although not the underlying cause. “It’s a syndrome caused by a hyperexcitable state in the brain, so when you are under stress, that hyper-excitability is brought out more,” Kaski explains.
Balson was diagnosed by a private specialist, Dr Shanmuga Surenthiran, a neuro-otologist who specialises in audiovestibular medicine, in a telephone consultation. In the call, which Balson recorded for his own notes, he told Surenthiran what was going on in his life when he fell ill; he said he was under a lot of stress at work. Surenthiran, who was kind and reassuring, explained that stress is a common trigger for vestibular migraines.
Kaski says: “One of the problems with vestibular migraines is that there’s no diagnostic test for it. People can bounce between specialities. They see the GP, who sends them to an ENT, who sends them back to a GP, who sends them to the neurologist.” Kaski estimates that there are perhaps a handful of neurologists in the UK, including him, who specialise in balance disorders. (Audiovestibular and neuro-otology doctors can also treat the condition.)
Kaski says his patients are often anxious and depressed. But their mental health conditions are most often a result of vestibular migraines, not the cause of them. “They feel low, they feel useless, they feel worthless, they feel frustrated,” says Kaski. “A lot of people are quite angry. Part of the issue with dizziness is that it’s an invisible disease. You can see when someone is in pain. But dizziness is inside you. People often feel that they are not understood.”
Most people who present to his clinic will get their lives back in time. “It’s a condition that can be treated,” Kaski says. “It’s not something you can necessarily cure. But many people overcome it and lead a normal life.” He urges patients to eat healthily, exercise regularly and consider changes in the workplace. Kaski prescribes migraine-preventative medications and anti-CGRP blocker injections, which have recently been developed to treat migraines, in addition to Botox therapy. “An acceptable reduction in attacks is about 50%, but in some cases the reduction can be far greater,” he says.
Surenthiran told Balson that he would probably get better, but that it may take time. In the recording of the call, you hear Balson’s voice catch with hope. An in-person appointment to complete the consultation was scheduled for 17 May, four days later. Margaret felt certain Surenthiran would help her son get better. She texted him: “You’ve done a brilliant job in tracking down the person most likely to help you!”
***
‘True crime is a genre where there are many ethical issues,” says Prof Elana Newman, the research director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. “You’re trying to tell stories in a way that is respectful and not exploitative.” Newman is an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder. She explains that vicarious trauma is a negative emotional reaction that comes from bearing witness to the pain and suffering of others. It is often seen in aid workers, first responders, war veterans and journalists.
Exposure to graphic imagery is known to increase a person’s risk of developing PTSD. Studies estimate that anywhere from 4.3% to 43.2% of journalists may suffer from the condition. The Dart Center, which has published guidelines on how the media should work with traumatic imagery, suggests journalists apply a temporary masking effect to distressing areas of images, turn off the sound on video footage and reduce the size of a window or the brightness of the screen to reduce the impact of an image. It also suggests labelling distressing images so that colleagues do not stumble across them accidentally.
In the US, police sometimes give unredacted crime scene photographs and footage to the press. “We see the stuff that has to be blurred for the TV audience,” says Angus Cameron, 59, a producer from East Sussex who worked with Balson in 2022. “But we can’t blur it. We see it.” Cameron says he once screamed after opening a folder of photos without being warned what was in them.
Newman has identified a strategy to reduce the likelihood that journalists will develop vicarious trauma. “Having clear ethics is protective. We know that, in journalists, PTSD seems to be correlated with ethical regrets.” She says she cannot comment directly on Balson’s struggles, but does say: “I would ask: to what extent was he wrestling with ethical issues in the work he did?” Cameron asks: “Are we making these shows to stop this happening to people? Or are we normalising these horrible events?”
Balson decided after he got ill that he would need to make a change. “I’ll have to learn to do a new job and a new career,” he wrote in his journal on 7 May. “Or at least one where I am not in this conflict of whether what I’m doing is bad or not. I need to do something better with my life that serves people and the planet better.”
***
Balson fought immensely hard to get better. “I intend to, no matter what it takes,” he wrote in his journal on 6 May. He thought about his children. “I love them so, so much,” he wrote. “I need to be there for them, no matter what.” He thought about what Niimura always said to him: that to be alive is to be rich.
The headaches were excruciating, the dizziness unrelenting. He barely slept. From May onwards, Balson’s handwriting in his journal, usually neat, devolves into ragged scrawls. “Torment and no peace and dizzy all the time and not even one second of relief.”
“He looked so desperate,” Niimura says. “I’d put his hand on my tummy and say: ‘Feel the baby. You are going to be there for the baby.’ He said: ‘I don’t think I am going to make it.’”
On 15 May, Balson had an appointment with an NHS psychiatrist. In the meeting, his mum says she asked whether Balson could be admitted to hospital, because she feared for his safety. The psychiatrist appeared unsure if this was an option. A follow-up appointment was scheduled for six weeks later. Unbeknown to Margaret and Niimura, Balson’s GP called him that day, having been alerted by his private therapist that she was concerned that he was at risk of suicide. Balson told his GP that he was OK.
The next day, 16 May, Margaret emailed local NHS mental health services. “We saw you yesterday but things have continued to get worse … He managed to convince you yesterday that he had no definite plans to end his life but today I am not so sure of that … He keeps saying sorry to us. I really think that he needs more care than we can give him at home. Please help us!”
On the phone, a member of staff at the NHS mental health service suggested Margaret take Balson to A&E, but his previous experiences had been so negative that she decided against it. Balson had an appointment with Surenthiran the next day. She felt sure that it would help Balson – Surenthiran was the first doctor who seemed to understand what he was going through.
Balson was quiet that day. He ate dinner alone, in his bedroom. Niimura fell asleep on the sofa. When she woke up, she slept in their daughter’s room, so as not to disturb her husband. The next morning, the house was quiet. Niimura had a feeling. She went into their bedroom. Balson wasn’t there. He had left his wedding ring behind. Their car was gone. Margaret called Balson, but there was no reply. “Please come back John,” she texted. “We need to get to this appointment … Dr Surenthiran will help us! I’m sure of it.”
When the police arrived that morning, to tell them his body had been found, “I never screamed so much in my life”, says Niimura. Balson died by suicide on 17 May.
Niimura and Balson’s second child is due this month. “We can’t believe it, can we?” says Margaret.
***
It will be up to the inquest into Balson’s death to confirm that he intended to kill himself and to try to understand the circumstances, but the tragedy has prompted much soul-searching in his industry.
After Deadline reported his suicide, the Association of True Crime Producers, a group of TV executives working in true crime, convened an emergency meeting. Channel 4 has ordered an external investigation into his death. A fundraiser set up to support Niimura, their daughter and their unborn baby has raised nearly £85,000. In September, the UK Film and TV Welfare Association will launch, calling for production companies to establish best practice around the welfare of their staff and contributors.
“There are a lot of people who care very deeply about this,” says Jude Spencer, who runs Dolly, a mental health consultancy for the creative sector, and is one of the association’s co-founders. “But the problem is that there’s no consistency across the board.” She believes that mental health support needs to be factored into production budgets.
In a statement, Channel 4 said it was “deeply saddened by the news of John’s death”. It said the independent investigation, which is being conducted by a law firm, will be “as swift as circumstances allow. We will take whatever action is appropriate in response to its findings.”
It added: “While we do not employ production staff directly, the wellbeing of all those working on the productions we commission is vitally important and is something we take very seriously. We are committed to supporting our production partners in ensuring those productions are safe and professional workplaces, with safeguarding measures in place.”
Paul Sommers, the managing director of Alaska TV, said the company is a “a small, close-knit team who have been devastated by this event” and that “the wellbeing of all our staff is of paramount importance”.
In the course of reporting this piece, I spoke with TV executives working in true crime, some who had worked with Balson and some who hadn’t. They expressed sorrow at his death and spoke passionately about prioritising the wellbeing of staff. Some talked about the protections they had set up in their own companies.
I had planned to quote them while writing this article, as examples of best practice. But when I started making calls to freelancers who had worked for these companies, as well as others, a more complicated picture emerged. Some were positive, saying these companies made available mental health support when it was needed. Others pointed out that it is often broadcasters, not production companies, that make unreasonable demands or questionable editorial decisions.
But many of the freelancers I spoke to described excessive workloads and immense pressure to deliver. After one freelancer was unable to deliver an unmanageable volume of work in a short space of time, an executive contacted their references to bad-mouth them. Another freelancer was browbeaten by a production manager into reducing his invoice after being told his footage was unusable. “If it was me, I’d be mortified,” the manager wrote. He refused and later saw his footage used in the programme anyway, without credit. Another freelancer who attempted to levy a late-payment fee was told that the production company would no longer use his services.
In some instances, the experiences of working for these companies had been so upsetting that people had stopped working in factual TV.
Niimura and Margaret say they are private people, but they want Balson’s story to be known, to raise awareness of vestibular migraines, NHS underfunding, the dangers of chronic stress and the devastating impact of suicide.
“I go out and take photos to send to John and then I remember I can’t,” says Margaret. “I still send messages to his WhatsApp, even though I know he can’t read it.” She reads up on vestibular migraines. “I’m still looking for a cure for him,” Margaret says. “And then it hits you. It’s too late for that.” Every time Margaret remembers John is dead, “my legs go weak again”.
Niimura implores anyone considering suicide to reach out for support. “No matter how alone you feel, you are still loved,” she says. “Please, don’t do it.”
Niimura and Margaret say the NHS failed Balson. The North East London NHS foundation trust has launched an internal investigation into his death, reviewing the care he received at Queen’s hospital.
Having read the hundreds of pages of Balson’s journal, plus his medical history, his work documents and his texts, and spoken to so many of his family and colleagues, one diary entry stands out above all the others, written three days before his death: “I really wish I’d taken it easier on myself.”
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
In the UK, the Migraine Trust helpline offers free, confidential information and support on 0808 802 0066
