When Karen Beadle got home from work on 7 February 2019, her phone was beeping furiously. She played the first message, which said her son Garry had had an accident and she should call the hospital urgently. “I thought: what’s he done now? The doctor said, ‘You have to prepare yourself,’ and I said, ‘Prepare myself for what? What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘He’s gravely ill on life support.’” Karen comes to a choked stop. “It’s like somebody punches you in the face. I said, ‘What’s happened then? What’s he done at work?’ He said, ‘He wasn’t at work, he was in prison.’ I thought ‘What are you on about?’ He said, ‘This is very serious. He has suffered catastrophic brain injury. There’s no coming back from that, I have to warn you.’”
Garry Beadle had never been in prison before. He spent less than a week on remand awaiting trial before attempting to kill himself. Four days later, the life-support machine was turned off. Karen has spent the past three years tracing what happened. The two were exceptionally close, but in his final days they hadn’t spoken. His relationship with the mother of his two youngest children had recently broken down, and he had apparently suffered a mental health crisis. After his partner asked him to leave their home, she changed the locks and moved in with her mother. When Garry discovered this, he broke in and wreaked havoc on pretty much everything that didn’t belong to the children. It wasn’t in character.
