Michael Barrymore - death in the pool

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You say that but it looks like someone at ITV was really trying to bring him back recently, -until that documentary dropped on C4. He has a sympathetic ear in Piers bleeping Morgan on Life Stories, then got the dancing on ice gig.
That documentary came along in the nick of time for all of us.

YES

who could forget his boo hooing to Piers

then Channel 4 commissioned that doc

and a long time ITV exec must have said

we,re standing by what we said almost 20 years ago

we are NEVER using him again
 
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If I remember correctly at the time, I was about 19 and had no interest in odd, old fashioned, creepy MB but it was obvious the police compleatly fucked up the investigation and as a result let the media, who should have been doing hard hitting stories on how a young man was raped and either murdered or left for dead just played it out as a night out gone wrong. I think the police know who did it-the men they arrested years ago but because they fucked the evidence gathering they need a confession. The party goers all know what happened at that party and one of them has come forward, a mix of guilt and the reward. But one person’s recollection from 20 years ago needs collaboration-so they need that to get anywhere. I think, until they accully charge someone we will never know. Also, I always felt it strange that those two young lads just popped in on the off chance in the early hours, when I was that age I was constantly going to peoples houses on the way home at 2pm-but I always got a text inviting me first, it would not occur to me to go calling at that time uninvited.
 
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The police definitely botched the investigation. The missing pool thermometer which was suspected to have been used to assault Stuart was removed from the scene and never found again.

The investigation was also fucked up by the pathologists all disagreeing on elements of his death. Makes me so angry that such a mess was made of it all.

 
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The police definitely botched the investigation. The missing pool thermometer which was suspected to have been used to assault Stuart was removed from the scene and never found again.

The investigation was also fucked up by the pathologists all disagreeing on elements of his death. Makes me so angry that such a mess was made of it all.

I know, I feel so sad for Stuarts family, especially his Dad, as they just want to see justice done. As MB was a huge star at the time the murder happened, I can understand why Stuart would have been star struck that he was invited to a party at his house and went. Who wouldn't’, right? I then think we was given drugs which he took and a sexual advance was made on him, which he probably resisted. Maybe he resisted too strongly which angered the person doing it. This is when the violent attack/ rape happened. As the attacker/s were so high on drugs, they probably didn’t realise how dangerously violent their attack was which ended up killing Stuart. Then a big cover up was planned before the Police arrived.
I don’t believe MB killed Stuart, but definitely think he knows who did and how it was done. He was all about saving his own skin and his career rather than being honest and open about the whole thing.
I really hope justice can be done, and hope that one day somebody will squeal on the murderer/s. If not this time, some time in the near future.
 
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I've always suspected Michael's ex. As someone said it would explain why he was quick to leave - I get he is innocent of the rape and murder but to me, he should be brought to court for perverting the course of justice if he did know all these years and never said.
 
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Supposedly Jonathan Kenney was the one that was arrested, however this is just a rumour and not confirmed yet. :unsure:
 
Supposedly Jonathan Kenney was the one that was arrested, however this is just a rumour and not confirmed yet. :unsure:
Wouldn’t be hard to work out as they said it was a 50 year old, Barrymore and Stuart are ruled out. So there were 6 other people, some were very young at the time of the party so wouldn’t be 50 yet
 
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My money is on Johnathan someone posted a link to a story about him from last year which said he was 49 so this year would be 50.
 
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I'm glad an arrest has finally been made. What an awful nightmare for Stuart Lubbock's father and family to have lived through for all these years. :(



What a scumbag. How can anyone say they had a good time at a party where a man was raped and murdered?


One of the females was the sister of male guests, Justin Merritt. Her name is Kylie Merritt. I am not sure who the other one is.
He would fit the age of the arrested guy.

Why didn't they check Stuart Lubbock for DNA etc?
 
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Is there any plausible theories on what happened?
There is a school of thought that says Stuart was never actually in the pool at all, that he was murdered in or near the jacuzzi and that his body was placed at the poolside and water poured over him to make it look as if he had been recently dragged from the pool.

There isn't even a clear narrative over who it was that actually found Stuart's body and who pulled him from the pool. Barrymore says it was he who first saw Stuart and raised the alarm; Jonathan Kenney, Barrymore's boyfriend at the time, claimed that he and Kylie Merritt pulled Stuart from the pool and started giving CPR while Kylie's brother, Justin, called the ambulance but then later, in a newspaper interview, Kenney changed his story and said that by the time he ran out to the pool, Stuart's body was already laid out on the side.
Presumably his story changed because the two men who left with Barrymore before the paramedics arrived had told police that THEY were the ones who first discovered Stuart in the pool and that they were also the ones who pulled his body out (before immediately running off without stopping to see if the man they pulled from the water lived or died).

Whilst I can believe people were so drunk/high that some recollections may be hazy, I cannot imagine something as momentous as discovering a body and/or pulling them out of a pool would be easy to confuse, yet the different versions of events all contradict each other.

I honestly believe Stuart was attacked by more than one person and that he suffered a heart attack as a result of his injuries and/or asphyxiation and when the perpetrators realised that he was dead they panicked and a plan was concocted to stage a drowning.

Although it is always said that Stuart's body was discovered in the pool, he was at the side of the pool when the paramedics arrived and we only have the word of those 8 people who attended that party that he was ever in there.

I think Essex police just went along with that assumption, accepting that it was accidental until the subsequent discovery of the anal injuries.

By that point the crime scene hadn't been properly secured, Barrymore's agent had been allowed in to tidy up (he even tested the pool temperature for the police!) and Barrymore and Kenney had been whisked away to rehab, ostensibly to protect them from press intrusion.

It was a horrible cover-up of an evil crime, aided and abetted by police incompetence and Barrymore just wanted the inquest to record an accidental drowning verdict so he could move on with his life and career. He and his friends in the media to this day try to spin it that the official cause of death was drowning and also that Barrymore was cleared of any wrongdoing. Neither of these facts are true.

I now understand that the 50 year old man arrested on suspicion of murder has been bailed until 12th April, pending further enquiries. I sincerely hope that charges will result and that, finally, the truth comes out so that poor Terry Lubbock who is terminally ill, may at long last get to see some sort of justice for his son before he dies.
 
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Eight people, including Barrymore, Stuart, and two women, leaving four other men. Stuart was young, fit and strong - he was a butcher. He would have fought and no doubt yelled had he been conscious and even drugged the injuries were so extensive that he surely must have reacted. It would have taken others to hold him down and silence him. Even if Barrymore was not involved, he is at least an accessory after the fact.
 
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Eight people, including Barrymore, Stuart, and two women, leaving four other men. Stuart was young, fit and strong - he was a butcher. He would have fought and no doubt yelled had he been conscious and even drugged the injuries were so extensive that he surely must have reacted. It would have taken others to hold him down and silence him. Even if Barrymore was not involved, he is at least an accessory after the fact.
Yes and the house wasn't the "mansion" that was it was constantly purported to be in the press, it was a bungalow, large-ish but certainly no mansion. You couldn't not have known what was going on, I just don't buy it.

It just drives me mad that, because just one man, and clearly not Barrymore due to his age, has been arrested there have been loads of people on social media saying that this somehow vindicates him and he deserves his career back! I don't believe just one man committed this crime and then covered it up without the complicity of the other people in the house that night.
And Barrymore has lied time after time,he's changed his story, tried to insist that Stuart's injuries didn't occur at his house, blamed the NHS staff who tried to revive Stuart, accused the hospital mortuary staff of some vile necrophiliac attack, refused to answer questions at the inquest-all after running away from the scene on the night.
He is far from innocent.
 
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How do they know it was rape? How do they know he hadn’t consented to sexual intercourse? They were all on drugs and alcohol. Also If he’d drowned he’d have had fluid in the lungs surely? If he’d died before he was in the pool his lungs would be clear?
 
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How do they know it was rape? How do they know he hadn’t consented to sexual intercourse? They were all on drugs and alcohol. Also If he’d drowned he’d have had fluid in the lungs surely? If he’d died before he was in the pool his lungs would be clear?
The pathologist specifically said his injuries suggested a sexual assault rather than consensual activity.

Stuart wasn't known to be gay or bisexual by friends or family. Maybe he was curious, maybe he just was just high and starstruck and went back to Barrymore's house to party, not realising he was seen as a potential sexual acquisition by Barrymore and chums. Anyway, he suffered such massive internal injuries to his rectum and anus that the pathologist said he would have been in agony during and after the assault and would have found even walking difficult. Not something your average gay man would consent to, let alone a straight man, and not something a person not bent on sadism would think of inflicting on a non-consenting human. Even if drunk and high. He also had haemorrhages in his facial blood vessels consistent with strangulation. It's basically suggest he was repeatedly assaulted with a large object and against his will, and restrained while it was going on, given his other injuries.

When the story broke all those years ago, I though the 'party' was some massive thing with hundreds of people in some huge estate that would explain how people there didn't know what happened. Once I learned it was a small private party, a sum total of nine people including the victim, Barrymore, and two young women, it became very clear to me that everyone in attendance either saw the assault or helped in the cover-up. Unfortunately the police screwing up and actually believing the tall tale about it being a drowning accident and allowing vital evidence to be removed from the scene prior to investigation probably means whoever was actively involved will get away with it. I believe Barrymore know exactly what went on, and is guilty of perverting the course of justice at the very least. Disgusting man. The fact he lied about not being able to swim to police when his ex wife said he absolutely could and produced evidence of him doing so, shows he was lying through his teeth to cover up something that night, and that's the tip of the iceberg of his guilt to me.
 
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How do they know it was rape? How do they know he hadn’t consented to sexual intercourse? They were all on drugs and alcohol. Also If he’d drowned he’d have had fluid in the lungs surely? If he’d died before he was in the pool his lungs would be clear?
The amount of water in his lungs wasn't consistent with drowning. They had an expert on drowning deaths examine his case because the second pathologist wasn't convinced that it was and he found that it "didn't add up to to being a classic case of drowning" (he speaks about this in the Body In The Pool documentary).

It is also worthy of note that Stuart's body showed very few signs of the abrasions one would expect had he been dragged from the deep end of the pool. A man of his size and weight (around 12 stone) would have been tremendously heavy and difficult to pull out of the water, up over the poolside. In fact it would have been easier perhaps to pull him to the shallow end and up the steps but none of the people who claimed to have got him out of the pool say this was how it was done and indeed he was laid out at the side next to the deep end when the paramedics arrived.

As for the internal injuries, as others have said, the pathologists all confirmed that the level of damage to Stuart's anus could not possibly have been consistent with anything consensual.

I think Stuart was held down, possibly with his head under water in the jacuzzi which would account for there being some fluid found in his lungs but not as much as one would find had he drowned. (As I understand there were no samples taken of the pool water which could have proved whether or not he was actually in there - another glaring omission by Essex Police).

I think he was held in an arm lock round his neck which is why he had the petitichae (not sure on spelling!), and that he was raped with one or more large objects.

Again, another thing here that convinces me of Barrymore's guilt is his adamance that no sexual activity occurred at his house that night and that Stuart's injuries definitely did not occur at his home. Yet, by his own admission, he barely knew any of the guests apart from his boyfriend (with whom he had only been in a relationship for about a month).
How can Barrymore be so certain that Stuart wasn't assaulted at his house unless he had spent the entire time with Stuart-which he says he didn't-?
Had I invited a group of strangers into my home and someone died and then four pathologists all confirmed that the deceased had been violently raped at some point after leaving the nightclub (ie: after arriving at my house) I would immediately wonder who amongst those people could have committed the act. He didn't know them so he also didn't know what they may be capable of and yet he maintains that no-one did anything to Stuart even though he wasn't with most of them for most of the evening.

His story is so full of holes it only serves to implicate him further every time he speaks about it.
 
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