What's on the Caroline Flack body-cam footage that drove the TV presenter to suicide?
And why are the media looking for an excuse to let celebrities off the hook in case they kill themselves from the pressure of being caught for their crimes?
Really strange reporting on the Caroline Flack Disney + documentary due out later this month. It’s like media bosses are trying to come up an excuse to let celebrities off the hook for their crimes because it might stress them out too much and they might kill themselves like the former TV presenter, who died by suicide on February 15, 2020. Apparently she was found “lying on her back” but had died by hanging (work that one out) in her London home after being charged with assaulting her boyfriend, model and former tennis pro, 27-year-old Lewis Burton. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had initially recommended the TV star only get a caution for the attack but this was overturned after London's Metropolitan Police appealed because Flack changed her story and claimed it was an accident. You’d need an admission of guilt for a caution.
Clearly there was something on that body-cam footage that made the Met appeal the caution recommendation and charge the 40-year-old Love Island presenter with assault by beating. Burton didn’t want to press charges against his famous girlfriend but the CPS went ahead, in the public interest. It was a charge the TV presenter denied despite being physically restrained on the ground by police at the scene after flipping a table, all caught on camera. She also admitted to the attack, as recorded by the police on the scene: I whacked him round the head... I admit I did it. I used the phone. I had his phone in one hand, and my phone in the other. I whacked him round the head - there's no excuse for it, I was upset... he was cheating on me". Her legal team would later advise her to change her plea to guilty as the evidence against her was too compelling.
Police who arrived at the scene in Stoke Newington in north London with body-cam equipment had found the pair covered in blood, with cuts on Flack’s wrist. It followed a “breathless” 999 call where Lewis Burton had pleaded with the police to help him: "She is going mad, breaking stuff. I've just woken up. She's cracked my head open... she tried to kill me, mate". Adding that his girlfriend was "beating" him as he pleaded for urgent help. Flack could also be heard on the recording being verbally abusive during the call.
The story goes she had used Burton’s finger, while he was sleeping on the sofa, to open his mobile phone using finger print recognition and read messages from his 60-year-old tennis client which Flack misconstrued and flew into a violent rage, throwing either a phone or a lamp at Burton’s head in an unprovoked attack while he couldn’t defend himself, conked on the sofa in a pair of boxers. Burton had told police officers that she had hit him with a lamp before later changing his story. Considering he was asleep at the time of the projectile missile, it’s hard to know for sure but something whacked him on the head to cause it to bleed. In February 2020, broadcaster and former tabloid editor Piers Morgan shared a tweet he had received from Flack in which she admitted she threw a phone in a fit of rage. She wrote:
"This has been the worst time of my life.
"And for what? Throwing a phone in anger."
The text contradicted her revised excuse that the incident had been an accident - that actually she was the real victim, not her sleeping boyfriend who went so far as to publicly show his head wound and play it down as ‘just a scratch’, even though the gash was treated by paramedics at the scene.
Here’s a reminder of The Sun’s front page from Christmas Eve, 2019.
According to the Mail, Caroline Flack's ex-fiancé Andrew Brady had reached out to Lewis Burton by text in the wake of her arrest saying 'I'm here if you want to chat with someone who knows what it's like'. The former Apprentice star offered his support to Lewis writing: 'I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg.' His offer was rejected by Burton.
On the Disney + documentary Caroline Flack’s mother Christine blames the police for her daughter’s premature death accusing them of going after the TV presenter because of her fame for a show trial. There’s one person in particular who has raised the ire of the powers that be, the police officer who instigated the appeal to quash the CPS’s recommendation that Flack get away with a caution for the assault. Possibly Detective Inspector Lauren Bateman who was confronted by Flack’s mother at the inquest into her death as reported by BBC News on August 6, 2020.
She told Det Insp Bateman: "No real evidence was put forward. If it was an ordinary person, you wouldn't have been bothered.
"You should be disgusted with yourself.
"That girl killed herself because you put an appeal through."
The report continues:
Det Insp Bateman told the inquest the decision to charge Ms Flack was "absolutely not" motivated in part by her celebrity status.
She said: "I would have done exactly the same if it had been anyone.
"All I can say is I was not biased and I treat everyone the same."
Apparently mum Christine’s “tireless campaigning” since the inquest compelled the Independent Office of Police Conduct to get the Met to reopen its investigation into the case. The watchdog recommended the force’s Directorate of Professional Standards interview the officer who was at Caroline’s arrest in 2019, “shortly before she killed herself”. Looks like they’re going after this officer who quite rightly pushed for a prosecution instead of turning a blind eye and letting the celebrity off the hook for a an unprovoked assault using a weapon. It’s not her fault Caroline Flack killed herself. That lies solely with Caroline Flack who chose to end her life rather than face the consequences of her actions, as captured on camera. The ultimate reality TV show.
A Mirror newspaper report from Saturday, January 4, 2025 reads:
He (the officer) was said to have been involved in the move to overrule the CPS decision to only issue the Love Island host with a caution for attacking Lewis Burton. But the unnamed officer was not compelled to give evidence for initial reviews into police conduct as he had left the force. He has since returned to duty.
Looks like he is probably a she and it looks like they’re going to make an example of her. Leave celebrities alone will be the message to other cops. They’re different. They might top themselves if you treat them like the Great Unwashed. Ignore their crimes. Put them in the same file as Epstein’s client list. If you do go after them, we’ll go after you and make your life hell. That’s the unwritten memo. If you want that promotion, you know what to do, or more to the point what not to do.
Really though, why should a celebrity, whatever their gender, be let off with a caution for whacking a lamp or a phone or whatever over someone's sleeping head (by accident!)? Imagine if a man did it to a woman and then blamed the cops for charging him because it was bad for his image - there’d be uproar. But when a woman attacks a man while he sleeps - somehow she becomes the victim and the police become the perpetrators for answering the 999 call and turning up at the scene to intervene. The PR gurus further flipped the script with that ridiculous Be Kind campaign which overlooked the obvious, that it’s far from kind to assault a sleeping partner, even if you suspect him of cheating, no matter how much booze has been consumed. Remember all those po-faced celebrities who repeated the Be Kind slogan on social media without registering the absurdity of the drive considering its foundation was seeped in blood, jealousy, rage and denial. Everybody started doing that silly love heart sign as if Caroline Flack had done nothing wrong and was herself the victim.
My anguished last phone call with ‘terrified and vulnerable’ Caroline Flack - by the lawyer who says her life could have been saved ran the headline in the Irish Daily Mail, Saturday, January 4, 2025.
Notice how the perpetrator of the crime is portrayed as terrified and vulnerable to elicit sympathy for the poor celebrity who should have been allowed continue to enjoy her fame and fortune in peace without getting hassle off the cops. It’s fascinating to observe how the mainstream media has reframed this story, the same way they reframed Flack’s inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old Harry Styles when she was the 32-year-old presenter of the Xtra Factor in 2011 and he was an impressionable boy-band contestant desperate for the limelight. Not only was it unprofessional, it was also creepy. Not so long ago an inappropriate relationship like that in the public eye would mean the end of a career or some kind of reprimand but in today’s toxic culture of ‘do as thou wilt’, it gets you promoted.
According to lawyer Nick Green, it was the body-cam footage that had been troubling the TV presenter the most. What had the cops recorded that made Caroline Flack so desperate? Where’s the footage now? An image of a blood spattered bed may have come from Burton to an ex-girlfriend before being released to the public. In an Instagram Story post in January 2020, Lewis Burton denied the blood was his and denied his own version of events by saying ‘I didn’t get hit over the head with a lamp’. Must have been a phone so. The blood seems to have come from Flack cutting her own wrist.
Lewis Burton didn’t want to pursue any charges but whatever the police recorded at that scene that night in December 12, 2019, it was serious enough for them to appeal the Crown Prosecution Service recommendation of a caution and enough for Flack’s legal team to recommend she change her plea to guilty.
The Mail tells us that Caroline Flack rang lawyer Nick Green on the recommendation of fellow TV presenter Melanie Sykes who had been arrested for assaulting her husband Jack in 2013. He had locked himself in the bathroom and called the police who later took photos of marks around his neck and face. Sykes got off with a caution which was later cleared from the records with the help of Nick Green. Her former husband told The Sun on Sunday that their short-lived marriage had been blighted by domestic abuse “which would never be tolerated if the genders were reversed”.
Caroline Flack had told friends she would rather die than have the body-cam recordings played in the public arena and wanted Nick Green to help her make them disappear. Green claims he could have helped Flack, dismissing the assault as “minor in nature” while claiming there was no “vulnerable victim” - only the fragile ego of a TV presenter who should have been allowed contact with Lewis Burton who had refused to make a statement in an effort to get the charges dropped.
Writer Richard Gregory has followed the story in depth and surmises on his website:
Caroline Flack expressed no remorse, pleaded not guilty despite all the evidence against her, brazened it out until her position finally became untenable, then killed herself rather than face reality.
It is very sad, but it is nobody else's fault.
It’s becoming clear the TV presenter’s death and the grief of her mother are being used as a cover to protect celebrities from future investigations and prosecutions into their crimes. The aim of the Disney + documentary is to show that celebrities should be given special treatment. They should be allowed to change their story, employ PR consultants, jet off on exotic holidays to reassess the details and deny, deny, deny.
Caroline Flack’s friends Louise Teasdale and Mollie Grosberg, had called an ambulance for her the day before she killed herself on February 15, 2020, a month before her trial was due to begin. They had found her unresponsive on the couch surrounded by pills. She hadn’t taken the news well from her legal team that she should change her plea to guilty. By the time the paramedics showed up, she had come to and sent them away again. Her friends stayed over and did their best to mind her but she was determined to finish the job, next time with a ligature. If only she’d held on. Covid was just around the corner and the media circus would have been subsumed by the propaganda machine. She might have even played a starring role in the Pandemic production after a little stint in rehab.
For her family, her loss is no doubt devastating and her mother’s grief is understandable but feelings cannot get in the way of facts. If Caroline Flack was guilty of domestic abuse as captured on body-cam camera, she could have said sorry and moved on. She had money to cushion the blow, unlike so many who find themselves in a similar position. She had the means to improve herself and would have probably received a promotion for her efforts.
Flack’s unprovoked assault, however bad, certainly appears minor in the context of wider celebrity criminality that’s been hidden for years but is finally coming to the surface with cases like P Diddy and Jay-Z. We’re learning how the showbiz industry works. It’s not pretty. Celebrities are running for cover.
Hence the search for ways to conceal their crimes and reframe the story by blaming the cops for pressing charges or by making it clear there are certain celebrities who are untouchable.
This is where we must re-establish the real story from the PR gurus and complicit newspapers editors who are attempting to rewrite the script and make the perpetrators the victims or minimise their crimes.
Stay on the alert. Their propaganda only works if we’re not paying attention.
Kindly support independent journalism and buy the author a coffee HERE. Thank you.
The blood on the bed doesn't ''look' like blood - good for photographs though......?