'My brilliant son was murdered, so why won't Pete Doherty tell me what happened?' says mother of par

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'My brilliant son was murdered, so why won't Pete Doherty tell me what happened?' says mother of party plunge actor

 

 

By Paul Bracchi

Last updated at 1:21 AM on 05th December 2009

 

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Mother of Cambridge graduate who died at drug-addled singer's party reveals damning dossier of evidence which she claims proves her son was pushed to his death.

Next week, as Sheila Blanco is painfully aware, Pete Doherty begins a UK tour. How could she forget?

 

'He will be dancing on my son's grave when he gets on that stage,' says Mrs Blanco, with a mixture of anger and frustration, born out of the kind of grief none of us, God willing, will ever experience.

 

 

Graduation day: Mark Blanco, pictured with his mother Sheila in 1997, plunged to his death after a confrontation with rock star Pete Doherty at a party

 

One of the numbers that Doherty, frontman of Babyshambles, will be performing is called The Lost Art Of Murder. The lyrics include the line: 'What a nice day for a murder.'

This probably won't mean very much to anyone in the audience, even supposing they manage to decipher Doherty's (often) incoherent, drug-ravaged ramblings that pass for songs.

 

 

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But Mrs Blanco understands only too well. 'Doherty is just taunting us,' she told me this week. 'He's laughing at me, my family, the police, everyone.'

The track appears to be a gloating reference to the late Mark Blanco, who died in tragic and mysterious circumstances almost three years ago to the day.

Unanswered questions: Doherty is said to have 'stepped over' Mark's body on the pavement

 

Mark, a 30-year-old Cambridge philosophy graduate, was found unconscious in the street following a row with Doherty and two of his cronies at a party in East London.

 

Doherty left before the police and ambulance arrived. He is captured on CCTV practically stepping over Mark's body on the pavement. A cloud of suspicion has hung over him ever since. Never more so than now.

 

Independent experts have reviewed the evidence on behalf of Mrs Blanco, and have concluded that he was, in all probability, the victim of foul play. In other words, someone - or indeed more than one person - has quite possibly got away with murder.

 

So far, anyway. Today, among the many unanswered questions is whether Pete Doherty himself is guilty of anything more than 'stepping over Mark's body' or 'dancing on his grave' by penning that breathtakingly distasteful song.

 

The video for the Lost Art Of Murder (which is on YouTube) was filmed at the scene of Mark's death. Doherty can be seen strumming his guitar in an apartment just yards from the balcony where Mark plunged to the ground, sustaining fatal injuries.

 

Mrs Blanco recognised the wallpaper from her one and only visit to the building.

 

Doherty's behaviour may yet come back to haunt him. Scotland Yard reopened the investigation into the Blanco case on the recommendation of the coroner in 2007.

 

It may not seem like much progress, but at least the new team of officers have completely ruled out an 'accidental fall', put forward by the original deeply flawed police inquiry.

 

They now believe Mark either deliberately jumped from the balcony but did not 'intend to harm himself' or fell as 'a result of the criminal act of another (or others)'.

 

Either way, it is the first time detectives have acknowledged that Mark Blanco might have been killed.

The proof, says Mrs Blanco, a lecturer in English and music from Guildford, is there in black and white, on the table in front of her.

It's a report revealing the results of a biomechanics investigation. Biomechanics is the science which examines the 'internal and external forces' acting on the human body - during a fall, for example, and the 'effects produced by these forces'.

 

Party guests: The bash was held at the home of Doherty's friend Paul Roundhill (left) and was attended by his minder Johnny 'Headlock' Jeannevol (right)

 

The report says Mark Blanco could not have jumped and suffered the injuries he did.

 

Had he jumped, he would almost certainly have landed feet first and injured his feet or legs. Instead, Mark had massive head injuries.

 

As Professor Richard Wasserug, a Canadian expert on deaths from suspicious falls, wrote: 'To sustain lethal injury almost exclusively to the head in a fall from such a low height [11ft 7in] would require more than just drug-induced [or drink-induced] poor co-ordination and slow reflexes.'

 

This is because humans in freefall react instinctively to protect their head, he added.

 

For the record toxicology reports show Mark, who was 6ft 4in, had drunk the equivalent of about four pints of lager.

 

His speech was not 'slurred', according to the statement of a woman who was at the party. Nor was he 'unsteady' on his feet.

 

'Based on the research,' Professor Wasserug said, 'I stand by my opinion that it is extremely unlikely that Mark jumped deliberately but if he did, he did not intend to harm himself to any degree.

'Given the nature of his injuries, the two most likely explanations are that he was backed into railings [in front of the balcony] and pushed over, or that he was not conscious, and was dropped over the railing.'

 

That last paragraph alone utterly undermines the initial police investigation. Officers assumed, wrongly, that Mark went over the first-floor balcony [from 12ft] probably 'feet first' when in fact he went over probably head first. B

But, then, the police had made up their minds about the 'fatal fall' almost immediately. The official police log - or 'incident printout' - says: 'Crime scene can be closed .. . there is no indication that this is suspicious.'

 

Rock star: Sheila says that Doherty will be 'dancing on her son's grave' when he begins his UK tour next week

 

The time is given as 04:19, December 3, 2006 - around four hours after Pete Doherty 'stepped over' Mark's body on the pavement.

 

'It's been one staggering revelation after another,' says Mrs Blanco. 'I thought the police would do their jobs properly.

 

'It's the least you expect, isn't it? But things are being done now which should have been done as a matter of routine at the time.'

 

The Whitechapel flat at the centre of the tragedy, we now know, was a 'crack house'. It was also the home of Paul Roundhill, sometimes described as Doherty's literary agent.

 

Mark Blanco knew Roundhill, but he did not go to the party to get drugs. He was rehearsing for a role in a production at a well-known East End theatre pub, the George Tavern.

When he found out Doherty was going to be at the party, he was determined to persuade him to come to the play's opening night.

 

Just after midnight, Mark turned up at Roundhill's door. Mark knew Roundhill and he was allowed in.

 

Six people, apart from Mark, were already inside: Roundhill, Doherty and the singer's self-styled minder Johnny 'Headlock' Jeannevol, and three women.

 

Doherty, it seems, found Mark a nuisance and he was eventually ejected. According to the police report submitted to the coroner, 'there was no evidence of any violence or threat of violence in respect to Mr Blanco's departure'.

 

In fact, Roundhill grabbed hold of Mark's lapels and tore his jacket, the transcript of his evidence at the subsequent inquest reveals.

 

Then, when Mark put his hand on either side of the door frame, Roundhill hit him three times - 'ineffectual gestures' he called them when challenged by the family's barrister, Michael Wolkind QC.

Shortly after entering the flats, Mark was out on the street. A few minutes later, he was back again.

 

Just 52 seconds later he went over the balcony of the open stairwell on the first floor. The time was 12.29am.

 

If Professor Wasserug's version of events is true, someone - or more than one person - at the party is lying about what happened during those 'missing 52 seconds'.

 

'One officer told me they [the people at the party] were just poor helpless creatures,' says Mrs Blanco. 'Those were his exact words.'

 

Over the past three years, however, Mrs Blanco has compiled dossiers on the those 'poor helpless creatures' which rather contradicts that claim.

 

Let's begin with Roundhill. He had already been banned from the George Tavern because of his connection with hard drugs. His nickname was 'Scaggy' ('Scag' being heroin).

 

The current occupant of his old flat still turns away 'crackheads trying to score drugs' at the address.

 

One person who has known Roundhill for 16 years has given a 'character reference' about him to Mrs Blanco.

 

He said that on one occasion, Roundhill injected another junkie with heroin. The junkie, he says, nearly died. Later the two men fell out and Roundhill 'beat him so badly with his fists' that he broke his nose.

 

Intriguingly, on February 14 last year, Roundhill left a voicemail message on the mobile phone of Mark Blanco's sister, Emma.

 

Roundhill said he wanted to speak to her to 'clear things up'. Emma phoned back and left her email address. Roundhill did not reply.

 

As for Johnny Jeannevol, well, his nickname 'Headlock' perhaps tells you something.

 

Someone who regularly saw Doherty's heavily built 'minder' around the East End pubs gave this account to Mrs Blanco: 'Every time I saw him he was making trouble, throwing tables and glasses.

 

'I was standing next to the bar [on one occasion] and saw him snap a snooker cue in two then use one part as weapon against another person.

 

'He smashed the face of the other guy, causing him to bleed and fall to the floor. He continued to beat him until he was physically removed.'

 

On Christmas Day 2006, just a few weeks after Mark Blanco died, Jeannevol walked into Bethnal Green police station and confessed to killing Mark.

 

He was locked up, but later retracted what he had said, claiming he was 'off his head', and was referred to psychiatric unit. He was subsequently released.

 

Finally, to Pete Doherty himself. Detectives tried to to interview Doherty about Mark's death on four separate occasions in 2008, without success.

 

They eventually caught up with him last November, but only as a witness, not under caution as a suspect. He said he 'couldn't remember very much' about the fateful night.

 

Yet included in Mrs Blanco's files is a statement from a close friend of Mark's. She tells of how she met a man at a party who claims to have had an extraordinary encounter with Doherty shortly after the tragedy.

 

The family's attempts to trace the 'source' have proved unsuccessful. Make of it what you will.

 

The friend said: 'The man - who was quite young - told me (and with sympathy, this wasn't gossip, he was quite traumatised) that he had been quite horrified to meet none other than Pete Doherty, and that Pete Doherty had said to him: "I will take you to a place where a man was murdered," and then took him to the very place - the Roundhill flat with the balcony - and showed it to him.

 

'He [the source] said he found out later from the papers it was the correct place, and then worked out the murdered man was Mark.'

 

As for Mrs Blanco's barrister, Michael Wolkind QC, who is devoting his services for free to help get justice for her son, he has no doubts about the case.

 

'The police started with two theories: suicide or accident. The expert evidence now excludes both.'

 

The new evidence has been sent the police, and if it is not acted upon, the family is considering a private prosecution or civil action against one or more of the people who were at the party on the night Mark went over the balcony.

 

So far, the campaign has cost more than £40,000. 'I am an optimistic person, despite everything that has happened,' says Mrs Blanco quietly. 'I am absolutely convinced that one day "someone" is going to crack. I will never give up.'

 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1233313/My-brilliant-son-murdered-wont-Pete-Doherty-tell-happened.html#ixzz0YqL6CuPo