At 9am on a freezing December early morning in 2019, Caroline Flack designed a tearful mobile phone simply call to a good friend from a North London law enforcement station.
The television presenter had just been explained to she was to be charged with prevalent assault immediately after hitting her boyfriend Lewis Burton at her flat.
She was distraught: just 3 hrs earlier, she experienced been informed she would be permit off with a caution.
This new final decision by the police remaining the significantly-liked host of ITV‘s controversial actuality series, Adore Island, ‘in pieces’, according to her buddies.
Two months afterwards, Flack, 40, who had slice her possess wrists in the aftermath of her violent row with Burton, took her lifetime at her home in Stoke Newington, North-East London.
In 2019, Caroline Flack was charged with widespread assault immediately after hitting her boyfriend Lewis Burton at her flat
‘She couldn’t compute why they experienced just one moment reported almost everything was likely to be okay and then the subsequent her lifestyle was in tatters,’ claims a pal.
‘If that determination hadn’t transformed, then Caroline could nevertheless be with us today. It utterly haunts all people who loved Caroline. Nobody can recognize it.’
Now there is a renewed perception of poignancy right after Flack’s mom Christine uncovered that the Independent Business office of Police Carry out has urged the Achieved to reopen its investigation into the situation of her beloved late daughter.
The watchdog has proposed that the force’s Directorate of Professional Standards interviews an officer who was present at the time of Flack’s arrest.
He was said to have been associated in the shift to overrule the Crown Prosecution Service’s selection to situation her with a warning for her assault on Burton — a previous tennis player and model with whom she was besotted.
Pursuing the incident, Burton experienced refused to make a statement to the law enforcement, in the hope this would direct to the law enforcement dropping the charges.
Burton posted a photo of the pair on Instagram right after Flack’s dying in 2020 with the caption: ‘My heart is damaged we had one thing so special’
Christine said yesterday: ‘Something really unusual happened to Carrie [Caroline] at the police station that night time, but no 1 held a proper file explaining why.
‘I’ve now created a complaint to compel the officer to give the assertion we assume he really should have specified 4 a long time back. As a relatives, we have been still left with significant, unanswered inquiries.’
She also discovered she experienced requested a conference with Sir Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Law enforcement — without having success.
‘He has refused to speak to me,’ she explained. ‘Now it really is time the Achieved gave us comprehensive disclosure.’
The unnamed officer’s lacking account of gatherings is recognized to be viewed as an ‘outstanding line of inquiry’. And, right now, the Mail can reveal that what transpired in those crucial 3 hrs is a person of the troubles to which Christine is now identified to discover solutions.
Caroline Flack introduced ITV’s Enjoy Island for the initially 5 sequence, from 2015 till 2019
One particular buddy claimed: ‘There was a disagreement among the CPS and the Met in excess of how the circumstance must proceed. Among the several hours of 6am and 9am one thing transformed and, when at the time it did not seem to be like a big deal to the police, now it has turn out to be so.
‘We all want to know what went on all through that time, why the final decision was attained that she would be charged and who was at the rear of it. We want to know everything. Caroline was hardly ever the very same later on: we owe it to her to obtain out the truth.’
Flack’s twin sister Jody dashed from her household in Kensal Rise, north-west London, to choose her up right after studying of the trauma she’d endured at the law enforcement station.
Her injuries from chopping her wrists were so lousy that she used 10 several hours in hospital acquiring them tended to. Jody and other users of her spouse and children had been also claimed to be ‘horrified, offended and upset’ at how the star’s frail psychological state was not adequately taken into account by the justice process.
A courtroom sketch of Flack at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Courtroom in which she pleaded not responsible to assaulting her boyfriend in December, 2019
As component of her bail conditions, Flack was banned from viewing Burton. She was heartbroken at the final decision and I can expose for the very first time that she was ‘too sad’ to return to the £1 million flat wherever she lived with Burton — and exactly where the incident took place.
In its place she holed up in the £500-a-evening members’ club, The Ned. Presented its spot in the old Midland Lender headquarters in the Metropolis of London — significantly from the standard celeb haunts — Flack believed it would supply her some unaccustomed privateness.
At the time ensconced, she scarcely left her suite, spending her time viewing ‘rubbish’ television and ordering food items on home support.
‘It was Caroline’s put of solace, she just came up with the idea of heading there,’ a former colleague of Flack’s tells me. ‘She believed the City was entire of people today who wouldn’t actually treatment about her so it was the excellent position.
‘Nobody at any time identified out she was there but it was her dwelling for some weeks. She couldn’t deal with heading back to the flat where she strike Lewis. It was all also unhappy for her.’
But, even though The Ned made available her some consolation, her occupation was in freefall. Even with not acquiring been convicted of any offence, she was virtually right away sacked from her £1.2million-a-calendar year work on Adore Island and changed by presenter Laura Whitmore.
Floral tributes laid by enthusiasts and admirers exterior Caroline Flack’s previous residence in North London after her demise in 2020
Although individuals close to Flack say she realized there was no guarantee of receiving her career again if she was located not guilty, ITV bosses say she was provided aid.
Her 6-determine contract with Polaroid sunglasses was also ‘put on hold’.
On major of all this undesirable information, she was dreading her future court docket date. Flack later moved into a new flat, exactly where she hanged herself on February 15, 2020.
Pals of Flack point out that she usually stated she would ‘rather die’ than see the law enforcement bodycam footage of herself on the night she strike Burton, let on your own see it played in open up court docket at the demo, which had been set for March 4, 2020.
The law enforcement recording displays her covered in her very own blood, weeping uncontrollably, in a scene that was ‘like a horror movie’.
Her fears that these lurid pictures of her, severely distressed, hardly clothed and with self-inflicted cuts, would be set into the general public domain are imagined to have been contributing aspects.
For that purpose, Flack — ‘Carrie’ to her grieving mothers and fathers and 4 siblings — was initially adamant she desired to plead guilty to assaulting Burton. ‘She imagined it would signify she could go on with her life,’ said a friend.
‘Yes, she was distraught at what she did but, in her eyes, it was an accident. She didn’t care about dropping her task on Like Island, she just required the total episode to go absent.
‘In any case, she felt she had accomplished 5 many years of Enjoy Island and that perhaps it was time it arrived to an finish.’
It was a go accredited by a single of her most reliable and extensive-standing showbusiness friends, Russell Manufacturer, who considered it would have been the finest way forward for her.
Nonetheless, immediately after consultation with her lawful group, Flack pleaded not guilty at the first listening to at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court docket on Xmas Eve 2019. The demo day of March 4 was then established.
‘You can not quit contemplating that if she experienced pleaded responsible, she could be alive today,’ explained the good friend. ‘She felt so significantly disgrace at the believed of that footage coming out, it was as well considerably to bear.
‘She would say that she’d rather die than it occur out publicly in courtroom but we failed to realise she in fact intended it.’
But, as a further friend is speedy to stage out, if the Achieved had not overruled their colleagues at the CPS, Flack just about certainly would be below nowadays to tell the tale.
