MY BESTIE WAS MURDERED BY HER SUGAR DADDY
GEORGINA LOVED HER LAVISH LIFESTYLE BUT IT TURNED OUT TO BE DEADLY...
To the casual observer, it looked like Georgina Symonds had it all.
With blondebombshell looks, a multimillionaire lover and a luxury lifestyle to boot, the 25-year-old lived the good life. Helicopter flights, spa visits and stays in fancy hotels were just part and parcel of Georgina’s everyday existence. But Georgina’s lavish lifestyle masked a dark secret. And she paid the ultimate price...
‘I’ll always remember getting that call from Georgina’s mum, Deborah,’ Georgina’s best friend, Alexy Butcher, 24, tells New Idea. Deborah told Alexy that Georgina hadn’t collected her little girl, Emily, from school.
‘Emily was her priority. There would be a good reason,’ Alexy remembers – and, so, she offered to go to the home her best friend shared with her millionaire lover, Peter Morgan, 55, to see if she was there. ‘I drove as fast as I could to the bungalow which was 20 minutes away. I felt fear rising in my throat,’ Alexy recalls. ‘When I arrived her BMW was on the drive. She never went anywhere without her car. I knocked hard on the windows of the bungalow but was met with complete silence.’
Naturally, Alexy then called Peter. Her best friend and the businessman had met somewhat unconventionally after Georgina had broken up with the father of her little girl.
Wanting a totally different life, Georgina took up pole dancing and burlesque classes – and she started working as a stripper. ‘I tried not to judge her but I was worried about her safety and told her so,’ Alexy remembers. ‘But defiant as ever, Georgina refused to be concerned.’
But there was a another side to Georgina’s new existence. She’d become an escort too and Peter had been one of her clients.
‘He was a very successful millionaire but he was married with two children,’ Alexy remembers. ‘He was a man of very few words but one thing was very clear – he was besotted
with Georgina.’ Soon the father-of-two was telling his younger lover that he wanted more than just a client relationship. He wanted to see her all the time.
‘It sounded like something out of the film Pretty Woman and a new world unfolded before my eyes,’ Alexy says.
Peter became Georgina’s ‘sugar daddy’. She nicknamed him ‘Rich Pete’ and just like Richard Gere’s character in the hit film, he splurged on his new love. He treated Georgina to clothes from her favourite shop, Karen Millen, and in time Georgina moved into a pretty little home in the grounds of a castle with her new man.
Meanwhile Peter continued to have a home he shared with his family in South Wales, UK.
With $17,000 a month to use as spending money, it was hardly surprising that Alexy’s friend started enjoying the finer things in life. Things had seemed perfect... that was until the day Georgina disappeared.
When Alexy called Peter to tell him, he was perfectly calm, telling her he’d drive over to the bungalow. ‘Finally he pulled up in his Porsche and let us both into the house,’ Alexy recalls. ‘We searched every room but there was no sign of Georgina.
‘Then he said something that seemed strange... “Georgina threatened to hang herself.”
‘I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I didn’t believe it. That didn’t sound like the friend I knew at all,’ Alexy says.
Perturbed, Alexy called the police. Quickly cars arrived at the estate and helicopters searched from above. They put a tracker on Georgina’s phone and found it to be in one of Peter’s cars at his family home.
That’s when the officers started questioning him.
‘I went home as it was getting late. I felt there was nothing more I could do,’ Alexy says.
‘It was like an electric shock through my body when the police told me the next day that he had confessed to killing Georgina.’ Alexy’s best friend was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.
It was only later, when Peter appeared at Newport Crown Court, that she learned more about how a sinister secret obsession had turned deadly.
Peter admitted he had paid Georgina to be with him exclusively – but he’d become increasingly controlling – using listening devices to spy on her.
Meanwhile he kept up the pretence of a happy marriage – while secretly being drawn into a seedy world of sex websites which he blamed on a ‘mid-life crisis’. That crisis also saw him buying sports cars, an American fire engine and guns.
When Peter overheard Georgina tell someone she was going to leave him, he strangled her with a home-made noose at the bungalow before dumping her body in an outbuilding. The callous killer had taped her legs behind her and wrapped the body in a plastic sheet before carrying it to the boot of his $91,000 Porsche.
Peter denied murder, claiming he had simply lost control, but he was found guilty and jailed for 25 years.
‘No matter how long he spends behind bars, nothing will bring Georgina back,’ Alexy says sadly. ‘I miss my friend every day – I miss her smile, her infectious energy. There will never be anyone quite like her.
‘Part of her was addicted to Peter Morgan’s money, but no one has the right to judge her.
‘She was an amazing mother to Emily and I knew deep down she just craved security for them both. ‘I feel such hatred towards Peter Morgan. He was obsessed and determined – if he couldn’t have her, nobody would.
‘“Rich Pete” thought he could buy whatever he wanted and Georgina paid with her life.’