Woman ‘made three suicide pacts with men’
A WOMAN who made a suicide pact with a postman then left him to die alone discussed death deals with other men less than an hour after he was pronounced dead, a court heard.
Natasha Gordon, 44, was found by police after allegedly leaving Matthew Birkinshaw, 31, to die in his Fiat Punto from carbon monoxide poisoning on December 17, 2015.
A jury at Leicester Crown Court heard the Royal Mail worker was found by police locked in his car and pronounced dead at 7.24pm.
Text messages read to the court between Gordon and two other men at 8.04pm and 9.28pm suggested she was entering into further suicide pacts.
One of the officers to attend the scene at Rutland Water, near Oakham, said Gordon told him Mr Birkinshaw had given her £60 to get a taxi home but “asked her not to change his mind”.
In a call to police earlier that day, Gordon’s partner said he thought she was going to kill herself.
PC Gordon Scott said: “It was the intervention of her partner that then made her disclose that we should be looking for another person at risk.”
Police bodycam footage of Gordon’s subsequent arrest showed her say: “I only tried to help him.”
Gordon met postman Mr Burkinshaw, from Walsall, West Midlands, online, the court heard.
He had previously said he wanted to end his life before he came into contact with Gordon and travelled to her home in Peterborough.
PC Anna Pollard said when Gordon was taken to a police station, she said: “I don’t want to die, that’s why I pulled out of tonight.”
A motorist who passed the death scene at 1.35pm said: “They looked like they had broken down and were waiting to be picked up.
“At the time I thought there smoke coming from the bonnet.”
Gordon denies a single charge of encouraging Mr Birkinshaw to take his own life.
The trial continues. was