MY HEART IS CRUSHED AND MY SOUL DESTROYED
MUM OF TRAGIC DAUGHTERS WRITES BOOK TO HELP OTHERS COPE WITH DEVASTATING LOSS:
KIRSTY Grabham died in one of the worst ways imaginable. Battered and bruised, her mutilated body was put in a suitcase and thrown out of a car by a man she had married just months earlier.
Her mother has now revealed she still cannot come to terms with her beautiful daughter’s death and is tormented by the idea 23-year-old Kirsty was still alive when she was hurled out of that car window on the M4.
Kirsty’s violent and bullying husband Paul Graham had tried to cut her in half before stuffing her still warm body into that suitcase.
Mum-of-three Cathy said: “The thing that gets me the most is when they found Kirsty, 10 days after she had gone missing, her body was still warm, her rigor mortis hadn’t even set in.
“I’m thinking was she still alive in that suitcase, and that’s the thing that does go through my head all the time when I go to sleep and wake up that’s what’s in my mind, was she screaming for her mum?”
Cathy, whose elder daughter Hayley drank herself to death heartbroken after her sister’s murder, has written a book about the torment she has endured.
In this interview, she opens up on one of the worst domestic abuse crimes Wales has ever witnessed which shed a light on a world of drugs, violence and prostitution.
Kirsty, who met her husband Paul in a massage parlour where they both worked as prostitutes, disappeared after visiting a nightclub with friends.
She was eventually found in a suitcase in woodland alongside the M4 close to Laleston, near Bridgend, on April 6, 2009, where Grabham had thrown her from his car.
The family was forced to endure the torment of hearing all the details of their lives and sex work aired publicly in Swansea Crown Court where Grabham, who denied murder, was tried, convicted and jailed for a minimum of 19 years for murder.
During the trial it emerged that the married couple ran a sex-for-hire business from their Swansea home, spent £1,000 a week on cocaine and had casual sex with strangers they contacted over the internet.
They were last seen to- gether having a row during a night out in Swansea. Grabham is thought to have killed the model after she arrived home after him. Grabham battered and strangled Kirsty to death in the flat.
Cathy has described the heartbreaking moment when she found out that her daughter had been murdered.
“When Kirsty went missing, all I could think about was that I hoped she was OK because she was in touch with me constantly every day. When I didn’t hear from her for two days I started to feel worried.
“On the first day I knew that she had been out the night before and I thought she just had a hangover so she was probably sleeping.
“I rang her so-called husband on the Monday and he said that he hadn’t seen her since the nightclub on Friday.
“Which was a lie, he murdered her, he battered her to death, he tried to cut her in half, he shoved her body in a suitcase and threw it from the M4 like a piece of rubbish.”
Mrs Broomfield has said she will never be able to come to terms with what happened to Kirsty.
“You never come to terms with what happened, you just can’t, I don’t give myself time to stop and think about it, I’m either playing games on the laptop or writing or reading.
“My mind has got to be active at all times, I’ve got to be thinking about something else, I can’t be dwelling on it all the time.
“When it first happened to Kirsty I had my hair dyed jet black and I had piercings. I was trying to change my identity, I didn’t want to be that person who lost their daughter, I was trying to be someone else.
“I can go months without leaving the house, I have a fear of going outside, you think everyone is talking about you. Sometimes if you’re in a supermarket and you go up an aisle and all of a sudden you see a black suitcase, like the one Kirsty was in, you’re not expecting to see it, it’s a shock.
“Or sometimes I’ll see a blonde girl, someone who looked like Kirsty and you think that’s her, my heart jumps for a minute and your stomach turns, but they turn around and you realise it’s not her.”
Five years after Kirsty was murdered, Cathy had to deal with tragedy again.
Older daughter Hayley Wilkinson drank herself to death after struggling to cope with the loss of her little sister.
Cathy believes Grabham is also responsible for Hayley’s death. She believes Hayley would never have drunk to the extent she did if her little sister had still been here.
The 62-year-old recalls the pain Hayley was going through.
“After Kirsty’s death it was awful, Hayley was drinking far too much, I had seen that from when she came to visit me and through the court case.
“She didn’t attend the case because she couldn’t look at him, she didn’t want to hear the details of what happened to her sister, she said she couldn’t live without her little sister.
“They were like twins, Kirsty was loud and outgoing and Hayley was more laid-back, she told me many times that she wanted to be with Kirsty. I’d say, ‘So do I, Hayley, but I’ve got to be here for you and your sister... please stop drinking.’
“I didn’t want to bury another child. She used to brush it off and say that won’t happen. But she was in and out of hospital on numerous occasions.
“The doctors had to restart her heart. She’s been in a coma. The doctors told me that she wouldn’t come out of that. I had a call from the doctor, he said a miracle had happened. I was so pleased, she woke up and she was talking.
“We took her to Tunisia for a week, it was all inclusive, but I noticed she was having a drink as soon as she woke up, when she was eating food she was going straight to the toilet, I knew she was being sick but when I asked her about it she denied it.
“But as soon as she was on her own everything collapsed around her, she was drinking and grieving for her little sister, the last time she was in hospital she said to her big sister Sonia, ‘I feel like I’m dying, I’ve never been in so much pain.’
“We went to the hospital and we were there holding her hand for about 12 or 13 hours, she passed away in my arms.
“The nurse said to me ‘she’s dead’. I said ‘ she can’t be, she’s only sleeping’. The nurse told me to look at the screen with the heartbeat as a monitor. It just stopped. She was just lying there like she was asleep.
“I remember thinking in my head that I’m glad she did look like that and not the way Kirsty did; Kirsty was battered beyond recognition, she looked like something out of a horror film. Hayley looked peaceful.”
Cathy has said that the only thing that has kept her going is family.
“My daughter Sonia and grandchildren keep me going, my husband has been brilliant, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. There’s a group on Facebook called together stronger, it’s a group for other South Wales mums who are grieving. We also meet up with each other.
“Sonia had a birthday party recently, the room was purple and pink, even the cake, because that was Kirsty and Hayley’s favourite colours. I put things on Facebook about them all the time, especially on their birthdays and at Christmas.
“I’m always buying little angels, I’ve got little gardens outside for them with a rose bush in each one - one has got a pink rose bush and the other has a red one.
“I’ve got the playboy bunny tattooed on my leg as that was what Kirsty liked. I also have a crown with a K on it because Kirsty was my princess. Hayley had the infinity sign on her finger so I had that tattooed on my leg.
“I talk about them to people all the time, I’m always looking at the pictures. Sometimes when I’m cleaning I come across something whether that’s a fridge magnet or a diploma saying ‘world’s best mum’.
“I feel really sad when I find these things. Sometimes I think I’m luckier than some people, when I think about that Manchester bombing, that little eight-year-old girl that got killed. I had Kirsty for 24 years and Hayley for 31 years, I’m a lot luckier than that mum, that’s the way I think of it.”
Cathy has now written a book about her tragic story. Her aim is to hopefully encourage anyone who is in an abusive relationship to have the courage to leave their partner.
She said: “A year after Kirsty was murdered I decided to write the book; it was like a release for me. It was a way of coping with my grief, I used to write down notes and one day I thought why not put it into a book.
“I wrote for about nine months, then I forgot about it. I had help with a ghostwriter which took a few years. While I was writing it, Hayley passed away. It seemed like I was writing about someone else and not myself. When I read the book back, I think that’s not me, that’s
someone else.
“Straight away I stared adding Hayley to it. I hope I can help people so they don’t think they are mad when they have these thoughts that I did. I want people to think that they are normal and it’s just part of the grieving pro- cess. After what happened I wanted to kill myself, I didn’t want to live, I took an overdose and I went up to Kirsty’s grave to die. The police found me and took me to the hospital and I know that after speaking to other mothers who have lost a child they go through these thoughts as well.
“If you are in an abusive relationship, don’t put up with it, walk out that door and don’t look back. The devastation your family go though, it’s just horrific and no-one should have to go through it.
“I had a message from a girl who read the book and the things I was saying about Kirsty, her friend was going through similar, she let her friend read the book and now she is thinking about leaving her abusive boyfriend. Her friend is going to give her all the help she can and I thought that was brilliant.
“My heart is crushed, my soul destroyed, and all because of one vile person’s terrible actions. But the memories of my two beautiful precious girls are locked up in a golden box within my heart forever.
“Never again will any- one hurt them; they are safe now, in the arms of the angels. To lose one child is devastating, but there are no words to describe the pain of losing two.
“My poor babies are gone, never again will I see them or hold them, not until it is my time to depart this painful world, and I hope that will be soon.
“Only then will my anguish and pain be over so that I can be reunited with my two beautiful girls forever. On the days that Kirsty and Hayley died, two golden hearts stopped beating.”
The true story by Cathy Broomfield, entitled Through A Mother’s Tears, is available to buy on Amazon.