Jailed for four years – the ex-model who encouraged a total stranger to kill himself
And how her extraordinary story reveals the disturbing role of the internet in countless suicides
POSING in a bright pink T-shirt with the words ‘Choose Life’ emblazoned on the front, Natasha Gordon’s Facebook page appears to be a celebration of renewed purpose and recovery.
Filled with life-affirming quotations in praise of the ‘Power of Positivity’, one photograph after another charts her progress back from the brink.
In one, she showcases a fresh hairstyle, in another she models a new faux fur coat. In a third she shows off striking fake eyelashes and in a fourth a blue glitter manicure.
The 44-year-old former model from Peterborough talks of going to college and the transformational effects of exercise on body and soul.
‘Life is so short,’ says Natasha, left with lasting injuries after a failed suicide attempt.
‘Be thankful for every day, don’t take loved ones for granted or friends, be kind to yourself and others. Never let a hater get you down.’
Uplifting words, but how painful for the grieving family of postal worker Matthew Birkinshaw, 31, from Walsall — a young man also with much to live for.
He, too, might be alive today if his path hadn’t crossed Natasha Gordon’s on a web chatroom attended by deeply pernicious people when he was at his most vulnerable.
In December 2015, Natasha and Matthew — strangers until they made contact on the suicide internet forum — entered into a pact to end their lives together. After texting and speaking on the phone, Gordon sent this text: ‘I really can’t wait until tomorrow — hope you don’t change your mind.’
They met in person the following day to discuss methods then drove in his car to Rutland Water Nature Reserve in the East Midlands. At the last minute, however, Gordon backed out of their planned suicide bid, the details of which are too distressing to publish. After sending a goodbye message to her boyfriend — who immediately called the police — she decided she ‘couldn’t go through with it’.
Gordon, who then left Matthew to die alone in the car, would later tell police she tried to talk him out of it, but he locked the doors, put on the radio and wouldn’t listen as she tapped on the window.
She claimed that ‘shock’ prevented her from telling officers that Matthew was dying just 450 yards away, when they came with her boyfriend to rescue her at a nearby hotel.
It was two hours before she told them of the pact, by which time it was too late. He had died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
In the meantime, Gordon had been back on internet forums discussing suicide with two other men within minutes of abandoning Matthew. She claimed she was looking for a partner to end her life with ‘for comfort’. Last month — in what is believed to be the first successful prosecution of its kind in the UK — Gordon wept as she was found guilty of encouraging another person to commit suicide following a week-long trial.
Yesterday she showed no reaction as she was jailed for four years at Leicester Crown Court for the role she played in Matthew’s death.
Sentencing her, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told Gordon she had ‘deceived’ Mr Birkinshaw and was ‘gripped by self-centredness’.
She said: ‘You misled him into believing you were genuine,’ and added: ‘Your intention at best was equivocal.’ Gordon, she said, had advised Matthew on the method of suicide and its deployment.
Matthew’s distraught parents paid tribute to their ‘thoughtful, sensitive, generous and compassionate’ son, who, the court heard, felt ‘disconnected’ despite having a loving family, a wide circle of friends and a steady girlfriend, none of whom had any idea of the depth of his distress.
Yesterday, his heartbroken mother Margaret, 62, fought back tears as she read out from a victim impact statement: ‘He was a man full of fun, laughter, love and intelligence, with everything to live for but with a sensitivity which sometimes made life difficult for him and the misfortune to meet with someone who wanted to do him harm when he most needed kindness and support.’
Matthew, who as a teenager had at times struggled with his mental health leaving him with an ‘inner vulnerability’, had been planning to move into a new flat in the New Year.
The evening before his death, he ate with his parents. His last words to his mother were: ‘Give me a hug, Mum. I’ll be back tomorrow.’
His older brother David, 36, a married father-of-two, told the court: ‘My brother was a bright, funny, articulate man . . . he was one of the kindest and friendliest people I knew and to hear that somebody could walk away from him in those moments is extremely hard to take.’
HE REVEALED how one of Matthew’s last acts of kindness was to give Gordon the money for a taxi after she backed out of their joint suicide bid.
Detective Constable Michelle Preston of Leicestershire police described Gordon as ‘a woman who quickly gained his trust by exploiting his vulnerability. Gordon’s blatant disregard for Matthew’s welfare that day is what has made this case even more distressing for all involved.’
But Natasha Gordon’s family insist that — deplorable though her actions were — she, too, is a victim of these dangerous websites.
The court heard that Gordon entered into a pact with Matthew almost a year after an earlier suicide bid. She told the jury that pain from the ankle she fractured in that attempt and other medical complaints, which forced her to give up work, had driven her ‘insane’.
Psychologically fragile, her family fear she will attempt suicide again in prison. Her sister Sonja Gordon, 40, this week told the Mail that Gordon had been unwell ‘for many years’, but refused help from mental health services.
Instead, she — like so many others — sought out a cyberworld community where harmful dialogue often masquerades as empathy and support.
SONJA said: ‘My sister is not a bad person. She’s not evil. She just thinks what she’s doing is right. ‘This is a woman who jumped from a third floor window, yet she was let out of hospital a week later without any help.
‘My parents tried to get help for her while she was in hospital, but the hospital said Natasha had to agree to it and she wouldn’t.
‘They went to their MP in Peterborough asking for help. But the MP needed Natasha to sign forms agreeing for information to be shared about her and she refused. She says there’s nothing wrong with her.’
But another man who met Gordon on a suicide chatroom painted a disturbing picture of her.
He told police how she’d ‘put pressure on him to end his life’ telling him to ‘hurry up and decide’ and ‘made him feel a failure’ for not taking his life on a previous occasion. He said she seemed ‘a bit too happy’ when discussing suicide.
Gordon also phoned a woman she had met online and called her a ‘twofaced bitch’ for cutting her out of a suicide pact with another man they were both in contact with.
Ged Flynn, chief executive of the suicide prevention charity Papyrus this week welcomed Gordon’s conviction. Indeed, he says many parents bereaved in this manner might consider it a ‘scandal’ that so few people are brought before the courts.
‘A vague idea of suicide becomes real when people start talking about it. These chatrooms reduce the stigma and shame.
‘Between 200 and 300 parents a year tell us their children have gone on to the internet to seek information on how to die. It’s awful.
‘If these children then encounter people online who encourage it, the impact is horrific. Even for those who say they are determined to die, there remains a lot of uncertainty.
‘We need to send a strong message that using any language online which is tantamount to encouragement, even if not wilfully goading another to death, is not acceptable.’
According to researchers, the
internet is often the first port of call for those in distress.
While the web can offer valuable platforms for suicide prevention and emotional help, experts say the widespread and pervasive nature of suicide-related material across the net makes it almost impossible to police.
For some, what begins as an online search for help can cross an invisible line and become dangerous, if not criminal.
Four years ago the Samaritans joined forces with Bristol University to carry out ground-breaking research, funded by the Department of Health, on the role the internet plays for those with suicidal thoughts.
This followed a spate of disturbing cases where suicides appeared to have been heavily influenced by online content.
In 2011 brilliant mathematician Jenny Spain, 23, from South-East London ended her life with a stranger she met on an online mental health forum — Mark Seattle, 37, a nurse from Essex.
Six months earlier two other strangers — Joanne Lee, 34, and Steve Lumb, 35, — were found dead in a car parked on an Essex industrial estate after entering into a suicide pact.
In an interview with the Mail, Jenny’s devastated mother Rita said: ‘If I knew Jenny had been on internet sites like this, I would have smashed the computer apart to save her.’
Bristol University’s Dr Lucy Biddle, of the School of Social and Community Medicine, led the research into suicide and the internet in partnership with the Samaritans, surveying 8,000 people in their 20s and more than 1,500 of all ages who were hospitalised after a suicide attempt.
She believes there is now an urgent need for regulation, policy and best practice around internet use. In a survey of 21-year-olds, of the 248 participants who had made suicide attempts, almost threequarters reported some kind of suicide-related internet use.
She is now working with clinicians, social media platforms and internet providers to put strategies in place to make it harder for vulnerable people to access harmful material. This involves enhancing the visibility of health material, disabling key words relating to suicide, moderating content more effectively and changing algorithms so that searches throw up sites which can help rather than lead down dark alleys from which there may be no return.
Dr Biddle said: ‘People often browse around the internet in a very disorganised way. Even if they’ve gone on to find help, they can get drawn into the risky, negative behaviour out there.
‘They find themselves pulled in a very negative direction. It’s only looking back afterwards that they could realise how harmful the dialogue they were having with other people was.
‘When people don’t have support in the real world, the internet can offer an opportunity to reach out but there can be a really fine line between supportive and harmful dialogue.
‘People engaged in that process don’t always realise when they have flipped over the line.
‘It’s hard to ban these things and in banning them, you might take away something very important. So we also need to educate people to become good online citizens and understand that what they post might affect others.
‘This content is very diffuse across the web, found on all sorts of popular websites that people go to for everyday things.
‘If you focus on specific suicide sites, you’re missing the point. It’s much broader than that.
‘A lot of suicide prevention work involves trying to get vulnerable people to bide their time. Sometimes they are in a very impulsive frame of mind, but if they can let the moment pass they can see things quite differently afterwards. They’ll have a more optimistic perspective and opportunity for their life to go on.
‘I’ve spoken to people who have afterwards felt so grateful that they weren’t successful.’
What a tragedy that Matthew Birkinshaw could not have been one of them.