GIRL KILLED IN HOUSEBOAT
Sarah Ferguson, mum of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, but Kate still hasn’t found the strength to read any of them.
The family held a private funeral for just 15 people, before hosting a memorial service for 600 mourners. Then they threw themselves into the task of trying to find out what had happened to Sarah.
Photos showed the crime scene had been tampered with, and Kashmiri authorities said vital video footage – which they promised to show to Vic and Kate – taken on the boat just hours after the crime had vanished in floods.
Phone records show Sarah tried to summon help just before 2am but the alarm was not raised until Samir’s mother got up to pray at 3am.
For two years Kate couldn’t bear to travel to Kashmir, although Vic visited the boat and even sat in the room where Sarah died. But in 2015 she finally went and met Samir’s mother, who Kate believed could have saved her daughter.
She said: “I had a bad feeling about her. She once told Sarah to stop laughing because it would bring the devil in.
“The water is so still and Sarah died in the middle of the night. The walls are like paper. How come no one heard or did anything? Samir’s mother kept saying, ‘I’m so, so sorry’. She was crying but there were no tears.”
Kate also confronted De Wit, who claims to be innocent and says the police beat a confession out of him.
In a call to his prison, she said to him: “My daughter was an angel. If you didn’t kill her, who did? We need answers.”
De Wit – diagnosed as showing signs of schizophrenia – told her he believes the British government was behind Sarah’s death.
Kate and Vic remain united in their hunt for answers. She said: “It has been acknowledged that the murder of a child splits couples up but no one can
drive a wedge between us.” The couple scattered some of Sarah’s ashes on the tiny Channel Island of Herm, where they holidayed when she was young, on what would have been her 30th birthday on June 21.
Other ashes were taken to Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, which Sarah had climbed.
Kate said she misses little things most, like Sarah getting into bed with her while Vic watched football on TV.
She said: “We would fall about laughing, we’d have to ask each other to stop. She talked to me about everything.
“She was so full of love and life. No one who met her ever forgot her. That’s why it’s so hard to accept the inhuman way she died. I don’t sleep much. These are thoughts I will have to live with for ever.”
She kept on saying, ‘I’m so sorry’. She was crying… but there were no tears KATE ON MEETING THE MOTHER OF SARAH’S INDIAN BOYFRIEND
■■See the Sarah Groves Foundation at sarahgroves.org