Student who fell to death at St Paul’s was Dan Brown devotee
A MEDICAL student who fell to her death in St Paul’s Cathedral had recently been reading a lot of Dan Brown novels, her mother has said.
Devoted Christian Lidia Dragescu, 23, died after falling 100 feet from the Whispering Gallery, which she would visit almost every week, whilst holding two letters in her native Romanian which police later gave to her mother.
The talented figure skater and straight-a pupil, who wanted to be a brain surgeon, had two suicide notes in her hands with one apologising to churchgoers who watched her fall from her “favourite place”, her mother has said.
Isabela Dragescu, 44, revealed Lidia had been researching the San Francisco killer, the Zodiac Killer and had been reading a lot of Dan Brown’s work because she was “fascinated by criminal minds”.
Brown’s novels rely heavily on Christian symbolism. The church and the investigation of untimely deaths are common themes.
Lidia had just started a biomedical degree but the university stress had taken its toll and for her the “world has been a bad place to live in”, her family said.
The note to her mother apologised for upsetting her but said that she was now “in a better place”. It continued: “I am doing this for me, to escape. All of the past and the present it makes my head heavy.”
In a note to those who saw her fall, Lidia wrote: “To all who saw me like this I am sorry, people should not come to see a dead body when coming here. I am sorry for showing you this ugly sight, please go and be happy about your lives.”
Ms Dragescu said: “She went to St Paul’s at least once a week, we would go together every Sunday.
“When she was alone she would go there by herself when she wasn’t happy, it was her favourite place in the city, she loved it there and we often climbed those stairs up to the Whispering Gallery.”
Describing her daughter as the “definition of good”, she added: “She loved God, when she came into a room all eyes were on her, but she did not have any friends.”
Lidia took a bus from her home in Romford, east London, to the cathedral on Wednesday morning after saying goodbye to her family, and less than two hours later she was dead.
She had already achieved a 2:1 business degree at the London campus of Ulster University and had begun to take over the family recruitment company with her mother as well as the second degree.
City of London Police are not treating the death as suspicious.