BBC revisits tragic death of newlywed
Kirsty died after fall from hotel balcony
A new TV documentary aired this week saw a former top detective attempt to solve the mystery death of newlywed Kirsty Maxwell at a Benidorm hotel.
Killed Abroad followed ex-DCI David Swindle as he tried to piece together Mrs Maxwell’s final moments, before she plunged 100 feet to her death from a balcony 16 months ago.
Kirsty, from Livingston, was on a hen weekend and is believed to have been looking for her friends when she entered a room used by five men, all from the Nottingham area.
Attempts were made to contact them for the BBC Scotland documentary which aired on Monday, but they have not commented.
Kirsty’s family have pleaded with them to reveal what happened on the night she died.
Her mum, Denise Curry, said: “The only thing we’ve asked for is for them to tell us what happened in that room. I would like answers from them, because Kirsty has no voice.”
Spanish police believe Kirsty ( 27), may have mistaken the apartment for a friend’s flat and become disorientated before she fell from the balcony of room 10E at Apartamentos Payma in the early hours of the morning of April 29, 2017.
In the programme, retired detective David Swindle asked if some of the accused men could have intervened to save Kirsty’s life in the time it took for her to climb over the balcony. And in a reconstruction of the balcony from room 10E, three women of similar height and weight as Kirsty and wearing the same clothes tried to jump on to the makeshift frame.
Swindle concludes: “She could not have jumped directly over that balcony. It seems far more likely she clambered over. But what happened next? It makes me wonder – had Kirsty been climbing? Was she trying to get to the rooms below? It wasn’t very quick. What were they (the suspects) doing when this was going on? We saw how difficult it is to do what it was said that Kirsty did.” The BBC programme also featured fall expert Michael Brown, who reviews police photos to try to piece together Kirsty’s final moments. He backs up a theory that she was facing back into the room at the time she fell.
He said: “All we can say is I believe she was facing into the room at the point she lost her balance or lost her grip and fell, vertically initially, before she interacted with features on the building. How that loss of balance or loss of grip occurred is not something I can hypothesise on.”