Diet capsules dealer jailed over death
AN ONLINE steroid dealer who sold toxic slimming pills which killed a bulimic student has been jailed for seven years.
Eloise Parry, 21, who was a student at Glyndwr University in Wrexham, died in hospital on April 12, 2015, after taking eight tablets containing the poisonous Dinitrophenol (DNP).
Bernard Rebelo was sentenced to a total of seven years’ imprisonment at Inner London Crown Court yesterday.
The 31-year-old, from Gosport in Hampshire, was previously convicted of two counts of manslaughter and one of placing unsafe food on the market.
Judge Jeremy Donne described Miss Parry, from Shrewsbury, as an “intelligent, articulate young woman who struggled with her mental health”.
“She thought she had found in your so-called fat-burning capsules a magic solution for her distorted body image and difficulties with bulimia nervosa. “She was of course quite wrong.” He said Rebelo had shown “no remorse at all” for causing her death.
“You are said to be a loving family man, devoted to your daughter – I hope you can reflect on what the death of Eloise has meant to her mother, sister and extended family,” he added.
He said: “Whilst there was only one death attributable to your conduct, very many people were at risk.
“You indiscriminately supplied DNP, a highly toxic industrial chemical, via the internet.
“You had no way of controlling who would purchase it, and it was highly likely that those with eating disorders – possibly even the very young and impressionable – would buy it.”
Miss Parry’s family sat together in court for the sentence.
Her mother, Fiona Parry, said her daughter had “many problems in life” but that there had been “positive signs things were changing for the better”.
“I had hoped that somehow they would be sorted,” she said in a statement read to the court.
She said her daughter had a number of plans for her future, including her degree, career and to travel the world.
“When Eloise died her life was undone and her possible future unravelled, and in that moment the hope I had for her was also destroyed,” she added.
Ms Parry said the company that allowed Rebelo’s site to operate “was also responsible”.
“Eloise was not the first person to die as a result of taking DNP and sadly she was not the last.
“Registrars are large, global corporations and as such have a duty to behave responsibly. What they do and what they allow others to do has consequences, in this case the death of my daughter.”