Guilty, ‘evil’ rapper who watched TV star’s daughter die
Holby actor’s rage at the rapper who gave his girl drugs and laughed as he filmed her dying moments
‘He took sadistic pleasure’ ‘Every parent’s worst nightmare’
HOLBY City star John Michie saw his daughter’s rapper boyfriend convicted of her manslaughter yesterday, having earlier branded him as ‘evil’.
Ceon Broughton is facing years behind bars after filming Louella Fletcher-Michie’s drawn- out drug death. Rather than get help for her, he laughed and gave ‘shout-outs’ to his rap group as she died.
He had deliberately given the 24-yearold an overdose of potent hallucinogen 2C-P at the Bestival music festival and was then guilty of ‘shocking and despicable negligence’. The lengthy iPhone footage he took showing her mental decline, and eventual death, was so shocking that one juror was left so traumatised she had to be discharged.
It can be revealed today that Broughton, 30, had to be restrained by police after he smashed up a table in the court building when the Michie family criticised him for failing to apologise.
Mr Michie told the killer, ‘You are evil, evil’, as he strode past him in the court atrium during a break in the trial.
His other daughter Daisy, 29, added pointedly: ‘All we wanted from you was an apology.’ Broughton, who had been sitting with his head in hands, exploded in rage, smashing a table to pieces by hurling it against the far wall and destroying a water-cooler, before screaming wildly and hitting himself.
Police officers had to restrain him as the shocked Michie family scattered. The incident was not reportable at the time for fear of prejudicing the jury at Winchester Crown Court against him.
The trial heard that Broughton declined to get assistance for his girlfriend as she suffered her ‘bad trip’ from taking the drug at the festival in Lulworth Cove, Dorset, in September 2017, as he was scared of being jailed for violating a suspended sentence for carrying a knife.
Damning texts showed the musician plotting a cover-up even before the woman he had called his ‘soulmate’ had died on the eve of her 25th birthday, ordering friends to tell Miss Fletcher-Michie’s trusting family that the drugs had come from a ‘random’. It can also be revealed that Broughton:
Had a track record of giving young women large drug doses before filming the humiliating results, apparently in the hope of getting ‘likes’ on social media;
Had a ‘ morbid’ obsession with images of death, hoarding photographs of corpses and footage of people suffering on his phone;
Told one girlfriend he dreamt of pushing her off a roof and covering up the murder. He took ‘ sadistic pleasure’ in filming her after she hit her head while on drugs;
Claimed to be lost in dense woodland during Miss FletcherMichie’s six-hour ordeal, but was in fact yards from medical help;
Was sentenced to 24 weeks in prison, suspended for one year, for two counts of carrying a knife – a month before Miss FletcherMichie’s death.
Speaking after Broughton was found guilty of manslaughter and supplying Miss Fletcher-Michie with a Class A drug, an emotional Mr Michie, 62, said: ‘We began our life sentence on what would have been Louella’s 25th birthday. Ceon’s life sentence is knowing he didn’t help Louella to live.’
In court, Broughton, who wore a black jacket and jeans, showed no emotion as the six women and five men of the jury, one in tears, announced their unanimous verdicts after only nine hours of deliberation. He previously pleaded guilty to two further counts of supplying 2C-P. Mr Justice Goose remanded him in custody and said he would be sentenced this morning. Gross negligence manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The Michie family reacted with decorum and restraint when the verdict was announced. Mr Michie turned around in the public gallery, telling Broughton’s father: ‘You have my sympathy.’
Before he was led away to the cells, Broughton, of Enfield, north London, called out to his lawyer: ‘Text my mum’.
Mr Michie and his wife Carol, 68, a former member of the Hot Gossip dance troupe, attended every day of the three-week trial after they completed their evidence.
Broughton compounded their agony by pursuing a wild defence, with his lawyers aggressively attacking the credibility of every prosecution witness, from family and friends to impartial experts.
One of the final claims of his barrister Stephen Kamlish QC – that Miss Fletcher-Michie would have defended Broughton ‘ had she woken up’ from the overdose – drew gasps from the public gallery. Because of Broughton’s stubborn silence, the truth about what occurred in gaps between his phone footage and the exact circumstances of his girlfriend’s death remain a mystery.
Mr Michie had asked the rapper why he did not give evidence ‘to be fair to Louella’.
Giving evidence during the trial, he told Broughton: ‘I don’t know how you can say you love someone who you left to die in front of you.
The excruciating phone footage of Miss Fletcher-Michie filmed by Broughton captured him giggling remorselessly as she groaned and issued and psychotic tirades during a six-hour ‘bad trip’.
Gripped by hallucinations, she began to rub herself with brambles and even put them in her mouth, cutting her face and hands to shreds. Instead of helping her, Broughton noted on his phone the rhyming phrases ‘ nettles and thorns’ and ‘bleeding where the heart was torn’, apparently for use in his rap lyrics.
Underscoring his apparent intention to share the upsetting footage with friends, Broughton also spoke into the camera to give ‘shoutouts’ to his rap crew and an associated record label.
His lawyer argued that the footage was destined ‘for Instagram, for Snapchat’, which showed his client could not have realised she was dying.
Family and friends of Miss Fletcher-Michie all said they had believed in the killer until the damning evidence emerged months later.
Mr Michie told jurors he had defended Broughton when reports of his arrest emerged.
But he added: ‘What I didn’t realise was how in the six hours he was with her he had not taken her to get help, and how he had seen the very, very distressed state she was in and how I believe he has even filmed her after she died. Clearly, I made a mistake.’
Simon Jones, from the Crown Prosecution Police, said: ‘ He did
nothing to prevent her death. This case represents every parent’s worst nightmare.’
Senior investigating officer Neil Devoto, of Dorset Police’s Major Crime Investigation Team, said: ‘Even when she lay motionless, struggling for breath and dying he continued to take photos and videos and message friends. All he needed to do was walk a few hundred metres to the on-site hospital and medical staff and call for emergency help or dial 999 on his mobile.’