Pictured: Mother stabbed to death at £2m mansion
A MOTHER was found knifed to death outside her £2million mansion just minutes before a young man was discovered dead at a nearby train station – in what police are calling a ‘linked’ tragedy.
Maya Bracken, 56, was found fatally stabbed in a crashed Lexus vehicle yards from her seven-bedroom home in the picturesque village of Pangbourne, Berkshire, at 5.45pm on Thursday.
Police have launched a murder investigation into her death, which they say is linked to that of an 18-year-old man who died on the railway track near Pangbourne just half an hour later.
Neighbours said Ms Bracken had two sons and a daughter, believed
‘Maya was a lovely lady, so kind... this is horrific’
to be in their late teens and early 20s. They are believed to have attended the prestigious £48,000-ayear boarding school Radley College in Oxfordshire.
A friend said: ‘Maya was a lovely lady, so kind and generous to people. She doted on all her children.
‘She had twins, a boy and a girl, and another son. She’d do anything for them.
‘They all spent Christmas and New Year together as a family. What’s happened is horrific and so unexpected.
‘She lived there with her three children and was quite a private lady. l believe they were boarders at a public school and the twins had gone to university.’ Ms Bracken is understood to have been from Indonesia originally and to have met her British husband, Michael, in Hong Kong.
Michael is said to have worked in banking and to have built the mansion in Pangbourne which, according to land registry, was bought by his wife for £1.9million in 2014.
Ms Bracken’s friend said: ‘Michael project-managed building the house in Pangbourne. I’m not sure he ever lived there, though, as he and Maya split soon after the house was finished.’
A neighbour said: ‘She was never out. She lived all alone in this big house – her children were not always around. I heard her dog more than I heard her but I’ve never had any problems.
‘It’s so horrendous. It’s very strange and very sad. I feel sorry for the two surviving children because they have to live with it now.’ Senior investigating officer Detective Superintendent Kevin Brown, head of the Major Crime Unit, said: ‘We are not currently looking for anyone else in connection with either death.
‘We are still investigating but are treating the two deaths as linked. We are keeping an open mind as to the circumstances of each.’