Smiling in the sun with his Georgian lover, the killer who said he was suicidal

DAYS AFTER HE FLED JUSTICE

GAZING adoringly into his new lover’s eyes at a picturesque mountaintop in Georgia, this is Jack Shepherd just weeks after he had fled Britain.

Shepherd told a judge in Georgia last week that he was ‘suicidally depressed’ after the tragic death of Charlotte Brown during a reckless late-night spin in his speedboat in 2015.

But, as our exclusive pictures show, married Shepherd was busy wooing an attractive Georgian TV presenter less than two months after going on the run in the former Soviet republic.

The 31-year-old web designer – who took out £50,000 in loans before he disappeared – was living the high life in the cosmopolitan city of Tbilisi.

Within weeks of his arrival, he caught the eye of 24-year-old Maiko Tchanturidze, who is said to be ‘absolutely besotted’ with him.

The couple posed for a picture during a trip to see the stunning Kazbegi mountain 100 miles north of Tbilisi in May last year. At the time, the grieving family of Miss Brown, 24, from Clacton, Essex, had no idea that their daughter’s killer had skipped bail and fled overseas.

It was still two months before Shepherd’s lawyers would announce on the first day of his Old Bailey trial that he had absconded out of ‘cowardice.’

Shepherd, who received a six-year term for causing Miss Brown’s death, has never served a day of his sentence. Instead, he appears to have been cultivating his new romance, leaving behind a wife and a toddler son back home.

By October last year, Shepherd’s relationship

with Miss Tchanturidze appears to have become serious enough that the couple travelled to her family home of Kutaisi, 140 miles west of the capital.

In another romantic scene, they are pictured during a visit to the former medieval capital of Georgia, walking around its beautiful gardens. As they embrace beside a carousel, Miss Tchanturidze rests her arm on his shoulder while Shepherd gazes affectionately back.

Another snap taken the same day shows them looking like carefree tourists in love they sit on the top platform of Kutaisi’s cable car, his arm around her neck and her head resting against his shoulder.

By this time, Shepherd had got legal aid and instructed his lawyers back in Britain to appeal against his conviction, claiming £100,000 in legal aid.

After The Mail on Sunday revealed he was hiding in Georgia, Shepherd decided the game was up and handed himself into police.

He spent his first full day inside Tbilisi’s notoriously violent Gldani jail yesterday but indicated that he intends to fight against his extradition to Britain.

One source said Shepherd appeared calm in his cell and that he looked ‘solid and silent.’ The last person to speak to him on the run said he seemed ‘surprisingly happy’ and that he had taken five books into jail, including a novel by George Orwell, The Essential Kafka, and Pride And Prejudice.

At a Tbilisi court on Friday, Shepherd told the judge he felt ‘suicidally depressed’ as he appeared to recast himself as the real victim in this tragic tale.

The judge remanded him in prison for three months to allow his newly hired defence team – including a celebrity lawyer who appeared on Georgia’s version of Strictly Come Dancing, to prepare his case. Just before the hearing, Shepherd gave a TV interview which further upset Charlotte’s family as he blamed everybody but himself for her death.

The Mail on Sunday understands it was Ms Tchanturidze who set up the interview with Rustavi 2, the station where she used to work.

Last night, she told The Mail on Sunday that she was standing by Shepherd. She said: ‘He is the best person in the world. Everything the media is saying about him is false.’

Georgian police were last night investigating if Shepherd had an accomplice while he was on the run as he set up no utility services or bank accounts. After he was arrested on Wednesday, he gave police a false address.

Nino Vardzelasvili, who conducted the TV interview, said: ‘He was not very sad, he was in a good mood.

‘I was surprised because it was his last day as a free man.

‘He said that after everything is finished he would like to come back to live in Georgia.’

If he is extradited to the UK, Shepherd faces a six-year sentence for manslaughter and further charges of glassing a barman in Devon last March.