The glass-panelled dock in court one of Chelmsford crown court remained eerily empty throughout Jake Neate’s murder trial. Neate, 37, was not there to speak for himself at last week’s hearing because he was detained in intensive care at Rampton hospital in Nottinghamshire, one of three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England and Wales. He is seriously ill with paranoid schizophrenia and subject to checks every 15 minutes.
On Wednesday after a trial of the facts, a jury found that Neate killed his girlfriend, Suzanne Brown, 33, by stabbing her 173 times at the couple’s home in Braintree, Essex, on 15 December 2017. The court heard that Essex police officers arrived at the property three hours after Neate’s mother, Jan, had called them. By that time it was too late to save Brown.
Neate’s parents, Jan, 62 and John, 65, say they have no idea how all this could have happened. “As far as we are concerned, the alarm bells were ringing loudly over and over again,” Jan Neate said. “Sue has died and Jake might as well be dead. His quality of life is non-existent and at the moment there seems to be no hope that things will improve. Jake and Sue trusted and believed in the system and thought everything would be OK. We trusted the system too but that trust has now been destroyed.”
Jake Neate was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at the age of 20 while studying geography at Birmingham University. He began taking anti-psychotic medicine and in his mid-20s was prescribed clozapine, which he did well on. He had neither a history of violence nor a criminal record.
Neate’s parents retired to Spain a few months before the killing. When they left the UK things seemed to be going well for their son and his girlfriend: they had been living happily together for 10 years, were thrilled to have recently moved into a flat of their own and proud of the new kitchen they had installed. Brown worked as a nursery nurse in Harlow and was described in court as having the patience of a saint.
But the Neates became increasingly concerned about a sudden deterioration in their son’s mental and physical health towards the end of 2017 after it was decided he should be taken off clozapine because it was damaging his immune system.
The parents stayed in regular touch with the couple by phone and text and repeatedly tried to raise the alarm as Jan Neate, a retired lawyer, meticulously documented the downward spiral. Jake deteriorated physically as well as mentally, suffering from severe urine retention, constipation, racing thoughts and an inability to sleep. His consultant psychiatrist, Dr Rachna Bansal, informed him that he was relapsing.
“Sue said that he spent periods crying and getting very upset – she spent hours sitting up with him at night,” said Neate’s mother. Texts seen by the Guardian show that Neate himself knew he was getting more and more unwell. He tried to reach out to various health professionals as well as his MP, James Cleverly, and a mental health charity.
In texts to his mother a few weeks before he killed Brown, he said he had been researching private hospitals where he could be admitted as an in-patient while withdrawing from clozapine. “I feel a bit angry that no one told me of the implications of going on to this drug,” he wrote. “I would like to be an in-patient to deal with all the issues. I’m going to write everything down in detail and give it to Dr Bansal.”
On the day of the killing, a mental health worker visited the couple’s flat and said telephone support would be put in place and a home visit organised for the following week. That evening Jan Neate received a call from Brown “screaming and hysterical”, saying Jake was hurting her. Jan Neate told her to get out of the flat and called the police.
Last week the judge in the trial gave Jake Neate an indefinite hospital order. Multiple inquiries have been launched – by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, into the police actions on the night; by the Essex Partnership University NHS foundation trust, which was responsible for Neate’s care; a domestic homicide review and an inquiry by NHS England. Neate’s parents hope the inquest into Brown’s death will be reopened so the roles of the police and NHS can be further scrutinised.
“Our lives have been annihilated. We have lost everything,” said Jan Neate. “All we can do now is fight to try to stop this from happening to someone else.”
