The Punch: The killing of an innocent man and the wait for justice

0:00Coming up, Matt Jeffery was killed by a single punch whilst on a stag do. Six years on, a Sky News investigation has identified a new suspect. How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.

0:43In 2019, Matt Jeffrey and a group of his closest friends took a trip to the Greek island of Zante for a stag do. What was meant to be a few days of fun and sun ended in tragedy almost as quickly as it started. Hours after they arrived, a fight on a dance floor spilled out onto the street. One punch ended Matt's life and broke the hearts of his wife Charlotte and their two daughters. So kind. He was hard-working. He loved, you know, he loved me and the girls, his family, his friends. Greek police arrested two English men. They were later convicted, but neither has yet seen the inside of a Greek cell.

1:18And a Sky News investigation has revealed a series of police and prosecution failings, but also a new suspect. Our home editor, Jason Farrell, led the investigation. Jason, this story starts with something that literally kind of happens every day. A group of lads heading abroad for their mate's stag. Tell me, who was Matt Jeffrey? Well, he was a 35-year-old father, married to Charlotte, a lovely family, two daughters, one stepdaughter and one biologically his, who he cared for and he clearly loved to death, always there for his friends. And they actually said, you know, 35, they felt like they were getting a bit old for Xanti because it's a party town, everyone knows.

1:57It's a young vibe. And they really had second thoughts about going. But it was a big group of them. It was one of their younger friends who's getting married. And his best man knew a bit about Xanti. So that's why they went in a big group. So they headed to the island. They arrived in a town called, I think it's Laganas. Just explain what it's like for those who haven't been. Well, it's basically one strip full of nightclubs. It's young people having a good time, probably drinking a little bit too much, but, you know, they're out having a laugh with their mates. Yes, there's lots of stag do's and hen do's there as well.

2:29And it's Greek island, so it's a lovely island. But it has something of a reputation. Sadly, Matt Jeffery's not the first person to die on that strip from being punched. It's happened twice, actually, prior to him in the last 10 years. So they arrive. How did they spend their first day there? They go to the pool, they're just drinking, they're enjoying the company of friends again, you know, a lot of them married, hadn't seen each other for a while. And then they go out for dinner and then they've got this choice of dozens of clubs to choose from and the one they chose was Sizzle. So what happened there, there was the group from Somerset involving Matt, but there was another group there as well.

3:03Yeah, you know, and you look back and if these two groups of people had never come together, this obviously wouldn't have happened. But there was a group in there from Essex and they were at the bar, they were drinking. We see photographs of that playing these drinking games. And then they join the dance floor. And then what we see and what the friends have described to me as well, it's captured on CCTV, is this brawl breaks out in the middle of the dance floor. And you can see who's on whose side, if you like, because the Essex guys have taken their shirts off. And you see this massive brawl and you see one of the guys, a guy called Mark Sargent, jumps in and tries to break it all up.

3:36and the Somerset group leave very quickly. They don't want to be involved in all of this. We don't know how this fight started, but the point is the Somerset group leave, they get out, and then the group who are from Essex muster, and then you see them follow them out. What do we know about what happened outside the club? Well, this is one of the extraordinary things about this because we actually not only have CCTV footage of what happened in the build-up, but we have a video of exactly what happened. It's a 19 second video in which we see Matt Jeffery standing in front of a man who's swearing at him, knocking his fists together, saying, do you want some of it?

4:13Not at all. You want it? We'll f*** you. Have you all seen it? How is Matt responding to that? Well, Matt has his arms open and he's not posing a threat. And actually, it's not the person he's looking at who hits him first. There's someone on the side of him who smacks him on the side of the head. he loses his balance and then the other individual who we know is a man called Luke Brownston comes in with an uppercut and it's really disturbing to watch and we haven't used the whole video in our film but we've shown still photographs from it and we've used some of the video but when he hits the ground believe me the sound is really sickening and then you see people first of all these guys just sort of nonchalantly walking away from what's just happened looking over their shoulders and then I think realising the seriousness of what's happened and start to run.

5:03Matt is on the ground. His friends are helping him. Are they going after the other group? One of them goes after this guy who we see is wearing white shorts and we see one of the friends run after him and he tackles him to the ground but then he kind of leaves him with a bounce and goes back to his friends. Most of them gather around Matt and the emergency services are right there. You actually see the paramedic arrive within the first like five seconds. Wow. He's on the scene But the damage is done and he's put in the back of the ambulance. He's airlifted to Attican General Hospital, which is in Athens.

5:34And these guys have to make this call to wife Charlotte to explain to her what's happened. What were they able to say to her at that point? They didn't know quite what the severity of it was. And she didn't know until she got to the hospital. And at that point, they prepared her for the worst. She goes there with Matt's brother, Paul. And Matt's wired up to all these machines. and he describes having to see his brother with his head twice the size, he says, and they know that there's not much chance. And it takes five days for the medics to just say, look, we're going to have to turn the machines off.

6:07So Matt later dies from his injuries, but quite quickly after the attack itself, the police are involved and arrests are made. Yeah, so in the early hours of the night of the attack, the police do make arrests. They arrest someone called Luke Brownston and another man called Adam O 'Brien. And they basically say to O 'Brien, you know, there's some white shorts on the floor of his hotel room. Are those your shorts? And O 'Brien says, yes, they are. And they arrest him, but sort of assuming that those are the shorts. And what we understand from the police, and there's a police statement that says, essentially, they admitted their involvement in it.

6:40They are charged. They are allowed to leave the island. And then it takes four years to get to court. Four years? Yeah, because, I mean, you've got a bit of COVID in there that delays things. But even so, it's a very, very slow process. The family had to actually crowdfund to get kind of the legal costs sorted out. They had to pay for their own lawyers. Cost them£40 ,000. And on top of that, their flight's out there, flying out witnesses, you know, putting everybody up. And they get to court and the two suspects are not in court. They have not turned up. The witnesses are even told, you know, by the Home Office, you have to turn up for this.

7:19They've just ignored that and decided not to turn up and in a sense got rewarded for it because two years down the line, when we picked up the investigation, they're still walking free in the UK and there has been no extradition papers. So what happens at this point? We are becoming involved because there are two people, O 'Brien and Bernstein, that have been convicted. So they've been sentenced to 12 and 10 years and on effectively manslaughter charges. And they're just not serving those sentences. So we approached the family and said, look, you want us to talk about this? We think this is interesting.

7:50And obviously they said, yes, they were thinking about going to the media when we happened to turn up. So then we said, OK, we'll look into it. And we look into the court documents. Now, the first thing we see is that actually Adam O 'Brien is saying it isn't him. And he actually said it on the day he's being interviewed in the police station. This isn't me. He doesn't name the other guy yet, but when it comes to court, he then says, actually, it was this guy called William Locke. And when you look at photographs of them all on the stag do, you can see this guy, William Locke, is among those people.

8:18How on earth could a conviction have happened of O 'Brien, given that the first thing he said to the police was, I didn't do it? You know, they've got this police statement, which is saying he confessed to it. Secondly, he hasn't turned up at court. And, you know, what other evidence is there? The police have told the witnesses for the Somerset group that the guy in the white shorts name is O 'Brien. So all the way through when they're talking about this guy, O 'Brien, they are assuming that they're talking about this guy in the white shorts. As for the family, they've never watched the video.

8:47They didn't want to see that 19-second clip of Matt being hit to the floor. So for them, they've just known these two names, Brownson and O 'Brien, and because they never turned up at court, they know what they look like. So what happens next? What's happened then is that Adam O 'Brien, he hires an extradition lawyer because he's going to face extradition. and she's also given some of this evidence and she realizes how he's been arrested how the finger's been pointed at him and then starts asking were any witnesses interviewed by the police i mean there was a whole group of people there from essex who identified who nobody nobody was interviewed by the police other than the two suspects so then she takes her own witness statements and adam o 'brien obviously says it's not him his brother is also there who says it's not him but it's this guy Locke and three of the other people on the group they all say it was William Locke who was this guy in the white shorts who's seen walking away in the video and then what Karen Todner also does is hires a facial mapping expert to put pictures side by side and it's very clear from that report that the facial mapping expert comes to the conclusion that there is strong evidence to support the idea that those photographs are a match between William Locke and the guy walking away in the video.

10:03And there's strong evidence to support that it is not Adam O 'Brien. And the other really crucial thing, we see a photograph in the club. And I've been talking about the man in the white shorts all the way through this. In this photograph that's date-stamped on the night of the attack, William Locke is there in that photograph wearing white shorts. Adam O 'Brien is wearing black shorts. So unless he's changed his shorts at some point in the club, it's very hard to see how it could have been him. So what is Adam O 'Brien himself saying in light of this information? He has given statements to the court, but he has not turned up to defend himself.

10:39He's not been involved in our investigation. He has said that he didn't immediately name Locke because he was fearful of Locke. That was one of his chances. It should be said, you know, William Locke, when he got back to the UK, he was actually convicted of another crime to do with drug dealing and he spent some time in prison. He's since been released. So I don't know if that played into Adam O 'Brien's thoughts, but he certainly didn't know this guy particularly well. Obviously won't have seen the video immediately, but he will have seen the video before he left the island. It's a question mark over exactly what he told the police and when.

11:17But certainly by the time he gets to the first trial, he names him. And what's kind of weird is we can't find any other reference to William Locke during that trial other than in his statement. So it seems to be that piece of evidence was never really properly examined, either by the police or by the prosecution and the courts. So we find ourselves in this curious position where it seems very likely that there are at least questions to be asked about the safety of one of the convictions. What do the Greek authorities say? Nothing. We've written to the prosecutors. We've not had a response. And we've written to the police.

11:47We've spoken to the press office in Corfu, which covers that area. and I've gone into the police station in Zante with the facial mapping report, delivered it with a letter, with all the allegations that we make in our film and we have had no response. And it's not as if we don't know where William Locke is. Well, we've been to see him, yeah. So we decided we should obviously give him a right reply. We've written to him. He hadn't replied. We've written to a lot of people who haven't replied to us but we turned up at his house with the facial mapping report, with the image of him. And as he was leaving for work...

12:22Can I give you this? Mr Knott, can I give you this? Is that you? Is that you? Are you involved in the salsa back? Geoffrey, Mr Knott, can you take this? And he didn't say a single word. Not one word. He just got into his car, pretended I wasn't there, and drove off. What if the one person that we know was directly involved in this and convicted of the crime, delivered the fatal blow, in fact, Luke Brunston. Where are we with his extradition? So midway through our investigation, or actually fairly near the beginning of it, there was the extradition papers were put forward. And the team from the National Crime Agency arrested him.

13:04He was on a building site in Essex. And actually on that day, we got wind of this. We went to see Charlotte. And as he was appearing in court, one of our producers went down to the courthouse and we were able to relay back to Charlotte in real time what was happening. So to be able to sit there with Charlotte as the judge said you're not going to get bail you're going to have to wait now in jail for extradition to be able to say to Charlotte he's in jail, he's in prison. To see her face, react to that was really satisfying and she's a step closer now to full justice. But that was spring last year The extradition hearing isn't until February because of various different delays.

13:48So it's still another year waiting for that. But at least in that period, he is now serving his sentence. In a British jail, he may well be extradited to Greece to serve the rest of it. You make it clear that we are a distance away from justice being served completely, but at least we are heading in that direction. You say you've just spoken to Charlotte. I mean, how's she doing? How are the kids? She's good. I think they're pleased that, you know, this is out there and the brutality of it is not forgotten because it all happened very, very quickly. It was thoughtless, it was mindless, it took seconds, but the lasting impact is immeasurable.

14:24And we wish her well and our thoughts are with her, but I also find my thoughts going to his friends, Matt's friends, who went over to Zante with him. And just the fact that your friend's life, your best friend's life can be ended by one single punch. I mean, how can you ever deal with that? I think it's really difficult. I don't think you can underestimate the impact this had on those young men who were there and saw it happen. When we were editing this, I happened to watch Bridget Jones's diary. And there's a fight scene in that which is hilarious. And we've all seen where Colin Firth knocks Hugh Grant down on the ground.

14:58And there's one punch and it really just watching it in reflecting on what I'd been watching for real. I just thought that punch would have killed him. and I know it's funny but it does change your view and I almost wish that everybody could watch this video I mean it's upsetting but just to see the fragility of life and how quickly it can be snuffed out in one moment and when you get punched like that you don't turn around and make a witty remark afterwards as you do in the movies it's game over and it's not just game over for that person but actually it's going to affect the life of the person who's done it james graham's written a brilliant play punch which is on on the west end right now which talks about that very issue and the reason that that's out there and the reason we've done this documentary this is not a one-off you know this has happened twice before even on that strip and brits i'm afraid we have a reputation for getting into brawls and it's no coincidence that this was two groups of Brits on a Greek island on a stag do party town and it's Brits involved it's Brits who will go to prison and it's a British victim who had absolutely nothing to do with this fight you can see from the video and from the testimony of friends he was a gentle loving man who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

16:25Jason's full investigation is available on the website That's a lot for The Daily. We'll see you again tomorrow.

16:58We understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.