Death by Conspiracy?: 10. Light and Dark

0:04Oh look, it's military tornadoes. It's a military exercise.

0:12Marianna Spring:I'm in a children's playground near Shrewsbury and I'm sitting on a bench next to Charlie Parker. It's a cold January afternoon and a fleet of military jets are piercing the bright blue sky above us. They're getting ready for war maybe, I don't know. There is a war going on. Between who? Between who? Between light and dark. I don't think Charlie is talking about the prospect of military conflict here, but about everything he believes in, his entire world view. It's basically a battle of light and dark. Those are the key energies which really sort of govern the world and the universe, you know, is light and dark.

0:54Marianna Spring:From what I've seen, there does seem to be a struggle going on in the pretty market town of Shrewsbury. And in towns like it, all over the country and all over the world. And yes, maybe you could call it a battle between light and dark, between true and false. It's a battle that counts Gary Matthews among its casualties. 46-year-old Gary believed in Covid conspiracies before, in January 2021, he caught the virus and died. Charlie Parker says he's been accused of having blood on his hands for allegedly misleading Gary Matthews So now, as we reach the end of the investigation we look at where responsibility lies and what Gary's death tells us about the world we live in now I'm Marianna Spring from BBC Radio 4 This is Death by Conspiracy Episode 10, Light and Dark I've met with Charlie a few times while making this series.

1:56Marianna Spring:He's repeatedly told me how casting doubt on the cause of Gary's death was the right thing to do, even though it upset Gary's family. It's a worldview where nothing is as it seems, whether that's the reasons behind the lockdown restrictions or the efficacy of the vaccine. And when we meet in this playground, the military planes flying above us, I want to ask him about it. It strikes me that... It must be quite stressful thinking that everyone is part of this really sinister plan to harm people and to control people. It's not an easy way to look at the world. Not really, no. I think it's empowering, if anything else, to be well informed about what's going on in terms of international politics and the shape of the way the world's going.

2:45Marianna Spring:For Charlie, it seems to me, grasping for alternative truths, what many of us call conspiracy theories, is a way of making sense of things, of asserting some control over the chaos and distress of the pandemic. It's a worldview that, as we've discovered, can have a real human cost. And I'd speak to Charlie one last time about that. But first, as it's my final trip to Shrewsbury, and it's almost a year to the day that Gary died, There's a few last conversations I want to have.

3:19Marianna Spring:I meet Gary's friends, Peter and Geoff, on a wooden bench at the end of their garden. Above us, the winter sunshine. Ahead of us, the River Severn. Frost glistens on the grass, and as they consider what's changed in the past year, they're in a reflective mood. Now, I think a year on, we're faced with... A lot of people I speak to say now, well, we're all going to get it, aren't we? But at least now we've had our vaccinations and hopefully it won't be so bad. Whereas I think in that unknown time, people like Gary and others really put themselves and others at huge risk. What's coming up for me is that on the 11th of January will be his birthday.

3:58And I think he'd be 47. And it just feels so sad. And it's that usual unreality of knowing somebody who's very alive and very much part of your life. but it's still so hard to come to grips with that and know that you actually are never going to see them again.

4:22Marianna Spring:When somebody dies, and especially when that death is preventable, we often want to assign blame. And that's no different in Shrewsbury. Some people here blame social media for Gary's death. Some people seem to blame Charlie Parker and his Facebook group. But Gary's cousin Tristan, who we met earlier in the series and who encountered the town's conspiracy community himself, has a different view. Charlie is part of a force. He's a strong part of a force that is pushing out information, which, if you follow it, will keep COVID travelling further around and is going to result from a lot of deaths.

5:03So, I mean, he didn't go up to Gary and pull a gun to his head. he didn't go up to Gary and shove COVID in his mouth. Honestly, he didn't put those ideas into Gary's head. I think Gary came to them alongside Charlie. So it's complicated. Do I hold him personally responsible? No. Do I think he should have deaths on his conscience and really rethink what information he's pushing? Yes. Do I understand it's more complex than that? He probably believes he's doing the right thing.

5:34Marianna Spring:So, no. Tristan doesn't blame Charlie. And even though some people in the town have called him a murderer, he's not. Not at all in the legal version of that word. And morally, was he responsible for Gary contracting the virus? For Gary's beliefs and actions? No. They weren't best friends or old mates from way back. They were more like comrades on a mission. Gary was not just a blind follower. he made up his own mind, as did Charlie. So let me be clear, Charlie didn't kill Gary, but I still have some questions for him. With that in mind, a month after our last face-to-face encounter in the playground, I wanted to phone him one last time.

6:21Hello? Oh, hi, is that Charlie? Speaking, how are you doing? How, Charlie, how are you doing? One of the conclusions that we've come to from speaking to lots of different people and investigating what happened to Gary is that those allegations that you have blood on your hands aren't true. Well, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I mean, you know, anyone with the slightest amount of intelligence and forethought can obviously see that the situation surrounding Gary's death had nothing to do with myself or any of his political beliefs or groups that he was involved with.

6:56Marianna Spring:But we do know that Gary believed untrue conspiracies that the pandemic was a hoax and that his beliefs impacted his behaviour, which put him at greater risk of catching the virus. And yet Charlie Parker has continued to question whether Gary died of COVID-19 at all, to the distress of Gary's family. And now, with all the evidence I've uncovered, and for the sake of the people closest to Gary, I'd like to try and put a stop to that. But the other thing that we've investigated a lot is what happened to Gary in the final days before he died. I talked Charlie through the timeline I've discovered of Gary falling ill, thinking it might be flu, later deciding to get a test, worrying about infecting family, telling his family about the positive result and becoming progressively more poorly.

7:49He died at home on the 13th of January and it was his dad that found him. He was looking up symptoms of coronavirus they think that he realised that coronavirus was real at the end and they are very sure that he died of COVID-19. OK, well, obviously the police weren't involved at all in the investigation of a young man being found dead. There was no investigation, there was no post-mortem at the time, which would have been a critical window period to establish the circumstances. But Charlie, what would it take? You know, I'm telling you information that has come directly from Gary's family immediate family, what would it take for you to believe it, to believe that Gary died of COVID-19?

8:36Well, the whole situation is completely murky because there's been no official documents or reports. There was no police investigation. There was no post-mortem, all of these things. For Gary's family, you know, they know that their son died of COVID-19 and they're grieving and they're sad about it. I know that you're grieving Gary as well. But when you question whether he died of COVID-19, that upsets them because the evidence they have is contrary to that. And maybe now everyone can just remember Gary however they want to remember Gary. What evidence are you talking about? Like what I just told you about getting the COVID test and about testing positive.

9:16That's not even legitimate evidence. Putting Gary's family to one side because this is about Gary at the end of the day, like it's difficult for all of us, but with all due respect to Gary's family, this is about Gary and what happened to him.

9:32Marianna Spring:So no, I didn't make much progress with Charlie on that front. It's something that's come up again and again across the series. When Charlie tells me it's about Gary, what I really think that means is it's about the Gary on a mission with Charlie. It's about defending the beliefs that they shared. No matter how much evidence I present to him, Charlie still won't believe that Gary died of COVID-19.

9:59Marianna Spring:I've set out to uncover exactly what happened to Gary and what happened in his town to honour his memory and to challenge anyone or anything that does the opposite. Because there are many Garys and many Shrewsbury's. Each month I get hundreds of messages from people across the country about an uncle or a sister someone who's been pulled into conspiracies by things they read online. Maybe you know someone in your life right now who's gone down the same path or seems on their way. Someone you wouldn't describe as bonkers, crazy or basement dwelling. But normal, lovely, loved, kind, fun, intelligent, curious.

10:41Marianna Spring:Someone you care about a lot. Someone you're surprised has fallen into this topsy-turvy world. So what can you do? After all, someone who believes in conspiracy theories doesn't think they believe in conspiracy theories. They believe, just like you do, that they believe in the truth, that you're the one who's wrong. Shouting doesn't help. Shaming people doesn't work. It can even backfire, hardening their beliefs. The experts tell me the best thing you can do is listen and try to understand. Try to see where people are coming from. where they get their information, why they don't trust scientists.

11:24Marianna Spring:In the end, I don't think my investigation changed Charlie Parker's mind much at all. But maybe I persuaded him to be a little bit less suspicious of me. And just before we hang up the phone for the last time, he comes back to that idea of light and dark. You know, light and dark is something that is part of us all, you know, and we can either be governed by light or we can be governed by darkness. You know, Gary was a man of light, of all I knew him, and he must have had bad experiences in his life and in the darkness, as we all do have darkness to contend with, but light dispels darkness, you know.

12:04When the light is shone, there's no hiding place for the dark.

12:08Marianna Spring:I agree with Charlie, but not in the way he might think. I hope that this series has shone a light on what happened to Gary, on Shrewsbury on the community that Charlie's a part of and I agree too that we're all a mix of light and dark that's why there's no bad guy to unmask in this final episode any search for a villain, the culprit, the dark simplifies a complex problem because this is about ideas infectious conspiracies that destroy people's lives They're complicated to untangle, but they point to huge issues. The effects of social media on our world, inequality and consequent distrust, breakdown of community.

12:53Marianna Spring:They've created fault lines which the upheaval of the pandemic has brought into the mainstream. Gary's story is a cautionary tale, and it is a tragedy. A year later, the absence of Gary's own light is very much felt in this somewhat magical and in places fractured town. And now, many of his friends still remain in limbo, trying to make sense of what's happened, waiting for Gary to pop round the corner. I guess unless you see somebody actually leave, in my head, I suppose it's a coping mechanism. You just assume that this will pass and he'll be round the corner in a minute and this will just go away.

13:34What do you miss most about him? Him. Just miss him. I can't hug him. So, you know, that's that.