Death by Conspiracy?: 4. Charlie

0:03My name is Charlie Parker. I'm from Shropshire. I'm a performer, entertainer. I juggle. I ride the unicycle. I'm involved in various different varied activities from circus workshops to soul performances and working with groups.

0:19Marianna Spring:Everyone I've met so far in Shrewsbury has told me about Charlie Parker From rallies to living rooms, he crops up time and time again A couple of people we approached were too scared to discuss him at all But others have described him as a more benign figure The town jester, often spotted on a unicycle, charismatic, great with kids The town's mad hatter He started a Facebook group filled with conspiracy theories about Covid that Gary Matthews, a 46-year-old artist and photographer, joined before he died. But it strikes me no one I've spoken to so far seems to really know Charlie. And there's lots I want to ask him.

1:01Marianna Spring:About how he became friends with Gary. About accusations that he led Gary into Covid conspiracy theories. And about messages he sent to Gary's family after Gary died. I'm Marianna Spring from BBC Radio 4. This is Death by Conspiracy. Episode 4, Charlie.

1:27Marianna Spring:We're sat at a table in a pub a short drive from Shrewsbury. Charlie is in a lime green shirt and has a twirled moustache. He's brought his friend Fly with him, as well as a stack of notes. Before Covid hit, Charlie was already highly sceptical of mainstream ideas. And in spring 2020, Charlie's concern about lockdown measures led him to set up the Shropshire Corona Resilience Network. I started a group on Facebook to question what was happening to society, the impact that it was having on all sectors across the board, not just in our own country but around the world and how that was affecting different countries in different ways.

2:08The group initially started off with a small group of people. Gary was at one of our first meetings and he was one of the founding members.

2:15Marianna Spring:Charlie says his group had a clear aim. To provide information that we could use to support each other and be more independent and to give other people the confidence that they shouldn't be living in fear of not wearing a mask or complying to restrictions that had no intelligibility to them. While the country went into lockdown to stem the spread of the virus and alleviate pressure on the NHS, Charlie had other ideas. Me and a friend were up on the roof of Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology. We scaled the roof of the building. We were around 70 to 80 feet in the air with a sign reading no more lockdown.

2:55And the police were up there on the roof trying to get us off the roof for several hours.

3:00Marianna Spring:They were arrested and the charges eventually dropped. and members of the group did not confine themselves to roof protests. They tried to organise anti-lockdown rallies in Shrewsbury. They travelled to London to attend bigger gatherings. And most of all, they posted on the group. Lots of those posts were misleading, or just plain false. One showed a wanted poster with a picture of a government minister, accusing them of committing genocide by vaccine. Another long post described how the virus is 100 % a dark magic ritual. And even as we speak to Charlie, outlandish views are never far from the surface, peeking through time and time again.

3:46Marianna Spring:Like when he thinks I might be a robot. I'm pretty sure he's joking, but it's not always easy to tell. But at the end of the day, we're humans. Well, I think we are anyway, unless you're like a cyborg or something, I don't know. I might be a cyborg. Unless there's like a sort of like, like a doot doot doot. Or that I might be a lizard. Have you got webbed feet? No, normal feet. That's all right then. Having established that I'm human, I probe Charlie about his beliefs. He tells me he's always asked questions about the true origins of the 9-11 terror attacks. He believes in secret societies and hidden global plots.

4:23Marianna Spring:In January 2021, Charlie's Facebook group helped organise another protest. But this time, there was someone missing. We united with several local groups on the 2nd of January. It was an amazing day, really good, but there was only one thing missing. Gary. And I was, where's Gary, you know? Eleven days later, Gary was dead. In the media coverage that followed, in The Guardian and on BBC Local Radio, Charlie Parker was portrayed as the ringleader of Shrewsbury's COVID conspiracy movement. and that idea started to spread around Shrewsbury too. People in Shrewsbury have accused me of being a murderer because Gary died and have shouted out murderer to me in the street, blood on your hands.

5:16And I'm like, if that's honestly what you think, then arrest me.

5:20Marianna Spring:Why are they accusing you of being a murderer? Because he was part of the movement that objected these tyrannical lockdown measures Although by no means a typical murder accusation Charlie wasn't there at the scene Legally there's no crime associated with Gary's death What he's accused of is misleading his friend Encouraging his beliefs and making it less likely That Gary would take sensible precautions To avoid catching the virus And as we talk, a realisation begins to dawn on me The nature of Charlie's relationship with Gary seems very different to all of Gary's friends I've spoken to so far.

6:02Marianna Spring:When I asked Charlie what Gary was like, he doesn't tell me a story or describe a cherished memory. Instead, he reads off a long, handwritten series of notes. Gary was a unique and highly regarded individual to all those who I knew that had met him. He was highly intelligent and had a variety of interests from fine art to photography. He was part of the furniture in town... It's a tribute, ticking off some of Gary's character attributes. But it's in such contrast to the picture painted by friends like Peter and Geoff, who have vivid memories of meeting Gary decades ago. Whereas with Charlie, it all sounds a little bit vague.

6:44Marianna Spring:I don't know, did you have the same social circle? Was there a specific time? Like, did you meet him at a party? Do you remember at all? I don't actually remember meeting him. His presence was always noticed. He would always uplift the energy. He uplifts me now. I'm starting to wonder, how well did Charlie Parker really know Gary Matthews? Like, really know him? Rather than long-standing friends, they appear to have been more like comrades on a mission. Charlie has brought along a huge stack of papers, documents that he says Gary shared with him. It certainly complicates the picture that Charlie somehow misled Gary towards a more extreme worldview, especially as others have made it clear that Gary was an independent thinker himself and not easily led.

7:36Marianna Spring:What is becoming clear to me is that Charlie's absolute priority is this belief system, the one both he and Gary grew and adopted together. I think that can help us understand something. Because while you might think that Gary's death from Covid would make Charlie reflect on his own beliefs, as I discover, that's not quite the case. We've seen a copy of Gary's death certificate and on it it lists the sole and primary reason for him dying is Covid and obviously that's been signed by a doctor. What do you think of that? What do you think happened? God only knows. you know I don't know what happened because my feeling is is that he had a heart attack I don't know whether that's true or not this is the thing you know without evidence we don't know it's as simple as that so you wouldn't consider the death certificate to be evidence or the doctor who certifies that how how how would it be I'm sure if you went around to the pub and asked people if someone in your family died and there was a death certificate and it had been signed by a doctor and it had the cause of death that they would say I trust the doctor you know you don't trust the doctor I just want to understand why don't you go and speak to the government before you release this and and ask them and see what they've got to say about it many thousands of deaths have wrongly been listed as COVID and many other causes of death are highly likely to be responsible for those.

9:06Gary falls into that category.

9:08Marianna Spring:I'm familiar with this narrative. It's often promoted by online groups who believe doctors are wrongly attributing huge numbers of deaths to COVID-19. It's used to suggest there's something more sinister going on. And many people who died of COVID had underlying health factors listed on their death certificate. But Gary Matthews was a healthy 46-year-old man. There is only one cause of death listed on his certificate, COVID-19. At this point, Charlie's friend Fly chips in. I stand for absolutely everything Charlie says. I'm a very highly educated woman, highly educated. And I feel that the more people who wake up will know that there is far more going on here, far more.

9:59Marianna Spring:I still have a critical question I want to put to Charlie. After Gary died, did you post about it online? What was your reaction? How did you express that? Did you post a tribute to him? What did you do? The reason why I contacted members of his family was out of concern that there wasn't a post-mortem. After Gary died, Charlie contacted Gary's family online and posted on social media. He questioned whether Gary died of COVID-19. He suggested there had been a cover-up and that an inquest should be ordered. Gary, he said, never would have stood for this. It was portrayed as interference, as this is none of your business.

10:38You shouldn't be interfering with our lives. And I didn't want to say anything, but I felt out of moral obligation. I had to, because I knew that the RT-PCR test was inaccurate. I knew that so many death certificates were being fraudulently written.

10:55Marianna Spring:Charlie has no real evidence for this allegation. RT-PCR tests are accurate to a very high degree. And as we sit there, I'm thinking about Gary's closest friends and family. I tried to put myself in their shoes. Do you see how his family might have found your reaction quite hard when they were grieving someone that was really, really close to them? I knew there was such large grounds for foul play that I felt it out of moral obligation I should approach his family to notify them in the most empathic way I could and that was such a difficult thing to do. Can you see it from the point of view though of people who were really close to him who might have felt like actually regardless of what anyone thought they needed to grieve someone that they loved.

11:40Marianna Spring:Do you see that? I tried to contact certain members of his family and I was accused of harassing his family which is complete nonsense. I simply messaged a couple of members of his family to notify them about my concerns for circumstances surrounding what had happened to Gary. That's all I did. Can you see it from their point of view? Gary's not coming back. Gary's dead. They don't get to ever speak to Gary again. And they've got to see this kind of stuff on Facebook. Can you see why that might be really upsetting? How hard that must be when they've lost someone who means so much to them? What are you suggesting?

12:20Marianna Spring:I'm just trying to see whether you understand why they might be upset. I appreciate that they were in their own mourning, as we all were for Gary, but I could also see how wrong and immoral the situation was. Anybody who cares about anyone would want the circumstances to be investigated promptly and his wasn't. It strikes me that Charlie genuinely doesn't think he's done anything wrong. That rather than the ringleader that he's been made out to be, he's really a follower too. He's been drawn into online conspiracies, which he's then gone on to promote. He believes in the falsehoods he spreads online so fervently that in his topsy-turvy world, messaging Gary's family to question the truth that he died of COVID isn't a form of abuse.

13:11Marianna Spring:It's a moral obligation. And although he refuses to take my word for it, might he change his mind when confronted face-to-face by a member of Gary's family? I've lost my cousin. I don't think you've ever believed that this kills people. That's later in the series. I'm Marianna Spring, and that was episode four of Death by Conspiracy from BBC Radio 4. Next time, we look at how the stories spread in the media. And how Gary's family were pulled into the orbit of people who wanted to use Gary's death to push their own agendas.