Death by Conspiracy?: 6. Tristan's Quest

0:01I got a Facebook message from my mum in Spain. She'd heard through the grapevine, it's difficult, I'm 8 ,000 miles away or whatever.

0:10Marianna Spring:When Gary Matthews died of Covid in January 2021, it didn't take long for the news to reach his cousin Tristan, a filmmaker in Los Angeles. Not quite 8 ,000 miles away, but you get the picture. Yeah, you know, it was devastating. It's just, you know, he was 46, he was fit and healthy, he had some strange ideas in his head recently, but, you know, he was still a beloved family member. I don't think he deserved this. The last time the two had been in touch online, they'd had a row. Tristan had taken Gary to task for his post's resisting lockdown measures and calling into question whether Covid existed.

0:52That stupid, bitter Facebook exchange with Gary was the last time he communicated. That's, you know, I have that memorialised. That's the last time I spoke to my cousin, who I loved.

1:09Marianna Spring:In the grip of grief, something began to nag Tristan. He needed to know what had happened to his cousin Gary. So I started calling people, seeing what had happened, and, yeah, I started piecing together a story. I'm Marianna Spring and this is Death by Conspiracy. Episode 6, Tristan's Quest. After Gary died, Tristan posted on Gary's Facebook wall. Something for me, I think, which helps with death and grief is knowing the situation people died in. So I put in one sentence saying, Gary died of Covid on this day, you know, he'll be loved and missed. Suddenly, Tristan found that he'd provoked a reaction on social media.

1:51Marianna Spring:He got a response from Charlie Parker, who ran an online group filled with conspiracy theories about COVID and which Gary was a member of. Charlie definitely jumped in there. He made his own memorial, which was like 10 % about Gary dying and like 90 % this is our fight, he didn't believe in this, he wouldn't have wanted this. Gary's family have told us about some of the messages shared on Facebook by Charlie and sent to them directly, questioning whether Gary died of COVID-19, suggesting there's been a cover-up, that the family have to order an inquest, that Gary never would have stood for this.

2:27I was incensed. At the time, I wanted to destroy Charlie completely. I was so angry, indignant, just heartbroken.

2:38Marianna Spring:Thousands of miles from Shrewsbury, Tristan couldn't get his cousin and what was happening in his hometown out of his head. I couldn't sleep one night, and it got to three in the morning and I just knew I was at a point where if I don't write everything in my head down onto paper, it's going to keep swirling in my head and keep me up for days. Tristan decided to go back to the UK to speak to his family and to confront the man he'd been interacting with online. He wanted to return to Shrewsbury to make a film about what had happened to his cousin. I always think of myself as a bit of a small town boy with big ambitions.

3:15It was like stepping back into a life I led 10, 15 years ago.

3:22Marianna Spring:Tristan arrived in Shrewsbury a few months after Gary died. Today is April 17th, 2021. I'm in Shrewsbury and yes, I'm here to look into the death of my cousin. Once out of quarantine, he began to film. Hello, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. quiet streets of his hometown. OK, that's St Chad's. It's a historical church right by the quarry. It's actually very nice, pretty. You can even go inside. And to track down his interviewees. Soon, he found himself face-to-face with the man he'd spoken to online. When we spoke with Tristan more recently, he reflected on his experience meeting Charlie.

4:10The first time I met Charlie, when I came back, I sort of had an off-camera meeting with him. We walked into a pub beer garden. He's like, well, give me a second. He walked over to a group of older, I don't know, like alcoholic guys, handed him all papers, seemed to get on with him well.

4:27Marianna Spring:It was a newspaper called The Light, which bills itself as a truth paper. I'm familiar with this publication. Generally, they're filled with conspiracy theories about COVID and about the efficacy of vaccines. Bar lady then said, excuse me, are you Charlie Parker? He said, yes, I am. She's like, great, I'd like you to leave, please. He was like, well, why? And she's like, well, look, we just don't want you here, really, Charlie. Was she kicking him out because of Gary? That was part of it, yeah. And I'm like, Charlie, there's plenty of other pubs. We can go somewhere else. And he's like, no, look, I was not responsible for Gary.

5:00Look, his cousin's here. He can forgive me. He can tell you. And I'm like, we're just talking.

5:06Marianna Spring:Over the next few weeks, they met a few times. But there was no blazing showdown. Instead, an uneasy relationship began to develop. Mr Charlie Parker.

5:23You all right? Yeah, we're filming.

5:28Marianna Spring:At times, Charlie doesn't seem to understand that the two might have had quite different relationships with Gary. Gary's one of your family members, you know, he's a kind of a family member to me of sorts. He's my cousin. He was more than that. He used to babysit me. He was a friend. Every time I came back to Shrewsbury, I made it a point to see Gary personally. So what we can both agree on then is that we both love Gary massively. I would give anything for Gary to be back. I'm reminded of when I interviewed Charlie earlier in this series. I got the sense that Gary's relationship with Charlie was different from the ones Gary had with his oldest friends, the people who'd known him for decades.

6:14Marianna Spring:Charlie struggled to understand how calling for an investigation and trying to cast doubt on the cause of Gary's death might be met with horror by those who were very close to him. But before Tristan confronted Charlie about the social media posts, the two of them did some filming together, as Charlie tries to win people over to his cause. The footage helps me to understand more about the dynamic developing between Tristan and Charlie, but also about Charlie in particular. The more I watch, I get a growing sense of who he really is and why he believes what he does. Let's find some more people to talk to.

6:52Yeah, this sounds good. Let's have a walk around.

6:54Marianna Spring:In the footage that Tristan filmed, we see the two of them in the quarry, a park near Shrewsbury Town Centre. They make for an unusual pair. Tristan, in sunglasses and a button-down shirt, films with a camera on his shoulder, while Charlie, a loudspeaker strapped to his chest and wheeling around a unicycle, approaches random members of the public. How's it going, guys? You all right? Excellent, yeah. Just wondering if you'd be up for doing a few minutes on film as part of a documentary? No. We're not the people you should get to. No, cool. All right, no worries. Tristan, come on, let's jog on a bit.

7:30This is good. I can still hear you perfectly.

7:33Marianna Spring:A few days later, Tristan followed Charlie to an anti-lockdown protest in central London. They arrive at Hyde Park in the afternoon sunshine. Charlie is in his element. Everywhere he's greeted by anti-lockdown activists, people who recognise him from previous protests. Charlie! Charlie! Charlie! What's your name, lad? Dad. Oh, Sal, nice one. Good to see you, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Sal. Charlie wields his homemade sign on Oxford Street outside a sports shop. Free your face! Free your face! Free your face! Free your face! As people come to take copies of the light newspaper from Charlie, there's one thing that's becoming abundantly clear and something that I've seen with other people drawn to conspiracy theories.

8:26Marianna Spring:It's at gatherings such as this where he finds connection and community. This is my mother. At the protest I visited in Shrewsbury, there were a handful of fellow activists. Here, there are thousands. Comes to life, guys. Get your free life. See you. All right. All right. All the while, the microphone captures tiny moments of tension between Tristan and Charlie. Moments that remind you of the unusual circumstances that have brought these two together. We've got Tristan. He's here today filming. How genuine it is about it, you know, time will tell. But, you know, it's one of them. But I think even if someone disagrees with us, I'd rather that they were here seeing what it's all about.

9:13Marianna Spring:Back in Shropshire, Tristan and Charlie sit down together for another interview. They sit on a leather sofa, Tristan puffing on a vape. They discuss the effect of lockdowns and of Covid itself. The tension that's been simmering between them begins to come to the boil. I mean, I do think the lockdown's caused a lot of mental health problems. If a lack of social distancing cost me my cousin's life, which I do in a way believe that happened, then, yeah, I'll go through that again. I'll go through much worse if I could bring him back. Everyone's been completely ruined by this mentally, physically, financially.

9:48And, you know, to me that is far much greater than a virus which kills less than 0.3 % of people who get it, which is a tiny percentage. I don't think that number's correct. Tiny percentage. I've seen people die. I've lost my cousin. Yeah, I appreciate that, and a lot of us... I don't think you'll ever believe that this kills people.

10:11Marianna Spring:That number's not correct. Death rates have varied, but Charlie's figure is almost certainly an underestimate. Tristan later told me that during this interview he was continually reminding himself to keep his cool. When he says something that makes me want to punch him in the face, well, I'm not really a confrontational person anyway. I'm going to take a breath and try and figure out where he's coming from. So that was my approach for Charlie. Take a breath, breathe. He tries again to get his message across. What I know is he had the symptoms of coronavirus for about six days. and at about the sixth day if you have a serious reaction to coronavirus you should have a very low dip in oxygen lower than normal and this is even lower just after you've woken up this is even lower just after a period of activity your blood oxygen can get so low that you can simply collapse and you can get to the point you can die and it seems the doctors were 99 % sure that that's what happened to Gary.

11:17His family was offered an autopsy, but they didn't want to desecrate the body, and so they turned it down. I'm not sure you could ever accept that diagnosis.

11:31Marianna Spring:But even with Tristan telling Charlie what the doctors have said, what the family has said, he just can't accept it. The reason why I don't accept it is because the test that Gary tested, the RT-PCR test, is not designed to distinguish from one virus or another. And it's known to be highly inaccurate. So, you know, without a proper post-mortem and a proper investigation, it's simply unknown what happened to Gary. Charlie claims to have done research into Covid tests, but his conclusions just aren't true. And Tristan says that Charlie's was a worldview impervious to any other information. If you imagine there's like an accepted media view, they're like, well, the opposite view must be true.

12:21Let's champion that. It's almost anti-establishment to the extreme, to a ridiculous point. So it was interesting. but, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't do it again.

12:38Marianna Spring:Hearing about this conversation, it makes me think again of the scenes of Charlie at the protest in London. You could see that this was his community. You could see the agency and purpose it gives him, the sense of identity even. These are things that are deep-rooted, stronger perhaps than can be unpicked by evidence, Stronger even than a dead man's family imploring you to see their side of things. I eventually realised that Charlie's got a long, long history of being a troublemaker, seeking attention, and it's in his nature. I didn't forgive him, but I wasn't angry, and I realised that if you truly understand Charlie and see where he's coming from, for anybody to make any kind of sense of this, we had to talk to him.

13:28and not get angry with him.

13:32Marianna Spring:I'm Marianna Spring, and that was episode six of Death by Conspiracy from BBC Radio 4. Next time, those crucial days right before Gary died. What happened? And right at the very end, when it was too late, did he change his mind about COVID conspiracies?