‘Every day is the worst day of my life,’ says mother as speedboater gets six

A fugitive womaniser has been jailed for six years for letting his date drive his speedboat at full throttle moments before they were flung into the freezing Thames.

Jack Shepherd, 31, used the vessel as part of his ‘seduction routine’ and had taken as many as ten women out speeding to impress them.

He met 24-year-old Charlotte Brown on dating website OKCupid but their champagne-fuelled first date ended in disaster when she hit a log and the boat capsized shortly before midnight on December 8, 2015.

They sped up to the Houses of Parliament at more than twice the 12-knot limit before Shepherd gave the helm to Ms Brown, a business development consultant from southeast London, who had no boating experience.

Shepherd later told police the two lifejackets on board remained tucked beneath the seats and he did not even bother asking if Ms Brown could swim.

Both were hurled the water after the boat collided with a partially submerged tree trunk.

Ms Brown died from cold water immersion shortly after being pulled unresponsive from the river.

The Old Bailey heard Shepherd bought the 14ft Fletcher Arrowflyte GTO from Gumtree to ‘pull women’.

But the 1980s model had a number of defects, including faulty steering, damage to the windscreen and seats, and there was no kill cord attached to cut the engine should the driver go overboard.

Shepherd was convicted in his absence yesterday of gross negligence manslaughter.

The lothario has been on the run since March and his whereabouts are unknown – despite him remaining in close contact with his legal team throughout the trial.

Ms Brown’s family pleaded for him ‘to return and assume the responsibility of his guilt and devastation he has caused by his careless actions’.

The Common Serjeant of London, Judge Richard Marks QC, today (fri) jailed Shepherd for six years and slammed his ‘totally cavalier attitude towards safety issues’.

‘It is clearly the case that it was a cold, dark December night,’ he said.

‘The defendant was to say to the police that he didn’t normally take the boat out at night.

‘As one prosecution expert witness was to say, and I refer here to Paul Glatzel, “visibility at night can be a difficulty. The Thames can be an extremely challenging location to helm a craft.

‘Night skippers will need to display a high degree of competence and awareness to ensure the safety of their craft, their passengers and other water users. You really need to have your wits about you and to be fully aware of your game.”

‘Those words alone make it abundantly clear that there is no way that they should have been out on the boat that night.’

He added: ‘What is clear beyond doubt in my judgement is that the defendant should never have allowed Charlotte to drive the boat at any time given the fact that she had been drinking as well as the fact that it was dark and that he must have known that the river was potentially very hazardous.

‘Moreover, as the evidence of her sister revealed, she had no previous boating experience.

‘Nor does it appear from the evidence that when she took over the driving of the boat that he sought to assist or supervise her closely or at all.’

In a moving victim impact statement, Ms Brown’s mother, Roz Wickens, described the heartache of losing the ‘light of her life’ and blasted Shepherd for failing to explain what happened in her daughter’s final moments.

‘The loss of Charlotte’s loss on my family and I is immense, which words cannot describe,’ she said from the witness box.

‘Watching my two daughters grieve and deal with the loss of their sister and very best friend has been heart-breaking.

‘No-one can underestimate or understand the panic that shivers through you when your thoughts go to how Charlotte lost her life that night.

‘My daughters and I are a very close family unit, spending a lot of time together still holidaying together every year.

‘Charlotte was the light of my life in every way.

‘She was beautiful, healthy, intelligent, compassionate, bright, funny, supportive and just the very best company.

‘After going to university, she had gained an excellent job and to be honest she had everything to live for.

‘Charlotte’s life had hardly begun and she has now been robbed of her life, being a wife and mother and all that her future life entailed.

‘Every day is the worst day of my life because it is yet another day without Charlotte.

‘People say time heals, but that is not the case when you have lost a child.

‘Time, in fact, makes the feelings worse and to say I miss Charlotte is a dramatic understatement.

‘Every day is a struggle and every event is impossible.

‘Anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas and family get-togethers have become traumatic events.

‘The empty chair, an empty room, an empty space, has never becomes less empty. Empty is still empty, gone is still gone and missing is still missing.

‘The problem is nothing can fill it and ease this feeling.

‘Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after heart-breaking year that empty space remains.

‘I want Jack Shepherd to know that when he is enjoying himself with his family, I in fact am not enjoying myself and never will.

‘The truth is I will be visiting Charlotte’s grave.

‘Also, if it was a dreadful accident as he claimed, why hasn’t he explained to us what had happened that night and at least sent his condolences?

‘The fact is that if Charlotte hadn’t met him she would be alive today.

‘The empty hole that has been left in my heart is huge and is agony.

‘I will continue to feel pain, distress, emotion and anguish until I take my final breath.’

Defending, Stephen Vullo QC told the court Shepherd failed to come to court out of ‘cowardice’ because he could not face Ms Brown’s family knowing how much they have suffered.

He insisted it was ‘not affront to them or an affront to this court’ and described it as being ‘a million miles’ away from the stereotypical situation where a defendant runs away and sits on a beach drinking beer ‘thinking they are very clever’.

The court heard Shepherd got married to an old school friend shortly after the tragedy and had a child before it broke down.

He has since ‘struggled to find employment’ and ‘started to drink far too much’.

Prosecutor Aftab Jafferjee QC told jurors Shepherd used the speedboat as part of his ‘seduction routine’ and he may have taken up to ten women on a boozy cruise.

After meeting online, Shepherd and Ms Brown shared two bottles of wine over dinner at The Oblix restaurant in The Shard.

He invited her back to his Hammersmith houseboat where they had more drinks and then out for a high-speed champagne sightseeing tour in his red speedboat.

Ms Brown can be heard yelling: ‘Oh my God, you’re going so fast’ as she made a video on their way up to the Houses of Parliament.

But Mr Jafferjee told jurors the encounter ‘went horribly wrong’ when Shepherd decided to hand the wheel to Ms Brown.

‘It was cold, it was dark, we submit, it was sheer madness,’ he said.

The speedboat capsized opposite Plantation Wharf, near Wandsworth Bridge and Shepherd was found clinging to upturned bow of the boat.

He was unsteady on his feet and still reeked of alcohol after lifeguards hauled him from the river.

Charlotte was found dead or dying when she was pulled from the water.

Shepherd later told officers they drank two bottles of wine before taking taxi to his houseboat where they ‘drank more and decided to go out on the boat’.

‘On the way back she wanted a go,’ Shepherd recalled.

‘She was quite insistent on it.

‘I had said that she could, so it was hard to go back on it.

‘So, I got to a straight stretch where I considered it to be safe and we swapped.’

Asked about what kind of speed Ms Brown was doing when she took the wheel, he replied: ‘Full throttle to have to be hanging on, and maybe steering slightly erratically.’

He added: ‘Neither of us wore life jackets although there were two in between the seats.

‘But she would not have known they were there and I didn’t point them out.

‘I didn’t even ask if she could swim.’

He was previously stopped in the boat on August 22, 2015 on his way to The Shard where he was taking Amy Warner for a meal at a nearby restaurant.

She told the court: ‘He was driving quite fast.

‘Obviously, from the other surrounding boat traffic coming towards us the water was quite choppy.

‘I asked Jack to slow down.

‘In comparison to the slower boats, I guess tourist boats, on the river at the time it did feel a lot faster than that.’

A few weeks later, on September 10, three months before the fatal accident, marine units again pulled Shepherd over for speeding.

Mr Jafferjee said it was again pointed out to him that although not a requirement, life jackets were an important piece of safety equipment.

A similar observation was made about the kill cord.

‘As you know, none of these warnings were ever heeded,’ Mr Jafferjee said.

Since buying his barge in Hammersmith, Shepherd claimed to have dated ‘probably ten’ women – with ‘the majority’ being taken out on the speedboat.

He said in maybe half of ‘those 10 incidents with the lady friends’ they had driven the boat themselves.

Shepherd, from Abergavenny, Wales, was jailed for six years in his absence.

A warrant for his arrest remains outstanding.

ends