This is Part 3 of a BuzzFeed News investigation.
From afar, the long black shape lying under the trees looked like a discarded object.
As Ashley Chaplin walked closer, cutting across the lawn of Regent’s Park, the blurry image on the grass ahead sharpened. It was a person. He sped up, striding towards the body, drawn by a hunch that with each step grew into dread. A black towel was pulled over the face and torso. Its edges reached the hairline, revealing just enough.
He recognised the hair.
The next hour was horror.
Pulling back the towel, realising that it was his husband, the man he had loved for 15 years. Feeling the fridge-cold temperature of his neck, seeing the strange, concertinaed marks on his face, the liquid coming from his mouth. Phoning 999, a woman telling him how to do CPR, Chaplin performing it inexpertly, desperately, on his husband’s chest, pushing up and down, up, down, up, down, the futility never stopping him, until the paramedics arrived — one man, one woman — telling him they would take over now, that he must step back, from where, by the hedge on that Sunday afternoon, he could only watch as they gave up.
Gerhard Venter was dead, aged 39. It was September 2, 2018, a sunny lunchtime in London’s famous park. He had probably been dead for several hours, or perhaps it was the day before.
A year later, still no one knows.
The time of death would prove to be just the first question left unanswered. From the moment paramedics pronounced that his husband was gone, Chaplin faced an unending search: to uncover the causes and circumstances of Venter’s death. The truth. He hoped the police would help. But as the first anniversary of Venter’s death passes, his widower is still fighting for answers.
It took four months for Chaplin to learn which substance killed Venter: GHB, the drug commonly used with crystal methamphetamine to heighten sex between men — chemsex — and also sometimes referred to as a “date rape” drug. But Chaplin had to demand the test for GHB, weeks after his husband’s death, because it is not included in most routine toxicology screens. He fears that had he not, he would never have known.
“When approached by BuzzFeed News with detailed points surrounding this case, the Metropolitan Police did not respond to them. Instead a spokesperson sent what appears to be a template response containing the line: “Chemsex is a lifestyle choice.” There is no evidence sex was the setting for Venter’s death itself. The phrase “lifestyle choice” has been used as a judgement on gay people for decades.”
Chaplin also does not know why police declared that the death was non-suspicious the day the body was found, without key information available, nor why that assumption was not amended either as the drug was identified or as he supplied more details to the investigating officers.
Police knew little of the dramatic sequence of events leading up to Venter’s death. There was so much more there.
Venter’s case raises key questions about how police are responding to fatalities from GHB. Following the 20% cuts to police numbers, do they have the resources to investigate fully a lethal overdose? Given that GHB is an odourless, colourless liquid easily slipped into a drink but rarely tested for in hospitals or postmortems, are they equipped with the basic medical evidence surrounding this most elusive of substances? And if taken at a chemsex party, for example — with everyone unknown to each other and all detached from reality — how could officers hope to prove that a fatal dose was intended, or who administered it? Do most officers fully understand the contexts in which GHB is taken? Read more via Buzzfeed