When exactly is true crime a force for good? It’s a question we should probably ask ourselves every single time we consume something in this lurid and inevitably exploitative genre. Death of a Showjumper is, in many ways, a standardly sensationalised account of a young woman’s murder: paced for maximum dramatic intensity; details judiciously withheld to spin the most compulsively watchable yarn. But its broader subject matter – the epidemic of violence against women, and the ways such abuse is silenced, minimised and weaponised against the victims themselves – is one of the few that can justify the existence of a series like this.
It’s easy to feel cynical at first. Visually stunning and thematically arresting, Death of a Showjumper’s backdrop is tailor-made for a TV crime drama. It’s set amid the equestrian community of Northern Ireland, and we are transported to a place brimming with bucolic beauty as well as “secrets and silence”. The lifestyle is familiar but subtly alien: horses are ubiquitous and the associated culture not reserved for toffs – the hunt is an adrenaline sport for skilled riders. And 21-year-old Katie Simpson was one.
Simpson’s world revolved around horses: this three-part documentary portrays her as a hard worker with huge potential and an irreverent sense of humour (she named her horse Satan). But in August 2020, Simpson’s friends and family were told she had hanged herself from a banister; she died in hospital six days later. To say they were baffled by the circumstances of her death is an understatement. For the journalist Tanya Fowles, this apparent suicide was more than just out of character – it was deeply suspicious.
A veteran court reporter who had known Simpson since she was a child, Fowles is one hero of this story. When she found out who had discovered the body, alarm bells grew louder: it was Jonathan Cresswell, the perpetrator of one of the most disturbing domestic abuse cases she had ever covered. He was also the partner of Simpson’s sister; the three of them lived together.
When Fowles contacted the police with her concerns, they dismissed her as a nuisance. So she phoned detective sergeant James Brannigan – the other hero here – who Fowles remembered had once cracked a domestic abuse murder without a body. The pair’s pursuit of justice in the face of authorities who were ambivalent at best (Brannigan also met with significant resistance from colleagues) is the stuff of bleak cop drama that somehow ends up restoring your faith in humanity. Cresswell was chillingly close to getting away with murder; Brannigan put him on trial against all the odds, risking his own career in the process.
This strand of the story may be TV-friendly, but the rest is mired in almost inconceivable darkness. We get a lengthy account from Cresswell’s ex-girlfriend Abigail Lyle – now a dressage rider who represented Ireland in the 2024 Olympics – of the abuse she suffered at his hands. It proves that Cresswell was a depraved and dangerous monster. But, after his release from a brief stint in prison, locals threw a party for him, while Lyle was ostracised. The community’s response was, by the sounds of it, a combination of denial and contempt for anyone accusing a charming man of heinous violence. Many were under Cresswell’s spell. Jill Robinson, another ex-girlfriend, is interviewed extensively here; she was one of three women eventually convicted of perverting the course of justice or withholding information, contributing to the cover-up of Simpson’s murder. However poorly judged Robinson’s behaviour was – she claims she had no idea how Simpson died – it is clear she was one of Cresswell’s victims too.
Death of a Showjumper concludes amid a cloud of hopelessness. Due to events not revealed until the final episode, there are numerous aspects of this crime that will never be uncovered. Meanwhile, Brannigan quit his job owing to his frustrations with the case and the intimidation he experienced in the police during his investigations. More generally, the programme hammers home how widely tolerated domestic violence remains. (It partly attributes this to the rural, insular area Cresswell and Simpson were from, but the proper context is a merciless global patriarchy, not the equestrian community of County Armagh.)
There is a fine line between using a harrowing crime to create entertainment, and using entertainment to exact some semblance of justice. Death of a Showjumper may reel in viewers using a litany of true-crime tricks of the trade, but it is a valuable endeavour in itself. This is a series made propulsive and gripping by teasing the prospect of Cresswell finally paying for his crimes. By telling Simpson’s story as comprehensively as possible, it ends up being the closest we’ll ever get.
Death of a Showjumper aired on Sky Documentaries and is on Now
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org