Gazing adoringly into his new lover’s eyes at a picturesque mountaintop in Georgia, this is Jack Shepherd just weeks after he had fled Britain.
Shepherd told a judge in Georgia last week that he was ‘suicidally depressed’ after the tragic death of Charlotte Brown during a reckless late-night spin in his speedboat in 2015.
But, as our exclusive pictures show, married Shepherd was busy wooing an attractive Georgian TV presenter less than two months after going on the run in the former Soviet republic.
The 31-year-old web designer – who took out £50,000 in loans before he disappeared – was living the high life in the cosmopolitan city of Tbilisi.
Within weeks of his arrival, he caught the eye of 24-year-old Maiko Tchanturidze, who is said to be ‘absolutely besotted’ with him.
The couple posed for a picture during a trip to see the stunning Kazbegi mountain 100 miles north of Tbilisi in May last year. At the time, the grieving family of Miss Brown, 24, from Clacton, Essex, had no idea that their daughter’s killer had skipped bail and fled overseas.
It was still two months before Shepherd’s lawyers would announce on the first day of his Old Bailey trial that he had absconded out of ‘cowardice.’
Shepherd, who received a six-year term for causing Miss Brown’s death, has never served a day of his sentence. Instead, he appears to have been cultivating his new romance, leaving behind a wife and a toddler son back home.
By October last year, Shepherd’s relationship with Miss Tchanturidze appears to have become serious enough that the couple travelled to her family home of Kutaisi, 140 miles west of the capital.
In another romantic scene, they are pictured during a visit to the former medieval capital of Georgia, walking around its beautiful gardens. As they embrace beside a carousel, Miss Tchanturidze rests her arm on his shoulder while Shepherd gazes affectionately back.
Another snap taken the same day shows them looking like carefree tourists in love they sit on the top platform of Kutaisi’s cable car, his arm around her neck and her head resting against his shoulder.
By this time, Shepherd had got legal aid and instructed his lawyers back in Britain to appeal against his conviction, claiming £100,000 in legal aid.
After The Mail on Sunday revealed he was hiding in Georgia, Shepherd decided the game was up and handed himself into police.
He spent his first full day inside Tbilisi’s notoriously violent Gldani jail yesterday but indicated that he intends to fight against his extradition to Britain.
One source said Shepherd appeared calm in his cell and that he looked ‘solid and silent.’ The last person to speak to him on the run said he seemed ‘surprisingly happy’ and that he had taken five books into jail, including a novel by George Orwell, The Essential Kafka, and Pride And Prejudice.
At a Tbilisi court on Friday, Shepherd told the judge he felt ‘suicidally depressed’ as he appeared to recast himself as the real victim in this tragic tale.
The judge remanded him in prison for three months to allow his newly hired defence team – including a celebrity lawyer who appeared on Georgia’s version of Strictly Come Dancing, to prepare his case. Just before the hearing, Shepherd gave a TV interview which further upset Charlotte’s family as he blamed everybody but himself for her death.
The Mail on Sunday understands it was Ms Tchanturidze who set up the interview with Rustavi 2, the station where she used to work.
Last night, she told The Mail on Sunday that she was standing by Shepherd. She said: ‘He is the best person in the world. Everything the media is saying about him is false.’
Georgian police were last night investigating if Shepherd had an accomplice while he was on the run as he set up no utility services or bank accounts. After he was arrested on Wednesday, he gave police a false address.
Nino Vardzelasvili, who conducted the TV interview, said: ‘He was not very sad, he was in a good mood.
‘I was surprised because it was his last day as a free man.
‘He said that after everything is finished he would like to come back to live in Georgia.’
If he is extradited to the UK, Shepherd faces a six-year sentence for manslaughter and further charges of glassing a barman in Devon last March.
Dramatic new evidence that casts serious doubt on speedboat killer Jack Shepherd’s attempt to blame his victim for the accident which claimed her life has been uncovered by The Mail on Sunday.
Fugitive Shepherd has always claimed that Charlotte Brown was at the wheel when his boat capsized at high speed and she drowned on their drunken first date.
The serial womaniser, who was jailed for six years in his absence for Charlotte’s manslaughter, told police they were thrown out of the boat together and he desperately tried to dive down to rescue her.
Stacia Read, who was watching from the balcony of her riverside apartment, saw a lone figure, apparently peering into the water as the boat ‘chugged along’ slowly. Shepherd has always said Ms Brown was at the wheel
He heaped more misery on Charlotte’s family after he gave himself up after ten months on the run in Georgia when he claimed in a staged TV interview that it was an ‘established fact’ that she was at the helm of his boat.
But today it can be revealed that a witness believes she saw Shepherd alone on his boat, suggesting that Charlotte had fallen in alone. Stacia Read, who was watching from the balcony of her riverside apartment, saw a lone figure, apparently peering into the water as the boat ‘chugged along’ slowly.
She told The Mail on Sunday how she saw the 14ft vessel veer towards the south bank, then heard it crash with ‘a loud bang’, possibly into a wharf. Ms Read said she then heard a male voice, which turned out to be Shepherd’s, screaming for help as he clung to the hull of his capsized boat.
She told The Mail on Sunday how she saw the 14ft vessel veer towards the south bank, then heard it crash with ‘a loud bang’, possibly into a wharf. Ms Read said she then heard a male voice, which turned out to be Shepherd’s, screaming for help as he clung to the hull of his capsized boat
Charlotte’s mother, Roz Wickens, believes the explosive new evidence demolishes Shepherd’s story – and suggests it could be proof that he staged the crash to try to cover his tracks. Speaking to this newspaper, she condemned him as ‘a weasel of a man’ trying desperately ‘to save his own skin’.
The dramatic new development comes as we can also reveal:
l The first pictures of Shepherd while on the run, showing the married fugitive gazing into his new lover’s eyes, despite telling a court last week he had been ‘suicidally depressed’ while evading justice;
Jack Shepherd (pictured above) surrendered at a police station in Georgia on Wednesday
l That it was our painstaking investigation which discovered the killer had fled to Georgia, sparking the manhunt that forced him to surrender;
l That it took detectives a year to take the vital statement from Ms Read – even though she called 999 and alerted police to the tragedy at the time it happened.
In a tearful interview, Ms Read said: ‘I spotted the boat. It sounded like there was something wrong with it. I saw one silhouette of a person, who looked as if they were standing, trying to see if there was something wrong. I could hear him say, “Help, help, SOS”, but it was always “me”. It was never “us”.
‘Even in a self-preservation mode, if you are with someone, you would surely mention them but there was no mention of her at all. It was always “Help me, SOS, help me, help me”. And I found that totally strange.
‘When I read Charlotte was involved, something just didn’t feel right. I thought, “Why didn’t she scream?” And why didn’t he say there was someone with him, even if he couldn’t say her name?’
Asked if she thought Charlotte could have been at the helm, Ms Read, a school sports coach, said: ‘I don’t think she was. If she was piloting that boat, she would have screamed. There was never a second voice, just his. If you crash, then you would scream. I am a million per cent sure I did not hear her.’
Ms Read, 38, dialled 999 and stayed on the line to the emergency operator until police arrived and Shepherd was pulled from the water by a rescue boat. Charlotte was found drowned upstream around 20 minutes later on the night of December 8, 2015.
Jack Shepherd (right) was convicted of killing 24-year-old Charlotte Brown (left) during a speedboat date on the Thames
Her mother Ms Wickens is convinced Charlotte was hurled out earlier while Shepherd was recklessly showing off, possibly doing so-called ‘doughnuts’ – steering in circles at high speed – and she believes Ms Read’s testimony is also evidence of Shepherd seeking a way of blaming Charlotte.
Ms Wickens, of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, said: ‘Stacia’s evidence means he was lying when he told police that they were thrown in together. I believe that she saw Shepherd looking around anxiously to try to find her before he hit the pier which caused his boat to turn over. I am convinced he claimed he had been thrown out at the same time to try to deflect the blame from himself.
‘The trial heard one of the women who had been on a previous date with him say he had been showing off by doing doughnuts in his speedboat. I think he was doing that when Charlotte was thrown out. There was certainly evidence that the boat was being driven erratically and at high speed on the night.
Married Jack Shepherd in Georgia with girlfriend Maiko Tchanturidze in Maiko’s hometown of Kutaisi, western Georgia in October 2018. The speedboat killer told a judge last week he was ‘suicidally depressed’ after the death of Charlotte Brown
‘He could have carried on looking for her but he didn’t. If he had a phone on him, he could have dialled 999 from the boat, but that didn’t happen. She might have survived if she had been found earlier, but he left her for dead. I know he is lying. He has not told the truth in the past and he is not telling it now.’
Shepherd’s trial at the Old Bailey last July – held while he was in hiding – heard that a police helicopter spotted a tree trunk in the river near where the tragedy happened. But Ms Wickens said it was only speculation that the boat may have hit the obstacle.
Charlotte, a 24-year-old business consultant, met Shepherd on a dating website. He treated her to a £150 meal with two bottles of wine in a restaurant at The Shard before they went back to his houseboat in Hammersmith, West London.
He then took her in his speedboat with a bottle of champagne to see sights, including the Houses of Parliament. It was the same seduction routine he had used on most of the ten other women he had seen in previous weeks, despite having a pregnant partner in Devon. His 1980s boat, which was bought second-hand online, had faulty steering and no kill cord to cut the engine if the driver falls overboard. It was also speeding before the tragedy at up to 30 knots – nearly three times the 12 knots speed limit.
Shepherd told police in a witness interview the next day that he had failed to offer a lifejacket to Charlotte and had not even asked her if she could swim. He claimed he handed her the wheel, saying: ‘I got to a stretch I considered to be safe because it was quite straight and long, so we swapped over.’
Shepherd, a 31-year-old website designer, said he remembered her probably going ‘full throttle’, forcing him to hold on to a bar for support before the boat capsized.
Two months later, he gave a prepared statement to police, saying: ‘To the best of my recollection, immediately before and at the time of the incident, Charlotte was driving. I recall attempting to dive under the overturned boat to look for Charlotte, then shouting for help.’
Shepherd fled to Georgia last March, but incredibly was able to claim legal aid and allowed to communicate with his lawyers from his bolthole. He was then allowed to appeal against his conviction, funded by taxpayers.
Ms Wickens believes Shepherd gave himself up in the Georgian capital Tbilisi after The Mail on Sunday last week revealed that he was believed to be hiding in the country. Other newspapers were reporting he was elsewhere.
She and her daughters Victoria, 31, and Katie, 30, watched with horror as self-pitying Shepherd protested his innocence on Friday in Georgia. His expensive lawyers indicated he would be fighting extradition, and he was remanded in custody for three months.
Ms Wickens, who is divorced from Charlotte’s father Graham Brown, 55, said she was willing to fly to Georgia to meet Shepherd.
She said: ‘I want to look him in the eye and ask him how Charlotte died. He was the last person to see my beautiful daughter, so only he can tell the truth about what happened. I want to give him a chance to give an honest account.’
She said his claim that Charlotte was behind the wheel was ‘a disgusting lie’, adding: ‘Once again he was trying to save his own skin. He is definitely a narcissist who thinks the world revolves around him.
Shepherd leans in for a kiss with the TV presenter in the Kazbegi mountain area, Northern Georgia, in May last year
‘It left me with a sickening feeling that he was trying to twist things around and blame Charlotte. He is behaving a bit like a celebrity, lapping up all the attention, but he is a weasel of a man. It is time that he shows remorse and stops lying.
‘But he doesn’t think he has done anything wrong and has convinced himself that he is the victim. It shows his incredible arrogance.’
Ms Read was a witness at Shepherd’s trial, but her evidence was never reported at the time. She was on the balcony of her fourth-floor flat near Chelsea Harbour when she heard Shepherd’s boat making a strange ‘chugging noise’, as if it had a faulty engine.
She said: ‘It was not speeding. I would be surprised if it was going 5mph or 10mph. It sounded like there was something wrong with it. I saw one silhouette of a person.’
She saw the boat veer slowly towards a pier on the opposite side of the river. Seconds after she lost sight of it, there was a loud crash which sounded like ‘something had gone into metal’. She added that she then heard a voice ask: ‘Is there anyone else with you? Are you OK?’ There was no reply. ‘That was when I rang 999,’ she said.
As she spoke to an emergency controller, she saw the capsized boat. She also heard Shepherd’s voice becoming more breathless. Ms Read added: ‘I kept on telling the operator, “He is getting tired now, seriously he’s not going to make it.” I was shaking the whole time, and I could see people trying to throw life buoys to him.
‘Then there was a silence for a time, a cold silence.’
She watched as police arrived with the crew of an RNLI rescue boat which pulled Shepherd from the water around 20 minutes after she first saw his boat.
Ms Read had no idea that a woman was also in the water until she read media reports that Charlotte had drowned. She added: ‘I told the police that something did not feel right, because there was never ever any inkling that there was anybody else in that boat with him.’
Ms Read described Shepherd as ‘a lowlife’ for going on the run, adding: ‘How can you live with yourself, whatever happened? I feel for Charlotte’s family massively. I want him to face justice for their sake.’