Living in a picturesque valley beside the River Exe in Somerset, the life of John and Debbie Zurick seemed utterly enviable. Thanks to their roles as top-class dog breeders, they had climbed into the highest echelons of country society — becoming friendly with everyone from Princess Anne to singer Roger Daltrey.
Indeed, as Debbie Zurick once revealed on Facebook, The Who singer, who lives on a rural estate in East Sussex, once complimented her about her eyes over dinner. Her husband, John, who posted on the same conversation thread, added ‘I would agree’ and said he considered himself a ‘lucky man’.
So why on earth did this self-proclaimed ‘lucky man’ shoot his beloved wife of 30 years dead last weekend, before turning the gun on himself? John succumbed to his injuries in hospital on Thursday, after committing the shooting at the couple’s Exmoor home, a terrible end for a seemingly charmed couple. The Zuricks’ passion for breeding working Clumber spaniels had brought them many famous friends — Princess Anne spoke of her sorrow this week at hearing of Debbie’s death — as did the fact they lived cheek-by-jowl with Boris Johnson’s family on an estate belonging to the PM’s father.
Fancy dress: A picture of John and Debbie Zurick posted in 2014. The self-proclaimed ‘lucky man’ killed his estranged wife at their Exmoor home last week before turning the gun on himself. They had climbed to the upper echelons of country society – becoming friendly with everyone from Princess Anne to singer Roger Daltrey
They socialised with the Prime Minister’s family, drinking with 79-year-old Stanley Johnson at the Royal Oak in the nearby hamlet of Winsford and acted as key-holders to the Johnson clan’s properties. But the Mail has discovered there was a darker side to the Zuricks’ relationship, which began to unravel late last year. It led to Debbie taking a flight to Ireland to stay with friends — before returning to Somerset last weekend to tell John she wanted a divorce.
Debbie, we can reveal, was having an affair with a family friend — someone her husband knew and held in high esteem. When, in late December, John discovered the man’s identity, it broke him.
According to a farmer living in Winsford who knew the couple well, John initially claimed the separation was ‘amicable’ and that he would be staying in the couple’s three- bedroom cottage. ‘They seemed perfectly happy to us but a few weeks back John told my wife they had separated. It was all very sudden. He didn’t explain the reasons but he said that Debbie had moved to Ireland.’
She was staying at the home of a close family friend overlooking the sea in County Wexford. It was a place she and John had been to visit frequently for fishing holidays and where she, several years ago, caught her first salmon.
Debbie is pictured with one of her Clumber Spaniels. In early 90s, she set herself up as a breeder and became secretary of the Working Clumber Spaniel Society
In recent weeks, it became increasingly clear John was not coping well without the woman he fondly referred to as ‘the wife’ who, according to another friend, ‘he really, really loved’. Aside from losing 3 st and cropping short his usually thick coiffed white hair, the 67-year-old is said to have been drinking heavily.
‘John had been drinking a lot,’ says the farmer. ‘A few weeks ago he drove his car into the ford in the village and abandoned it.’
Add a firearm to this tinderbox situation and, with hindsight, one can see how the relationship ended in such a tragic climax.
But serious questions remain about how John was able to get his hands on the firearm used to kill his wife. Avon and Somerset Police had confiscated all the licensed firearms kept by the couple after John was allegedly involved in a drink-drive incident earlier this month. They have referred themselves to the police watchdog over the incident.
So where did John get the gun? Disturbingly, a source close to the couple has confided to this newspaper that Debbie, who was 56, the daughter of a gun dealer, had a secret and unlicensed cache of weapons inherited from her father.
According to a fellow dog breeder, who has known the Zuricks for almost 20 years, the weapons were kept illegally in a heavily locked barn on land at the couple’s previous Somerset home, Leys Farm in Foxtwitchen. ‘Debbie was always very protective of it and secretive about it,’ said the breeder. ‘She never let anyone in there.’
He added that not long before the Zuricks sold Leys Farm in 2013 and moved to the Johnson family estate, Debbie asked a gun dealer to help her sell the weapons. After he discovered the collection was unlicensed, he refused to get involved.
‘He was absolutely flabbergasted. He said it was like an armoury,’ said the dog breeder friend. ‘He had never seen so many guns in one room, which is saying something for someone who had worked in his profession. It was rammed from floor to ceiling.
‘Debbie asked him if he would be able to sell them on but he was suspicious about their legality. He asked if the police knew about them and she told him not to worry. He said he was worried as it would be his reputation on the line.’
Boris Johnson is a neighbour of the couple. He is said to be pictured outside the Zurick house. They lived cheek-by-jowl with Johnson’s family on an estate belonging to the PM’s father
What happened to the guns is not known and while the gun dealer in question refused to confirm or deny the information, it certainly raises the possibility that police didn’t know about all the firearms in the couple’s possession when they removed the Zuricks’ licensed guns earlier this month.
Another local told the Mail that the Zuricks were recently attempting to sell unlicensed weapons.
‘It could be it was one of [Debbie’s guns] which John ended up using to shoot Debbie,’ added the friend. ‘There would certainly be a tragic irony in that.’
Guns lie at the heart of this desperately sad story. Step back from the terrible events of this week and the roots of this tragedy stretch right back to World War II, when Debbie’s late father, Derek Townsend, paced the Sussex Downs with a shotgun in search of rabbits to eke out the family’s rations. At the time he was just a teenager and too young to fight — but his love of hunting led him to set up his own gun shop in Brighton’s Preston Street.
It was here that Debbie, described by her stepmother as a ‘pretty, sociable and outgoing’, began working behind the counter as a Saturday girl and then as a full-time shop assistant. It was here, too, that John Zurick went to buy his first shotgun from Debbie’s father, with whom he also went shooting.
The Zuricks (pictured, John) moved to Somerset to set up their dog-breeding business, first purchasing Leys Farm in Withypool near Minehead, before selling it for £760,000 and buying the cottage at Nethercote from Stanley Johnson for £440,000 in 2013
Debbie was only 15 when she first met John, the charismatic, flashy manager of two seafront hotels in Brighton’s Regency Square owned by his self-made father, Harry.
Said to be ‘bowled over by him’, she shared his love of hunting, dogs and outdoor pursuits. Despite an age gap of more than a decade, they got together several years after John’s first marriage broke down.
‘They hit it off and fell in love,’ says Debbie’s stepmother, Carole Spencer, who has a son, Debbie’s 44-year-old half-brother Philip.
The pair married at Hove Register Office in July 1990. A year later, it was Derek Townsend who first introduced his daughter to the idea of breeding hunting dogs Clumbers. While ill in hospital in 1991, he spotted an article in Country Life about the rare spaniel breed and told Debbie he planned to get a pair.
Although her father did not live to see his plan through, Debbie pursued his idea, buying her first Clumber, Bertie, three years later. She set herself up as a breeder and became secretary of the Working Clumber Spaniel Society, a role which elevated the Zuricks into an elite clique.
Fellow Clumber owners include the society’s patron, Princess Anne — whose puppies Sparkle and Millie were bred and trained by John and Debbie — as well as the Marquess of Salisbury.
While out pheasant shooting, they rubbed shoulders with the likes of Viscount Gage on his Sussex estate at Firle. They were regularly featured in the glossy pages of magazines such as Country Life, where John could be seen sporting his upmarket tweed shooting attire from Mayfair gunmaker’s Purdey, towering over his petite wife, who also always immaculately dressed in country tweeds.
It certainly wasn’t unusual to see either of the Zuricks with an uncocked rifle slung across an arm. Utterly at ease around guns, on one occasion they even dressed up as cowboys for a fancy dress party and posed for a photograph while pointing pistols at each other.
Debbie (pictured with a Spaniel) was only 15 when she first met John, the charismatic, flashy manager of two seafront hotels in Brighton’s Regency Square owned by his self-made father, Harry. They ‘immediately hit it off’ says Debbie’s stepmother, Carole Spencer
In the wake of Debbie’s father’s death, the Zuricks moved to Somerset to set up their dog-breeding business, first purchasing Leys Farm in Withypool near Minehead, before selling it for £760,000 and buying the cottage at Nethercote from Stanley Johnson for £440,000 in 2013.
It was said to be a neat and cosy affair, with a sign of their first love, a decommissioned ornamental rifle, hung on a wall. It’s a sign of just how highly regarded they were that Mr Johnson agreed to sell them a property on the remote estate where he raised his children and where Boris, his sister Rachel and brother Leo still own properties. The Zuricks’ cottage shares a driveway with all the Johnsons’ properties.
Anyone who bought one of the Zuricks’ ‘Sedgehurst’ Clumbers had to sign a contract agreeing to let the couple train them. As well as selling dogs to several friends locally, they had a wide-ranging network of contacts all over the country and had also secured lucrative sponsorship deals.
‘Debbie was the brains and the driving force behind the business,’ says a friend. ‘The dogs were registered to her. She did all the paperwork and the behind-the-scenes work. She had the eye for detail. But John liked to give the impression he ran the show. He had a tendency to talk over Debbie. He was very talkative and outgoing. He also towered over Debbie. He was a big man, whereas she was quite bird-like, but he adored her.’
A few weeks ago that locals began to notice that Debbie had disappeared. A notice posted in January on the Working Clumber Society website announced that she had resigned as honorary secretary ‘with immediate effect’.
Princess Anne, 69, has expressed her sadness after learning a dog breeder who worked for her, Debbie Zurick, had been shot dead in the cottage where Boris Johnson grew up (pictured second right with the Queen’s daugthter is John Zurick who allegedly shot his wife)
John — described by one professional colleague as a ‘serious drinker for the whole of the 20 years I have known him’ — began drinking even more noticeably.
On February 5 he was involved in an accident with another vehicle while riding a motorbike. He was subsequently charged with drink driving, for which he was due in court on March 12.
A week ago, a family friend had stayed with John and offered him support. He was said to be suffering from depression but seemed to be holding things together. Four days before he shot his wife, John referred to mental health on his Facebook page, sharing a post which read: ‘The hardest part of getting the help you need is initially having that strength to speak up.’
Tragically, it appears John instead chose to keep the darkest thoughts in his mind a secret.
Last Saturday, Debbie returned to the cottage in Nethercote with a friend to tell John she wanted a divorce and to collect a dog and some possessions. The woman in question is thought to be an NHS psychologist and a long-standing friend of Debbie’s. While the events that followed are the subject of an ongoing police investigation, it is believed John asked Debbie to go for a walk with him and shot her while they were outside the house.
The friend is believed to have been held captive in an outhouse during the shooting and summoned police to the scene with the help of a location app which narrows down someone’s position to three square metres and is often used by police on rural emergencies.
Having shot Debbie, John is believed to have messaged another friend of the couple — photographer and fellow dog breeder Heidrun Humphries — who also raised the alarm. John is then thought to have turned the gun on himself.
While neither women wanted to speak of their ordeal, another grieving friend broke down in tears as she said: ‘It was a case of “if I can’t have you, nobody can”. I just didn’t think John had it in him to do this.’
Clearly, neither did Debbie. A breast cancer survivor, friends say she had made a good recovery after treatment and it had given her a renewed vigour for life. On New Year’s Eve, she left a post on her Facebook page talking about fresh starts and forgiveness and saying that she was ‘walking into 2020 with a clear heart’. ‘Life is too short for pent up anger, holding of grudges and extra stress or pain,’ she wrote. ‘Here’s to 2020.’