By Ian Sheppard
On 12 October 2004, my father Graham Sheppard made a decision that was, after his death, to lead to a Court Case that went all the way to the Court of Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. All over a question of fact — pitting truth v. lies. It serves as a reminder of how some people (and their lawyers) are not afraid to present fabricated evidence, e.g. fake diaries, in Court. In the case below, a fabricated story was presented early on to win a case on the basis that the Burden of Proof was with me, and based on case law it was a very high burden. But the point is, nobody should have to prove lies are lies. Lawyers play games they shouldn’t be allowed to play; and should be afraid to play in leading their clients’ illegal behaviour in presenting fake evidence. They also drag things out in a way that is impossible to imagine for those who haven’t been through a Court case — and the Court simply doesn’t care. Getting evidence and witness statements becomes impossible when lawyers and their clients just give you what they want to give you, instead of respecting Disclosure properly. The legal profession in the UK just pays lip service to how they should behave, and the more experienced the lawyers are, the more they can run rings around the system. In the vast majority of cases there is little by way of deterrence, and very little by way of sanctions. As someone who has a legal background, having passed the Graduate Diploma in Law and Legal Practice Course that gives me all the education I need to be a Lawyer, and having followed this with a real case through the Courts for 3 years, I am convinced that we need an Act of Parliament to govern litigation more tightly. Otherwise, we’ll never have Access to Justice for the ordinary citizen that does not have deep unlimited resources.
At the relevant time, I was studying law at Kingston University, two evenings a week. I finished in 2005 and then went on to do a part-time Legal Practice Course at the College of Law (University of Law) in Guildford.
This is a simple case really. It hinged only on one piece of English Law — that when someone signs their will, there must be witnesses present.
My father died on 24 August 2005 after a long battle with myelofibrosis, a rare bone condition. He was only 62. When the end came after years of decline, he was living in Teignmouth, in Devon. He was rushed to hospital but never regained consciousness after a night heavily sedated with morphine.
I arrived at the hospital after a long drive down from London just after he passed away. A couple of days later my brother arrived from Zambia, where he lives. With Margaret, we went to arrange the funeral. Our relations with her were good at the time, and we’d always got on with her.
Strangely Margaret soon turned the conversation to wills, and indicated that my father’s latest will, of August 2005, was “technically not valid” but Margaret also warned that an earlier will, from October 2004, was valid, but left my brother and I “much less money”.
We didn’t want to discuss it at the time so didn’t query it – she and her brother Chris Barling were my father’s executors. My father was a former airline pilot who through that and his hobby of building at built up considerable wealth.
Forward-wind to several months after my father’s funeral in Teignmouth. One evening I went for dinner at Pizza Express in Worcester Park with my estranged wife Nicola and our three sons, Tristan, Frederic and Sebastian. They were aged 8, 5 and 3 at the time, and Margaret had not wanted them to go to their Grandpa’s funeral.
I happened to mention to Nicola that Margaret had been acting extremely strangely towards me and the probate was taking an age. I mentioned what Margaret had said about the 2005 will not being valid because my father had signed the will but it hadn’t been witnessed! She said they’d not had time to take it to her parents to get them to witness it, but apparently she had got them to sign it anyway the night before he died, when he was in hospital!
That will was more generous to Margaret than the 2004 will had been, in particular because it said she could keep the home where I grew up, in Inkpen, Berkshire, (which we called “Inkpen”) “as long as she wanted it” before she was to hand it to charity, the Centre for Alternative Techology, in Wales. This was despite his promise to my mother when they divorced that he would leave the house to my brother and me – but I respected his change of heart, as he worried a lot about the environment and felt guilty he’d spend his whole career “drilling holes in the sky” in airliners.
Anyway, Nicola thought back, during that meal at Pizza Express, to the date of the earlier will — 12 October 2004. Having an amazing memory (something Freddie has inherited), Nicola said she remembered what happened that week. She recalled that my father had come to see us alone on 20 October, two days after Nicola’s birthday. He’d just been to Rome with Margaret and apologised because Margaret had forgotten to bring Nicola’s birthday present up from Teignmouth the previous week, before they flew to Rome.
This rang alarm bells with me. Margaret had sworn that the will of 12 October 2004 was valid, unlike his will of 5 August 2005. Her threat was still fresh in my mind.
That evening I did some thinking and then I spoke to Nicola again. I remembered going to see my father before he went on that Rome trip. I remembered rushing down to see him at my Uncle Norrie’s house in Hersham, where he often stayed with Margaret.
He had told me he’d come up on the train before Margaret as he wanted to cut the grass at the property in Inkpen, which they stayed at occasionally. I remember his appearance and thinking with his bloated liver he looked pregnant, which was quite upsetting. I remembered a conversation a few days before where Margaret was in tears at the danger of my father flying to Rome, and I remembered that night going to law school and telling my grandmother, as I was about to go into a lecture, of my father’s upsetting state of health. I also told a good friend on my law course.
At that brief meeting at my Uncle’s, over a cup of tea, he said he and Margaret had been due to drive up together the previous day (11 October) and spend one night at Inkpen but, as their British Airways tickets for Rome hadn’t arrived yet, Margaret stayed in Teignmouth to wait for them. My father, wanting to get the grass done, left on 11 October. He had got the train on previous occasions, as during his illness he sometimes liked to spend time at Inkpen on his own.
Usually my father wouldn’t have worried about cutting the grass – there was about 2 acres – as our family friend Aston Piper used to do it. However, Aston was on an extended trip staying with my younger brother Richard in Zambia, and would not be back until the first week of November.
With his state of health my father was not up to mowing the grass with a push-mower, and as it was long anyway he needed a sit-on tractor mower. As he had done on a couple of previous occasions, he hired one from A4 Hire on the A4 road in Hungerford, some 10 minutes’ walk from the railway station. They would have run him to Inkpen (about 3 miles) and dropped him with the tractor-mower.
In the knowledge I had caught Margaret lying, I challenged her about the earlier will and told her that with that will invalid too, my father had in fact died intestate. Given that they had married in early 2004 (so Margaret could get half my father’s BA pension when he died, mainly), no other, earlier wills could be valid. This meant the house at Inkpen technically would pass to my brother and me, unless we agreed otherwise. I suggested that perhaps we could let the Centre for Alternative Technology use the field at Inkpen (which had 5 acres of land in total) but Margaret refused to discuss the matter further.
The next thing I knew I received a call from Margaret’s brother offering me £50k to settle, but I refused. I said she had to admit her lie as the starting point, a lie made to a dead man’s sons a few days after his death. I thought this made it far worse. Plus the way the will had been her first thought as my father was on his death bed. I just saw a greedy woman determined to be in control.
It wasn’t long before I received a letter from a solicitor, Richard Walford of the firm Gilbert Stephens. It said Margaret and my father had taken my father’s will to her parents on the morning of 12 October and they had duly signed it as witnesses after my father. Then, the letter said, they had driven up the A303 road to Norrie’s in Hersham, near London, and on 13 October they had caught a flight to Rome.
I knew this was completely untrue, but to my astonishment the lawyer had included a copy of two pages of Margaret’s diary. It was messy but purported to back what he was saying. It was so clearly fake.
Clearly the lawyer had persuaded them that they could get away with it. However they probably expected that I’d taken it at face value. But I fought on for many months all the way to the High Court at the Royal Courts of Justice.
By then I was determined to overturn their lies. Margaret had by this time added to her own witness statement lies by adding a lying witness statement from a friend, a Margaret Bacon, who claimed she was at Margret’s parents house in Teignmouth when my father and Margaret (Sheppard). Then Margaret obtained Deeds of Due Execution from her elderly parents, essentially saying they had witnessed that earlier will. More lies – and, amazingly, when I challenged the Commissioner for Oaths at the solicitor firm in Teignmouth that had overseen it, they accidentally admitted that Margaret had “brought” the wills to her – so she never even saw Margaret’s parents. So even the affidavits were not valid! Caught red handed but everyone in Teignmouth continued to be in denial.
I had one major breakthrough, working against many people who Margaret had tried to turn against me. A4 Hire, where my father had hired the tractor-mower on 12 October 2004, sent me his account. However, instead of showing 11/10/2004 for the hire, it showed 10/11/2004. This I knew was impossible, as the weather then was not wet and cold and not conducive to my ill father’s condition; and Aston was back from Africa by then. But he didn’t want to admit that in writing. And, in any case, from Nicola’s amazing recollection we had pieced together events such that we knew my father wasn’t in Teignmouth at all on 12 October 2004 – he was at Inkpen and then got the train on to Hersham. Again, something he’d done before. Margaret then met him there having driven up the A303 from Devon — with the will not ‘signed’ (but not technically witnessed) by her parents.
I was at first incredulous that Margaret couldn’t recall me having been to see my father at Hersham on 12 October 2004. Later, however, I came to realise she really did think I was lying about that, and that somehow I’d made it all up to try to “knock down” my father’s 2004 will with some false story. Of course, Margaret does know the truth of my father leaving before her, but can’t accept I have first hand knowledge from what my father told me.
It explains in a way why she fought so hard and felt justified in creating false evidence, with a helpful lawyer assisting her all the way. I said to Richard Walford on man occasions that he could be struck off for assisting Margaret with what was clearly a fabricated case. I said it was completely against the solicitor’s Code of Conduct, and the same applied to their barrister, who argued the false case in Court.
So eventually the case came to the High Court, the sale of Inkpen having been stalled a couple of years by now. I’d put a Notice on the Title.
I thought the judge would see that the mower records had been altered. It was obvious. Margaret and my father had known the owner of A4 Hire well, over several years. I checked with the accounts system vendor and they admitted with that version of their software, a date could easily be amended in this way.
But the judge was having none of it, and issued a damning indictment of me as if I was the liar! I was totally stunned. Luckily, no costs were awarded. Margaret decided to put the 2005 will through, even though the judge accepted that it was not valid and the 12 October 2004 will was the valid one. Clearly that was my father’s last will, but having been studying law for 4 years I had come to believe more than ever in upholding the Rule of Law. Only with my brother and me agreeing formally could the 2005 will be granted Probate. Yet it was granted probate anyway, and the corrupt lawyers guided Margaret and Chris Barling through to wrapping up my father’s estate.
A Startling Discovery…
I thought it was all over and wondered what all my effort had been for. Standing up for the truth but in the end spending a huge amount of time, effort and money on a Court case which backed lies. Luckily I’d taken the case in person from fairly early on, which meant I could afford to outlast Richard Walford’s attempts to run me out of money, for example spending months refusing to let me see Margaret’s supposed diary. And I never did get to inspect it properly. I had five minutes at his office once having a look and i knew straight away that it wasn’t a diary kept over a year – it was one written out, in a fresh, clean 2004 diary! The early pages sent to me were likely filled in first, then the rest Margaret was forced to laboriously copy from her actual diary. Obvious, but I couldn’t make any headway getting it for analysis. Neither had I managed to bring various possible witnesses to Court – I’d have needed Court Orders and the likes of Margaret Bacon just ended up having a holiday booked conveniently at the time of the Court date. Unlike Margaret and her brother Chris Barling, she was perhaps not willing to swear on the bible in Court, when she knew her statement was fictitious.
So what was the startling discovery I hear you ask? Well, the evening after my loss in the High Court I took it upon myself to look up the judge who had so squarely taken me apart (I suspect partly because I said I was a professional journalist and that I’d just applied my skills to piece together the truth!)
His name was Sir Nicholas Warren QC. I noticed in his biography that he was involved in the Competition Appeals Tribunal, based near the Royal Courts of Justice. And who should be on the CAT (ironically the same acronym as the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales!)? A certain judge by the name of Gerald Barling QC. And they went to the same Oxford College, at the same time; and they were in the same Inn of Court as barristers.
A coincidence? It seems unlikely — Margaret often spoke about her QC relative who they called in on sometimes, and if you see his picture there is a very significant resemblance to Margaret’s father, Tom.
Appeal Refused
Armed with renewed confidence that I would soon expose Margaret and her family as liars, I tried to appeal. However, I didn’t get Leave to Appeal but I did think at the hearing that they were very unfair. I did understand that there was no point of law — the only point of law was whether the will of 12 October 2004 was duly executed, and the judge had accepted it was. I had the Burden of Proof and I had not met it, could not “knock down” the lies. But I shouldn’t have had to — I should at the very least have been protected by the Legal profession’s Code of Conduct precluding them from acting. Instead, I believe Richard Walford was very much aware of the fabricated story and never in his wildest dreams thought I would fight it — for a start, Margaret clearly believed I never saw my father on 12th October 2004 and so could have no knowledge of their exact movements. But I knew and so did Nicola Sheppard (whose evidence the judge ignored despite saying she was a very credible witness).
So the point is that none of those legal principles work at all unless the Court is presented with the real facts, which relies on the parties telling the truth. People need to tell the truth so the Court can apply the law. And, sadly, I suspect corrupt lawyers hand-hold their clients through lying and other ‘tactics’ while still being seen as ‘Officers of the Court’. To my mind, the legal profession needs to sort this out; which side are they on, as they can’t be on both.
Cases like the above cannot be uncommon, and it cries out for litigators to be subject to heavy regulation. Otherwise, the common man will never really get access to justice.
Perjury should be treated far more seriously, and then people wouldn’t so readily lie in Court. And lawyers wouldn’t so readily hand-hold them through the process, ready at any minute to deny all knowledge. And the Law Society and others that fail to prevent civil untruths through backing their members against genuine complaints should start to clamp down on standards.
It is my hope that one day someone will come forward and say ‘Of course your father went to Inkpen on 12 October 2004 and cut the grass.’ Perhaps someone who saw him that day at Inkpen and chatted to him, and saw that he was using a tractor-mower. I know of at least one person that could blow the whole thing open, but again Margaret got to them before I did and painted me as someone ‘trying to knock down my father’s will’!
Actually, no. I just wanted to be told the truth, and for the truth to be the starting point
About My Father
Graham Sheppard was somewhat of a polymath — a career airline pilot, pro-standard musician, and accomplished builder. Also a grandfather, but sadly he died aged 62 so didn’t get to see his grandsons (Tristan , Frederic, and Sebastian) and granddaughter (Maya) grow up. He is missed by all and remembered fondly – for his dry humour, his wayward beard, his old car, his weird and wonderful collection of books, and his generosity. And, perhaps most of all, all those discussions on futuristic physics, UFOs and the paranormal while I was growing up!!
R.I.P Graham Sheppard, 11.12.1942 – 24.08.2005.
Footnote 1. Lie Detector Test
I was so frustrated at not being able to prove what I was saying against the lies of Margaret and her family that I took a lie detector test with Bruce Burgess, an international expert based near London. While it indicated I was being truthful, Margaret and her lawyer ignored requests for her to take a test too. Of course, although not admissible in UK law (while it is in the USA), she was lying and there is a high likelihood the test would have indicated she was lying.
Footnote 2. Eventual Sale of Property (Hunters Way, Craven Road, Inkpen, near Hungerford, Berkshire).
When eventually Margaret Sheppard and her brother Chris Barling managed to win the case through their lies, their corrupt lawyers were able to remove the notice I’d put on the property title of what had been my childhood home, that my father had kept. The new owner Nick eventually knocked down the sprawling bungalow my father built and built his own large house on the 5 acre plot. He was not to know the back story and dispute over my father’s will and what should have been intestacy. It sold for around £670,000 and my father’s will stipulated that it go to the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), who had joined Margaret and Chris in defending the Court action. They also joined in my brother Richard, without his consent, as he wanted nothing to do with it. More lawyer corruption. Sadly, CAT’s greedy managers (caring not for the truth) later got into another dispute, with a builder of their new student accommodation blocks in Wales, which I understand they lost having spent all my father’s money! Divine justice in a way but I can’t say I disagree with their climate-related aims; or that my father left the property to them. However I do suspect family members including Margaret were full of glee when my father decided not to leave the property to his sons. That’s selfish and hypocritical as none of them were ready to give up any money they received from his estate, and in Margaret’s case that was several other properties – or the proceeds of them – that my father had built up with her doing DIY builds and rent-outs. But I always made clear that I discussed my father’s wishes before he died and he told me he wanted CAT to have funds – as the planet needed saving from climate change, for the sake of his grandchildren. So I agreed with that, which is why I suggested – realising the intestacy – that we turn Inkpen into a CAT centre closer to London. I told Margaret that Richard and I would work with CAT to realise this. Sadly, Margaret was too controlling and couldn’t stand the thought that under law the property would pass to Richard and I – which is why she came up with her fabricated story about my father’s movements on 12th October 2004.
Footnote 3: Warning That I Would Regret It
Margaret Sheppard and Chris Barling were on shaky ground with having to explain the mower records and other inconsistencies, and faced with Nicola Sheppard’s excellent memory. They were clearly extremely nervous, especially when it appeared that they would have to complete the fake diary. They thought they could get away with just filling in two pages and that would be that, after lawyer Richard Walford’s first shocking letter where they asserted their fake version of events (which surely could only have been done with Walford’s collusion!) However things took a strange turn of events when we were heading to a proper High Court hearing and Margaret warned me I’d regret it and said there were people that were powerful on their side. That was puzzling but I pushed on, angry that they were persisting with their lies even as I pieced the truth together from my memories in some detail. That must have been increasingly embarrassing for them and they clearly hoped I’d settle on the eve of the hearing, so nervous were they that they were about to lie under oath. That fact that they’d lied the whole way through and really couldn’t get out of that mess unless I capitulated must have been hugely stressful – more stressful, perhaps, than they huge strain I was under having to take them on. Early on, almost two years before, I’d taken a call from Chris Barling from the Wimbledon flat in which they offered to settle for £50k but I made it clear the starting point was for them to tell the truth. That must have been the prompt for the fake case, as it appeared a few days afterwards. At the end of the day, having lost and not understanding why the judge ignored all my evidence, it was only when I noticed the parallel careers of Barling QC and the judge at the High Court hearing that alarm bells started to ring. But to this day I’ve been unable to find anything more out about what one could term a “conspiracy theory” but one I believe to be true.
Footnote 4: The Harry Edwards Sanctuary in Shere, Surrey
While I was putting together the event around 12th October 2004 it appeared I had a memory of my father and Norrie (my uncle Edward Norrington, who he stayed with on the night of 11th October 2004) saying they’d just been to visit the Harry Edwards Sanctuary in Shere. My father was a long-time believer in faith healing and other alternative medicines and thus he’d tried quite a few things since being diagnosed with myelofibrosis in 1999. I contacted his healer at the Sanctuary, Dawn Redwood, but she would not talk to me (strange) and even when I turned up, they were very evasive. I’d been there once with my father probably in around 2002, in the early days of his illness. As I recollect it, on the 12th October 2004 in the morning Norrie had driven my father to Shere for an appointment with Dawn but I suspect Margaret’s early intervention prevented my ever securing any records — while Dawn ultimately moved and set up her own practice in Devon herself, but still refused to provide any details. I recall being aware when I called my father from Wimbledon, on the morning of 12th October 2004, suggesting I come down to see him before he headed off to Rome the next day — and I remember being aware then that Margaret had not yet arrived; and I remember him saying when I got there that he went to the Sanctuary. Despite all this, the judge just wasn’t interested when the time came, and called me a liar, in effect. Which is why I call him a corrupt judge — and one who was disparaging when I said I was a professional journalist with a very good memory (I was also only in my 30s at the time).
Footnote 5: Barrister’s Insight
By barrister before I had to go it alone due to lack of funds, Emma, hit the nail on the head. Hearing that my father’s last will was signed by him on 5th August 2005 (just after I’d seen him and just a few weeks before he passed away), and that Margaret had admitted it had not been witnessed — she had rushed it to her parents after my father was taken in to hospital on the evening of 23rd August 2005, to get it signed by them — Emma noted that they were clearly in the habit of not being very organised so could very much see a Court believing they done the same before — 12th October 2004, as it happens. On that occasion, they had married in the April, invalidating his previous will (2001 I believe). And as they were due to go to Rome, Margaret was panicked that it was highly risky in his state of health — mobile, quite with it, but dependent on blood transfusions and with a bloated liver having already had his spleen removed. I recall her being very upset on a phone call a few days before their trip to Rome, that he was insistent that he’d be OK. But for Margaret, her thoughts turned to inheritance and the fact he had no valid will. I later came to be reminded of this, when I met my father at Inkpen in late July 2005, a month before he died, and a few days after I separated from my wife, Nicola. I remember the awareness in our conversation that the circumstances of October 2004 meant technically his will was invalid, and hence he was at that time writing a new one. He discussed this with me and told me Margaret was, in this new will, to get Inkpen “for as long as she wanted it” and then it would pass to the Centre for Alternative Technology. While I was fine with that if it was his wish, I could see Margaret’s fingerprints on this will. He did however tell me that he was increasing my inheritance from £80,000 to £150,000; not much given he was easily a millionaire but I’d always accepted that he didn’t really believe in inherited wealth! Despite my mother having made him promise in the 80s, on their own divorce, that he would leave Inkpen to my brother Richard and me. What really annoyed me, however, was that Margaret and her brother Chris, as my father’s executors, used the threat of going back to the 2004 will which “was valid,” they said, but left me “less”, as a way of stopping me pushing them through a legal case to just tell the truth. Clearly Margaret was too stubborn to tell the truth and trust me that it was all I wanted. She caused a lot of stress and cost for everyone through her lies, and to this day I’m sure her brother Chris Barling must be mortified that he had to lie under oath in the High Court to secure her “win”.
Footnote 6: Probate Connundrum
Probate took a while even after Margaret and Chris, as my father’s executors, had finally lied their way to a win in the High Court (RCJ) and got the block on the sale of Inkpen removed at the Land Registry. Later I queried why, when the Court had recognised that the 5th August 2005 will was invalid for “want of due execution,” it had nevertheless been granted probate. Surely it was the will of 12th October 2004, which — because of his corrupt judgement — had to be granted Probate? If any lawyer can tell me how this can be the case, I’d be most grateful. Perhaps they feared that withdrawing the 2005 will, which looked just as home-made with the same “witnesses” (Margaret’s elderly parents) as his 2004 will, would raise too much suspicion that neither was duly executed — which was in fact the truth? Just as Emma has said. My father died intestate, sad to say. But it is the truth, and that should be all that matters.