LYING LAWYERS: TIMELINE…

1999: Airline pilot Graham Sheppard (57) diagnosed with Myelofibrosis (a terminal illness) having failed a flying medical for Heathrow-based cargo operator AFX, which was operating Boeing 747s.

2002: Graham completed the first of three handwritten wills.

April 2004: Graham marries his long-term partner Margaret Barling, so she can benefit from his BA pension, having said he would never marry again. This marriage renders the 2002 will invalid. They had been together several years.

12th October 2004: Date on Graham’s second will. However, on 11th October he had in fact gone up to Hunters Way, the house near Hungerford (Berkshire) where his sons Ian and Richard Sheppard had grown up. Graham still owned the property and he wanted to go to cut the grass which had got very long. He thus went up by train from Teignmouth and hired a sit-on tractor-mower.  Aston Piper, a family friend who usually cut the grass, was on a long trip to Zambia and was not due to return to the UK until 6th November.

Then on 12th October Graham got a train to Hersham where he was to meet Margaret. That morning Margaret took the so far unsigned will to her parents house in Teignmouth, they signed it, and she set off driving up the A303. 

As she and Graham were going to Rome on 13th, Margaret had been concerned Graham needed to complete his will and so brought it with her in the car. The reason she stayed behind in Teignmouth on 11th was that their BA tickets to Rome had not yet arrived in the post. 

Ian knew all this as he spoke to Margaret on the 11th from his flat in Wimbledon, and then to Graham when he was at Inkpen when they arranged that Ian would meet Graham at Uncle Norrie’s in Hersham on the 12th, in the afternoon. During that meeting, Ian was shocked at Graham’s appearance, swollen liver etc. 

Ian was aware that Margaret was driving up the A303 with the unsigned will (Graham was agitated about her insisting he do it before flying due to his health) and that Graham had hired a tractor-mower at Inkpen. As can be seen on the 2004 will, the writing of the date and address is different.

When at Uncle Norrie’s in Hersham, Ian was aware that they had just been to the Harry Edwards Sanctuary in Shere, where Graham liked to go sometimes for treatment. He saw Dawn Redwood, a healer (who has always refused to communicate with Ian).

Ian was concerned doing the mowing had not been a good idea for Graham in his state of health – he mentioned this to his friend/fellow student Julie Rowe at law classes that evening at Kingston University, and to his grandmother, who he called shortly before going into the lecture.

17th October 2004: Graham (without Margaret) called in to see Ian and Nicola at Worcester Park, where they lived. He apologised for not bringing Nicola’s birthday card (her birthday was 18th October).  He said Margaret had left it at their home in Teignmouth before she had driven up to meet him at Uncle Norrie’s in Hersham before the Rome trip. 

20th July 2005: Ian splits up with his wife Nicola. 

2nd August 2005: Date on Last Will which was invalid as Graham had signed the will but it was signed by Margaret’s parents, Ruth and Tom Barling, in Teignmouth on the evening of 23rd August, the night before Graham died. Graham was unconscious on morphine in hospital in Torbay after suffering a ruptured liver while driving. Much later, Margaret and her solicitor were to delay a long time the admission that this will was invalid (in fact it was inadvertent by her Barrister at a preliminary hearing… after they had applied for Grant of Probate on the 2005 will).

12th August 2005: Ian meets Graham and Margaret at Inkpen (Hunters Way) and discusses his breaking up with Nicola. Ian has a private conversation with his father. Graham says he had writing a new will because the 2004 one was invalid (at that time Ian recalled the circumstances surrounding the Rome trip but didn’t give it much thought); and the earlier one (from 2002) was too due to his marriage to Margaret in April 2004. Graham says Ian will be left his money in trust due to split with Nicola and says he is intending to leave more money to Ian “to help you get back on your feet”. He shows Ian the 2005 will which Graham has already signed, before it was witnessed. Ian, who was studying law, thought this was strange given that once witnessed it would still be invalid, as the signing itself should be witnessed, in law. Note: It is clear that his 2004 will had been written by Graham in the same way, signing at the time of writing.

24th August 2005: Graham dies minutes before Ian arrived in Teignmouth at the hospital. Margaret had been slow to tell Ian that this could be the end. Richard was soon told and booked a flight back to the UK from Zambia. Ian went to pick him up and bring him to Teignmouth, where they stayed with Margaret.

26th August: Margaret tells Ian and Richard that Graham’s will was technically invalid, but used the threat of an earlier will leaving less to them.

Spring 2006: Probate was taking a long time so Ian checked the date on Graham’s second will (12th October 2004) and discussed it during a dinner with his estranged wife Nicola and their children, Tristan, Frederic & Sebastian (Graham’s grandchildren). Nicola, who has an excellent memory, recalled Graham calling after their trip to Rome, and apologising about her birthday card. This was a big moment as they immediately knew Margaret had lied about the validity of that will.

Later in 2006: Margaret’s brother Chris Barling calls Ian and offers to settle for £50,000. Ian refuses but e-mails him and Margaret with an alternative suggestion. Given that Ian knew his father to have died intestate, he knew that this was a problem but was concerned at Margaret not telling the truth. He said that the property at Hunters Way could still be used by the Centre for Alternative Technology, who would benefit from the property if the last will were valid.

A few days later: Ian receives a solicitors letter from a Richard Walford at a firm called Gilbert Stephens in Exeter with a supposed copy of Margaret’s diary from the week of 12th October 2004 purporting to show that Graham was in Teignmouth on 12th October 2004 for the signing of the will.  Ian is shocked by these blatant lies.

Ian investigates in the following weeks and is sent records from A4 Hire for the tractor-mower hire. This shows a date of 10/11/2004 for Graham’s hiring of the tractor mower. Ian knows this to be wrong and suspects Margaret, a friend of the owner of A4 hire, has persuaded him to alter the records. He establishes with the IT company that wrote the accounting software that this had been possible on that version of the software, at the time.

Ian establishes that the weather in November was in any case not suitable for Graham using the tractor-mower and in any case it was logical that it was far too late in the year, Graham wouldn’t have been concerned at that point about grass growing – unlike in October when there was a spell of fine weather. In addition, Aston returned from Zambia on 6th November so he would have done any grass cutting after that, as usual!

21st February 2007: Margaret takes affidavits of due execution to Gwen Grimshaw, commissioner for oaths, at Scott Richards Solicitors in Teignmouth. See letter. Later Grimshaw and Walford both deny that Margaret’s parents were not present.

2007: Deed of Agreement with Centre for Alternative Technology under which Hunters Way would go to CAT under 2005 or 2004 will. At this point Margaret and her lawyers still had not admitted that the 2005 will was invalid, let alone the 2004 one.

15th March 2007: Preliminary Hearing before Master Bowles at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Margaret’s barrister inadvertently admits 2005 will is invalid.

7th November 2008: The case is finally heard at the High Court at the Royal Courts of Justice and Ian loses and the judge is disparaging about him. Ian is again shocked. He is also offended that the judge was disparaging about him being a professional journalist. Judge Warren (Nicholas Warren QC) completely ignored the tractor-mower records!

That night Ian looked up Nicholas Warren QC and found that he is a contemporary of Margaret’s uncle, who she knows well and had mentioned on several occasions to Ian in the past: Gerald Barling QC. He just happened to have taken a job at the Competition Appeal Tribunal at the RCJ that year. The two judges went to Oxford together, and were even called to the Bar on the same day! 

That this was not a fair trial is a fact that seems to have been lost on the legal system, and even the Court of Appeal would not entertain allowing an appeal by Ian. Covering up for their friends? One suspects so…. though technically they were entitled to trust Judge Warren, and ignored the issue of him completely ignoring the ethical code of conduct let alone the right to a fair trial enshrined in the Human Rights Act.

Many years pass after Ian completed his own legal studies but he carried on as an aviation journalist/editor and flying instructor.

In mid-2024 Ian Sheppard became aware that Richard Walford, Margaret’s solicitor, has been heavily fined for misconduct by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, but not struck off. Ian realises at last there is a crack that could convince people that Walford had knowingly helped Margaret push a fake case through the High Court. Ian had been aware things had become rather tense at one point for Margaret and her brother Chris, but they’d found a way through with the help of a member of their family who was a senior judge. If this isn’t the very definition of corruption, what is? Walford had wrongly believed Ian would give up, be forced to settle on Margaret’s terms, or run out of money – but he acted in person, giving up his own solicitor and barrister who had rapidly drained his funds. They got caught out, but nobody has done anything about it. Yet.

Sadly, Graham Sheppard died intestate, with no valid will. That’s the truth, no matter how much false evidence and lies Margaret creates to try to resist it.

Yet in the months following the trial, the will of 2nd August 2005 was granted probate. Yes, the one that was admitted to be invalid! The case was all about the will of 12th October 2004. Ian is not sure why nobody will listen to him about this either.

12th October 2024. Anniversary of Graham going to Hunters Way, Inkpen, near Hungerford while Margaret stayed in Teignmouth.

24th August 2025: 20th Anniversary of Graham’s death at the age of 62. Ian had an excellent relationship with his father and with Margaret and had discussed his father’s wills on several occasions with them. What got Ian was the lying after Graham died, and he always fought for the truth on the basis that it was the starting point, and nothing else would be acceptable. Unfortunately, Ian believes Margaret was long convinced, and possibly still is, that Ian was lying about visiting his father at Hersham that day. This is puzzling but perhaps Graham simply forgot to mention it – or she simply forgot. Thus Ian had first-hand knowledge of his father’s whereabouts on 12th October 2004 as he sat and had a cup of tea with him and Uncle Norrie (who sadly died in 2006). Crucially, the fake evidence sent initially by Richard Walford came before Ian had fully divulged the details of his visit to his father at Norrie’s on 12th October 2004, but Ian had already established this and was piecing together the chain of events around it without a diary, anchored in time by Nicola’s initial recollections. The slight delay in Ian fully backing up his accusations that his father had died intestate had given Margaret and her solicitor Richard Walford the confidence that placing Graham with her on 11-12th October would soon see Ian off – relying on the false assumption that he had no first-hand knowledge of events.

The fact was that Ian was up against the fake-evidence making machine that was Margaret, the solicitor that facilitated the delays that her to create more fake evidence as and when required, and a ‘friend of her family’ judge who just waived it all through, having colluded with Margaret’s barrister – there’s no other way the judge could have produced that judgment so quickly when all Ian did is go across the road to St Clement Danes for an hour or so, awaiting the judgment. He was very much aware when he came back to the Courtroom that the two had been conferring when really the judge should have independently gone and considered the evidence, in a balanced manner. 

Ultimately Margaret had no real evidence, only lies and fabricated evidence.