The Last Days of Katy French

Kieron "Wolf" Ducie, describes what happened on the night Katy French passed away in compelling detail. He also recalls the build-up to the tragic events that unfolded.

Jason O'Toole, 20 Nov 2008

He is clearly very bitter about the way he has been portrayed in the media.

“Some journalists have taken advantage of the situation – they’ve twisted words, manipulated some things I said or done. I’ve sat down and thought about this a load of times – why me? Why did I get lambasted? Why did I get – for lack of a better word – shafted by the papers? I think every story has to have a villain. I was painted as a villain because I had a nickname, ‘The Wolf’, which was given to me by a friend of mine because I bought a timber wolf crossbreed with an Alsatian dog. People used to laugh at me when I had this thing because it was howling every night of the week. That’s how I got the nickname – there was never a derogatory meaning to that.

“It was a very bitter pill to swallow. It was especially very hurtful on my family. My father is a very respectable businessman; my mother goes to church every Sunday. It’s very hard for any parent to pick-up a newspaper and see loads of lies written about their son.

“From the very beginning, I told the truth. I never lied, but I never told the papers – out of respect for Katy and her mother and her sister and her father and friends – I didn’t want to tell the story. And I got slated for that. I got bullied for it. I got intimidated for it. I got vilified for it. The media have to sell a story and, unfortunately, because I wouldn’t tell anybody the story, editors and journalists sat in their offices and made up the story to con the public. As my granny used to say to me, ‘A paper never refuses ink!’ Katy would say the same thing, ‘Tomorrow’s chip paper’. But, unfortunately, for me it wasn’t tomorrow’s chip paper – it was 11 months of media intimidation, humiliation. I don’t know what else I can say about that.”

The papers are saying Katy’s mother doesn’t consider you to have been a real friend of her daughter’s.

“They’re trying to twist it. It was actually a tactic used by a couple of newspapers who weren’t getting interviews off anybody. I also believe that one particular individual who was close to Katy gave her mother an inaccurate portrayal of me. In respect for Mrs French, she was grieving a lot and it’s understandable that she didn’t want to talk to anybody. It was her daughter who’d died. But then they started to make innuendos that Katy didn’t know me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being bad – but would your mother know every one of your friends? My mother wouldn’t know every one of my friends. I had no reason to go to her mother’s house. Why would I want to go to her mother’s house? I was in a relationship.”

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