Using a diary to solve a murder case? That’s exactly what happened four years ago, and the story is now being told through a documentary.
According to GCN, the 2015 death of British novelist and English lecturer Peter Farquhar, 69, is making headlines again due to a new Channel 4 documentary. Farquhar passed away in his home in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire from alcohol poisoning. Originally, the death wasn’t seen as suspicious, but a similar death of an 83-year-old neighbor named Ann Moore-Martin raised the police’s suspicions.
It was then that police found Farquhar’s diary and looked at then-28-year-old Ben Field as a prime suspect. In the diary, Peter wrote about meeting the younger man, who was a pupil at Cambridge.
“We embraced and hugged each other,” wrote Farquahar. “I can’t believe that this has happened: Ben can love me – a miracle if ever there was one.”
Eventually, Ben moved into Peter’s home and got a job at a nursing home. But soon, things started to become strange. In the diary, Peter wrote that “something [was] not right” and how he started to lose his mind. He also wrote about seeing “hideous packs of black insects.”
According to ITV, Ben Field was seeing four women while living with Peter. This included Peter Farquahar’s neighbor Ann. Before Ann’s death, she suffered a seizure and was taken to the hospital. While there, she told the hospital’s staff that Ben had given her “white powder.” Police believe Field was drugging his romantic targets while also convincing them to change their will so that he was the beneficiary.
Ann Moore-Martin later died from natural causes, so Ben wasn’t found guilty of murdering her. But according to Channel 4’s recently released documentary Catching a Killer: A Diary From the Grave, Ben was later arrested. While he admitted to tricking Peter and Ann, he denied involvement with their deaths. Despite that, he was later found guilty for Peter Farquahar’s murder. He was ordered to serve a minimum of 36 years for his crimes.
Again, the investigation is back in people’s minds because of Channel 4’s documentary about the murder case. If you want to watch and learn more about it, you can watch the documentary on-demand.