#News #Gemma McCluskie
Gemma McCluskie murder: EastEnders extra was murdered and her body mutilated by her BROTHER (source:Mirror)
As Danny McCluskie watched the grainy CCTV footage his world
crumbled. It showed the unthinkable, the one thing every part of him had
screamed could not be possible. His brother Tony carrying a heavy
suitcase containing the mutilated body parts of their beloved baby
sister Gemma.
The footage proved beyond doubt that Tony had killed the former EastEnders actress in cold blood, chopped her up then disposed of her like putting out the trash.
For
Danny one thing made it even more incomprehensible – Tony had put his
arms around him when Gemma disappeared and assuring him they would keep
looking.
“When I look back at it now I just think, you absolute
scumbag, you doing that, you had us on the runabout, looking for our
sister, you knew full well what you’d done to her,” says Danny, 39,
speaking in depth for the first time since the 2012 murder.
“They
showed me that bit of evidence. That just persuaded it for me and I went
mad. He’s a monster for what he done to my little sister.”
As a one-time TV star, Gemma’s gruesome death at the age of 29 made
huge headlines that March. News that her own brother was the killer
astonished the nation and tore her family apart.
An EastEnder in
real life, her talent won her a place at drama school aged seven and she
took on the Albert Square role of Kerry Skinner aged 17. She appeared
in 34 episodes in 2000 and 2001, all the time living in Shoreditch, East
London, with her mum Pauline and brother Tony, six years her senior.
But after EastEnders acting work dried up and she went into to bar management.
When
Pauline went into hospital for surgery on a brain tumour, Gemma paid
the bills. Tony was mostly unemployed, drifting between building jobs
and cleaning windows. He was a heavy cannabis user, smoking strong skunk
“from morning until night”.
On March 1 Gemma vanished, prompting a
police search. Two days later her butchered torso was found in the
capital’s Regent’s Canal. Her limbs, in bin bags, were found a week
later. Although her head remained missing for six months, she was
identifiable from a tattoo on her back.
There was no reason to
suspect Tony. He may have been dope-addled but his family had never
known him to be violent. Psychologists now believe he was jealous of
Gemma’s success, but at the time no one believed him capable of murder.
In the early days he joined in the search, comforting Danny and their separated parents, dad Anthony and mum Pauline.
But the sick truth was that he had killed her after a bitter
argument. In his drug-fuelled haze he had gone to sleep and let the bath
overflow. It was the last straw for Gemma, who told him to get out of
the family home.
Then she went to see their mother in hospital,
leaving Tony to stew. She returned to find him in a murderous rage.
Still high on drugs, he hit her over the head with a blunt object,
fracturing her skull in three places with at least two heavy blows. She
died from a bleed to the brain.
Then, clinically and coldly, he
tried to chop up his sister’s body with a knife. When that failed went
out for a meat cleaver, rolls of bin liners and cleaning chemicals.
The
next morning, with the body still in the house, he began a cover up,
texting his girlfriend: “Morning, sorry crashed out last night. Woke up
too late to get back to you. Feeling a bit better today.”
He even sent a text to his dead sister saying he had been to visit their mum.
He
wrote: “Hi Gem, letting you know I’m at the hospital. Mum is doing
really good and the doctors are pleased with her. Going to look at the
throat and swallowing today. Love ya xx.”
He had never once told Gemma he loved her in a message before.
Later that night that he stuffed her mangled body into a suitcase, called a cab and dumped her in the canal.
Brother
Danny says: “He took her life away. She didn’t even hit 30 years old,
she didn’t get married, she didn’t have kids, he took all that away from
her.”
When Tony told the family Gemma hadn’t come home they assumed she was
staying with a friend. Danny recalls: “But on the Sunday morning me and
a friend met up with Tony and got some pictures developed of Gemma. We
took them down to Bethnal Green Police Station.”
Speaking on
tonight’s Channel 5 crime documentary Countdown to Murder, he recalls it
was difficult to get sense out of Tony. “But I just thought it was just
him just stoned out of his nut again,” he says.
Increasingly
worried, the family stepped distributed photos and posters and Tony
joined in. But two days later police found the first body part in the
canal.
Danny recalls Tony’s reaction. “Out of nowhere he walks in
and puts his arms round us and he starts saying, please don’t let it be
Gemma. I’ll never forget it.”
But their sister was immediately identifiable because of her tattoo.
“That
broke me,” says Danny. “I turned round and went to the police officer, I
said, ‘You’d better catch whoever did this’. And he kept saying to me,
‘I promise, we’ll catch him, we’ll catch him’.”
It was left to Danny to tell their mother in a moment that still haunts him.
“I
ended up breaking down, crying. I was just overwhelmed. I’ve just found
out it was my sister and now I’ve had to go and break the news to my
mother.
“She’s laying there in hospital, you know, she’s just had a big operation.”
Loyal
Danny refused to believe Tony had anything to do with it, even when
police questioned him for a second time. “I said to him, you look me in
the eye and you put your hand on your heart you ain’t done this to my
sister?” he recalls. “And he just said to me, ‘The police are fitting me
up’.
My head was all over the place, you know. It was like, this
ain’t right. I phoned the police and I said to them, ‘You’d better show
me some evidence it’s him, otherwise he’s in that jail, he’s in that
jail suffering’.”
The damning CCTV showing McCluskie putting the heavy suitcase in the
back of a minicab was all the evidence anyone needed. Ten days after her
disappearance Tony was charged with Gemma’s murder.
Danny says he
felt only one thing on seeing his brother in the dock. “I just thought,
I wanna smash his face in. Because he was guilty,” he says.
For Danny, the worst insult was Tony’s continual denials and excuses.
Even when he admitted the killing he denied it was murder, blaming a
loss of control, amnesia, stress with his girlfriend. He even claimed
Gemma had come at him with a knife.
“He was saying he couldn’t
remember what happened. I’m just thinking, is this geezer for real?”
says Danny, his anger still raw. “You know, you blatantly got the
evidence there in front of you that you’ve done it, and you’re still
denying it.
On January 30, 2013 Tony was found guilty of the murder and jailed for a minimum of 20 years.
For Danny he has lost twice over – a bubbly, beautiful sister, and a brother who is now, to him, just a monster.
Now he just holds on to his treasured memories of Gemma.
“She
was always centre of action,” he says. “She liked singing and dancing.
She was a funny character my sister, lively like myself,” he says
fondly.
But deep down, Danny may wonder if he can ever feel lively again.
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