A British multi-millionaire real estate businessman, 40-year-old John Broadhurst, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter this week, saying he “totally lost it” during mad drug- and alcohol-fuelled sex games, causing his girlfriend Natalie Connolly to have sustained over 40 external and internal injuries.
Prosecutors told a jury that he left the woman, who was obviously in dire need of medical assistance, unsupervised and didn’t establish any contact with emergency services despite the “risk of death” running high.
At the direction of a judge at Birmingham Crown Court, Broadhurst was cleared of murder, which he had been previously charged with, and causing gross bodily harm, as well as was released on bail.
Addressing the decision, prosecutor David Mason told the court: “The evidence in this case, which is an extremely unusual case, has been very complicated”.
“The family [of the victim] have been consulted and are entirely content with the view that the prosecution have taken”.
The softening of the charges caused a severe uproar online, with Twitter users vocally expressing their outrage over what they called the wealthy circles’ impunity when it comes to the letter of the law.
The girl passed away “not after a night of sado-masochistic sex games, but after being attacked by her domestic abuse perpetrator boyfriend”, one Twitter user butted in.
Others focused on the “nice prosecution and judge” in the case, questioning, tongue-in-cheek, if it really was “a sexy death:”
Others opted for a more categorical tone, enraged at the recent developments in the story:
Another Twitterian picked up on a part of the story about the sex being consensual:
“If she was 5 times the drink drive limit how could she consent to rough sex? Or any sex?” he asked.
Ms Connolly was pronounced dead on the morning of 18 December, 2016 after Broadhurst, who had by then separated from his pregnant wife, called paramedics to his home in Kinver, near Stourbridge, in the West Midlands. The sentence is expected to come along next Monday.
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