Elizabeth Coriat: Failed by the System, Killed by Her Son

In August 2012, 76-year-old Elizabeth Coriat was found dead in her Forest Hill flat. She had been killed – and decapitated – by her own son, Daniel. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, known to mental health services, and had made disturbing statements about Elizabeth long before her death. Despite this, he was discharged and deemed low risk. No safeguarding. No crisis intervention. No support for Elizabeth.

What happened to her wasn’t just a brutal act – it was the tragic end point of a system that ignored warning after warning.

In this episode, we unpack how the mental health system failed both Elizabeth and Daniel, the gendered burden of care that mothers so often carry alone, and why these cases keep happening without national attention.

Also, yes – we open with a bit of chaos. There’s accidental drinking, theatre trips, mum group antics, and the re-emergence of the word drinkage. But we get serious fast.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-21249495  https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/son-beheaded-witch-like-mother/29041747.html  https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/9616953.daniel-coriat-is-due-to-appear-at-the-old-bailey-charged-with-murdering-elizabeth-coriat/  https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/9948055.forest-hill-man-denies-murder-of-his-mum-whose-decapitated-body-was-found-in-flat/  https://www.hundredfamilies.org/the-victims/london/  https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/29/daniel-coriat-beheaded-mother-elizabeth-looked-like-witch_n_2573253.html  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269672/Paranoid-schizophrenic-decapitated-elderly-mother-thought-witch.html  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270268/Naked-man-Daniel-Coriat-beheaded-mother-thought-witch-Hannibal-Lecter-noises-arrested-police.html  https://www.femicidecensus.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Femicide-Census-Redefining-an-Isolated-Incident.pdf  https://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2012/03/man-charged-over-forest-hill-murder/  https://kareningalasmith.com/2014/02/02/mother-killers/ 
https://www.femicidecensus.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/2000-Women-full-report.pdf 
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/05/more-than-170-mothers-killed-by-sons-15-years-uk-report 

Thanks for tuning in! If you loved diving into the dark corners of South London with us, don't forget to hit that subscribe button to never miss an episode of "Sinister South."

Also, follow us on Instagram @SinisterSouthPodcast for sneak peeks, behind-the-scenes content, and more cheeky banter, or www.sinistersouthpod.co.uk. Remember, every crime tells a story... and South is the best side of the river...

Produced and hosted by Hannah Williams & Rachel Baines
Mixed & edited by Purple Waves Sound (A.K.A Will)

Transcript

Ep 16 - Elizabeth Coriat
Hello, I'm Rachel, I'm Hannah, and this is the Sinister South podcast, a podcast all about the nefarious ongoings in South London. Ongoings. Ongoings, yeah.

Nice. I brought nefarious back, that's why. That's the lesser known JT song.

I'm bringing a tone, oh, I couldn't say it. I'm bringing nefarious back. Yeah.

I love it. Yeah. How are you? Good.

I'm 36 now. Oh, happy birthday. Happy birthday.

Welcome to the other side of the hill. Thanks. It's better to be over it than buried under it.

Oh, wow. It's a friend's quote. Is it? Is it? No, it is.

It's fine. Oh, yes. Good.

Did you have a lovely birthday? I did. I had a great time. Yeah.

I managed in true me style to drag it out over about five days, which is wonderful. Correct. Well done.

Yeah, no, really good. I had drinks with you. Yes, you did.

Which was more than two drinks. I was astounded. I don't know what's happening to me, mate, I'm becoming an absolute reprobate.

Then had family time on the Saturday, which was lovely. We all descended on my uncle's house and eat, drink and were merry. Nice.

Then on Sunday, I got my surprise from Richard, which was he took me to the theatre show slash concert slash gig slash whatever of self-esteem during the new album, which was transcendental and just amazing. Just absolutely incredible. Like she's a powerhouse.

And the new album came out today. So I'm eagerly awaiting the vinyl to be at my door. Nice.

Yeah. So that was fabulous. That was fabulous.

So that was the Sunday. Yeah. Monday, my actual birthday ended up at my local football team, because that's what I do now, which is really good fun, kind of accidental drinking like, oh, I didn't think we were drinking today.

Oh, well. Yeah. So lovely times.

Lovely times. A very lucky girl. Felt very, very appreciated.

Oh, that's good. As you should be. As you bloody well should be.

Yes. Oh, I'm glad you had a lovely day. Thanks.

Long weekend. Got the most, tell me your 36 birthday present from my mother and co, which was garden furniture. Mate, you know what? I would give anything for some garden furniture right now.

Absolutely. What's it like? Is it a rattan? I don't know how to describe it, but it's lovely. Oh, good.

A table and chairs, not like a sofa-y kind of thing. Because I thought we might like to eat in the garden at some point. Balancing on knees is not the one.

It's not the one. And you've done a lot of work on your garden recently, hasn't you? We say me. I was in the general facility when other people did a lot of work in my garden for me.

Yeah. So we're nearly there with that as well. Like the garden would be nice and lovely time.

So yes, very spoiled, very, very loved. Oh, I love that for you. That's brilliant.

Thanks. Yeah, we did have fun at the pub. It was lovely.

It was nice. It's funny when I said start the evening off, I said to the kids, I'll only be out half an hour. Yeah.

Okay. I got back well past midnight. It was fun.

We were kicked out of the pub. We were there. I know.

They weren't very happy that we were still there. We've asked you to go now. Drink it.

Yeah. And then I have done two more drinking sessions, which is bizarre for me. Very bizarre.

I love this. I'm beckoning in your new era. Where I finally get my drinking buddy back.

Yeah, it's the years of child rearing are hopefully now very much behind me and I can get back to the good old fashioned practice of drinking and being hungover. Yeah, no, I had accidental drinkage on Tuesday. Drinkage.

Come on now. Sorry. This is like Holly Bob's again.

Oh, sorry. I don't even realise I'm saying that. That's the thing.

Half of it, I think, is just my brain not being able to compute when it comes out as something else. Also, I'm definitely not firing on all cylinders. No, I know.

So, but yeah, I had accidental drinks with a friend on Tuesday when I went to pick the kids up. She looked after them all day because it was an inset day. Who does that? I know.

Two week bloody holiday. And then, oh, do you know what? We're just going to tack on an extra day because you've not seen enough of them and you don't have to get back to work to be able to afford their snack. I would do it at the beginning if I had to do it around the holidays, but I'm sure there's probably method in the madness.

I'm sure there is. I don't know what it is. But there we go.

So, yeah. So friend had looked after both of them for me for the day, which is very sweet. And then she went, I've got wine.

Oh, let's have a small one. And the next thing I know, we drunk a bottle. I was like, oh, well, this is, I mean, it's been lovely, but and then I think, yeah, last night went out for drinks with the other mums from the school and didn't get home until gone one in the morning.

Oh, absolutely. It was a school night. It was a Thursday night.

You retrobate what you like. Honestly, wild child. Absolute chaos, chaos and carnage.

That's what I'm trying to say. Fuck it up. I mean, it made a change for you to be the one texting me saying you were hungover.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes.

But it was the the thing that got me more than anything was like, yeah, the hangover is shit. Like, I don't like having a headache. I don't like feeling a bit groggy or feeling like I just want to, you know, I don't know, call in a little ball and just be like, I live here now.

But it was more the fact that I walked home and it was like, it's about it's probably about a 20 minute walk from where I was to. Can I just say, I don't care how many times you say this and the casual way you drop it in. I do not condone a lone woman walking home at one o'clock in the morning in South London.

We literally do a podcast about this. Yeah, I know. I've got to do to avoid it, I suppose.

No, you fucking don't. I don't. I just.

Because if you did know what to do to avoid it, you wouldn't be walking home alone in the middle of the fucking night, would you? I know. I know. I know.

I know. It's just one of those things where it's like, I can't. The concept of paying for a cab when I'm like, not that far away.

It's just the absolute. You can't spend money if you're dead. I know.

But the kids will be able to. I'm sure that will be a great comfort to them. Oh, my mum was brutally murdered, but at least I've got this fiver she saved on not getting a cab.

Anyway. And you've got two. It's £2.50 each.

It's not worth it. Your maths ain't mathsing, babes. It's really not.

It was never my strong suit. But no, but what really annoyed me was by the time I'd done the walk, regardless of whether I should have been doing it or not, I was then wide awake when I got home. So I did not go to bed until four o'clock in the morning because I was just like, oh, I'm awake now.

Second wind. What shall we do with this? Yes. So now very tired.

What did you do? Doomscroll. I doomscrolled for a bit. I listened to the latest episode of Heart Starts Pounding podcast.

I had a bath because I was like, started to get, you know, like restless leg. I don't actually have restless leg syndrome, but you start getting a bit twitchy. But I was laying on the sofa and that wasn't helping.

And then like sitting up wasn't helping. So I just go see if a warm bath will make me sleepy. And to be fair, it did do the trick.

That's the reason why I was able to then go to sleep. But yeah, it was very, just like pottering around. It's like being a little, you know, a night person.

I was just like, oh, I could just... A little night person? Yeah! It's like just pottering around my house when everyone else is asleep, like a little mole. It's just like, oh, I'm just going to do this. No one will know.

They're all asleep. It was quite interesting. I don't normally see that time of night, do I? How much chocolate did you eat? Ah, put it this way.

The kids may have an egg less each. It's night time. No one will know.

Little mole person. But yes, yes, it was, it was an interesting, it was a fun night. It was a good night.

Good. I haven't done the old school mum's chat in a while and it's always funny because there's always some ridiculous anecdotes that come out about the kids and you're just like, what? How? How? How have we bred these? The drama of it all. It really is.

The amount of drama that comes out of a class of seven and eight year olds, it's just insane. I love it. There we go.

You doing anything nice this weekend? I'm seeing my friend that I haven't seen for, I was trying to work out, you asked me earlier how long it had been since I'd seen her and I genuinely couldn't tell you. I think it's probably been over a year. Oh wow.

So we're going to meet in town. Oh, lovely. So yeah, really looking forward to seeing her.

Yeah. Nice. But other than that, no.

That's my, that's my plan. My one plan. Very good.

Which is all good. Yeah. I'm going to sit on my arse and do nothing.

Nice. Nice. Well, I've got to take the kids swimming and then I'll sit on my arse and do nothing, which I'm very excited about because even though we've just had a load of bank holidays and all the rest of it.

Yeah, but you were away and like two weeks off school for them might be relaxing, but for you. It's not. It's not relaxing.

Oh, it is not relaxing. Solidarity to any other parents who are now weaning themselves off of the caffeine and the false excitement at any small thing a small child does. You've got a story for me today, haven't you? I have.

I have. Go for it, mate. I don't know how to pronounce this surname.

Well, no, I do, but. I feel like I have got in your head about this when I, and I shouldn't have done because I think you were probably right. I think the way that you're pronouncing it is correct.

I think I was just being annoying. So, yeah, if I'm saying it wrong, I apologize. I'm going to go with my gut.

I think you should. I think you should. But it could be.

Yeah. All right. It's Coriath is how I'm going to say it, but it could be Coriath.

I'm not. I'm like. I don't know.

I'm not sure. I'd say. I'd say.

On reflection, it's probably 98 percent you're correct. And I think that. But the Internet was was going absolutely very unhelpful.

How to pronounce this dot com. Yeah. Very unhelpful.

Yeah. Bizarre. So.

And then I was like trying to scour for. Obviously, I've read a lot of news articles, but the operative word being read. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. There are no video news articles.

Yeah. Talking about it. I just wanted one reporter to say Coriath so I could be like, OK, fine.

But yeah, couldn't find anything. So annoying. So, yeah, if I'm saying it wrong, soz.

And it's I mean, trigger warnings. It's fucking horrible and sad and all of the stuff that all of these cases normally are. Yeah.

Fair. With a little bit of anger in the mix. Oh, well, we like that.

The mood I'm in at the moment as well. I feel like, yeah, I can do anger. Anger is one that I'll be able to do today.

I also wanted to give a shout out at the start for a document or a report that I found in the researching of this, which I was actually a bit stunned that I hadn't seen before. Which is quite intense. But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say it's a good read, but it's incredibly insightful and terrifying and sad.

It's the Femicide Census. Oh, God. So, yeah, there's a lot.

Bedtime reading. Yeah. A lot of stats.

I then just kind of got up from my laptop, walked into the living room, just for breathing. Yeah. I mean, how dare you? I'm so angry.

To be fair. I didn't actually mention, just because I think his dad might still listen. Just putting that out there.

Figuratively. Yeah. Metaphorically.

Just storming around the flat. Richard's like, what's wrong? Why you are wrong? Why do you exist? What's wrong with men? Yeah, because funnily enough, men feature really fucking heavily in the Femicide Census. God, maybe I should have read that last night.

I definitely wouldn't have gone to sleep. You definitely wouldn't have slept. You probably wouldn't have done that fucking walk alone either, love.

No, probably not. Maybe I do need to read it. I'm moving in packs now only.

Safety in numbers. Oh dear, right. Okay, so we're buckling in then, are we? Yeah.

I'll just dive in. I think everyone, all the Trevors are used to the trigger warnings and all of that now. You know what you're going to get.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. It didn't begin with a weapon.

It began with silence, discharge papers and missed alarms. When Elizabeth Coriat was killed in her South London flat in August of 2012, it was easy to frame it as a moment of madness. Her son, Daniel, had not only taken her life, he had decapitated her.

Horror, shock, mental illness. But what happened in that flat on Sylvan Road wasn't just the result of a psychotic break. It was the product of years of deterioration in one man's mind and in a system that was supposed to keep people safe.

Daniel Coriat was 43 years old when he killed his mother. He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia more than a decade earlier. His illness was well known to mental health services.

He had stopped taking his medication. He had disengaged from treatment. And still, weeks before the killing, he was deemed low risk and fit for discharge.

Elizabeth had spent her life trying to support him. She was his primary caregiver, his advocate, his mother. But she was also afraid of him.

In the weeks before her death, she told mental health professionals that her son was deteriorating again. She asked for help, but she didn't get it. What followed wasn't just a tragedy.

It was a failure of policy, of communication and of care. Elizabeth Coriat was 76 years old when her life ended in unimaginable violence. Elizabeth had lived in her flat on Elsinore Road in Forest Hill, South London, for more than 30 years.

The building was a familiar part of the street. Red brick, modest, surrounded by trees. And so was she.

Neighbours described her as warm, intelligent and polite. Not the kind of woman to shout across the street or throw big parties. But someone who nodded hello, who remembered your dog's name, who kept herself in that quiet, dignified way so many other older Londoners do.

She had a French-sounding surname, or did she? And a soft voice. She dressed neatly, spoke gently and always seemed calm. One resident of the block described her as elegant.

Not in a flashy way, but with a kind of inner composure that suggested she had once had a different kind of life. And perhaps she had. What we do know is this, she was fiercely devoted to her son, Daniel.

And that devotion shaped the final chapter of her life. Daniel Coriat had been unwell for many years. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, he had been in and out of psychiatric care, often sectioned and most times violent.

But Elizabeth stood by him, not just as a parent, but as his primary caregiver. She fought to get him the help he needed, welcomed him back when he was discharged, and tried again and again to manage his condition with patience and love. It couldn't have been easy.

Friends later said they had feared for her safety, but Elizabeth would never have given up on her son. To those around her, it seemed she was trying to hold two things in balance, her son's illness and her own life. She did the shopping, made the appointments, called the GP.

She kept the flat tidy and she looked after Daniel. She hoped, perhaps, that stability would come, that he would get better and that it would all settle down. And she shouldn't have had to do it alone.

Elizabeth Coriat wasn't just a pensioner or a victim, she was a woman with a life, and a relatively long one. She loved, she gave and she tried. She deserved better than the silence that crept in around her, and she deserved better than the endings she got.

By the time Daniel killed his mother, he was profoundly unwell. But he wasn't always. Before the courtroom statements, before the psychiatric assessments, before the headlines about decapitation and delusions, there was a boy, a son, a young man who, by many accounts, had once been bright, curious and deeply connected to the woman who raised him.

Daniel grew up in South East London with his mother, and details of his early life are limited in the public record, but it was clear that Elizabeth raised him largely on her own. Friends and neighbours described their relationship as close and affectionate, at least in the early years. She was a committed mother, and Daniel, though quiet, was said to be intelligent and creative.

He attended school locally, and for a time seemed to have a fairly typical upbringing. But as Daniel moved through his teens and into his early twenties, things began to change. Not in sudden, but really gradually, subtly.

The kind of change that might be dismissed as stress, or adolescence, or simply going through something. He became more withdrawn. His behaviour became harder to read.

Conversations that once made sense began to fracture. At first, Elizabeth tried to help in ways that any parent might. Listening, encouraging, trying to keep things steady.

But the shifts continued. Eventually, Daniel was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, as I said, which is a serious mental health condition that often begins to present in late adolescence or early adulthood. For Daniel, the onset was marked by increasing paranoia, delusional thinking and disordered speech.

He began to express ideas that didn't align with reality. Thoughts that people were out to get him, that he was being watched or followed, and that the world was somehow conspiring against him. At times, these delusions focused on strangers, but over time, they began to include people much closer to him, including Elizabeth.

What's striking, and painful, is how long Elizabeth remained his carer. Despite the growing signs that Daniel's condition was deteriorating, she continued to support him, house him and advocate for him. She encouraged him to seek treatment, and she attended appointments with him.

She tried again and again to hold the line between love and fear. But she did end up doing it largely alone. By 2012, Daniel had a long history of contact with mental health services.

Court documents and reporting from the time indicate that he had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act at least once before the killing. He had been prescribed anti-psychotic medication, and there were periods when his condition would stabilise. But these were often short-lived.

He had a documented pattern of missing appointments or disengaging entirely from psychiatric support. And when he did, obviously his symptoms returned, mainly more vivid and more frightening and more volatile each time. Neighbours began to notice the strange behaviour.

He was seen pacing the street at odd hours, talking to himself, shouting at things that no one else could see. Elizabeth, they said, looked exhausted, worn thin, and there were times where she seemed afraid. In one of the more haunting details shared at trial, it was revealed that Daniel had told mental health professionals more than once that he believed his mother was a witch and that she was trying to harm him, that she needed to be dealt with.

These statements were locked, they were known, and yet, at the time of her death, Elizabeth was still living alone with him, with no safeguarding measures in place, no crisis intervention, and absolutely no protection. It's difficult to say whether Elizabeth ever truly believed she was in danger. As a mother, she kind of may have held onto the hope that Daniel would get better, and that love and patience and the right support might turn things around.

But the system around her did not do enough. On the morning of the 21st of March 2012, emergency services were called to a residential address in Forest Hill. It was a first floor flat, quiet, unremarkable, just one of many others in the neighbourhood.

But what officers found when they entered would stay with them for the rest of their careers. Inside the flat was the body of 76-year-old Elizabeth. She had been stabbed and decapitated, her head placed beside her body.

The scene was described in court as one of the most distressing that police had ever encountered. There was no sign of a break-in, no evidence of a third-party intruder, and it was immediately clear who was responsible. But Daniel wasn't there.

Oh. In the hours following the discovery, officers began searching for him across London. His mental health history was well known, and so too was the fact that he had been living with his mother.

So police issued an alert and began tracking the sightings of him. Several hours later, Daniel was found hiding inside a wheelie bin at Honor Oak Park railway station, around a mile from the flat. He was completely naked, smeared with blood and behaving erratically.

God. Witnesses said he was making what were described as Hannibal Lecter-style noises, growling, barking and speaking incoherently. When police approached him, he didn't run, he didn't resist, he was barely aware of where he was or what was going on.

Oh, God. He was arrested and taken directly to a secure psychiatric unit where he remained under medical observation until fit to be interviewed. In the days that followed, investigators began piecing together the timeline.

There was no evidence of premeditated planning. No weapons brought in from outside. The knife used in the attack came from their kitchen.

Based on the forensic findings and Daniel's behaviour in the immediate aftermath, psychiatrists concluded that he had been in the grip of a florid psychotic episode, one so intense that he likely believed he was acting in self-defence against a perceived threat. And in his mind, that threat was his own mother. Yeah.

When questioned by professionals, Daniel made repeated references to witchcraft. He said Elizabeth had been possessed or was controlling his thoughts. He also said that he believed he was Jesus and that his mother was a threat to all humanity.

His language was disjointed, hallucinatory, sometimes completely unintelligible. But the central theme, that his mother had turned into something dangerous and that he had a duty to stop her, remained consistent. Yeah.

Oh, God. There was no suggestion that Daniel had ever previously been that violent or violence to that level. And he had no criminal history.

But his psychiatric notes revealed that he voiced paranoid beliefs specifically about Elizabeth. Yeah. These weren't just dismissed, they were documented.

But there was no follow-up, there was no safeguarding response What emerged later, quietly, devastatingly, was a portrait of a man who had been spiraling for years, slipping through gaps in a system that couldn't keep pace with his deterioration. And a woman who had spent those same years loving him, supporting him and ultimately dying at his hands. Daniel Corriatt's illness didn't just appear out of nowhere, it had a name, it had a file, it had a history.

By the time of his mother's death, he had been in hospital for over seven years. Some of this is a bit one of those kind of multiple dates by different places kind of thing. But the most consistent that I could find was that he was diagnosed in 2005, that he had been sectioned at least once, but potentially multiple times and treated in secure hospitals both as an inpatient and outpatient.

And basically, his condition was really serious and it was really complex and really well documented. And so too were the warning signs. Several times during those years, Daniel had voiced disturbing thoughts about his mother, like I said.

He had told, this idea that Elizabeth was a witch wasn't new or that she was controlling him was a central theme. They were repeated, they were logged, they were known to his care team and his psychosis had a pattern and often Elizabeth was at the centre of it. He'd get better, he'd be discharged, he'd disengage, he'd stop taking his meds, he'd start becoming more and more paranoid.

He'd be seen in the streets shouting and stuff. And then that paranoia would start to centralise on her. Why didn't they bloody do anything? So there was no full safeguarding referral.

There was no consistent care plan to account for the fact that his delusions fixated on the very person he lived with. And Elizabeth was allowed to remain as his primary carer with no additional support. That's just mental.

I'll say it to the end, but what? And multiple times when Daniel's symptoms did worsen, when he disengaged and stopped taking his meds and showed signs of acute decline, the response, the documented response to it was really limited. His case wasn't really ever escalated. He wasn't really ever treated as high risk.

Not that I could find evidence of anyway, but there was no follow-up care for Elizabeth. So there's no single point of failure here. There's just a sequence of decisions and each one made in isolation, put all together, had this devastating combination.

And also Elizabeth never raised the alarm herself. And maybe she didn't want to, maybe she was afraid or maybe like so many other carers of loved ones with severe mental illness, she had simply learned to manage, to wait out the episodes and hope for the best. But hope wasn't enough and neither was the system built around them.

The headlines focused on the horror, the beheading, a mother murdered by her mentally ill son. For days, the story sat on the news tickers, shared not for what it meant, but for how it shocked. But once the cameras left Forest Hill, the real aftermath began.

Not just for the police, the neighbours, or Elizabeth's extended family, but for the professionals who had seen this coming in pieces. So Daniel Corriatt was not charged in the usual way. From the moment of his arrest, it was clear that he was not mentally fit to stand trial.

A full psychiatric evaluation confirmed what many had already suspected. He had been in the grip of an intense psychotic episode at the time of the killing. He was completely delusional, paranoid and entirely detached from reality.

So he was detained indefinitely under section 37 of the Mental Health Act with additional restrictions under section 41, meaning that he would only be released if and when he was no longer in danger to himself or others and only with expressed approval of the Secretary of State for Justice. So in practice, that means detention in a high security psychiatric hospital, possibly for life. So there was no stereotypical trial, no defence and prosecution in the traditional sense.

It was just a quiet legal process that confirmed what we already have said. One of the saddest lines was just like, Daniel Corriatt was not a criminal in the eyes of the law, but a patient, a man with a devastating illness who had committed an act he did not fully understand. Elizabeth Corriatt's name was not one that stayed in the headlines.

There was no campaign in her honour, no inquiry into her death. But in the years that followed, her story was cited quietly in discussions about gaps in community mental health care, in conversations among carers supporting mentally ill relatives and in policy reviews examining how families fall through the cracks. So Daniel Corriatt's untreated paranoid schizophrenia, the prior warning signs and the disengagement from support, these are not just tragic details of this case.

They are reoccurring motifs. The report found that in 69% of the 170 cases, the son had a diagnosed or suspected mental illness. Almost half of the sons were known to police or health services beforehand.

And shockingly, in nearly one in five cases, there had been prior threats or violence towards the mother. And 71% of those women were killed in their own home. Fucking horrible.

And some of these women asked for help, flagged concerns or were living in fear, only to be left unsupported. And just like in Elizabeth's case, the mother is often the primary caregiver, absorbing the system's failings until it is too late. What this side quest highlights is a systematic blind spot.

Public narratives focus on intimate partner violence and rightly so, but the horror of familial violence, especially matricide, often falls through the cracks. Yeah. Elizabeth Coriatt wasn't just failed as a vulnerable adult.

She was failed as a woman, a mother and a carer in a society that still didn't take the risks posed by men in crisis seriously enough, especially when the woman at risk is their own mum. Elizabeth Coriatt didn't die because her son was ill. She died because once again, a system built to protect the vulnerable, underestimated the danger they were living with.

Mic drop. Boom. That was horrible enough.

It's not pleasant in the slightest. No. Absolutely not.

It's just fucking sad. It is really sad. Do you know what it is? It's the whole way through the whole conversation you were having, and the reason I got my phone out was because I couldn't remember the name of it.

I was thinking back to the slam episode that we did last season. And in that, there were two. That's right.

When I spoke through this one and started writing it, I messaged you and was like, hang on, have we done this? No, unfortunately we have not. We had two entirely separate cases. We had Maureen Watkins, who was in Peckham.

And then I was just trying to find the other family, but I can't. It was a French name in Brockley. I know.

Find it now. Gilbert Corre. That was it.

That's C-O-R-E-T-T-E. Oh my gosh. That's why.

That's about the name. That was Brockley. Gilbert and Fleurice was his mum's name.

Yeah, and it is that idea of mentally unwell sons being looked after by their mothers who then take with reality, whether it's because they've not taken their meds or whatever else it may be. And it just is so devastating. And I think that there's that point you made.

She didn't ask for help, but it may not have been because it wasn't. But how often, at what point do you? Like, I know someone and I'm going to try my best to like, if I sound really vague or if it sounds like I'm making it up, it's because I'm trying to be so vague that I couldn't possibly identify these people. And I know it's slightly different.

It's not a mum and son, but I know a woman who I am friends with whose partner has suffered with mental health issues. Not a diagnosed schizophrenia or anything of that ilk, but depression, serious depression, serious anxiety. And there is a cyclical nature to his condition.

And she often becomes the focal point of it. You're the one that's making everything wrong for me. You're not helping.

You don't make my life easier. Everything's bad. I'm bad.

Everything's terrible. And she knows him well enough. She knows him so well that these cycles are... She's forewarned by them.

She knows they're coming. She can sense it. She can sense his deterioration.

And she knows she's just got to grit her teeth and power through it. If he snaps, at what point should she have gone, actually, fuck it. I need help.

At what point is she going to have that in her brain that's even... Don't be so dramatic. Oh my God, your partner's a bit sad. Get over it.

Yeah, I hear you. I think it is so difficult. And there is obviously the danger there that he's not getting the safeguarding he deserves either.

But in the nature of what we're talking about here, when does she become someone that's vulnerable? When does she become someone that... But that's the thing that I think is quite interesting with this case in particular in the fact that he was known to... He had been in inpatient care. He had... It was so well documented that you just think in a weird way, why wasn't it taken out of her hands? Why was it her decision to make? Yeah, because of course she's going to want to look after her son. Of course she is.

She's going to think that she's the only one. She's going to think that it's her duty as a mother to do this and to put herself and keep herself in harm's way. And she probably knew she was in harm's way.

But at what point do you essentially... I would imagine, and this is probably me putting all of my own neuroticisms into things. But like at what point do you kind of make peace with yourself that you've... I can't help him anymore. And what is that? I don't know if I've ever met a mother that's like, I can't do anything else here.

Exactly. Hands up, I'm done. And if you do feel that way, then the feeling of, have I failed? No one wants to put themselves through that.

So it's actually a case of if you're being told by medical professionals, it is not safe for him for you to continue being his primary caregiver. Just someone needs to be the voice of authority. Exactly.

Someone needs to have taken a non-emotive... That's exactly it. They need to have taken a non-emotive look at it and decided that actually... Because also for Daniel, the fear that he must have felt in those psychotic episodes when he thinks that the woman he loves is a witch who's trying to control him. It's not felt on either of them.

And I'm not for a second giving him a pass for what he did. He murdered someone, but this is going to be something on a really macabre t-shirt. Schizophrenia does not a murderer make.

Exactly. But it is, it's just so sad. And that is the only word for it.

Even though the graphic nature of the killings, again, when we did the slam one and there was the boy with his grandmother, that was graphic. That is what makes him sensational. And the way that he was acting when he was found as well.

So this, it was really... I feel like I say this as a caveat to every case I do now. This was really hard to research. But there wasn't a lot of official documents out there about it.

It was a lot of reporting and gratuitous reporting from Red Tops and stuff like that, you know, what we kind of expect because it was so... Well, it was gratuitous. It was violent. It was so completely out of the realms of quote unquote normality.

All of the headlines are like Hannibal Lecter's son kills witch mother. Yeah. That's basically everything I read.

And I was like... But the thing is, it's like I don't... They shouldn't be reporting it like that at all. But I understand the... In a way, I understand the titillation of it. When you've got one fucking... Like one case like this a month.

Well, not exactly like this, but a mother killed by her son won a month for 15 years. You've got to make it stand out somehow to sell your paper. Yeah.

It's just... But there is that. As we say, it is gratuitous. It is violent.

It is so bizarre and out there. And it is the stuff of horror films. It's... I get why it becomes this sensationalist thing.

But I just think that it's so... It's so dehumanizing to the people that are involved. And at the end of the day, this is an absolutely devastatingly sad situation. If you strip away all the blood and gore, that's what we're left with.

An incredibly upsetting, incredibly... Someone who desperately needed... Two people who desperately needed help didn't get it. It's really sad. And that's what I put in the end about the no big inquiry or anything like that.

It kind of shocked me. I thought I'd at least find a board paper from a NHS Governing Body meeting. Big up me.

At least to pull those together. But you'd find something, even if it was a funding review or something. You normally find something that's like, OK, hang on, there is an official document here that's got an opinion from the healthcare side.

There was nothing I could find. Unless I was terrible at Googling that day. Or would it be sealed? It could have not got to... It could be an internal... There's 14 other board meetings before you get to a Governing Body public meeting.

It could well be that there were. And it does seem like that it is noted in some reviews. Like the name, if you Google Elizabeth Corriatt and SLAM review of this or whatever.

But it's just not as front and centre as you think it might be. Yeah, it's fascinating. And it is just like the how do you deal with that? Is the other question.

Because if he was never seen, and I suppose it's because if there's no criminal record, if there's no previous... I think for once, the police get a bit of a pass on this case. Because he wasn't known to them. But that's the other thing, isn't it? Because I think I was thinking about it in like, again, with the SLAM cases.

But all of those people were known to police because they had committed violent... Yeah, they all had committed a violent offence prior to the one where they ended up hurting somebody and killing them. They had committed these offences or they'd been arrested for stopping traffic. There was stuff that was going on that meant that they were on police's radar beforehand.

And so in those cases, it was a question of why would SLAM just release them? They obviously have form. I suppose in this case, if Daniel, he doesn't have form himself or someone else that we know of. As far as we're aware.

In a way, it connected him to the police. It may be that that's potentially why he was never considered high risk. What was quite interesting or kind of what I was pondering on a lot was like, you know, every small community or every village, but any pocket of a community.

I'd go as far as to say in the country, everyone's got, oh, it's mad Dan. It's that person that talks to themselves or is known homeless or whatever. We've got Fritz and Catford, who I see in London Bridge all the time now.

I saw him the other week having a good old chat to the police. But I seemingly see him everywhere I go. I was like, you were just in Catford.

Why are you branching out, son? But the most politely threatening man I've ever met. Who walked me home from a night out once. Did he? I was getting off the bus when I lived in Catford.

I was getting off the bus and he was like, come on, darling. And I was like, I'm all right. It's like fucking shitting myself.

Oh my God. No, come on. You don't live down here.

How do you know where I live? But I was thinking, this is probably the best protection I could have to walk home in the pitch black in Catford. Because no other mentalist is going to fuck with Fritz. No one fucks with Fritz.

I've had him hold up traffic while I cross the road. Oh, all the time. But you've got that person who's often seen in the streets talking to himself, shouting, obviously visibly mentally unwell.

Is there support here? Like as friends and neighbours, do you have a responsibility to go? Are you all right? What's happening? Even anonymously reporting like this person, it's been, you know, if there was an escalation and if he came out once a month and was doing, you're like, oh, it's down day like kind of thing. Oh, hang on. This is every week now.

Yeah. If you're starting to notice any patterns and changes in behaviour, yeah. At what point are people safely living with their conditions? Regardless of what, how unconventional that looks to the outside world.

And at what point are they escalating? But I think it's always really difficult, isn't it? Because I think especially in London specifically, not just South London. I think we're all very, you know, there's the age old trope that Londoners are the most unfriendly people in the world and no one looks at you if you're on the underground and all the rest of it. And to a large extent that is correct.

Very true. But it's also, I think there's in a weird way, it's almost a bit of a self-protection thing that Londoners have. It's such a large city.

It's quite a transient city. People come and go all the time. You might not always recognise the same faces, even when you're in that neighbourhood.

It could be that you spot that person a couple of times, but it's not, it's not all the time. It's not regularly enough for you to start asking questions. If you're a general bystander neighbour that isn't close to them sort of thing, potentially.

So let's, let's frame it. So if we saw Fritz and being moderate, like we're used to the telltale, oh there's Fritz and that's what he normally is doing. If we saw Fritz and he was doing something complete we'd never seen him do before.

Would we feel a duty to go, someone should probably ring an ambulance? I think, I think we would, not trying to be sanctimonious, but like I think, but I don't think everyone is that sort of person. I think there will be people out there who go, it's none of my business. Just to give it some balance here, to an extent I kind of think that.

Not that I need to be asked twice to ring. No, no, no. We all know that.

Famous, yeah. But it is, it is interesting isn't it? I just think that it's, the thing that surprises me most about this case was the fact that it wasn't an unknown, undocumented illness. And I kind of go, if you've been in the system, if you are being safeguarded at any point, if you've been an inpatient for schizophrenia, and again, we're not going to say it, but I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush.

You can live very comfortably. Well, no, you can live without violence. You can live to a level that is, that is managed and is not violent.

And it's manageable for you, not just managed. Yeah, exactly. With paranoid schizophrenia.

But if you are admitted, sectioned, potentially multiple times, there is a part of me that goes, the duty of care lies with those health providers. Yes. But it's, it just seems, and I know they're overstretched and I know they're overworked.

But it just, it's just so sad that, and what's even... I don't think either of us are sitting here being like, they're the villain in the piece. But at the same time, responsibility has to fall somewhere. Otherwise, this is going to keep happening.

But it's just, what I think was so sad is that it's, it's not an isolated case. Exactly. As you said, it is not, this isn't the first time this has happened.

And really, unfortunately, it won't be the last. And I mean, Trevors, if anyone is feeling too joyous, too overexcited, too comfortable, safe or happy, do read the 2000 Women report. The Femicide Census.

It's fucking bleak. Incredibly eye-opening. It's a bit like, I think after... And I've bought a gun! It's a bit like, Richard, if you're listening, I have a gun now.

Okay? Wasn't it like the, is it The Guardian who does the, the rundown of women, the women who were killed in the UK? I think it is The Guardian. It's the same time as Jess Phillips does the reading out of the names. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

For International Women's Day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And every single year, I'm just like, fucking hell, I swear this list gets longer.

It does. Exponentially longer. Every year.

It takes longer to read every year. They have to carve out more time on the agenda for Jess to do it. Yeah.

Every year. Fucking heartbreaking. Fuck, aren't they doing anything about... Anyway.

It's opening up a very big can of worms that I don't think we're able to necessarily... Like, you can't just have your normal men. Yeah. I am strongly coming around to the idea that men hit 18, no, men hit 16, they get put in prison and then they have to prove themselves out.

Because all it seems to be doing is we're working in the other direction and that they're all out and they prove themselves in. So let's just fucking safeguards, put them all in and then they can work their way out. That could be a star-based programme.

I am joking. To any of you male Trevors out there, I am joking. Famously love men.

But at what point did it stop being a joke? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it is terrifying. Well, on that cheery note.

On that lovely, cheery, happy note for your Friday. You can't even think about going to the pub now. I know, I know.

I'm sorry. I've got to do... Well, no, I've got my sister coming around to annoy me. I know.

Or babysit. Hmm? Yeah. Or babysit.

Or babysit. I know. If you drank again today, hell would freeze over.

Honestly, like I don't know. Honestly, it's just not... There's a flying pig. Oh dear.

Well, I suppose then that all that leaves us to do is all the nice bits. So we have a website. Oh, and to say, we got a lovely email off of the website from the glorious Jo, my darling Clementine, who, as she goes by on Instagram.

Hi Jo. Hi. She sent us a lovely email I got it yesterday, actually, about the Troyden Cram.

There we go. Episode. And also mentioned that apparently very small world.

She used to go to the same Isle of Wight campsite that I went to. And did not know about the aeroplane crash and immediately went to see it after she'd been listening to us and prevented herself from dropping pasta on the floor. There we go.

So just to say, hi, Jo. Hi, Jo. Thank you.

Thank you for the message. It's lovely. And if anyone else wants to leave us a message, there is a contact us form on the website or you can email us directly at sinistersouthpodcast at gmail.com. One day I will check it.

We believe it's that one. If it bounces, tripod. We've got the website, which is sinistersouthpod.co.uk. We've then got the Instagram, which is sinistersouthpod.

We've got the TikTok, which is sinistersouthpod. And I think that's it, isn't it? Oh, there's the Facebook group. Yeah.

The lovely Lou, who I will try and get some tram facts in for the next episode for you, Lou. I'm not. No.

Categorically not doing a reoccurring theme. Now we've done the case. We've done all the nice bits.

Now it's time for Rachel's train fare. No. I'll wear her down eventually.

But yes, so there is a lovely Facebook group from the lovely Lou runs or looks after for us. And you can go and have a chat with other people who listen to us drivel on. Yeah.

If you fancy. So, yeah. Also, I've been having seeing a lot of people commenting recently being like, I've just found you guys.

Yeah. It's been so lovely. And so welcome.

Any new Trevor's. Oh, my gosh. I do feel like at some point we might have to if it carries on this way, we might have to do an explanation of Trevor.

If people have to do the background. Episode one, I'll put a timestamp on where you can find out what the fuck Trevor's is all about. If you are new, just to follow me around for the rest of my life.

I've tried to do a podcast and I actually can't speak. And it is one of the required skills. It's brilliant.

I love it. I wouldn't change it for the world. But yeah, have an absolutely epic week, everyone.

Have a wonderful week. Yeah. We shall see you next Wednesday.

Usual time. Love you. Bye.

Love you. Goodbye.