PLAYBOY ‘MONSTER’ FOUND GUILTY OF MANSLAUGHTER
By: Daily Mail reporter
Published: 06.02 GMT, 17 November 2002
Nicholas Reilly was yesterday convicted of the manslaughter of Patricia Hendrick, whose body was discovered at his West London home in March this year.
Hendrick, 25, known by her friends as Patty, died after a 48-hour-sex, drink-and-drugs binge during which Reilly, 28, plied her with alcohol and repeatedly injected her with cocaine.
When Hendrick experienced breathing difficulties and then fell unconscious, Reilly failed to call an ambulance. Hendrick died shortly afterwards.
A post-mortem found the cause of death to be a pulmonary embolism brought on by an impurity in the drug.
At the time of her death Hendrick’s body bore the marks of rough and prolonged sexual activity, including extensive bruising, much of it intimate, and ligature marks around her wrists, ankles and neck.
Over the course of a trial whose details have often been distressing, the jury at the old Bailey heard how in the early hours of 7 March this year, Reilly and Hendrick, who at the time was dating the defendant’s brother, Mark, left the nightclub in East London where they had spent the evening with him and other mutual friends. Both were already drunk and high on cocaine.
The binge continued for two days at Reilly’s home in Chelsea. Reilly admitted giving the deceased large quantities of vodka and tequila and supplying her with repeated doses of amphetamines and cocaine to ‘keep the party going’.
Police who attended the scene testified that the ‘party’ had occurred largely in the defendant’s bedroom, where they discovered evidence of bondage and other sado-masochistic activity.
Though the sexual activity itself took place by mutual consent, at least initially, the defendant admitted that unbeknownst to Hendrick, he was using concealed cameras to film the encounter for later viewing. The final tape proved decisive in Reilly’s conviction, showing him administering intravenous doses of cocaine to Hendrick when she was too intoxicated to give her consent.
Police arrested him at the scene after calls from a downstairs neighbour disturbed by noise. He will be sentenced on Friday.
Speaking outside the court, investigating officer Detective Inspector Michael Iveson said, ‘This was a deeply disturbing case for all concerned. Though Ms Hendrick was initially a willing participant in the events that took place at Nicholas Reilly’s home, there can be no question that Reilly behaved in a depraved and inhuman manner, first by administering doses of cocaine and continuing sexual activity for his own pleasure after Ms Hendrick suffered breathing difficulties and began to lose consciousness. And secondly when, aware of the illegal nature of the drug-taking and his role in supplying Ms Hendrick, and afraid of the consequences, he failed to call for medical assistance.
‘This is a man who, even under the effects of sustained drinking and drug-taking, was able to calculate his own sexual gratification and freedom as worth more than the life of another human being. There can be no doubt that his callous failure to act resulted in Ms Hendrick’s death. He will no doubt spend a considerable length of time behind bars and we hope that Ms Hendrick’s friends and family will find some comfort in that.’
‘SICK NICK’ REILLY TAPED SEX ACTS
AS LOVER FOUGHT FOR LIFE
By: Gazette reporter
Published 17 November 2002
Perverted Nick Reilly shot secret footage of lover Patricia Hendrick as she lay dying.
Convicted of manslaughter yesterday at Winchester Crown Court, sick nick admitted to using secret cameras to film himself having rough sex with Patty, 25, as a cocaine-related blockage in her lungs left her fighting for life.
During the course of the trial, a horrified jury was forced to watch footage of monster Nick injecting a barely conscious Patty with more cocaine.
Even when Patty lost consciousness altogether, cowardly Nick, afraid of the consequences, failed to ring for an ambulance.
Her body was discovered when police came to investigate reports of a disturbance.
Before his arrest, Sick Nick, 28, was flying high, earning a six-figure salary, enjoying several exotic foreign holidays a year and driving a brand-new porsche.
Blonde Patty was well known in her circle as a party girl who loved the company of wealthy friends, especially men. A friend who wished to remain anonymous said, ‘Patty was no saint – she liked to go out, have a good time, and she liked male attention. There was always something naive about her, though, despite her wild behaviour – she was a bad judge of character. All it was going to take was for her to meet one wrong person and tragically she did.’
Early in the trial, the jury heard how the pathologist was at first confused to find DNA belonging to two different men when he examined the body. Nick’s brother, Mark Reilly, founder of City software success story DataPro, told jurors that he had been dating Patty at the time of her death.
Mark Reilly told the court that he and Patty had enjoyed a tryst in a lavatory at the club just twenty minutes before she left the venue with his brother. He returned from buying drinks for himself and Patty to find that the pair had gone.
Sitting in the public gallery yesterday, Mark Reilly wept openly as the jury delivered their verdict on his brother.
Acquaintances of Sick Nick were today reeling at news of his conviction. Liza Miller, a former classmate at his high school in Eastbourne, Sussex, said, ‘I’m shocked – totally shocked. Nick had a wild streak, we all knew that, but we thought it was just fun – I never thought he could actually physically hurt someone. We were so young and stupid then, it’s terrifying to think what could have happened. It could have been any of us.’
To others, the news came as less of a surprise. Martin Westing, another classmate, said, ‘The blokes always knew there was something wrong there but the girls loved him. He could charm them out of the trees like birds.’
Becca George, described by others as an old flame of Reilly’s, was initially reluctant to talk but told the Gazette that: ‘Nick could be very persuasive. With him, everything was fun, exciting. He lived in the moment – there was no thought for the consequences.’
Speaking outside court, Patty’s father, Richard, a wealthy Hertfordshire businessman, described himself and his wife as ‘totally devastated. Patty was the light of our lives. We hope Reilly goes to prison for a very long time.’
Hannah tipped her head back and let the freezing drizzle fall on her cheeks and eyelids. She pulled in long breaths, willing her heart to stop beating so fast; she could feel it knocking behind her sternum as if she was going to have a heart attack. Another wave of nausea went over her, and she crossed the yard and leaned against the little wrought-iron table, bracing herself with her hands. She was hot then cold then hot again, sweating in her clothes but shivering.
She thought of the crimes she’d imagined on the Tube home – fraud, drugs, even the death by drink-driving – and she wanted to laugh: how tame of her, how naïve. But how could she have imagined anything like this? In one of the other tabloid pieces – she’d barely scratched the surface so far; the story had run for days, it seemed, the papers loving this tale of sex and death amongst the young and glamorous – she’d read descriptions of the look of glee on Nick’s face as he’d emptied another syringe into Patty Hendrick’s limp arm, then angled her body towards his hidden camera as he’d pushed her knees apart again. Glee – the word was sickeningly vivid. Reading it, she’d seen him as clearly as if he’d been crouching over her, Hannah, his eyes hungry, mouth wet and open, his sharp incisors just like Mark’s.
Even without the references to Mark and DataPro, even though she’d never seen a picture of him before, she would have known the man in the photographs as his brother straight away. The pictures were ten years old now but looking at them she’d felt as if she were looking at a younger, better-looking version of Mark, the face a little less broad, the eyes just slightly wider-spaced, the mole on his cheek lasered away without a trace. Mark was an excellent prototype – she’d thought he was handsome from the first time she’d clapped eyes on him on the verandah in Montauk – but Nick, it was clear, was the perfected version.
And Patty had been ‘dating’ Mark. What did ‘dating’ mean in British English? Had they been in a relationship? How long had they been seeing each other? What did it matter, so far as what Nick had done? What kind of person even entertained the idea of a woman his brother was involved with or had even expressed interest in? The kind of person who let his sixty-year-old mother work in a shop to fund his post-college lifestyle, answered the voice at the back of her head. Who showed naked pictures of his girlfriend around school. The kind of person who could watch a woman fight for her life and not ring an ambulance.
Hannah’s stomach gave a sudden heave and she dashed back across the yard and wrenched the door open. She made it to the downstairs lavatory just in time. Afterwards, empty, she closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the cold china rim of the hand basin. That poor woman, she thought, poor, lost Patty. To die like that, drugged out of your mind, filmed naked, alone with a leering, conscienceless horror of a man who’d stand by and watch you die rather than deal with the consequences of calling for help.
The papers had had several different pictures of her and, if the Internet page layouts were anything to go by, they’d printed them big. No surprise there: she was perfect for that kind of story, any kind of story, with her long straight blonde hair and wide green eyes that at first glance seemed innocent but then revealed a glint of invitation. She was slim but curvaceous, still young enough at twenty-five that the curves suggested puppy fat in the best of ways, a toothsome, almost succulent plumpness. Two of the most frequently featured photographs looked as if they’d been taken on the same night and showed her in a simple black dress with cap sleeves that she’d pulled in at the waist with a thick patent-leather belt whose studs and heavy double buckle were perfect visual shorthand for what she’d been into the weekend she died, if not ever before.
Hannah thought about the photograph Mark had described but never shown her, the one of him and his brother as boys on the beach in Devon: Nick the golden child, Mark with his wasp sting and too-tight trunks, his ice-cream cone dropped in the sand. She imagined him in the club that night, coming back from the bar carrying a drink for Patty to discover that she’d left with his brother, and she felt a rush of pity for him, an intense, bitter sadness. In seconds, however, it was gone, replaced by anger. How could he not have told her? This was so huge, so fundamental. Something like this must be scored into his psyche; a day couldn’t pass when he didn’t think about it. What kind of a wife was she to him that he’d never told her – that he’d left her to find out like this from a friend she’d never even heard of?
But then, why hadn’t she found out for herself until now? How could this exist in Mark’s past without her knowing? Well, how hard, accused the voice in her head, did you try to find out about him when you met? Yes, they’d met through Ant and Roisin but they themselves had only known him a few weeks by then. She had met a man in a foreign country, without any of the normal infrastructure that surrounded people: family, old friends. Mark’s parents were dead, his brother estranged – she’d had none of the usual references. Teenage girls, she thought savagely, did more research into their crushes than she’d done into her husband – an hour on the Internet and she would have found all of this. She’d started once, googling him at the office one night when she was waiting for a call from LA, but after the first few links she had stopped, feeling grubby and stalkerish as she’d read pieces in the business press about his success, the big contracts DataPro had been getting then. All the talk of money had made her feel like a gold-digger, as if she was sizing him up as a catch, a potential target.
It hadn’t just been that, though. As she’d finished one story and clicked on the next, she’d been ambushed by a memory from her childhood. It had been spring, March – what happened in the weeks afterwards meant she’d never forget – and she was nine years old. She’d been upstairs in her bedroom doing her homework and she’d come down for a glass of milk and, if she was lucky and the kitchen was clear, a raid of the biscuit tin. Just as she’d been about to round the kitchen door, however, she’d seen her mother.
Something she’d never been able to put her finger on – the atmosphere, a radiating tension in the air, perhaps – had stopped Hannah in her tracks and she’d stayed back, out of sight. Her mother had been putting a load of washing on, sorting it before it went in the machine, and Hannah had watched as she’d gone through her father’s trouser pockets, pulling them all the way so they stuck out like cartoon ears, shaking the trousers as if she could force them to talk to her. She’d been crying, the sobs silent but strong enough to wrack the whole of her upper body.
Hannah had been physically repulsed. Why was her mother doing this? Did she want to destroy their family, to drive Dad away? Couldn’t she see what she was doing? She was making his life unlivable, a nightmare. Nearly every night Hannah could hear their voices on the other side of the bedroom wall, her mother’s desperate pleading that he just tell her the truth, her father’s increasing frustration, his growing anger at her insistence that he was lying. Her mother was like a rat, Hannah thought as she stood at the kitchen door and watched, a rat gnawing and gnawing, eating away at their family.
Without letting her mother know she’d been seen, Hannah had run upstairs to her room, slammed the door and jammed the lock with her hairbrush. Then she’d flung herself face down on the bed and cried and cried. It was hopeless; there was no way her parents could stay together. Her dad would move out and there would be a divorce and she and Tom would be like her friend Claire from school, who lived out of a bag and felt guilty all the time for being excited about Friday nights when she finally got to see her dad.
Lying on her bed that night, Hannah had made a promise to herself: she would never creep around like that, spying on the people she was supposed to love. She would never do it. If she ever got married, she would trust her husband. Well, she’d kept her promise, hadn’t she? she thought bitterly now. And look at the results.
Legs shaking, she stood up and washed her hands and face. Pink eyes stared back at her from the mirror, any benefit from the long sleep on the sofa last night wiped out. That felt like weeks ago. She dried her hands and went back to the kitchen, poured herself another half-inch of Armagnac and sat down at the table. The red light was flashing on her BlackBerry and when she went to her inbox, Mark’s name was at the top again. She paused for a moment then opened it.
Just finished the meeting. Went v well, I’m sure we’ll get the contract, so def worth staying. Home tonight to see my gorgeous wife – not many hours to go . . .