The Trouble with Leroy

Leroy Thomas was first interviewed by PC Matt Crowe on September 15, 2015 as he prepared to leave Tresco after being fired by his employers for failing to turn up to work on September 13th. 

He told PC Crowe he had worked until 4.30pm on 12th September before going to the New Inn. He said he’d downed around six pints of Carlsberg while at the pub and had got talking to some colleagues there, who told him about the party at the Shed. He bought four cans of San Miguel and headed up to the party with five or six others, leaving the pub at around 11pm.

He thinks there were around 20 people there when he arrived, but told the policeman that due to the amount of alcohol he’d had that night, he remembered very little about what happened says he remembered some ‘argy-bargy’ with ‘one of the Polish lads’. He said he did not leave the party, but had been outside the shed at times. 

He said he had left the party at around 3am with others from the New Inn, before heading to the Artist Chalets to sleep – a trip he said took around 40 minutes. He said he woke up at around 1pm the following day with a bad head and decided not to go to work. Instead he played cricket.

He tells police he was ‘merry’ but denies being drunk while at the New Inn, leaving with a group of colleagues for the party at The Shed at around 10pm. He tells police he had taken four cans of San Miguel with him and had been drinking and mingling at the party, but had not taken any illegal substances. 

He tells the police there were a group of ‘Polish or Hungarian’ men at the party who were pushing and shoving each other around. A couple of girls got caught up in it and Leroy spoke to one of the men to ask him to calm down. 

He told police by the time he left the party it was around 3am and he walked back with a small group of people. He says he doesn’t remember leaving the rest of the group, but was told they had split up near the Post Office. He doesn’t know why he decided to go to the Artist Chalet and doesn’t remember going there. In fact, he doesn’t remember anything other than waking up at 12.20pm with a hangover. He left the chalet and joined in a game of cricket.

Between 1.30pm and 2pm, he said they were approached by two people who were looking for Josh, who had been missing from the party. He tells the police he didn’t know Josh and didn’t remember ever meeting him, nor had he seen anyone matching his description at the party.

While the others continued their search for Josh, Leroy returned to his game of cricket until around 4.30pm, before heading to the New Inn, getting kicked out at around 10pm.

The following day, he was called to the offices and his contract terminated by his bosses who were unhappy that he had not turned up to work and in light of complaints from residents of the Island about people shouting and swearing.

He tells police about his ‘moment of madness’ in going to the party and not going to work the following day, and says he was aware that one of the works vans had been damaged overnight.

Thomas tells them he had worked until around 6pm on the day that Josh went missing and had driven the works van when he went to lunch at The Sail Loft. He says he left the van in a courtyard behind the Sandpiper, with the keys in the ignition.

He talks about going to the New Inn after work, drinking six or seven pints there and talking to people about the party at The Shed. At around 11pm, the group left the pub and headed to the party – describing himself as ‘six out of ten’ on the drunk scale.

He tells the police he was concerned by the atmosphere at the party, that there was ‘jostling and argy-bargy’ between some people there, but no fights. He said he thought some of the younger people at the party had taken drugs and there were a number of people ‘acting stupid’ – although he was unable to name any of those people. He confirms that he does not know Josh, so could not say if he was one of those people.

He remembers telling one lad to ‘wind it in’ and giving him a ‘bit of a dig’ because he’d been knocking people about. He says he can’t remember what this person looked like. At this point, he decides he doesn’t want to stay at the party any longer.

He says it’s around 3am when he leaves the party and he doesn’t remember the journey from The Shed, nor how he ended up in the Artist Chalet. He says he woke up at around 12pm and joined a game of cricket after leaving the chalet. 

He tells police he didn’t join the search for Josh because he felt it was best left to the professionals. He explains that he wanted to go home because he needed to change his clothes after falling in some bushes. It was around this time he was told about the works van being taken.

Asked outright if he took the works van, Leroy denies it. Police suggest he may have taken the van and driven it to avoid walking from the Post Office to the Artist Chalet and he says he knows he didn’t.  When asked if this means his memory is returning, Leroy explains that there was an ‘incident’ when he was younger when he had taken a van and despite being ‘smashed out of his head’ he’d remembered doing it. He also denies that he would have taken a bike, or a buggy.

Police tell him that while he was at the Artist’s Chalet, people were concerned that he was also missing. 

Police say that witnesses saw him arguing with Josh at the party, and he responds by saying that he didn’t remember arguing with anyone at the party. Police tell him Josh had been upset by Leroy being ‘touchy feely’ with some of the girls at the party, but again, Leroy claims not to remember this happening. He’s told about three other incidents in and around The Shed – including one where he was separated from another person and had to be held back. Again, he claims to have no memory of this happening. 

They tell him that witnesses saw him leaving the party on someone’s bike and returning a short time later – Leroy denies this claim, saying it would have been too dark to ride a bike in his inebriated state.

There are minor inconsistencies in his re-telling of what happened that night – this time he remembers that he may have been ‘too friendly’ with some of the girls.

He says the atmosphere at the party was ok for about the first hour that he was there until the incident with the Polish/Hungarian guys.

This time, he was in the middle of the confrontation and he ‘nudged’ someone acting ‘extreme’ out of the way to try and diffuse the situation. Then he backed off, not wanting to be involved. 

He said he didn’t know Josh – and didn’t really know anyone on the island on a social basis.

He says that if had been Josh he’d ‘nudged’ he’d only told him to calm down. 

He says he was at the Shed for the duration of the party, but did go outside for a smoke a couple of times, leaving at around 2.30-3.00am with Kate and a few others, heading back towards Sandpiper. 

He then tells the inquest he’d been concerned for the lad he’d seen acting strangely at the party and decided to go back to try and find him. When he returned, the Shed was empty so he headed to the Artist’s Chalet to sleep, waking up at somewhere around 11am-11.30am before joining the game of cricket. 

As the coroner asks further questions, the story changes once again. 

He said he felt he should check on the ‘Josh lad’ to make sure he was OK after the incident at the party.

Asked to elaborate, he says that in the months following his many police interviews, he has remembered a confrontation between someone he now recognises to be Josh and some Polish people at the back of The Shed. 

He claims that Josh had been involved in an argument outside the Shed over a pushbike and that he saw Josh throwing the bike around, and people holding him back. 

He claims that Josh was ranting and raving and said he was going to kill himself before running into a thicket and disappearing. 

Leroy tells the coroner’s court he is concerned about what he saw and left the party to try and find him and find out what had happened. 

He is asked why he has waited until now to talk about what he claims to have seen and he admits that he was smoking weed the night Josh went missing.

He tells police he didn’t want to put the burden of what he heard that night onto anyone and didn’t want to bring it to the light of day.

He’s told that what he is saying is ‘relevant and serious’.

He claims that he did not know Josh, but that he had recollected it afterwards, recognising him from the photo evidence.

He claims he saw Josh causing a commotion, throwing a bike around and that those nearby were trying to calm him down.

He said Josh was ‘causing a big problem’ for whatever reasons, that he was upset. Leroy claims he felt ‘he had decided he was going to do something stupid’.

His story shifts somewhat, and he says the ‘Polish’ lads were not acting aggressively towards Josh.

Leroy says he thinks something was going on in Josh’s mind and the others were trying to stop him doing ‘a stupid thing’.

He says he saw Josh run off into the thicket and the Polish lads were going to go after him, but he told them Josh would come to his senses.  

He tells the police he didn’t volunteer the information because he felt there was a witch-hunt against him and hadn’t been certain it was what he’d seen because he had been drunk and smoking weed.

He says he can’t name the two foreign workers he had been arguing with but does give a vague description.

He says the group backed off and he headed back into The Shed.

As he left the party, he claims to have told Tristan Dorian-Smith there had been some ‘problems at the back’ of The Shed but that he didn’t take him seriously.

He said that he hadn’t told Katie about what he’d seen as they walked back from the party and had decided to go back and look for Josh by foot, navigating the island by ‘instinct’.

In this interview he said that after losing his job on the island he had been preoccupied with needing to leave Tresco and was ‘a little cloudy’ about what had happened when he first spoke to the police.

For the second interview, he said he’d been feeling under pressure after splitting up with his partner, but started to think about what he ‘may’ have seen and has now clarified in his own mind what he saw that night. He said until then he had simply wanted to move on with his life. 

It was when he was summoned to the inquest that he decided not to ‘hide’ the information any longer.

He tells the police he finished work at around 6pm on the night of the party and went to the New Inn before heading to the party later that evening with between 8 and 10 people. 

At the party, he saw Tristan Dorrien-Smith among the ‘30-odd’ people there.

Some pushing and shoving broke out and he now realises Josh was in the middle of this altercation.

Some people were trying to calm Josh down and he was ‘quite irate’ and ‘banging into a group of people.’ He says Josh was taken outside and Leroy saw him on a golf-buggy with four or five people trying to persuade him off it. 

Leroy claims he went back to the party and was talking to some girls who said that Josh was ‘a little bit weird’.

Later he says he heard a commotion outside and saw some Eastern Europeans arguing with Josh ever a pushbike.

He says Josh was throwing the bike around, the two other men were arguing with him and Josh was ‘ranting and raving’. 

He said that Josh ran past him saying ‘I’ve had enough, I’m going to kill myself’ and ran through the thicket at the rear of The Shed.

The Eastern Europeans tried to go after him to calm him, but Leroy talked them out of it and they went back to the party.

He then saw Tristan Dorrien-Smith and told him there had been some trouble, but that Tristan had been more interested in getting everyone out of The Shed and locking it up. 

Leroy left the party with Kate, Frank and another girl, walking home, but decided he didn’t feel right about what happened at The Shed and would go back.

He says he’d seen small bags of drugs being passed around the party and there was ‘something not right’.