DAD'S PLEA
My daughter drowned on date with speedboat killer…he’s never revealed truth about horror but could be freed next month
English lit grad was thrown from boat into the freezing Thames
A DAD has issued a heartfelt plea to keep his daughter's killer in prison until he reveals the truth about her final moments.
Charlotte Brown, 24, was thrown from Jack Shepherd's boat when it capsized on the River Thames in December 2015.
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He was jailed for six years in April 2019, for manslaughter by gross negligence.
But the following year, he had almost three months slashed from his sentence and could now be freed next month.
Charlotte's dad Graham Brown, 60, has now said Shepherd should stay in jail until he "tells the truth" about what really happened.
He told the : "The only one who knows what really happened is Shepherd.
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“We want to know what happened. But evil men like this who do these sorts of things never admit or tell anyone. He will never admit it, I know he won’t. He will say it’s not his fault.
"In my mind he murdered my daughter and should be doing a proper life sentence. He shouldn’t be released until he tells us what he did.”
On the night Charlotte died, Shepherd tried to impress her with a late-night trip past the Houses of Parliament after dinner at the Shard.
He had been drinking heavily before the tragedy, while English literature graduate Charlotte barely touched a drop on their first date.
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Harrowing footage showed him racing down the Thames in his faulty speedboat moments before it hit a log and flipped over.
Charlotte, who died shortly after hitting the river from cold water immersion, could be heard screaming: "Oh my God, you're going so fast".
Shepherd was interviewed by police immediately after the tragedy before he cowardly fled the UK for Georgia.
He spent ten months on the run as Charlotte's family faced an agonising wait for justice.
It was while he was hiding in Georgia that the chilling truth behind the champagne Casanova began to emerge.
Police discovered Shepherd had bought the boat from Gumtree to "pull" and had taken ten other women for rides before the fatal crash.
Shepherd was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018 after being convicted of manslaughter in his absence.
He eventually handed himself into local authorities in Georgia and even tried protesting his innocence in front of TV cameras.
Smirking as he surrendered, he insisted it was a "tragic accident".
Shepherd, who got married and had a child after the crash, could now be released automatically in January - the halfway point of his sentence.
Graham has slammed the move as a "mockery" of the British justice system.
He also hit out at Shepherd for blaming Charlotte for her death after claiming she was at the helm at the time.
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The dad added: "She was Mrs Sensible, she was not reckless. She had not been on a speedboat, I believe she thought it was going to be a toddle up the Thames. I’m sure she had no idea that he was going to put his foot down.
"Charlotte would never have driven that boat. Even if she had, it’s the equivalent to being on a flight and the pilot telling you to land the plane. If the plane crashes, whose fault is that? He owed Charlotte a duty of care. He was totally reckless.”
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