The night Michaela Hall was murdered, police knocked on her door. They had received a report that the mother of two children and the former Virgin Airways flight attendant were being strangled by her partner, a well-known abuser who had just been released from prison.
Michaela, 49, was talking to a friend on the phone when she was attacked. “I heard her say, ‘Don’t come near me, Lee,’ and she started screaming,” the friend, who lived abroad, told the Crimestoppers charity. “It was horrible, pure fear, like something in a movie.”
The case was referred to Devon and Cornwall police and marked as urgent, according to a police surveillance report seen by the Observer.
But when two officers arrived at Michaela’s bungalow in the Cornish village of Mount Hawke, everything was quiet. The curtains were raised, the property was in the dark and “there were no signs of disturbance.”
Officers touched Michaela’s back window and checked the garden. Nothing. They considered talking to neighbors but decided not to, according to the report.
“We don’t have enough input power, do we?” the first agent asked his partner, in a conversation picked up by a body camera. They lit a torch through a gap in the curtains. Nothing nasty. After spending seven minutes on the property, officers boarded his car again.
By radio in the Devon and Cornwall police control room shortly after 11:30 pm on May 31, 2021, they speculated about what might be going on. “We have visions … as if she was there with him covering her mouth and stuff,” the first officer told his colleague.
Police had been called to the property before, attending 14 times in as many months for domestic abuse incidents. On previous occasions when Michaela’s partner had attacked her, she “drank and drank and drank” until she fainted, the officer said. Maybe that too had happened this time.
Also, they reasoned that even if they could get in, Michaela wouldn’t talk to them.
“What can you do if she’s not helped?” the officer asked a fellow on the radio.
Michaela was found dead the next night.
She had been murdered by her partner, Lee Kendall. After a fight over dinner, he grabbed her by the throat and stabbed her in the eye with a kitchen knife, a court heard in January.
Kendall’s brutal actions shattered a family and left Michaela’s two young children without a mother.
But the case also raises urgent questions about the treatment of victims of domestic abuse by police and whether Michaela could have been rescued, or whether her killer could have been captured earlier, if the answer had been different.
Known as a vulnerable person, at high risk for domestic abuse, Michaela was under the protection of a multi-agency safeguard protocol at the time of her death, according to a report by the Independent Bureau of Investigation. Police Conduct (IOPC), which examines Devon. and the Cornish police response to the case.
Michaela Hall’s father, Peter Hall, was photographed at his home near Redruth in Cornwall. Photo: Karen Robinson / The Observer
However, although they were called to urgently report that Michaela was being attacked and were aware of the history of domestic abuse, Devon and Cornwall police did not enter her property or take key steps to establish that she was safe, according to the IOPC report.
Officers who attended thought they did not have the authority to force entry, believing they did not have enough information to establish whether “life or limb” was at risk, the IOPC found. Control room officials did not order them to enter.
Lee Kendall had recently been released from prison. Photo: Devon & Cornwall Police / SWNS
The unpublished report, seen by the Observer, also details how in the 24 hours after the initial call of Crimestoppers emergency, at 22.19 on May 31, the police went twice more to the property of Michaela, but again he did not enter or speak to the neighbors.
During the second visit, at 2.50 pm on June 1, they found the curtains open but with no signs of disturbance. “They got no response to call” and “looked at the back of the property” before leaving a few minutes later, according to the report.
Police arrived for the third time that night, at 7:14 p.m. “They will leave when they have finished some paperwork,” a sergeant had told the control room before sending two officers, according to the report. After finding no signs of disturbance, they left after three minutes.
Later that night, Michaela’s parents, Peter and Anne Hall, drove the three miles to her bungalow to check on her after she missed a scheduled phone call that night.
Realizing that something was wrong, Peter entered the house with a key that he received from the owner of the couple. At around 10.30pm, while the neighbors were concentrating on the front door, he found his daughter’s body in the bedroom.
The rigor had been put to death, suggesting that she had been dead a few hours ago. But the exact time of her murder is unknown, which raises questions about whether she missed opportunities to be saved or caught by her killer, who was released until the next day.
Peter, 70, and Anne, 72, believe that instead of seeing her daughter’s abuse history as a risk factor that meant she needed more protection, officers blamed her for staying. with his violent partner.
“She was trapped in a cycle of abuse. And for a police officer to say, ‘I’ve talked to her before and she can’t help it,’ is horrible,” Peter said. “As far as we know, my daughter was alive when the police knocked on the door, with one hand in her mouth.”
“He left me thinking every day, all the time, if they had just come in, would they have saved him?” Anna added through tears. “We’ll never know what could have happened. Michaela could still be alive, and I could have gone there to hold her hand.
In the weeks before she died, Michaela had tried to regain her life.
Educated privately and the eldest of four, she had a comfortable education before getting a job she loved as a flight attendant, caring for first-class passengers and traveling the world. “People loved flying with her because she was very organized. She was always spotless,” Anne said.
She loved her two children, and they loved her. But things in his life had become difficult. After about 10 years flying with Virgin, Michaela moved to a village near her parents in Cornwall and began studying law, but her mental health suffered after custody disputes with an ex-partner.
After failing to comply with a restraining order, he was given a suspended sentence, which affected his career prospects.
In 2018 he got a job at a charity that worked with criminals on his way out of prison. In December of that year, he met Kendall, a drug user with a number of convictions, including theft.
Prosecutor Jo Martin QC said the relationship, which caused Michaela to lose her job, was “complex.” “[She] He was always trying to help and possibly save him, “he told the trial for murder.
Over the following years, Michaela suffered brutal abuse at Kendall’s hands, including strangulation, punching, dragging her hair, and kicking her head. 999 repeated calls were made and she was seen with “black eyes numerous times,” Truro’s crown court heard.
Michaela Hall, left, with her siblings Peter, Harry and Lisa. Photography: family photography
Kendall, 43, admitted some of the attacks and was jailed. But his control over Michaela was so strong that while he was detained, he continued to control her from his prison cell.
I would send her love letters in scribbled envelopes, promising her a happy forever, Peter said. She sent him money regularly because he said he “didn’t like prison food” and they talked on the phone almost every day.
“It’s all part of the image of how they coerced her. However, all in all, you have a man who is abusive, threatening and manipulative, and a person who has become very vulnerable,” Peter said.
In early May 2021, while Kendall was detained for an attack on Michaela earlier this year, she seemed optimistic about the future.
Having a coffee at his parents’ house, he talked about his plans to join a wild swimming club and asked for help to move out of his bungalow. “We had a great time,” Anne said. “No one wanted to mention the elephant in the room, which was him coming out of jail.”
It was the last time they would see her alive. When, on May 14, Kendall received a three-year community warrant from a judge and was released, he returned to Michaela. Two weeks later, he killed her.
Judge Garnham, who jailed him for at least 21 years at Truro’s crown court in January, said Kendall had deliberately pointed at Michaela’s eyes, which his family described as “dark and bright.” . “For reasons never explained, those beautiful eyes were always the target of your violence,” the judge said. After killing Michaela on May 31, he poured himself a glass of wine and watched television. He was not arrested until June 2, after arriving on a bus in Truro, where he stole alcohol and argued with homeless men and shelter staff, the court said.
At the time of the murder, Kendall was believed to be under the control of the Probation Service, which is investigating his actions after his release and the role he played in managing “the risk that Kendall posed to himself and to the others “.
Harriet Wistrich, a senior lawyer and director of the Center for Women’s Justice, said the case was “really horrible,” but “sadly not atypical” of domestic homicides, and that police needed a better understanding of the situation. domestic abuse.
He said Michaela’s reluctance to associate with police was typical of victims of coercive control. “In any case, not presenting charges or ‘helping’ each other is a reason to intervene more,” he said.
Dame Vera Baird QC, the Commissioner for Victims for England and Wales, said the police response to Michaela …