Lovesick woman who helped her 'psychopath' ex cover up the rape and murder of his 21-year-old sister-in-law breaks down in tears as she reveals her regret

Daily Mail​

16-07-2025

A woman who was sentenced for her part in covering up the murder of a 21-year-old jockey for the sake of her lover has spoken out for the first time since the young woman's death.
Jill Robinson, 43, took the bloodied clothes of her lover Jonathan Creswell to a launderette after he had beaten, raped and murdered his young showjumper sister-in-law after having an affair with her.
It was assumed for six months that Katie Simpson, found with a rope around her neck at home in the village of Tynan in Northern Ireland, had died by suicide.
But unexplained bruises and cuts on her body, including on her inner thigh, and her 'swollen and bruised' hands eroded that theory - although the case was stifled for half a year before an investigation was finally opened.
After brutally attacking and killing Katie, Creswell was able to cover his tracks with the help of three women - including Jill, who was 'infatuated' with him.
Speaking for the first time in a new Sky documentary about Katie's tragic death, Robinson breaks down in tears as she reveals how she was manipulated by Creswell.
'You don't understand how they get into your head and just sort of take over your life,' she sobs.
'Every day I ask myself, "Why did I do that, why did I wash them?" A lot of people don't understand the way he was, that you didn't question anything.
'You blame yourself so much, how you got yourself involved in something that led to such catastrophic results.'
Robinson, killer Creswell and victim Katie all ran in the same close-knit equestrian circles. Katie was the horse-mad baby sister of Christina Simpson, who was married to Jonathan Creswell.
They were also close with groom Hayley Robb and teenage British equestrian star called Rose de Montmorency-Wright; who also helped Creswell cover up his horrific crimes.
Speaking in the trailer, Robinson describes the group's 'wild' life working together, hanging out together and 'living the horsey dream'.
Creswell, 36, was a charming and deeply manipulative jockey-turned-trainer who was adored at the local stable yard in Derry.
On August 3, 2020, a distraught Creswell called police and told them he had desperately tried to save the life of Katie, Christina's younger sister, after finding her hanging from a bannister.
Weeping, he spun a tale in which he had cut her down and administered CPR.
But it later emerged that Katie - lively, talented and sociable - had not taken her own life but had been brutally murdered by Creswell in a fit of jealousy.
Despite obvious holes in Creswell's cover-up story, it was months before police properly investigated the suspicious death.
Finally, in March, 2021, Creswell was arrested and charged with Katie's rape and murder.
Creswell was not only engaged in multiple sexual relationships with other women – including Katie herself – but three women had lied to try to cover up for him.
One of them, Rose de Montmorency-Wright, 22, had lived with Katie, Creswell and Christina, and had helped carry Katie's coffin at her funeral.
The others were Robinson and Hayley Robb, those friends of Katie's who'd lived out their 'horsey dream' by her side.
All three women later pleaded guilty to offences ranging from perverting the course of justice to withholding information, and received suspended sentences.
But Creswell never faced justice, because at 9am on April 24, 2024, one day after the prosecution had outlined their case at his trial, his body was found at his home.
Creswell was a talented young jockey six years Robinson's junior and her first love.
It was an 'all-consuming' passion, she said, even though his phone quickly started ringing with other women at the end of the line.
'The first time I thought he was with someone else it was like complete devastation, like someone had taken out your heart and crushed it like an Easter egg. But he talked his way out of it,' she says.
Creswell routinely inflicted slaps, punches and hair-pulling on Robinson, but that was nothing compared to the mental cruelty he was capable of.
Creswell had a way to 'make you feel that small, completely destroy your self-confidence', Robinson previously recalled. Their relationship ended in 2008 when she went to Australia.
After a six-month stint in prison following his abuse of talented dressage rider Abi Lyle, Creswell quickly began a relationship with Christina, with whom he went on to have two children.
What no one knew is that he was simultaneously grooming her little sister Katie, who was just nine when she first met him.
'He controlled and coerced Katie since she was a child,' Detective Sergeant James Brannigan, the officer instrumental in bringing Creswell to justice, told a court hearing.
No one knows when his relationship with Katie became sexual, although some locals noticed that the bubbly young horsewoman seemed terrified of Creswell hearing suggestions that she might get a boyfriend.
'Don't go saying anything like that in front of Johnny,' a family friend, Chris Faloon, recalls Katie pleading with him after he suggested another showjumper might be keen on her.
Nonetheless, a few weeks before she died, Katie had embarked on a relationship with a showjumper called Shane McCloskey, who is not named in the documentary but was identified by the Mail last year.
The extent of her fear of Creswell was exposed in a frantic exchange of messages with McCloskey, in which she begged him to lie about the fact they had spent the previous night together if Creswell got in touch.
'He'll kill me,' she wrote.
A day later, an outwardly devastated Creswell rang the ambulance service to say he had returned from dropping off his children at his mother's house to find Katie hanging from the banister of the family home.
He insisted on attempting to take her directly to Altnagelvin Hospital in his car to avoid paramedics visiting the house.
'No one was more distraught,' recalls Robinson.
Not everyone was convinced by Creswell's story, however. Some nurses raised concerns over bruises on Katie's body. Her injuries were 'shocking' says DS Brannigan.
'Her hands were like boxing gloves, they were that swollen and bruised. There were marks on her legs, on her inner thigh, there was a massive bruise on her shoulder, a small cut to her lip and bruises on her arms.'
Katie's friends – Jill and Hayley – claimed she'd fallen from a horse the day before, but Brannigan was not convinced.
Nonetheless, when Katie died six days later, having never recovered consciousness, the narrative that she had taken her own life had been set in stone.
Local police seemed uninterested in investigating. Tanya Fowles, a journalist who knew Katie and had suspicions that all was not right, recalls a Derry police officer accusing her of being a 'curtain twitcher' when she rang to alert them to Creswell's previous convictions for violence.
DS Brannigan, who worked in County Armagh but had been contacted by Fowles to see if he could help, recalls how he was similarly stonewalled, with Derry detectives telling him Katie had tried to take her own life twice.
As he later discovered, they had mistakenly logged two suicide 'attempts' – the first when she arrived in hospital and the second when she died from her injuries.
It would take six months of dogged work by Brannigan and Fowles for Derry police to finally open an investigation.
When previously unexamined internal swabs taken during the post mortem came back showing Creswell's semen, detectives had enough to arrest him.
Even then, Creswell tried to bluster his way out of it, announcing he'd been in a relationship with Katie since she was 17 and that they'd had sex several times the night before she'd gone to hospital.
His arrogance would also be his undoing, however. Later in the interview, he drew a diagram showing how he'd found Katie.
'He said she was "kissing the wood" meaning her head was facing the inside banister,' Brannigan recalls.
Yet when the detective revisited the scene he discovered that the strap with which Katie had purportedly hung herself was not long enough to do this.
On March 6, 2021, Creswell was charged with Katie's murder – the first of what would prove to be several criminal charges in relation to her death.
In the weeks that followed, astonished detectives uncovered CCTV footage showing Hayley Robb following Creswell's car home from hospital before entering his home then leaving with a bag and placing it in the boot of her own vehicle.
She subsequently admitted that as Katie lay dying, she and Robinson had taken Creswell's clothes to a launderette. Robb had also cleaned up traces of blood in the house.
Rose de Montmorency-Wright, who had platonically shared a double bed with Katie for a while, was subsequently arrested in England and brought back to Northern Ireland for questioning.
Brannigan says: 'She admitted to us "Yeah. He told me he'd beaten Katie". And I said "Why didn't you tell us?"
'She said she believed Katie had taken her own life and didn't believe it was relevant. I pushed her on it, but she asked to speak to a solicitor and when she came back she wouldn't say anything.'
She subsequently pleaded guilty to withholding information, and received an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.
Robinson received a 16-month suspended sentence for perverting the course of justice, and Robb two years, suspended for two years, for withholding information and perverting the course of justice.
Katie's sister Christina, whom police also believed was subject to coercive control by Creswell, was not prosecuted.
Loyal to the end, Jill Robinson, who visited Creswell in prison when he was on remand, confides that she felt she had 'let Johnny down' by telling the truth.
It subsequently emerged he was facing a catalogue of allegations from more than a dozen other women, among them a teenage girl who had spoken to police about being abused by Creswell.