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 Charity worker: Ester Gluck, who had co-ordinated a voluntary trip to Africa, pictured at a market stall in Ghana
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‘Where did my daughter spend her last ten hours?
’Mother’s search to discover what drove a happy woman to
‘a horrible death’
THE mother of a woman who died on rail tracks in Hampstead has spoken of her desperate attempt to solve the mystery of her daughter’s last 10 hours alive.
A coroner’s inquest ruled last Tuesday that Ester Gluck, 24, had taken her own life – but her mother, Angela, said the hearing did not answer all her questions.
Ester, a charity worker, died last September at Hampstead Heath station.
Personal belongings including her distinctive purple boots, a mobile phone, a watch and her bicycle were missing. Her whereabouts during the 10 hours between leaving her boyfriend’s house at midnight and her death the following morning remains a mystery.
Friends and family want to know what prompted a seemingly happy and successful young woman to throw herself in front of a train.
She was affectionately known as “the Purple Princess” because of her wardrobe, inspired by her favourite colour.
Just three weeks before her death she had secured a job working with refugees which she had been chasing since leaving university two years earlier.
No suicide note was ever found and Ester, who lived at Brondesbury Villas, Kilburn, had never spoken of harming herself.
St Pancras coroner Dr Andrew Reid said an autopsy had found alcohol in her blood.
Her bag was recovered at a place that British Transport Police recorded simply as The Avenue, with the police notes having no exact location. In it was the lock for her missing bicycle.
A purse, with money, which was strapped to her ankle, hidden from potential muggers, was never recovered.
“That is just bizarre,” said Mrs Gluck. “You could, I suppose, lose your bike – lean it somewhere and maybe it would get stolen but it appears it might have been taken off her, or was she knocked off it?
“Did she have an accident? And what happened to her watch and her money purse?”
Tributes to Ester are still being filed on a website in her memory, nearly a year after her death.
A member of Finchley Reform Synagogue, she helped take younger members of the congregation for classes and accompanied them on overseas trips. She co-ordinated a voluntary trip to Africa in 2003, helping give advice about HIV.
Notes left on her website include a message from Rabbi Dame Julia Neuberger, who wrote that Ester had “time, energy, love and compassion – and, of course, fellow feeling… in abundance.”
Ester performed with the youth group at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, where a seat is named after her.
Mrs Gluck told the inquest that Ester had suffered all her life from a problem diagnosed by doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital as spatial awareness interruption.
She took part in a trial at the hospital investigating the condition, which made it hard for her to judge distances and measurements. Mrs Gluck said: “When she returned from university she tried to take driving lessons but she just couldn’t do it.
“Her teacher said she would have accidents if she tried. She had a permanent problem with judging spaces and this was potentially dangerous.”
Ester was in a steady relationship with boyfriend Ryan Dolan. The inquest heard that the pair had argued the night before she died but Mr Dolan told the court it was not a splitting-up type of argument.
Eye-witness accounts contained discrepancies about how she was hit by the Silverlink train at Hampstead Heath station.
One witness, a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, told the inquest he saw Ester calmly sit down on the edge of the platform and then lie across the tracks.
The driver of the train, however, said he had seen Ester moments before she died taking “pigeon steps” towards the edge of the platform, and then jump in front of the train.
British Transport Police officer David Humphreys told the inquest: “I contacted Hampstead police to ask them to search the Heath. The bike was never recovered, and neither were her other possessions.
“There is no evidence as to what happened to her after she left Ryan Dolan’s home.”
A Camden police spokesman said they had no records relating to Ester’s death or subsequent investigation.
Mrs Gluck said: “Something must have happened to her before she died. She was a streetwise person but she also had a kind, caring streak.
“She would never say no to someone who needed help and I had thought at times that one day her willingness to listen to people might land her in some kind of trouble.”
Two witnesses who gave police statements said they thought Ester had been “attacked”, although police have never checked what they meant by that.
Mrs Gluck added: “Two people saw her outside the station, and they both said they felt she looked like she had been attacked and was in distress. What did they mean?”
Dr Reid said that the picture was not complete, but added that the inquest could do little except come to a conclusion as to how, not why, she died. He said: “There is still a gap in the evidence as to what happened. People who saw her approach the station say there was some concern about her but before they could stop her the incident had occurred.”
Mrs Gluck added: “It was a horrible, horrible thing that happened to Ester, and I would like to know the truth.” |
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