In March 2020, when the world was going into COVID lockdown, Kelly Fitzgibbons and her two children Ava and Lexi were shot and killed by the person who should have loved and protected them the most – partner and father Robert Needham, who then killed the family dog and took his own life. Having lied on his application for a shotgun and with Kelly wanting to take a break from their relationship Needham took a final act of control over his whole family.
In March 2020, when the world was going into COVID lockdown, Kelly Fitzgibbons and her two children Ava and Lexi were shot and killed by the person who should have loved and protected them the most – partner and father Robert Needham, who then killed the family dog and took his own life. Having lied on his application for a shotgun and with Kelly wanting to take a break from their relationship Needham took a final act of control over his whole family.
Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. I'm your host, claire Laxton. So before we delve into this week's story, I wanted to give you a couple of updates. The first one is a pretty unbelievable one I said. This week I heard that Killer in the Family podcast has been shortlisted in the True Crime Awards for rookie podcast of the year. Oh my gosh, I genuinely can't believe it. I cried a lot when I heard. As you all know, this podcast is, you know it's a huge labour of love and sometimes it gets really tough carrying on, but having all of you amazing listeners support it, support me, makes it so worthwhile. The actual awards are on at the end of April, so I will keep you updated on that. So in other updates, very excitingly, next week we have a special podcast episode for International Women's Day, which is on Friday, the 8th of March. I absolutely love International Women's Day and I just can't wait to share this episode with you. Before I do, as it's International Women's Day, I want to hear from you, send me any questions, comments or anything like that as voice notes or DMs on my Instagram at Killer in the Family pod, and I just can't wait to hear from you all. The International Women's Day episode is an exclusive interview with a very special guest and I just really can't wait for you to hear it. I'm also in the process of trying to secure another very exciting guest for the podcast and will announce it when they have confirmed. So let's get into this episode. This is going to be a really tough listen.
Speaker 1:
In March 2020, when the world was going into COVID lockdown, kelly Fitzgibbons and her two children, ava and Lexi, were shot and killed by the person who should have loved and protected them the most Partner and father, robert Needham. He then killed the family dog and took his own life. Moving light on his application for a shotgun license, and with Kelly wanting to take a break from their relationship, needham took a final act of control over his whole family. So, before we hear all about Kelly, ava and Lexi, I wanted to flag that Kelly's identical twin sister, emma, has set up a foundation in their memory. I've linked to the foundation website in the episode notes and have also donated the foundation to to remember Kelly, ava and Lexi.
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I've used a lot of news articles for this episode, as well as an ITV documentary called Murder in the Family, which includes lots of family footage as well as interviews with Kelly's family and friends. All the sources are in the episode notes, as are sources and information about support, if you need it. So Kelly Fitzgibbons was born in 1980 and, as I said, had an identical twin sister, emma. She was described as being really fun, loving, with a zest for life, and in a newspaper article her twin sister Emma said quote Kelly was a wonderful and special person. She was kind, caring, funny and always smiling, with an amazing love for life. Kelly also apparently loved dancing, and on the ITV documentary Murder in the Family, there's a clip of a home video which showed Kelly, emma and another friend dancing and singing to Wanna Be by the Spice Girls in 1996. I think some of us can massively remember doing exactly the same thing. Apparently, both twins were really popular and they were just great friends.
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Now, when Kelly was 26 years old, she met Robert Needham. Rob, according to friends, was quiet and quite introverted but clearly adored Kelly. He was really dependable, apparently, and they just settled down when they met and the next year they moved in together. Now again, friends and family described Rob as socially quite shy. They thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy and after a few years together. Kelly was so excited when she found out she was pregnant with Ava.
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Her and Rob moved in with Rob's mum before Kelly gave birth, so they lived in her house in a place called Woodman Coat in West Sussex. Woodman Coat is a village with a population of around 3,000 people. It's in the county of Gloucestershire and about three miles from Cheltenham in the south of England. The name actually means Woodman's Cottage in Old English, apparently. So Kelly and Rob were living there rent-free because Rob was building an extension For his mum and they lived upstairs and his mother lived downstairs in the house. So they did sort of have separate living areas to Rob's mum.
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Their daughter, ava, was born and they both adored her. Ava was just four years old when she was killed and soon after she was born she was joined by a younger sister, lexie, who apparently was a mini Kelly, really outgoing and cheeky, and Lexie was just two years old when she was killed and Kelly just loved being a mother. It was everything she ever wanted, her sister said in a news article, quote she was a dedicated and loving mother and adored Rob and her two beautiful children. So moving on to Rob, he was 42 years old when he died. He was a builder and had a successful business and apparently he adored his family. In the ITV documentary it showed home videos of him playing with the girls. He never complained and seemed to be a really great dad, though a friend on the ITV documentary did say that she never really heard Rob talk about his feelings.
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Apparently Rob told one of his friends that he found his life quite boring, which made his friend maybe think that he wasn't as content as they thought he was, and although family and friends thought he was like a good guy, if a bit quiet, around the time of the murders the newspaper the Times quoted a neighbour of theirs in Woodman Coat who said quote, kelly was alright but he was a bully. He wouldn't speak to me but I heard them arguing a lot. He used to lock the dog in the garden and leave it to bark all night. So there definitely seemed to be some different layers to Rob that maybe he didn't sort of show everyone all the time and in the ITV documentary friends and family talked a lot about how Rob was away with his building work and that maybe him being away was getting longer. Once him and Kelly had two children he often stayed away in the week and sometimes also worked over the weekend as well, and people were sort of reflected that maybe that meant he was actually trying to escape from family life. I can't imagine how hard this was for Kelly, though, when I raised two young children. When your partner isn't there all the time must have been really tough, and there's an occasion, described in the ITV documentary, when Kelly was taking Rob to the doctors as he'd found a lump in his nose, so he was getting a biopsy. Now she was really worried, and it turned out that Rob didn't tell anyone what the results of that biopsy or other tests were. So it turned out that the issues with his nose were the result of a long lasting cocaine addiction. No one in the family had any idea.
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In 2020, it seemed that Rob Needham had everything he ever wanted A loving partner in Kelly, two wonderful daughters and a thriving business. However, he was apparently becoming more introverted and looking back at his family, and looking back was possibly struggling with the responsibility of a young family. When Ava was one month old in 2015, rob applied for a gun license to shoot rabbits. As part of the application asked questions about whether he had any previous convictions or any mental health illnesses. He said no to both questions. He was lying, and when the police did some follow-up inquiries, he actually admitted that he did have a history of mental health issues and when asked why he hadn't put that on the application, he said that Kelly had filled it out. He was lying again. The police, though, thought this reason was justified and they granted him a gun license. On the 20th of March 2020, a few days before the country went into a huge national lockdown, although Covid lockdowns were already being talked about, rob went out and he bought a semi-automatic rifle Six days after the country went into a national Covid lockdown.
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On Saturday, 28th of March 2020, rob Needham began the day by putting up a playhouse for his daughters in the garden of the home that he shared with Kelly and his mother. A mere 24 hours later, on Sunday, the 29th of March, kelly's uncle would be climbing through the upstairs window of that house, concerned about the family. What he found would haunt him forever. Going back to that Saturday, the family had a relatively normal day. Emma and Kelly exchanged messages on Instagram about a photo Emma had put up of her children. She said that that was the last time she ever spoke to Kelly.
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Around seven o'clock on the Saturday night, kelly and Rob put the girls to bed. As normal, they were both asleep in the master bedroom and their parents ordered a Chinese takeaway. Around 9pm Rob spoke to his half sister on FaceTime and then they both settled down to eat the takeaway and Kelly went to bed soon after, unbeknownst to her. When Kelly was in bed sleeping with the girls sleeping next to her, rob was downstairs gathering his gun that he just bought and loading it with bullets. This is going to be really tough. It's going to be a tough lesson to him.
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Rob heard Kelly go to the bathroom upstairs and he walked up into the master bedroom. He shot both his daughters and Kelly must have come running out of the bathroom, and he shot her too when she was on the landing. She was wounded, but still alive, and she ran into the bedroom, presumably to protect her daughters from the nightmare was happening. While she was on the bed. Rob shot her in the back of the head. He then shot their family dog on the landing and at some point later killed himself. How long after, no one knows. It really breaks my heart to think that because Rob shot the girls before Kelly that she knew what was happening before he killed her. She knew that the girls were in trouble and that it was Rob that had done it. It feels particularly callous from him.
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The police won't actually say what time they think the family died, but Kelly's sister, emma, believes that Kelly and the girls died on the Saturday night and that Rob died a long time after, not only from the levels of digestion of their food, but also apparently that night he made a couple of charity donations and also forwarded a friend of video at 11.45pm. So on the Sunday, once Kelly's uncle had discovered the horrific scene, the police were called. This really reminds me of the case of the Mokkuri family, as they were also discovered by a friend climbing up a ladder to look in the upstairs window. Unlike the Mokkuri family, what the police found when they went into that house will stay with many of them forever. The police found the girls Ava and Lexie in the master bedroom. Ava was near the door and had been shot at close range. Lexie was lying next to her sister, also shot at close range. As we know, kelly was on the bed, shot twice and killed by a shot to the back of her head. The family dog, billy, was also shot and killed, and as was Rob, whose bullet wound was self-inflicted. He was found with the firearm next to him. After the police had secured the scene, they issued a statement. Chief Superintendent Jerry Westerman of Sussex Police said this is to believe to be an isolated incident contained to one property. In these early stages of the investigation, we are not seeking anyone else in connection with the incident.
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This is a very similar quote that we hear from many familiar sides. Emma describes what it felt like for her and her family when they found out what happened. She writes on the foundation website. Quote On the 29th of March 2020, my wonderful twin sister, kelly Fitzgibbons, and those of her beautiful girls, ava and Lexie, ended so tragically. All three had been shot by her horrific murder at the hand of Kelly's partner, the girl's dad, who then went on to take his own life. I feel like I've been living in a nightmare or some police drama ever since. It's been the most horrific experience of my and my family's lives and as the shock slowly wears off, we are faced with the distressing reality that our new lives will have to continue without those three beautiful girls in it. Such a devastating and daunting prospect for so many people. There have been so many things I've learned over the last six months, things I wish I'd never need to know or experience. Unfortunately, I have. So, rather than drown in my own tears and grief, I want to share this knowledge and provide some much needed help and support to anyone else unfortunate to have to go through such a traumatic and devastating loss. I also want to campaign for changes to gun laws and licenses, as some simple changes could prevent other similar tragedies. I want to make Kelly proud and ensure her Ava and Lexie's memory lives on, although once met, they were impossible to forget. So this is for you, cal, the wind beneath my wings.
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After the horrific murders of Kelly, ava and Lexie, the one question so many people had was why? Why had Rob done this? What had made him kill his whole family? The senior investigating officer at SIO for the incident said that when something like this happens, it really turns everyone's idea of repair upside down. She also said that Rob had no history of violence or domestic abuse, and the inquest into the deaths of Kelly, ava and Lexie was carried out in July, two years later, and the coroner found they'd all been killed unlawfully and that Rob had taken his own life. Bbc News article talks about the inquest where assistant West Sussex coroner Bridget Dolan QC said, quote what is clear is that all three cruelly and needlessly lost their lives, having had them taken away from them by Rob Needham, she continued, quote Really, why this tragedy occurred remains completely unclear. Years after the murders, family and friends are still asking why Rob did what he did. They look back and wonder if they really knew him or did they miss the signs?
Speaker 1:
As we know, rob did have a history of mental health issues which he reported to his GP, and this was known to the firearm licensing team and the police. The investigators couldn't find any recent interaction with his GP about his mental health though. Also, as we've spoken before, rob had a long-term cocaine issue which he hid from everyone. Absolutely no one knew about it. He was also a habitual drinker. The family all commented on it. They thought that he must have been drunk and high to do what he did. Actually, toxicology results from the incident shows that Rob had no drugs and very little alcohol in his body at the time of his death. This supports what we know about family and eye laters. They coldly plan and carry out murders with clear-headed callousness.
Speaker 1:
It also turned out that Kelly and Rob were having difficulties in their relationship. The ITV documentary showed what's up from Kelly asking him if he was coming back from the pub, if he was still out drinking, and that they both needed to make more of an effort. She did say in one message that she didn't feel like she could be herself with him, which was really worrying. She also said sometimes that she wasn't looking forward to coming home because all the girls heard was lots of shouting. She said she wanted to leave him and that he should get some help. There really seemed to be lots of challenges that they were facing together as a family. I'm sure the Covid lockdown didn't help. It also turned out that the year before Rob had actually closed his building businesses due to an issue with an £8,000 tax bill. He was still working as a builder, though, but it raises the question of whether there were bigger money worries in the family, With Covid lockdown putting a stop to building work. I can imagine he was under financial pressure.
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Kelly's brother on the ITV documentary talked about some of the timings of Rob's interaction with guns and firearms and how they connected to incidents in his life, as we talked about before, a month after Ava was born, he made his first shotgun licence application, the one that he lied on. One month after Lexi was born, he bought a gun. When his dad died, he upgraded his shotgun licence to a firearm licence, which means he could own different types of gun. When the world went into lockdown, he bought a semi-automatic rifle. I don't think these timings were coincidences. As Kelly's brother said on the documentary. Maybe it was his way of regaining control over his life when something happened out of his control. We'll come back to these gun licence issues soon.
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Remember as well that this was all taking place in the context of a COVID lockdown, which saw a rise in domestic homicides and domestic abuse. Looking back at that time, data has shown that there were at least 16 suspected domestic homicide killings in the UK, far higher than the average rate for that time of year. Harron and Garda Smith is the founder of the Counting Dead Women website and the Femmicide Census, and I actually worked with her on the first ever Femmicide Census when I was at Women's Aid. She counted the 16 domestic homicides between the 23rd of March and the 12th of April in the UK during the COVID lockdown.
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So we have a man who was maybe struggling with family life, feeling like everything was out of control, living with a cocaine addiction that he was keeping from his family and friends, having lost his business and just gone into COVID lockdown and potentially losing work, not able to escape with work or to the pub, with a struggling relationship and with legal access to guns. I think we have someone who is feeling huge pressures financially and personally and who'd probably never learnt how to talk about or express his feelings. Similar to Robert Mockrey, he had a very masculine view of the man as the provider and the patriarch and that struggling or talking about it was failing and a weakness. I've said before on this podcast that I will never shame anyone for living with mental health issues as I do, but it is absolutely no excuse for killing your whole family, no matter the pressures he was under.
Speaker 1:
The responsibility for the murders of Kelly, ava and Lexi lies with him him only. Looking at Rob's life and his issues of mental health, I truly believe, as Kelly's family do, that he absolutely should never have been granted a gun licence. He was. He absolutely should have also undergone further chats when he wanted to upgrade it to a firearms licence. If he hadn't had access to guns, it's hard to say whether he would have still killed his family. He definitely wouldn't have been able to do it as easily as he did, and this is something that Emma and Kelly's family and friends feel really passionate about and are campaigning for changes to gun laws in this country. In a statement following the inquest, kelly's family talked about the monitoring of gun licences and sharing information between police and GPs are total shambles. They said quote we firmly believe that if Rob hadn't legally accessed a weapon that allowed him to kill in such a fast and cowardly way, they would still be here now, and they are calling for a number of changes to gun licensing. They've met with politicians and the media to campaign for these changes and they're asking for 10 key changes. These are all detailed on the foundation's website, but they are here as well Wait.
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Number one gun reviews should be carried out more frequently. Number two full medical should be carried out and face to face. Number three applicants with a history of mental health, depression and anger management issues should not hold a licence or there should be a cap on the number of episodes of reoccurring depression. Number four GPs should be flagging patients who have gun licences. Number five closer sharing of information by the police, doctor's surgery and the home office who received the gun application. Number six applicants need to declare the purpose of holding a gun, both on their initial application and if they apply for a different type of gun. Number seven the scenarios when the removal of a gun needs to happen must be clearly agreed upon and applied. Number eight applicants should be made to pay the tree cost of a gun licence to therefore ensure a robust application process is applied. Number nine guns should be stored in a facility away from the home, either as a gun club or a locked storage facility off their property. And number 10, applicants found to be dishonest as part of the application process should not be able to continue with the process, and I, for one, completely agree with their campaigning calls, and particularly the last one. You know, even applicants lied on their initial application, as Rob Newdom did. Why are they going through? Why are they allowed to continue through with the process and get access to a gun? You can find out more on the foundation's website and also donate to them as well, if you can.
Speaker 1:
As we bring this episode to a close, I think it's only right to end with a quote from Kelly's family Quote. We don't want Kelly, ava and Lexi to be remembered as murder victims. We want their memory as the beautiful and very loved souls they were to live on. We miss them every single day. They've left a hole in our hearts that will never ever be filled. So we will remember Kelly, ava and Lexi as the loving people and kids they were and think about the joy they brought to everyone around them.
Speaker 1:
This has been Killer in the Family podcast, written and produced by me, claire Laxton, with music from the brilliant Tom Box and Pixabay. I'll be back next week with the very exciting International Women's Day episode. So please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and don't forget to send me any comments or questions on a voice note or DM my Instagram profile at Killer in the Family pod. Do let me know any stories you'd like me to cover as well. Until then, I've been Claire Laxton. This is the award shortlisted Killer in the Family podcast. Until next time, take care you.