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Killer in the family podcast
A true crime podcast exploring men who kill their families.
Killer in the family podcast
Episode 38 - The Foster Family
In August 2008 Jill Foster and her 15 year old daughter Kirstie were shot and killed by their husband and father Christopher Foster. A successful businessman who was staring down the loss of his empire and home – he shot and killed his wife and daughter before killing his dogs and horses and setting his house on fire and taking his own life. Having talked about taking his life in the months before, Foster was a cry for help that no one heard.
This is the story of The Foster Family.
Information and support
· Samaritans UK Contact Us | Samaritans
· National Domestic Violence Helpline UK 0808 2000 247
· Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA) Home - AAFDA
· Women’s Aid www.womensaid.org.uk
· Mental health support USA I'm looking for mental health help for myself | Mental Health America (mhanational.org)
· Domestic abuse helpline USA 1.800.799.SAFE Domestic Violence Support | National Domestic Violence Hotline (thehotline.org)
References
Clare Laxton is fundraising for Women's Aid Federation Of England (justgiving.com)
Watch Crimes That Shook Britain S4 | Prime Video (amazon.co.uk)
Christopher Foster | Crime + Investigation UK (crimeandinvestigation.co.uk)
Brother's plea on Oswestry mansion tragedy | Shropshire Star
Chris Foster, The Millionaire in So Much Debt He Committed Familicide – History and Things
'I've thought about doing myself in loads of times ...' | Crime | The Guardian
Foster family funerals held | Shropshire Star
Credits
Hosted and created by Clare Laxton @ladylaxton
Produced by: Clare Laxton
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Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. And before we start, I have an exciting summer podcast giveaway for you all. It is a lovely Killer in the Family t-shirt, size small, and Killer in the Family water bottle. They were both actually modelled by my great friend Kirsty at CrimeCon earlier this year. Don't worry, you get your own t-shirt and water bottle, and the competition has launched on Instagram at Killer in the Family pod today. The winner will be announced next week in the last episode before I take a break for the summer. So let's get into this week's episode.
Speaker 1:This case is probably one of the best known and widely reported familial sites in the UK. Like, if you google family annihilator or familial site in the UK, this will be one of the first cases that you come across and I thought it was time to talk about it in an episode. So in August 2008, jill Foster and her 15-year-old daughter, kirstie, were shot and killed by their husband and father, christopher Foster, a successful businessman who was staring down the loss of his empire and home. He shot and killed his wife and daughter before killing his dogs and horses, setting the house on fire and taking his own life, having talked about taking his life in the months before Foster was a cry for help, but no one heard. This is the story of the most infamous stories of familicide in the uk and probably one of the most covered news wise. As with so many stories we talk about, much of the focus of the media coverage is on Christopher Foster himself, rather than centering, or sometimes even mentioning, the victims. So I'll do my best to try and counter that here, but it is important to say that so much of the news articles are about Chris, and you know I really struggle to find loads of information about Jill and Kirsty, but I've done my best, so I relied mostly on news articles for the episode, as well as an episode of a series called Crimes that Shook Britain, which is available on Amazon Prime.
Speaker 1:I also tried to get hold of a book called Murder in Mazebrook by Elizabeth Yardley, who authored some of the research on family annihilators that we've talked about before. I just couldn't access this book. It wasn't available anywhere, so I'm really sorry about that, as I think it's probably really good and insightful as well. I wanted to flag two as well as homicide and suicide, this episode also deals with childhood sexual abuse, so here's the trigger warning. I've linked to all my sources and there's also information in the episode notes on where you can get support if you need it. And, as I said, I couldn't find loads about the background of Jill or Christopher Foster, and particularly Jill, and it doesn't surprise me because so much of the media focus was on him rather than his victims, which is absolutely classic. But what I do know is that Jill was brought up with her sister Anne and brother Roger, and that it was actually Anne who introduced her to Christopher Foster in 1983. Anne had met Foster through a friend and Jill brought him to Anne's wedding later on in 1983 as her boyfriend. Jill was 49 years old when she was killed by her husband. Christopher Foster was born in Burnley in 1958 and grew up with a brother, andrew.
Speaker 1:Andrew spoke quite a lot in the documentary that I watched for this episode, so we'll hear from him quite a bit. One of the things that Andrew talks about in the documentary is that he and Foster had quite a difficult relationship and Andrew attributes this to Foster sexually abusing him when he was younger. Andrew told the Shropshire Star wait. I told the officer that when I was 11 and Chris was 15 or 16, chris told me about the facts of life. This continued on and off and eventually he showed me pornographic magazines. After a while he started to sexually abuse me. The abuse was about control. He always denied it, but there was a pattern in Chris's life and it revolved around controlling other people. Andrew also talked about the sexual abuse as being about Foster having a very dominant form of masculinity. He sort of had to be that really clear heterosexual male. This is really interesting and something that we will come back to, and to me this sort of sexual abuse of his younger brother is such a huge part of Foster's personality and childhood, but there was so little information out there about it. I'm so sorry that Andrew had to go through that and indeed he has talked about feeling suicidal himself and that these issues of Foster seem to really be brushed under the carpet after he killed his wife and child.
Speaker 1:What else I do know about Foster and Jill is that after meeting and dating in 1983, they married in 1987. Anne Giddings, jill's sister, talks about how she never really liked Foster when she first met him. Quote when I first met Chris, I thought he was a creep. My mum and dad were taken in, but they were naive. Chris was completely power mad. He always had to belittle everyone else. He had a huge ego, couldn't stand the sight of him and was stunned when my sister fell for him. Now, before we go any further, I really want to reflect on what Foster's brother and Jill's sister said about him that he was controlling, he had a huge ego and was very charming. Now, from the outset, these descriptions say to me that he has the makings of a narcissist and coercive controller. Apparently, he was quite quick to temper as well. Now, by 1988, the Fosters were a normal couple living in the Midlands and Chris Foster was a salesman. Their lives were about to change drastically, though.
Speaker 1:Foster watched the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster in 1988 and had an idea. For those of you who haven't heard about Piper Alpha, it was an oil rig in the North Sea, sort of near Aberdeen and just off the coast in Aberdeen in Scotland. An oil rig in the North Sea, sort of near Aberdeen and just off the coast in Aberdeen in Scotland. In early July 1988, there was a huge explosion on the oil rig and this led to massive fires. It killed 165 of the men who were on board the oil rig and two rescue workers. The accident is actually the worst ever offshore oil and gas disaster in terms of lives lost. An inquiry into it blamed it on inadequate maintenance and safety procedures. No charges were brought. Now I remember watching a TV programme called the Day I Nearly Died and there was an episode about the Piper Alpha disaster and it was just truly horrific.
Speaker 1:Where the rest of the world saw devastation and huge human loss, where the rest of the world saw devastation and huge human loss, foster saw a business opportunity. He actually invented a new oil rig sealant that could withstand high temperatures. I mean, I'm not going to talk about it much more as I really don't understand the science around it, but by 1996 foster had patented the product, which he called olhield, and it had its own five star safety rating. And boy did this invention bring five star luxury into his and his family's lives. Foster's business absolutely skyrocketed and the turnover went from about 50k a month to about a million pounds a month. And the turnover went from about 50k a month to about a million pounds a month. By this time Jill and Foster had welcomed a daughter into their family when Kirsty was born. Kirsty apparently just loved anything to do with horses. She loved being around them. She loved cleaning the stables, being with her friends and horses and she was just horse mad. She also loved chatting to her friends on text and MSN Messenger. She was just 15 years old when she was killed by her father.
Speaker 1:Now, according to the documentary on Amazon that I was talking about and Foster's former personal assistant, foster loved spending money. She said he wasn't trying to keep up with the Joneses, he was more like trying to beat them. Foster bought tractors, trailers, horses and cars. Him and Joe actually had his and hers Porsches. They had a Ferrari, they had two Range Rovers and Foster also loved shooting, especially clay pigeon shooting, so he spent a lot of money on high quality guns and rifles. His personal assistant said that for her success and money really changed him. He needed help handling money. He couldn't do it on his own. He couldn't budget. She said to her enough was never enough. He always wanted more and more. Money didn't really seem to achieve happiness through money. Now his brother, andrew, said that Foster's compulsive spending was coupled with a hatred of tax, which is interesting. Apparently, in his business, foster exploited a lot of loopholes in the tax system to fund his lifestyle, so he wasn't paying VAT or national insurance. Now, for all of us who do pay our taxes, that seems like a pretty stupid thing to do and a pretty risky strategy to me.
Speaker 1:By the mid 2000s, because of his huge spending, foster was already pretty overstretched on his finances. That didn't stop him buying a huge mansion in Shropshire, though Apparently in 2004, jill had picked up a copy of the magazine Shropshire Life in a supermarket and saw Osbaston House in Maesbrook. It had 16 acres of land, a lake stables and a huge mansion. It was for sale for £1.1 million and Foster bought it straight away. The journalist and author John Ronson actually went to Maesbrook after the murders and wrote an article about it for the Guardian, and in this article he describes Maesbrook as, quote a beautiful, well-to-do village on the Welsh borders. The houses are vine-covered Georgian mansions, the cars parked in the driveways are Range Rovers and Porsches. People of Maysbrook are, by and large, self-made millionaires from Birmingham and Wolverhampton, entrepreneurs who've made it big, and I'm sure Foster saw himself like that as well.
Speaker 1:Now, a few years later, foster became embroiled in a legal dispute with his supplier. He was trying to source his products cheaper and was sued by his original supplier. He tried everything to get out of it, including going into bankruptcy and starting a new business in a new name, as he didn't want to give up anything that he thought he'd earned. But in September 2007, the company was placed in liquidation and Foster was removed. Now Andrew Foster's brother described him to be in a pretty desperate place as accountants took over the company. So from September 2007, foster actually had nothing to do. He wasn't earning any money from the business, but he was still spending and keeping up appearances of that extravagant lifestyle.
Speaker 1:By this point as well, jill and Foster's marriage was in trouble. Apparently, they were both having an affair with Foster having something like eight mistresses and living very separate lives. I can imagine they might have been staying together for Kirsty maybe also to keep up appearances again, which was so important to Foster. So by 2008, the Foster family were living in Osbuston House in Shropshire. Kirsty was 15 years old, probably about to start stressing about GCSEs, spending her time chatting with friends on MSN Messenger. I used to spend hours and hours messaging friends on MSN Messenger with classic chat like BRB and winking emojis from a huge desktop computer that was usually in the family lounge and where someone tried to pick up the phone and then they couldn't, because it was you were trying to be on the internet, anyway, but at this point, jill and Foster were living very separate lives and, although they had the outward look of a happy marriage, both of them probably knew that it wasn't a great marriage and unbeknownst to everyone else.
Speaker 1:Foster was in deep financial trouble. His big spending, hatred of taxes and trouble with his business had led to huge debts by the time he murdered his wife and daughter and took his own life. Foster owed HMRC Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs over £1 million in back taxes, according to the Crime and Investigation website. To try and cover his debt, foster had remortgaged Osbuston House three times over. He had 20 different bank accounts, with one being overdrawn by over £300,000. He was facing bankruptcy. Basically, it turned out that the bailiffs were coming as well. Collect on the range of debts that foster had run up.
Speaker 1:In early 2008, foster was prescribed antidepressants by his gp and admitted to a couple of friends that he was feeling suicidal. Now, being prescribed antidepressants in itself is not an indication that someone is about to go and commit murder. I'm not about shaming people with mental health problems here. As you know, I live myself with mental health problems. Talking about suicide is concerning, though, and I feel that something could have been done for him here. Foster apparently spoke to a business associate about how he was feeling and what was going on with his debts. He said quote they're not having my stuff, I will cop myself. They will carry me out of the house in a box. And how prescient this quote would become. On august bank holiday in 2008, the Fosters had gone clay pigeon shooting at a friend's house and they had a barbecue there. They returned to Osbuston house not too late, and it's thought that Jill and Kirsty went to bed, though Kirsty was texting her friends and messaging friends on MSN until Foster turned the internet off.
Speaker 1:Very early the next morning, the Foster's neighbours called 999 to report a fire at Osbuston House, and emergency services responded quickly. Now, according to police, it was actually the sound of the fire that alerted neighbours, so we are talking about huge flames here. What the fire service found when they got to the electric gates of Osbuston House was a horse box blocking the gate, with its tyres blown out. Clearly, it had been put there deliberately to stop emergency services getting into the house. This was the first indication to them that this could be something very different than an accidental house fire. When they eventually got through the gates and up the drive, they found the main house, stables and garages completely ravaged by fire.
Speaker 1:The fire service got the flames under control, but realised that maybe the fire wasn't the only thing that was happening at the house this night. They couldn't find any of the foster family who lived at the property, and so initially the police started a missing persons inquiry, hoping the family were on holiday or had fled. They were looking at you know things like had they used their passport, been at an airport or a port? Has their cars or any of their cars been seen anywhere? So they were sort of going down this road of missing persons inquiry. At the same time, emergency and other emergency responders started the long process of trawling through the rubble of the mansion and outbuildings. On Friday that week, so four days after the fire, the dead bodies of Jill and Foster were found on the ground floor of the house. It turned out that they had fallen from their bedroom three floors down due to the fire ravaging the house. The search continued and Kirsty's dead body was found two days later, on the Sunday, the missing persons inquiry was called off and instead the police focused their attention on trying to piece together what had happened that night and early morning Through their investigation, which involved talking to friends, families and neighbours of the Fosters, as well as looking into Foster's business dealings and CCTV from the house. What they pieced together was more awful and devastating than anyone could imagine.
Speaker 1:Early in the morning on Tuesday, the 26th of August, the Foster CCTV caught Chris Foster at 3.09am. He was slowly yet deliberately walking towards the stables with a gun in his hand. He shot his horses. You can see the light from the gunshot on the CCTV. He then drove the horse box down to the front gate and flooded the house, the stables and the garage with oil and lit the flame. You could see the start of the fire on the CCTV. Before Foster shot his horses and he killed his dogs as well. He had coldly shot and killed his wife Jill in the back of the head as she slept. He then went into 15-year-old Kirsty's route and shot and killed her in the back of the head as well. It is thought that they were both asleep when they were killed A small mercy for them there. Foster was taking a systematic approach to killing his family and destroying his whole life that early morning he then lay down on the bed next to Jill and took his own life via the fire that he had started. Later on that morning, a few hours after the fire, and when the house was overrun with the fire service and police, the bailiffs came to collect on Foster's debt.
Speaker 1:The killing of Jill and Kirsty Foster and the taking of his own life prompted the national media and local community to ask why. Why had Foster done what he had done? How does someone come to the position where they feel like they have to do that to themselves and their family? When people found out about the level of debt that was spiralling around Foster, they were surprised he was still living such an extravagant lifestyle, and no one would have guessed that he was under such financial strain. Seemingly like Robert Mockrey, who we talked about in episode two, he was a classic anomic family annihilator who felt forced into doing what he did because of financial pressures. What did come out, though, was that Foster did confide in a few people that he was considering taking his own life. We know he'd been to his GP and had been prescribed antidepressants, and it turned out, in the days before he killed his whole family, he was searching suicide websites on the internet. Was it? When he talked about how he was feeling? People just didn't take what he said seriously. Maybe they didn't know how to help him? At the barbecue that the Fosters attended the night before, foster was said to be in a good mood and no one could think of any warning signs from that evening.
Speaker 1:In the Guardian article I mentioned earlier by John Ronson, he went to visit Maesbrook and talked to people about the Fosters and why they thought he did what he did. And what Ronson found was men in the community feeling very similar things to Foster, not about killing their wife and children, but about taking their own lives. They talked about the stresses they were facing and how that made them feel. And when Ronson asked why they didn't talk about how they were feeling, one man said quote we're supposed to be manly. We're not supposed to get upset. We're supposed to be the breadwinners and the providers, especially in our children's eyes. We're supposed to do miracles. And I sort of come back to how we described Foster earlier on in the episode, as you know, having a very dominant belief of what masculinity was and what sort of heterosexual masculinity was, and I'm sure he um, you know, thought he had to be the provider and you everything for his family, and if he couldn't do that then he was a failure and he didn't want people to see that. So I wonder if that sort of gender norms around being manly and not talking about how you're feeling was really playing into how Foster was feeling.
Speaker 1:And John Ronson in this article talks about how he thinks it makes sense that Foster shot Jill and Kirsty in the backs of the head because he was ashamed of looking at them. He mused that Foster maybe couldn't bear the idea of losing the respect of Jill and Kirsty as his mounting debts and business failures came out. And when talking about whether he planned what he did, ronson found that people thought he definitely planned it. Quote oh, he was meticulous that night. That's weeks of planning, isn't it? When do you think he did the planning, I ask? John Ronson asks, probably in the middle of the night when he couldn't sleep. That's when people's brains start thinking about that kind of thing, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Now, when, thinking about why, why Chris took Kirsty and Jill's life, andrew Foster, chris's brother, thought that maybe Jill said she was leaving him. The decision that he was going to take his own life it sort of freed him to make any decision he wanted and from any consequences of that decision, and that's when he decided to take Jill and Kirsty's lives, because no one else mattered to him. By that point, I think there are lots of similarities here between Foster and Robert Mochrie because, again, mochrie so meticulously planned to take his whole family with him when he took his own life and the financial pressures and stresses on him and on the marriage seemed to just be weighing down on him at that point. Now there's also a question about how Foster was able to own so many guns and we talked about this in episode 23, about Kelly, ava and Lexi Fitzgibbons, who were killed by partner and father Robert Needham, who'd lied on his gun licence application and said and hadn't told them that he was living with depression. Now Kelly's sister campaigns on changes to gun laws now to ensure people with gun licences who live with mental health problems are flagged on a system and their licences are reviewed more regularly. It's something that Chris's brother, andrew, has spoken out about as well, calling for more cooperation between police and health services around gun licenses.
Speaker 1:No matter the reasons why Foster did what he did, I think it is really clear that he had a very controlling and narcissistic personality. So when he decided that he was going to take his own life, he then decided he was going to take Jill and Kirsty's lives as well, maybe because he thought they shouldn't or couldn't live without him and that he didn't want them to live without him. Basically, it's like as we talked about in the episode about the Tote family he killed his children because he thought he had that right, because he brought them into this world as well. So I think, whatever we you know, whatever the theories are around why Foster did what he did, I think we can be sure that he did what he did because he wanted to and it was the best thing for him.
Speaker 1:Jill and Kirsty's funerals were held in December 2008 in a small church, st John's in Mazebrook, and according to the Shropshire Star, over 100 people crammed into the tiny church to pay respects to the mother and daughter. People crammed into the tiny church to pay respects to the mother and daughter. Now, in a quite unusual move, foster's funeral was held later on the same day in the same place. Usually, the perpetrator is buried very separately from the people he killed and in a very private ceremony. Tony Sadler, who was the verger for Jill and Kirsty's funeral said, quote no one could have predicted that such a tragedy as this could happen in the depths of this beautiful Shropshire countryside. As Christians, we're required to forgive, but for many at the moment, that is a step too far. The wounds are too raw. Moment, that is a step too far. The wounds are too raw now.
Speaker 1:He also spoke just a few hours later at foster's funeral. I'm not going to talk about what he said because actually, um, I don't think it's as important. But what is important is that so much of the media coverage, particularly around the funerals and this whole story, talks about it as a whole as a tragedy which it is but no one talks really clearly about Foster as a murderer of his wife and child. They just talk about it as generally like, oh, just a tragedy for everyone, and I think everyone has been way too sympathetic to him. They seem to be completely excusing his actions, sometimes even justifying them once news of his financial stresses came out, and completely forgetting about the lives he took. None of this, please, no. And as if it wasn't heartbreaking enough that Foster had his funeral on the same day in the same place as Jill and Kirsty, the woman and child he had murdered.
Speaker 1:In another heartbreaking move, foster is actually buried next to Jill and Kirsty next to Jill and Kirsty. Now, I couldn't quite get to the bottom of how this happened, but one Mirror article alluded to quite a bit of argument and disputes within the family, and whatever the argument was, it seems that whoever wanted Foster buried with the wife and daughter he murdered won, because that's where he is. Jill's sister, anne, finds this just totally heartbreaking and when talking about not being able to visit Jill and Kirsty's grave, she told the mirror quote it's not personal with him there. I can't go and talk to her because it feels like he's listening in. It's like he's haunting us forever, decade later, and he's managed to keep on controlling her from the grave. I just find this truly horrific and demonstrates how the actions of Foster have been completely justified. In what other circumstances would it be thought totally OK for a murderer to be buried next to the people he killed in cold blood? And before you know, I get even more angry and rant even more. I'm going to finish this episode and I'm going to dedicate it to Jill and Kirsty Foster, to their lives that ended too soon and to the joy they brought to their family, friends and community. This episode is dedicated to you both.
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 another episode, so please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Don't forget to send me any comments or questions to my Insta at KillerInTheFamilyPod, or through a text via the episode notes. Do let me know any stories you'd like me to cover as well. Until then, I've been Claire Laxton. This is KillerInTheFamilyPodcast. Until next time, take care, thank you, thank you.
