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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 69 - The Gossett Family
In February 2018, in the quiet town of Derrylin, Northern Ireland, a fire tore through a remote bungalow. Inside were the bodies of four family members — Denise Gossett, 45, her children Sabrina, 19, and Roman, 16, and Sabrina’s baby daughter, 15-month-old Morgana. The only survivor was Denise’s partner, 33-year-old Daniel Allen — the man responsible for their murders.
Allen was a violent, coercive, and controlling man who forced the family to live under different names, isolated them from the outside world, and moved them from place to place to maintain his grip on them. His campaign of terror ended in a deliberate act of unspeakable violence. Today, Allen is serving a 29-year life sentence — one of the longest ever handed down in Northern Ireland — for the brutal, calculated murder of an entire family.
This is the story of the Gossett Family.
Information and support
· Samaritans UK Contact Us | Samaritans
· Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA) Home - AAFDA
· Women’s Aid Home - Women's Aid
· National Domestic Abuse Helpline UK 0808 2000 247
· Mental health support USA Mental Health America | Homepage | Mental Health America
· Domestic abuse helpline USA 1.800.799.SAFE Domestic Violence Support | National Domestic Violence Hotline
References
Derrylin fire: 'Strange' story of Daniel Allen who killed family - BBC News
Man jailed for 29 years over house fire that killed three generations of same family
Man who killed three generations of family has ‘disturbing part of make-up’ | The Standard
PPS statement following sentencing of Daniel Allen | Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland
Derrylin: Children's murders 'could not have been anticipated' - BBC News
Court judgement The King v Daniel Sebastian Allen.pdf
Credits
Hosted and created by Clare Laxton @ladylaxton
Produced by: Clare Laxton
Killer in the family podcast (buzzsprout.com)
Music from Pixabay.
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https://www.buymeacoffee.com/clarelaxton
Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. I'm your host, claire Laxton. Welcome to episode 69 of Kill it In the Family and I hope you enjoyed last week's episode with Kim Davis. Let me know if you've started listening to Slaycation podcast and what you think of it. Without further ado, let's get into this episode. Without further ado, let's get into this episode.
Speaker 1:In February 2018, in the quiet town of Derelyn, northern Ireland, a fire tore through a remote bungalow. Inside were the bodies of four family members Denise Gossett, her children, sabrina and Roman, and Sabrina's baby daughter, 15-month-old Morgana. The only survivor was Denise's partner, daniel Allen, the man responsible for their murders. Allen was a violent, coercive and controlling man who forced the family to live under different names, isolated them from the outside world and moved them from place to place to maintain his grip on them. His campaign of terror ended in a deliberate act of unspeakable violence. Today, alan is serving a 29-year life sentence, one of the longest ever handed down in Northern Ireland for the brutal, calculated murder of an entire family. This is the story of the Gossett family. Now this is going to be a really tough listen team. Every single episode is we know this, but this one is a particularly tough one, as the family just suffered so much. I've linked to information and support services in the episode notes and all my sources are there as well.
Speaker 1:Now let's start talking about Denise Gossett. She was 45 years old when she was killed by her partner. I couldn't find out loads about her childhood, but when she met Daniel Allen online in 2016, she was living in Scotland. She had two of her children living with her Sabrina, who was around 17 years old at the time, and Roman, who was around 14 years old at the time. Reports suggest that Denise had two other children who had been removed from her care before this time. One of these children was called Samantha, and I'm assuming that she was older than Sabrina, but I don't know for sure. I couldn't find the name of the other child and I'm sure that will be for privacy reasons, which is absolutely right. Now there are some sources that say when Denise met Alan in 2016, she had changed her surname to keep hidden from her ex-partner, who was violent. It's not clear if he was the father of her children, but as someone who has worked with women who've had children removed from their care, I know that domestic abuse and violence is one of the major reasons that children are removed from families. So if Denise's ex-partner was violent, then that could make sense in terms of two of her children being removed from her care. Whatever the reason, the fact that she had children removed from her care made Denise distrustful of professionals and social services and just fear losing her other children for the rest of her life, and to me this makes total sense and something that I've heard from so many women who've had children removed from their care. I don't know if Denise received any support for any domestic abuse she experienced, but if she was trying to hide from her ex-partner, I'm not sure she did, which just breaks my heart. Women who've had children removed from them need and deserve trauma-informed support to help them survive that trauma and thrive in the future. So, anyway, in 2016 we joined Denise, who was living with her two children, sabrina and Roman, in Scotland. As I said, she met Daniel Allen online. One source said that they shared an interest in BDSM, but I couldn't find whether they met through like a specialist BDSM website or another dating website. But they began chatting and were soon dating, and he actually moved to where Denise was in Scotland so they could be together.
Speaker 1:Alan was around 25 years old when he met Denise in 2016. Years old when he met Denise in 2016. He was apparently born in the Midlands and grew up with a brother and his mother after his parents split up when he was about two. He had a relatively troubled childhood and I saw some sources that said that he was abused by some of his mother's partners and, according to the BBC, he ran away to live with his grandparents in Bristol at the age of 12. And it's said that Alan had trouble forming relationships with friends or partners and made most of his connections online. It also turns out that he has a criminal past 2015,. The year before he met Denise, alan was sentenced to four months in prison in Ipswich for threatening to kill a former partner who had accused him of rape. After the sentencing, he actually absconded and took himself off to Scotland, which is, as we know, where he met Denise. So, as we've said, soon after meeting online online Alan came to live with Denise and her two children in Scotland, and soon after this, sabrina gave birth to a daughter called Magana. Now I couldn't find out who the father of Magana was, but because of Denise's fear of social services or potentially and probably Alan's controlling ways.
Speaker 1:The whole family moved to Ireland, to County Kerry. According to court documents, social services in Ireland became involved in the family, so they moved to County Caven and then over the border to Northern Ireland, to Deryllyn in County Fermanagh. Now social services in Northern Ireland were made aware of the family just days before they were killed in february 2018, and it probably won't surprise you that this family life for the gossip family in derelict derelict wasn't a happy one. They rented an isolated bungalow and apparently no one, not even drivers, were allowed in the house. Neither Sabrina although by the time she died she was 19, nor Roman went to school. They didn't work or had any friends, and apparently Alan also insisted that the family use false names. Sometimes Roman would be called Edward, denise was Crystal and Alan himself sometimes used the name Samuel.
Speaker 1:Now, although lots of sources say that this was because Denise was scared of Morgana being removed from their family and so they were scared of social services, I do wonder as well if it was Alan's controlling and coercive ways of keeping that family isolated. He is a classic perpetrator of coercive and controlling behaviour, isolating the family socially but also fostering that environment of fear. Also fostering that environment of fear. So fear of outside agencies, but also other people like neighbours and colleagues, is just such a common tactic for perpetrators of controlling and violence as well. Now, apparently by 2017, alan was communicating with another woman he'd met online through the online game World of Warcraft. He told her that his relationship with Denise was in difficulty and he was actually considering moving to America to be with this new woman. He obviously didn't move, but stayed and continued to exert his control over Denise and her children. I just can't imagine what their life was like for Denise, sabrina and Roman, and particularly Roman. He was a teenage boy. He must have just wanted to go to school and have friends and live a normal teenage life. For Sabrina, who was looking after her baby and probably constantly scared of social services finding them because of what Alan had told her, it just can't have been a happy life at all. Apparently, neighbours who never really saw the family said that Alan had complete control over them. This is going to be a really tough, tough lesson team.
Speaker 1:Early in the morning of the 27th of February 2018, neighbours in Derelin saw smoke and flames coming from a bungalow nearby. Although they didn't know the family that lived there very well, they did know that a family lived there and immediately raised the alarm. According to the BBC, some of the neighbours and the landlord of the Gossett's bungalow even tried to go inside the building to see if they could save any of them, but they were pushed back by ferocious flames. Little did they know that three of the family were already dead before the fire started. They did know that one of the family was safe and alive, daniel Allen. He was outside the house that was on fire and his hands raised and, according to court documents, told people not to go inside. He said that everyone inside was gone and was clearly distressed to neighbours and emergency services.
Speaker 1:According to the BBC, allen admitted that he had started the fire and said quote a promise is a promise. I promise to put them to the next life, as they didn't want to stay here. No, alan admitted that he had started the fire and said quote Once the fire had been extinguished by firefighters. Investigations in the house found the other four members of the family dead and, as I mentioned, postmortems would show that three of them had actually died before the fire started. Now, clearly, alan was the number one suspect for their deaths and was brought in for questioning by the police, he told them that he'd started the fire and took them through what he did that night, some of which I think we should take with a pinch of salt. As with so many of these cases, the victims of these homicides and these familial sides aren't able to tell us what really happened, so the perpetrators often own that story. So I think there are some parts of his story that don't add up which I will flag.
Speaker 1:Alan started by saying that he'd taken the drug ghb. The chemical name for ghb is uh okay, stay with me now gamma hydroxybutyrate um, and it's apparently used as a bit of a party drug in relatively lower doses, but in higher doses it can result in drowsiness, sedation, unconsciousness, seizures and, ultimately, death. According to court documents, ghb can only be traced inside an individual between six and eight hours after it had been taken. So when Alan was tested, it showed that he had about 10 milligrams per litre of GHB in his system, which is a pretty small amount. However, denise's 19-year-old daughter, sabrina, had a reading of 155 milligrams per litre. Her 15-month-old baby, morgana, had a reading of 730 milligrams per litre and 16-year-old Roman had a reading of 486 milligrams per litre. What this meant was that Morgana and Roman probably would have died from the high dose of GHB they had in their systems, probably given to them by Alan. While Sabrina's dose was lower, it still thought that she died before the fire, as she didn't have any soot or smoke in her lungs so she wouldn't have been alive when the fire was raging. Alan claimed that he had strangled Sabrina, but her body was just too damaged to know for certain. The court documents do highlight that Sabrina's blood was found on Alan's clothes, so strangling doesn't seem likely. However, we will never know how she died. An awful aspect of this case was that, apparently, sabrina and her baby Morgana's bodies were lying so close to each other when they died that it was almost like they had merged into one body. They have presumably both been killed by Alan together.
Speaker 1:Now, before we talk about what happened to Denise, I just want to talk about these murders first, like what does it take for a man to give GHB to a 15-month-old baby, and a huge dose as well, a 16-year-old boy and a 19-year-old? It just doesn't bear thinking about at all. Now, what happened to Denise is a different and equally distressing and horrific story. She was found and court documents said that her post-mortem stated quote so Denise was killed in the fire and was alive when Alan started the fire. She also had some GHB in her blood, but again a relatively low dose which wasn't enough to sort of knock her out or anything like that. So she was alive and awake when Alan started that fire and awake when Alan started that fire. And in a last and just really awful awful aspect to Denise's murder was that she was handcuffed to the bed so she couldn't escape.
Speaker 1:Now, alan's story about this was that he and Denise had a suicide pact, so the plan was to take GHB for him to start the fire and then to also handcuff himself to the bed. This didn't happen, though. He was not handcuffed to the bed, and the number of perpetrators who kill their partners and say it was a suicide pact but don't end up taking their own lives themselves is quite high. It's almost like they're lying, and you might be able to tell that. I do not believe that Alan and Denise had a suicide pack. I believe that he coldly and horrifically handcuffed her to the bed, set a light to their home and let her die in one of the worst ways possible. What an absolute bag of crap worst ways possible. What an absolute bag of crap. And it's also really interesting that Alan himself only had relatively minor smoke inhalation from the fire. It's almost like he saved himself after annihilating his family. So his story was that it was a suicide pact for the family. What I think actually happened was that he wanted to leave Denise and the family and, through his controlling and abusive ways, decided the best way to do it was to kill them all.
Speaker 1:Alan was clearly responsible for the deaths of Denise, sabrina, roman and Morgana, but he wouldn't face sentencing for his crimes until February 2024, so just last year and six years after those crimes took place. Court documents highlighted that the huge delay in the trial and sentencing was the result of a couple of things. One was that it took authorities a long time, for some reason, to track alan's records from england, scotland, ireland and northern ireland, and the second was alan wanted to plead guilty to manslaughter for all the deaths, instead of murder, on the grounds of psychiatric illness and like diminished responsibility. He was assessed by a range of doctors and while they agreed that he had some psychiatric and personality issues, they stated that these did not substantially impair his judgment with regard to what he did that night. So finally, alan faced justice and in June 2023, pleaded guilty to the following charges Three counts of murder for Sabrina, roman and Morgana, one count of manslaughter for Denise and one count of arson with intent to endanger life. In February 2024 he was sentenced to 29 years in prison, one of the longest sentences in Northern Irish history, and according to the Irish Times, upon sentencing, the judge said and I'm really glad here that the argument about sudden loss of control or rage wasn't accepted as a reason for what Alan did. So often, as we know, perpetrators of familiar side are excused by that sort of loss of control, but the vast majority of them we have talked about have planned the murders meticulously and callously and, to be honest, it does disappoint me that he was only found guilty of manslaughter. In the case of Denise, I don't believe there was a suicide pact and I think he murdered her, but the evidence just wasn't there to prove that. Also, I feel like everyone has forgotten that he absconded from his previous sentence for threatening to kill his ex-partner. That should like definitely have been added on with more for absconding.
Speaker 1:After the trial and sentencing of Alan, one of Denise's surviving children, samantha, told media quote Denise was my mother. She was my rock. My beautiful mother was taken from me. My younger brother and sister, roman and Sabrina, along with Sabrina's wee baby, morgana, are all gone too. Their four lives were taken in a fire started deliberately, and it breaks my heart to think on what happened, to think on how they died. I miss them so much and, to be honest, it's very difficult to convey such a loss in words. My remaining family and I are incredibly thankful for everything the police and those who helped bring this to court have done and also in response to the sentencing of Alan.
Speaker 1:To the Irish Times, detective Inspector Hazel Miller of the Police Service of Northern Ireland said quote three generations a mother, her two children and her granddaughter perished in a fire deliberately started by Daniel Allen in their home in Derelin. This was on the morning of the February theth 2018. This was a horrific and cruel act. It's hard to even begin to imagine the panic, fear and sheer suffering. I'm deeply mindful, however, that this is an event that will never be forgotten. We have seen destruction and a loss beyond words. My thoughts are with the remaining family members whose lives won't ever be the same and, as with many cases we talk about on the podcast.
Speaker 1:An independent review into the deaths of Roman or Morgana, as they were children, was carried out. It was the responsibility of something called the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland, the SBNI, to carry out a case management review. The review into the deaths of Morgana and Roman was published in 2019 and found quote the tragic deaths of Roman and Morgana could not have been anticipated. It did identify learning for professionals working in similar circumstances with vulnerable families. Now I couldn't find the actual report, but it doesn't surprise me that the review found that their deaths couldn't have been predicted or even prevented. I do think that there were missed opportunities to protect and risk assess them, though. Roman was not in school and someone somewhere should have had some professional curiosity about that. Although social services were notified about the family before the murders happened, I wonder if there could have been some better cross-country cooperation between services. Also, when Alan absconded from his previous conviction, more effort could have been done to find him. Personally, I feel like Denise Sabrina, roman and Morgana were let down by a range of agencies and, although they were actively hiding from social services, there were other agencies who could have been involved in their lives.
Speaker 1:This episode is dedicated to Denise, sabrina Roman and Morgana Gossett, to their lives cut way too short by a controlling and violent perpetrator and to their unfulfilled potential. We remember them. This has been Killer in the Family podcast, written and produced by me, claire Laxton. I'll be back next week with a new episode. Don't forget to send me any comments or questions to my insta at killer in the family pod or through a text via a link in the episode notes. Do let me know any stories you'd like me to cover as well. Also, don't forget you can buy me a coffee if you like the podcast and help support it's running. The link is in the episode notes and thank you so much to everyone for your support so far. Until then, I've been Claire Laxton. This is Killer in the Family podcast. Until next time, take care, thank you.
