When Zac Brettler jumped to his death in London, the coroner recorded an open verdict, admitting: ‘I don’t know what happened.’ The acclaimed author of Say Nothing and, now, London Falling, talks about his search for answers
In the summer of 2023, the American writer and journalist Patrick Radden Keefe was in London for the filming of Say Nothing, the television adaptation of his much-lauded, much-awarded account of a Troubles murder. It was there, on set, that Keefe got talking to a visitor, a friend of the director, who happened to tell Keefe about friends of his, the Brettlers, a London family who had experienced something tragic, strange and terrible.
Rachelle and Matthew Brettler’s 19-year-old son, Zac, had died in November 2019 when he jumped from the fifth-floor balcony of a luxury apartment overlooking the Thames. There had been no reason to believe he was suicidal – but plenty to suggest that he was very afraid. Zac had spent his last few months in the orbit of two men who believed him to be the son of a Russian oligarch, heir to a £200m legacy. Both men had been with Zac on the night he died – one had been in the apartment at the time – and gave varying accounts in police interviews. The family believed that the Met response had been full of holes – key witnesses hadn’t been formally interviewed, bloodstains on the apartment walls hadn’t been tested – and the investigation concluded in 2021 with the Crown Prosecution Service deciding there was insufficient evidence to bring charges for murder and perverting the course of justice. The inquest in 2022 ended in an open verdict. “I can’t fill in the gaps; I can’t speculate,” the coroner concluded. “I don’t know what happened.”
