I don’t remember my mum, Tina Wing.
She was just 32 when she died, and I was only a year old. In all truth, it’s taken me reaching the same age she was to really understand my grief.
It’s something I describe as ambiguous loss, because it’s unconventional and unclear.
Aside from not getting to know my mum, my grief was complicated because my mum was murdered and we’ve never had justice for her.
Just before her death, my mother was living in Friern Barnet Hospital, a mental health facility in north west London. She was there for postnatal depression and rehabilitation, having had me a year earlier.
On June 28, 1992, Mum set off on an unaccompanied walk around the grounds – her first since her hospital admission.
Four hours later, her body was found with multiple stab wounds and strangulation marks. An autopsy would later confirm the latter was the cause of death, as well as evidence of ‘overkill’ (referring to excessive or gratuitous violence).
The only suspect police really pursued was my dad, who ended up going on trial for my mother’s murder. He was found not guilty in June 1993 after testimonies were found to be inconsistent.
I was just a baby so I had no idea any of this had happened. It was decided that I would live with my nan, who was 60 years old at the time.
She showered me in love and helped make sure my childhood was as normal as it could be. In fact, I don’t really remember being told that Mum had died.
We’d often visit her grave on her birthday or Christmas Day, but I almost felt quite detached from it all because I had no memory of her.
I did, however, have a box of keepsakes of her that I would occasionally sift through. It contained things like her old school reports, address books, passport and holiday pictures, signature books from school friends, and funeral cards.
Now that I am older, I find it a great comfort.
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At the age of 10, my aunt Lesley decided to sit my cousins and I down to tell us about Mum’s death – that she had been hurt and is now up in heaven.
But I was quite numb to it at the time, so I didn’t really process it. I think I even asked if I could just go play.
Throughout the rest of my childhood, Nan was my rock. But I was always very conscious of the fact that she was a lot older than the parents of other kids at school, which made me cling to her even more.
I was terrified of losing her, perhaps because I had already suffered so much loss in my life and she had been there to pick up the pieces. As a result, I felt a sense of unspoken guilt in asking about my dad – like I was betraying my nan’s sacrifices for raising me.
Nan didn’t talk about Dad much, but she was against me meeting him. So I honestly didn’t think about him much, even assuming that he had died.
Sadly, Nan had a stroke nine years ago, which led to her dementia diagnosis. Around the same time, I came out as gay at 23 and adopted a boozy party lifestyle as a coping mechanism for everything going on.
Then, around five years ago, I was at an event where I met the head of a TV channel. I ended up telling her a little bit about my mum’s story.
Within a week, we had a proper meeting to talk about it in more detail and then a week after that, I met with a production company.
This is how my two-part documentary, ‘Who Murdered You, Mum?’ came about – and it ended up being the most I had ever spoken or learnt about my mother.
On the very first day of filming, I found out my dad was still alive. Not only that, he was living in London, married, and had two other children.
‘I don’t feel like it’s real,’ I ended up saying on camera. ‘I feel really disconnected from it. It doesn’t really feel like we’re talking about someone I came from.’
On the second day of filming, I went to the grounds where my mum was murdered for the first time. Then on day three, I went to the apartment complex where my mother and I lived together before she was admitted to Friern Barnet Hospital.
It felt like quite an intense start to the filming process, but it’s what finally unlocked this deep sense of connection with Mum and her story. It’s also how I started confronting my grief.
In the documentary, I asked my aunt Lesley if she got the opportunity to grieve my mum. ‘Not really,’ she replied, with tears in her eyes. ‘Because I was too busy with life and making sure everything was alright for everyone. But this process has made me grieve for the first time.’
I really wanted us to be able to grieve Tina together, but also celebrate who she was outside of how she was killed. This journey is how I came across the term ambiguous loss, which has helped me reconcile the feelings of numbness that I felt around my mum while growing up.
While filming, I had the realisation that I was the same age as Mum when she died, which was really difficult. She wasn’t given the opportunity to be a mum because her life was cruelly cut short.
For me, making the documentary was about taking control back. I now feel so inspired to live and the future is exciting.
But the main question I had going into the project – the same one that occupies the title of it – remains unanswered. No one has been brought to justice for her murder.
Sadly, Nan passed away two years ago – before we had any conclusions.
I’m hopeful now that the Met Police have confirmed a review into my mother’s death is being carried out, but I still want answers. All victims and survivors deserve that.
This hope is what keeps me going – and I want others to see that resilience and strength can come from tragedy.
As told to James Besanvalle
Who Murdered You Mum? is on Crime + Investigation tonight at 10pm
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing James.Besanvalle@metro.co.uk.
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