‘My best friend was killed by her husband – I’m running the London Marathon to honour the hundreds of others like her’

A woman whose best friend was killed by her husband after he beat her to death with a claw hammer is running the London Marathon to raise awareness for the 110 women killed by men in the UK during the last year.

On October 31, 2010, British Airways pilot Robert Brown killed his 46-year-old wife, Joanna Simpson, at her home in Berkshire while in earshot of their two children, Alex, 10, and Katie, nine.

According to Joanna’s best friend, Hetti Barkworth-Nanton, 59, the chairwoman of trustees at Refuge, the couple had been separated for three years and were living apart before Robert “used” the children to “get close to Jo so that he could carry out his hideous plans”.

Robert buried Joanna’s body in a pre-dug grave at Windsor Great Park and it was discovered five days later, before he was found guilty of manslaughter in May 2011 and was sentenced to 26 years in prison.

Hetti said she is running the London Marathon in memory of her friend and the hundreds of others killed through femicide, telling PA Real Life: “I am already really emotional about doing this marathon.”

“I’m going to be wearing a wristband with Jo’s name on it, as well as one with the names of some other women who have really touched me during my journey, who are no longer here,” she added.

Hetti is also planning to wear a cape with butterflies on it to represent the 110 women suspected to be killed by men across the UK over the last year since International Women’s Day on March 8, according to the Femicide Census.

“Jo was so strong and so determined,” Hetti added. “But she would say I’m absolutely mad for doing this marathon.

“I’ll be thinking about her throughout.”

Joanna and Hetti first met in 2003 when the pair were in their late-30s while their youngest children were in nursery together.

Hetti said they “hit it off straight away” and Joanna became the “most amazing friend and soulmate” for her, spending family holidays together and supporting each other “through thick and thin”.

She said she was “very privy” to the problems with Joanna’s husband, because her friend “needed people to confide in”.

“She didn’t recognise it as domestic abuse at the time,” Hetti said.

“Everyone talked about ‘domestic violence’ back then, not domestic abuse.

“There were threats of violence, but no physical violence, so it was much more about intimidation, undermining her, isolating her, and making her feel worthless,” she added.

Joanna reached a breaking point in 2007 and the pair separated after Hetti said Robert threatened her with a knife. Three years later, Hetti said her friend was still “very down in the dumps” around the time of her death because she felt Robert would “never stop fighting her” over custody of their two children.

The last time Hetti spoke to Joanna was around 3.15pm on Sunday October 31, 2010, when Hetti said she tried to cheer her friend up over a final legal hearing Joanna and Robert were due to have a week later.

At 4pm, less than an hour later, Robert had returned their two children to Joanna after a half-term visit and they ran inside to the family room, before Robert took a hammer that he had brought with him and bludgeoned Joanna to death.

He then put Joanna’s body into the back of his car, covered her in plastic sheeting, and went back inside to collect the children, before dropping them off at his home with his current partner.

Robert drove to Windsor Great Park – where he had already dug a deep grave with a large wooden box – placed the body inside, and covered it with soil.

Hetti said it wasn’t until Monday morning that she found out something was wrong, remembering a phone call with her friend Belinda who told her Joanna was missing.

“My world fell apart,” Hetti said. “It was an absolute living nightmare.

“I think when it became really impossible to comprehend was when I found out 10 days later that the police had found her in a deep grave with effectively a murder kit in the box.

“That was when I just went into complete trauma because that’s so dark and so evil that a human brain can’t comprehend it.

“It just gets stuck as this horror that you just cannot process. That was really tough,” she added.

Hetti said she was there “every minute of every day” at the trial in May 2011, which was “deeply traumatising” due to the extensive evidence.

Despite the prosecution pushing for a murder conviction, Robert was found guilty of the less serious offence of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility and he was sentenced to 26 years in prison, which Hetti recalled: “When the jury said ‘not guilty’ (to murder), we were all devastated and shocked.

“The police were crying. We were crying. It was absolute torture.

“I sat there and there was a great big, dark hole that just opened up underneath me, and I felt myself slipping through it.

“There’s no justice. There’s no closure, and there’s no way to move on from that. It’s just impossible to comprehend.”

In the years since, Hetti said she – along with Joanna’s mother, Diana Parkes – successfully campaigned to get a landmark legal guidance to prosecutors published for domestic homicide trials, before they jointly set up the Joanna Simpson Foundation in 2014, whose mission is to ensure children who experience domestic abuse and homicide are supported.

In 2016, Hetti and Diana met the Duchess of Cornwall, now Queen Camilla, to share Joanna’s story, which Hetti said “profoundly affected” the queen consort, who “still talks about” Joanna “to this day”, including citing this meeting and her story as being “engraved” on her heart via her 2024 documentary, Her Majesty the Queen: Behind Closed Doors.

Hetti revealed to PA Real Life that Queen Camilla has “personally” donated to her London Marathon fundraiser this year.

By 2020, Hetti became chairwoman of the charity Refuge, and said this work helps “feed the soul” and she feels like she is doing something “really tangible” on the frontlines of the domestic abuse sector.

Hetti said she was inspired to sign up for the London Marathon after seeing Sergio Aguiar – the father of Alice Aguiar, who was murdered in the Southport attack in 2024 – complete it last year and “raising so much awareness as a result of doing it”.

She said: “I’m not a runner and just to put that in context, I did a half marathon two years ago and that nearly broke me.

“I started training at the beginning of January and since then, I have done three runs a week, which I’ve slowly built up,” she added.

On how the idea for the butterfly cape came about, Hetti said: “Awareness fundamentally saves lives.

“And one of the most important pieces of awareness that I find really hits home is when I tell people that over 100 women are killed every year at the hands of men.

“So I wanted to somehow find a way to represent these women and I decided a cape would be really nice.

“I think butterflies are a really powerful visual way of demonstrating the volume of what we’re talking about and the impact that (domestic abuse) has,” she added.

Hetti said she might be a “blubbering wreck” on the day of the London Marathon on Sunday April 26, but she will be thinking about her friend Joanna “a lot”.

“Jo was so strong and so determined,” Hetti added. “There is no doubt in my mind that she would have done this for me.”

Refuge’s National Domestic Abuse Helpline is available on 0808 2000 247 for free, confidential support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A live chat service is also available from 10am to 10pm, Monday to Friday, and from 10am to 6pm on weekends. For more information, visit www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk

Hetti is calling on the Government to increase funding for frontline domestic abuse services and is raising money for Refuge via her London Marathon fundraiser: https://www.justgiving.com/page/hetti-barkworth-nanton-2.