Jonathan Creswell: Katie Simpson’s killer secretly buried in front of just two mourners

A coffin containing his remains was placed in a new grave at Ballyoan Cemetery in Derry’s Waterside last Saturday morning.

It is not known if a religious service of any kind was held at Creswell’s grave before his burial.

But a witness told us that only two people, a man and a woman dressed all in black, were present when Creswell was buried in the Rossdowney Road cemetery.

Both mourners left immediately afterwards, while municipal workers cleared the remaining debris.

Aside from a large arrangement of white flowers that had been removed from his coffin, there was nothing to indicate that it was the final resting place of the 36-year-old Creswell.

When this photograph was taken yesterday, there were no cards attached to the flowers or any other notes or messages of condolence.

But World Sunday I can confirm that the self-obsessed killer and sadistic sex monster, who had a sinister Svengali-like hold on several women, is buried in a shadowy plot at Ballyoan Cemetery, near Maiden City’s Crescent Link Highway.

A representative from Derry and Strabane District Council told us: “Jonathan Creswell was buried in Ballyoan Cemetery last Saturday morning.”

Former jockey Creswell’s trial for the rape and murder of jumper Katie Simpson, 21, came to a sudden halt two weeks ago when he was found dead.

Katie died at Derry’s Altnagelvin Hospital on August 9, 2020. She had failed to regain consciousness after being admitted six days earlier.

Creswell had taken the unconscious Katie to hospital from the home she shared with her sister Christina in nearby Lettershandoney.

Creswell was Christina Simpson’s partner but he also slept with Katie. He had previously been introduced to the Simpson sisters while she was working at a stable in Tynan, Co Armagh.

But outlining the prosecution case against Creswell for the rape and murder of Katie on the opening day of his trial, Crown prosecutor Sam Magee KC told Coleraine Crown Court: “It was a calculating and deceitful episode. He strangled her and created a fiction, pretending to others that he found Katie hanging on a ladder. “He pretended to the hospital staff that she had taken her own life.”

To explain the bruises on Katie’s body, the one-time champion jockey told detectives that the young woman had been trampled by a horse and that at first the police believed it hook, line and sinker.

But the truth of the matter was that the twisted Creswell had sexually attacked and beaten Katie in a fit of violent rage after learning that she had begun a new relationship with another man.

The new man in her life was Shane McCloskey, a well-known and popular event rider from Derry and a close friend of Creswell.

Shane had previously been in a relationship with Stacey Watling, who rented stables in Ardmore, outside Derry. Creswell and her Simpson sisters had horses with her regularly.

During the trial it emerged that a seemingly innocent phone call between Stacey and Creswell may have been the catalyst that triggered his jealousy and set him on the path to murder.

Stacey’s friend Aiskey Houston had seen Shane McCloskey walking away from a house where the Simpson sisters’ mother lived, near Victoria Bridge, in the early hours of August 2, 2020. Aiskey informed Stacey of this.

At the time, Stacey had recently separated from McCloskey and was interested in him collecting the property that was still stored in her garden.

Yesterday, Stacey told the World Sunday Since she knew that her ex-boyfriend and Jonathan Creswell were good friends, she decided to contact Creswell to find out what was going on.

Stacey told us: “I told Jonathan that my friend had seen Shane walking away from the Victoria Bridge area and it might have looked like he had been at my house, when he wasn’t.

“Jonathan said he hadn’t seen Shane and didn’t know where he was,” he added.

But it later emerged that as Creswell’s jealousy levels increased, he discovered that Katie had spent the night with Shane at her mother’s house and that they left separately early the next morning.

Stacey says she never noticed any signs of distress in Creswell’s behavior during the phone call.

But later that day, she saw a message in which Creswell ordered Katie: “Reply to my Snap right now.”

She said: “Obviously the reason was because Snapchat shows your location.

“I didn’t hear much else from him that day, other than a brief conversation about the size of the event he was involved in.”

But Stacey says alarm bells started ringing when neither Shane nor Katie showed up to feed the horses they had in their yard.

“They had their horses in the stable with me, but I hadn’t seen them for a few days. I really thought they were going to take the mickey, because I had to feed the horses.

“But when they told me that Katie was in the hospital because she had supposedly tried to take her own life, I felt terrible.” she said.

Stacey also said that after Katie’s funeral, where Creswell acted as chief mourner, she never suspected he had played any role in her death.

“Jonny, as we called him, was always very polite to me. Maybe it was because he knew that I was friends with several men who would have taken care of me.

“I knew he was different with women who had no one else to protect them. He knew he couldn’t get his way and he was too much of a coward to even try.”

Stacey said she spent a lot of time with Creswell after Katie’s death and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary about him.

She said: “When I broke up with Shane I was in a bad state, but Jonny and the rest were always there for me.

“They would come to dinner with me and help me cope, especially Jonny.

“So when the truth came out about Katie, I couldn’t believe it.

“I remember sitting with him in the truck at one of the horse shows and he was crying his eyes out because Katie wasn’t there.

“But when you look back, you wonder if it was just guilt,” Stacey said.

And he added: “My mother once told me that you have to be a very intelligent person to lie well. But in the end, her lies began to trip him up.”

In 2010, Creswell was jailed for six months when he pleaded guilty to five charges of assaulting his then-girlfriend Abigail Lyle, causing her actual bodily harm.

Three women who pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice in connection with Katie’s murder case are still awaiting sentencing.