Days before Nicholas Brandram, the man suspected of being the “Putney pusher”, killed himself, he told his family that the police investigation was “murdering him”. He had “no fight left” in him, he told his sisters, Alexia Hicks and Sophie Voelcker, and could not see an end to the Metropolitan police investigation, or the online abuse. Brandram’s lawyers warned the Met last week that his mental health had deteriorated and he was receiving treatment in a psychiatric hospital after renewed press reporting that he had been released under investigation.
Day by day, he was slowly being murdered,” Hicks, 40, said through tears. He said it more than once in the week before, that he couldn’t keep going. All we could do was just reassure him.
We had faith in the system, we had faith in the police, and they neglected him. They failed in their duty of care to him, to the wider family, and we do not want to see another family going through this.” The pair insisted that Brandram, 44, was not the “Putney pusher” and that he died thinking no one would believe in his innocence. He was arrested on suspicion of attempted grievous bodily harm on 15 June, nine years after a jogger shoved a woman headfirst into the path of an oncoming bus on Putney Bridge in south-west London.
The case attracted considerable media attention but appeared to elude detectives, who wound down their investigation in 2018, after interviewing 50 men and arresting three suspects. But there was renewed interest in the case after Brandram’s arrest, which his family described as heavy-handed and disproportionate. A number of officers in body armour reportedly swooped on his home address, his sisters said, while a reporter who had been tipped off about the arrest filmed the ordeal.
Although Brandram’s name was not published in the media because he had not been charged, his family said that biographical information in reports made him easily identifiable. He was described as a wealthy banker who lived in a £1.4m west London home and an army veteran with links to royalty. Brandram was the grandson of Princess Katherine of Greece, who was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, which made his arrest all the more newsworthy.
While in police custody in June over the Putney Bridge incident, he was also arrested on suspicion of possession of class A and class B drugs. His sisters said there was no forensic evidence linking Brandram to the Putney incident and that he had a prominent military tattoo and a withered calf which, they said, distinguished him from the man in footage of the attack on 5 May 2017. That morning, Brandram had walked from his home in Notting Hill Gate to his office in Bond Street and sent his sisters an email from his work account, which they said he could only access from his workplace.
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