Funshaughlin - the rantings of Mellow Blue Stuff

Articles like this only serve to tarnish Katy's memory. Why can't people just let her rest in peace and let us have the memories. The memories of the good times. I've nothing but the highest respect for the journalistic skills of Barry Egan (he should have a Pulitzer prize by now) but this article is beneath his usual high standards. He's re-opening the wounds and rubbing salt into them. The pain is still there. It's still raw. The only thing we can do is let time heal them.


Battle for Katy's memory begins as first anniversary approaches

SECTION: NATIONAL NEWS

LENGTH: 1012 words


Memorial clouded by betrayal from 'friend', by Barry Egan and Maeve Sheehan

Last week, the grieving mother of the model, Katy French, issued an invitation to honour her daughter's memory. A note to close friends and family invited them to remember the beauty at a memorial service on December 6, a year to the day she died. Janet French invited friends to pay tribute to her daughter, either in a special message, a memory they wished to share, or a song. "It would be a great comfort to us and the rest of Katy's family if you were there with us to remember the wonderful, though short, times that Katy spent with us here on earth."

Plans for this modest and intimate memorial have been overshadowed by the man who claimed to be her friend, who was with her when she collapsed and who said he did all he could to save her. In the same week that the invitations to her memorial were issued, Kieron Ducie released a catalogue of text messages he exchanged with Katy in the days before she died. And what should be a private anniversary of Katy's death has become a battle for her memory.

The macabre messages were leaked to a tabloid newspaper in the past week. They cast Katie as troubled and insecure, worried by her characterisation in the press. Ducie comes off as the man she turned to for reassurance in her hour of need. Instead, he has betrayed her memory.

This time last year, Katy French was riding high on a wave of celebrity. A work-a-day model, she made her name after her infamous split with her then boyfriend Marcus Sweeney. She had a publicity-filled year, in which she freely admitted courting the press in order to promote the "Katie" brand. She was nothing if not pragmatic.

She starred in the reality television show, Celebrities go Wild, appeared on Tubridy Tonight and was the subject of a documentary on her model life, that was all the more haunting because it was broadcast after her death.

Kieron Ducie stepped into Katie's life as a friend, someone on the fringes of the society circles she moved in. Two days after her 24th birthday party in Krystle nightclub, Katy French drove to her friend Kieron Ducie's house in Kilmessan, Co Meath.

She passed the night chatting to Kieron's girlfriend, Ann Corcoran. Kieron Ducie returned home at around 5am on Sunday morning. They chatted some more, he later told gardai, and then Katie went to bed. At around 9am, he heard a crash and found Katie on the floor of her bedroom.

He drove her to hospital shortly before 10am, laying her along the back seat.

The nearest hospital -- Our Lady's in Navan -- was 13km away. According to garda sources, she suffered a number of seizures during the 25-minute journey. Katie never recovered from her coma. She died days later, in her sister's arms. Traces of cocaine were later found in her body.

Ducie and his girlfriend were questioned about what happened that night.

Last week, it emerged that nobody will face any charges in relation to her collapse. Kieron Ducie has now turned his role in Katie's last hours to his advantage by publicising how the dead model turned to him in her last hour of need.

Four weeks ago, Ducie did an interview with Paul Martin in The Mirror around the same time as doing one with The Star and The Star On Sunday.

The newspapers could only print their interviews after Ducie gave them the green light.

The first of there series of texts between Katyand Ducie began on Saturday, December 1, the day before she collapsed. "Where are you' I need to talk to you."

"For her to drive 40 miles that night for someone to talk to gives you some sign of how she felt. She rang a lot of other people first but nobody answered her calls. That's how she ended up in my house talking to Ann," he told one newspaper.

The Mirror's headline last week read "final text messages that reveal torment before her death". These included Katy's text to Ducie "God, I'm fed up with this. Why do people have it in for me' Everyone is turning on me."

On Monday morning after The Mirror ran the front page of the Katy French texts, Ducie sent a text to the journalist in question: "U have put the shits up a lot of models 2day. They are all running scared. They think u have their numbers and texts to Katy." The text ends, sickeningly: "Let the mind games begin."

In another text, he declares himself to be "very good. Journalists outside my house at 7.30 this morning in force." About the picture used to illustrate the article, he adds: "Jesus, no more of that horrible pic of me again. Text me your email address so I'll mail pics now."

On Thursday, the Herald had Ducie "breaking his silence". He said "the strain" of the publicity surrounding Katy's tragic passing cost him his relationship with his then girlfriend, Ann Corcoran. He gave the Herald pictures of his new girlfriend, a Czech lingerie model named Zuzana Hurajtova.

Later that day, he texted another journalist: "I'm ringing and texting u all week. No return calls. I gave them a quote on Monday and they built a story around it with all my previous interviews with Sun.

"We've a signed agreement on an agreed date by me to give you the green light to go to print on my interview. Same applies to the Star Sunday. Eoin asked the same just there. If you don't answer my calls what can I do' Ring me 4 a chat. I have a brill story. If you don't want it, I'll give to star for Saturday. Ring me!"

The Star, the day after the Herald published Ducie's comments on Thursday, pubklished the allegedly 'embargoed' interview with Ducie on the front page.

The Herald ran part two of theirs the same day. Ducie was annoyed: "I'm f**king furious. I've just heard about the Star. They're after running the story without permission. I have the same agreement in writing. I'm going to sue the f**k out of them. I can't believe all this bullshit."

Neither, probably, can Katy's grieving family.

The service for Katy French will take place at the Church of Ireland, Enniskerry. Kieron Ducie is unlikely to be amongst the "close friends" who will be invited to share his memories of her.