By Johnny Nelson
The chief executive of one of Britain’s leading homeless charities has been accused of hypocrisy after it emerged she ordered the eviction of a vulnerable tenant who later died sleeping rough.
Victoria Wyndham, 45, who heads The Anchorway Trust, has been described by a trustee of the charity as ‘the worst kind of rogue landlord’ after allegedly using unlawful tactics to remove 32-year-old Owen Evans from a property she owned in Camberwell earlier this year.
Mr Evans, a long-term tenant of Mrs Wyndham, was found dead from a suspected overdose in the doorway of The Anchorway Trust’s headquarters in Kingston.
Documents seen by the Tribune reveal that Mrs Wyndham, whose charity received more than £2.5 million in public funding last year, sold the multi-occupancy property in Claremont Crescent shortly after Mr Evans was forced out.
Speaking exclusively to the Tribune, Mrs Wyndham’s former property manager, Shane Chapman, said he suspected Mr Evans was agoraphobic as he rarely left his basement flat.
‘Mrs Wyndham had put the place on the market and was desperate to evict all the tenants before it was sold. She paid me to get rid of him, “whatever it took”,’ he said.
Mr Chapman refused to reveal what tactics he employed to convince Mr Evans to leave. But just a few weeks later, the 32-year-old computer analyst was found dead. An inquest is due to take place later this year.
‘I’m not proud of what I did, and I hope that by speaking out I can make amends,’ Mr Chapman told the Tribune.
Neighbours said Mr Evans had become ‘withdrawn and frightened’ in the weeks leading up to his eviction. One, who asked not to be named, said: ‘Owen was terrified of losing his home and often said he had nowhere else to go. By kicking him out, Victoria Wyndham signed his death warrant.’
Today, Housing Secretary David Williamson joined calls for Mrs Wyndham to resign from her role as chief executive of The Anchorway Trust, saying her actions had been ‘beyond reprehensible’.
In a holding statement released by the charity this morning, Deputy Chief Executive Dee Hanning confirmedan internal investigation was underway and a full report would be published by the end of the week.
The woman at the centre of the scandal has yet to comment on the allegations amid reports that she is currently enjoying a holiday in a luxury villa on an exclusive Greek island off the coast of Corfu.
I slam the laptop shut. I’ve seen enough. There’s no getting away from it. I’m Public Enemy Number One. The best spin doctor in the world couldn’t save my reputation now. Not that I can afford to hire anyone, thanks to Barney’s stupidity. My career’s in tatters and my inheritance gone. I think of our huge mortgage, the repayments on our leased cars, the skiing holidays at Easter and the summers in the Dordogne. Barney’s mediocre job in finance barely covers the children’s school fees. For years, our lifestyle has been shored up by the income from Twelve Claremont Crescent. Now that’s gone too. My parents can’t help. They’re property rich and cash poor, and there’s no way my mother would agree to sell their former rectory and move somewhere smaller just to keep the wolves from my door.
I have to face it: my carefully constructed life, complete with all the middle-class trappings you could wish for, is about to come crashing down around my ears and there’s sod all I can do to stop it.
I no longer feel angry, just numb. And there’s a flickering of an unfamiliar emotion I can’t at first pin a label to. Not worry – I don’tdoworry – but a kind of creeping dread. As I tramp across to the window and stare out at the horizon, I wonder if this is what people mean by an existential crisis. I feel, for perhaps the first time in my life, helpless. And genuinely afraid. Not just for me, but for the children. None of this is James, Sophie or Amelia’s fault. Yet they’re the ones whose lives are about to be turned upside down.
And with the dread comes guilt, another emotion that rarely troubles me. Because I can blame Barney all I like for investing my money in Felix’s doomed development, I can hold Shane and the media responsible for the career-ending headlines, but when push comes to shove everything, from Owen Evans’s death to the slur I’ve brought on the family name, is all my fault.
54
AMBER
My stomach turns in on itself as I stare at my amber necklace through the plastic evidence bag.
‘Amber for Amber, yes?’ Detective Lieutenant Demetriou asks, his eyes boring a hole into mine.
I lick my lips. Nod.
He leans back in his seat. ‘Perhaps you can explain how it came to be found less than a metre from Mr Pearson’s body?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come now, Miss Miller, you can do better than that. According to Mr Brookes, you never take it off.’
My hand goes automatically to the blue and whitematipendant I bought at the market in Thalassia as Dominic’s latest betrayal sinks in.
‘It…it went missing a couple of days ago. But it’s not the only thing. Felix lost his Rolex and Simone lost a pair of diamond earrings from Tiffany. Dominic reckoned they’d been stolen.’
The detective’s eyes narrow in disbelief. ‘Who here would steal them?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say miserably. ‘But it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Three things disappearing like that?’
‘But your necklace hasn’t disappeared, has it? It’s right here.’ He watches me steadily. ‘We’ve now been able to narrow down the time of death. Mr Pearson was killed sometime between midnight and one o’clock in the morning. Which is when you say you were asleep on the beach, alone.’
