Hundreds of Britons advertise for suicide partner
A BBC investigation has revealed that over 700 people in the UK have used a pro-suicide website to seek a partner for suicide. The site, which remains unnamed, features a members-only section where users can find potential suicide partners.
Our investigation has linked several double suicides to this “partners thread” and discovered that predators have exploited the site to target vulnerable women.
In December 2019, Brett Stevens, Angela Stevens’ 28-year-old son, traveled from the Midlands to Scotland to meet a woman he had connected with through the partners thread. They rented an Airbnb and took their lives together.
Angela, who deeply misses her son’s smile and infectious laugh, has since devoted years to researching the pro-suicide site and its partners thread.
“It’s a very dangerous place,” Angela says.
She compares it to a dark version of a dating app.
“Where else would you go to find a partner to take your own life with?” she says. “It’s just absolutely vile.”
The thread encourages users to end their own lives – and offers instructions on how to do it.
Our analysis found more than 5,000 posts on the thread by people from around the world.
We are not naming the site or giving details about methods of suicide recommended there.
A BBC investigation in March found more than 130 British people may have ended their own lives after using a chemical promoted by the site.
The BBC team set up an anonymous account and analysed the number and content of messages.
Members post their age, sex, location and preferred method of death, in a search for someone to die with them.
Helen Kite’s sister, Linda, advertised for a partner in 2023.
It is a forum which “preys on desperate souls”, says Helen. “The partners section sets them on an inescapable path to death.”
“I am 54F [female], based near London,” Linda wrote. “I can travel and could pay for a hotel, if that suited. Obviously, would be good to chat first.”
Linda contacted a man through the partners thread and met him at a hotel in Romford, East London.
They consumed a toxic chemical and died together on 1 July 2023.
Helen says Linda was found “lying next to the body of a total stranger”.
She believes that, every day, “innocent victims seeking support are snared” by the forum, “unimpeded by the authorities”.
It causes “untold misery and suffering for those left behind,” she says.
But there was worse to come.
In September 2023, Helen’s other sister Sarah – devastated by losing Linda – also went on the forum, ingested the same toxic chemical, and died.
A further, even more disturbing, aspect of the partner’s thread came to light during our investigation.
Predators appear to be using it to target vulnerable and suicidal people, especially women.
In 2022, a court in Glasgow heard how 31-year-old Craig McInally had responded to a series of posts in the partner’s thread, placed by young women looking for someone to die with.
He persuaded one of them, a vulnerable 25-year-old woman, to come to his flat and “practice” suicide.
McInally repeatedly choked her to the point where she lost consciousness.
He had met them all on the partner’s thread.
One of them was 22-year-old Romanian student Roberta Barbos.
In messages seen by the BBC, McInally told Roberta that he had “a hell of a lot of experience” and promised to be with her “the whole way”.
She met McInally once and then refused to see him again – but took her own life alone in February 2020.
“It’s like something from a horror movie, from another world,” said Roberta’s mother, Maria Barbos. “I couldn’t believe that a website like this would even exist. They’re sick minds.”
An Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR) was imposed on McInally – a sentence reserved in Scotland for the most serious cases of sexual and violent offending, short of murder.
Under its terms, he was sentenced to a minimum of two years and three months in prison, and supervision for the rest of his life.
