The night Michaela Hall was killed, police knocked on her door. They had received word that the mother of two and a former Virgin Airways flight attendant had been strangled by her partner, a notorious rapist recently released from prison.
Michaela, 49, was talking to a friend on the phone when she was attacked. “I heard her say, ‘Don’t come near me, Lee,’ and she just started screaming,” a friend living abroad told the Crimestoppers charity. It was terrifying, pure fear, like something from a movie.
The case was handed over to police in Devon and Cornwall and was marked as urgent, according to a report by a police observer seen by the Observer.
But when two police officers arrived at Michaela’s bungalow in the Cornish village of Mount Hawke, everything was quiet. The curtains were drawn, the property was dark, and there were no “signs of concern.”
The officers knocked on Michaela’s back window and checked the garden. Nothing. They considered talking to neighbors, but decided not to, according to the report.
“We don’t have enough strength to enter, do we?” The first officer asked their colleague in a conversation detected by the body camera. They lit a torch through the gap in the curtains. Nothing awkward. After spending seven minutes at the property, police officers returned to their car.
Broadcasting the police control room in Devon and Cornwall shortly after 11:30 pm on May 31, 2021, they speculated on what might happen. “We have visions … like her lying there, and he covers her mouth and other things,” the first police officer told their colleague.
Police have been called to the property before, having been present 14 times in so many months for incidents of domestic violence. In previous cases, when Michaela’s partner attacked her, he “drank and drank and drank” until she fainted, the policeman said. Maybe it had happened this time too.
They also thought that even if they could get inside, Michaela would not talk to them.
“What can you do if she doesn’t help herself?” The officer asked his colleague on the radio.
Michaela was found dead the next night.
She was killed by her partner Lee Kendall. After an argument over dinner, he grabbed her by the throat and stabbed her in the eye with a kitchen knife, the court heard in January.
Kendall’s brutal actions tore apart a family and left Michaela’s two young sons without a mother.
But the case also raises urgent questions about the treatment of victims of domestic violence by police and whether Michaela could be rescued or her killer caught earlier if the answer was different.
Known as a vulnerable person at high risk of injury from domestic violence, Michaela was under the protection of a protocol to protect several agencies at the time of her death, according to a report by the Independent Police Behavior Service (IOPC) examining Devon and Cornwall police in the case.
Michaela Hall’s father, Peter Hall, is pictured at his home near Redruth in Cornwall. Photo: Karen Robinson / The Observer
However, despite being called for an emergency report that Michaela was attacked, and knowing the history of domestic violence, Devon and Cornwall police did not enter her property or take key steps to determine she was safe. , according to the IOPC report.
Officials in attendance felt they did not have the authority to force entry, believing they did not have enough information to determine whether “life or body” was at risk, the IOPC found. The managers in the control room did not instruct them to enter.
Lee Kendall was recently released from prison. Photo: Devon & Cornwall Police / SWNS
An unpublished report seen by the Observer also describes how, 24 hours after the first emergency call to Crimestoppers, at 10:19 pm on May 31, police visited Michaela’s property twice more – but again did not enter or talk to neighbors.
During the second visit, at 2.50 pm on 1 June, they found the curtains open but without signs of concern. “They did not receive a response to the knock” and “inspected the back of the property” before leaving a few minutes later, according to the report.
Police were present for the third time that evening, at 7:14 p.m. “They will jump out when they have just finished arranging some documents,” a control room sergeant had said before sending two officers, according to the report. After finding no signs of concern, they left in three minutes.
Later that evening, Michaela’s parents, Peter and Ann Hall, drove three miles to her bungalow to check on her after she missed a scheduled phone call earlier that evening.
Sensing that something was wrong, Peter entered the house with a key he had received from the couple’s owner. At around 10.30 pm, when neighbors gathered in front of the front door, he found his daughter’s body in the bedroom.
A deadly eye occurred, suggesting she had been dead for several hours. But the exact time she was killed is unknown, which raises questions about whether there was a missed chance to save her or catch her killer – who remained at large until the next day – earlier.
Peter, 70, and Ann, 72, believe that instead of looking at their daughter’s history of violence as a risk factor that means she needs more protection, officials accuse her of staying with her abusive partner.
“She was trapped in a cycle of violence. And for a police officer to say, “I’ve talked to her before and she can’t help herself,” is awful, “Peter said. “As far as we know, my daughter was alive when the police knocked on the door with their hands over their mouths.
“It makes me think every day, all the time, if they had just invaded, would they have saved her?” Anne added through tears. “We will never know what may have happened. Michaela could still be alive, and I could go there to hold her hand.
In the weeks before she died, Michaela was trying to get her life back on track.
Privately educated and the eldest of four, she had a comfortable upbringing before getting a job she loved as a flight attendant, serving first-class passengers and traveling the world. “People loved flying with her because she was so organized. She has always been flawless, “said Anne.
She loved her two sons and they adored her. But things in her life had become unstable. After about 10 years flying with Virgin, Michaela moved to a village near her parents in Cornwall and began studying law, but her mental health suffered after custody disputes with an ex-partner.
After violating the restraining order, she received a suspended sentence, which damaged her career prospects.
In 2018, she got a job in a charity working with offenders on release from prison. In December of that year, she met Kendall, a drug user with a number of convictions, including theft.
Prosecutor Joe Martin QC said the relationship that led to Michaela’s job was “complicated”. “[She] she was always trying to help him and possibly save him, “she told the murder trial.
In the following years, Michaela suffered severe violence from Kendall, including strangulation, beatings, hair pulling and kicking in the head. There were 999 repeated calls, and she was seen with “black eyes many times,” Truro’s Crown Court heard.
Michaela Hall, left, with her siblings Peter, Harry and Lisa. Photo: family photo
Kendall, 43, confessed to some of the attacks and was jailed. But his grip on Michaela was so strong that while in custody, he continued to control her from his prison cell.
He will send her love letters in envelopes covered with scribbles, promising her to be happy for the rest of her life, Peter said. She sent him money regularly because he said he “didn’t like food in prison” and they talked on the phone almost every day.
“It’s all part of the picture of how she was forced. And yet, under all this, you have a person who abuses, threatens and manipulates, and a person who has become very vulnerable, “said Peter.
In early May 2021, while Kendall was in custody for assaulting Michaela earlier in the year, she seemed optimistic about the future.
During a coffee at her parents’ home, she talked about her plans to join a wild swimming club and asked for help to move out of her bungalow. “We had the best time,” said Anne. “No one wanted to mention the elephant in the room he was when he came out of prison.
This was the last time they would see her alive. When Kendall received a three-year public order from a judge on May 14 and was released from custody, he returned to Michaela. Two weeks later, he killed her.
Leaving him in prison for at least 21 years in Truro’s court in January, Judge Garnum said Kendall deliberately turned Michaela’s eyes, which her family described as “dark and flashing”. “For reasons that have never been explained, these beautiful eyes have always been the object of your violence,” the judge said. After killing Michaela on May 31, he poured a glass of wine and watched TV. He was arrested only on June 2nd after boarding a bus in Truro, where he stole alcohol and got into fights with homeless men and shelter staff, the court said.
At the time of the murder, Kendall was to be monitored by the Probation Service, which is investigating his actions since his release and the role he played in managing “the risk Kendall took for himself and others.”
Harriet Whistrich, a leading lawyer and director of the Center for Women’s Justice, said the case was “really horrible” but “unfortunately not unusual” for domestic killings and that police needed a better understanding of domestic violence.
She said Michaela’s reluctance to engage with the police was typical of victims of forced control. “If nothing else, the fact that she will not bring charges or” help herself “is a reason to intervene more,” she said.
Lady Vera Baird QC, Commissioner of Victims for England and Wales, said that the response of the police in Michaela …
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