Speedboat killer Jack Shepherd jailed 20 months for assaulting girlfriend with barbecue tongs

Jack Shepherd, convicted of killing Charlotte Brown in 2015, has been sentenced to 20 months for assaulting his girlfriend, including striking her with hot barbecue tongs.

Speedboat killer back behind bars for domestic assaults

Jack Shepherd, known as the "speedboat killer", has been sentenced to 20 months in prison with a further four years on extended licence after pleading guilty to two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one count of damaging property, bbc.co.uk reports.

The 38-year-old appeared via videolink from HMP Swaleside in Kent at Isleworth Crown Court in July, where he admitted attacking his girlfriend on two separate occasions in 2025.

In the first incident, in February, Shepherd pinned the woman down and punched her several times, leaving bruising to her arm and upper leg. The second attack took place in June, after the woman remarked that he had burned a pizza on the barbecue. Shepherd responded by hitting her on the left breast with a set of hot barbecue tongs, causing a permanent scar.

The attacks led to his recall to prison in September last year, shortly after he had been released on licence in January 2024.

Judge rejects remorse

Mitigating counsel George Payne told the court that Shepherd was "genuinely very ashamed of his behaviour" and that the violence was driven by long-standing alcohol abuse.

Judge Martin Edmunds was unconvinced. He said he had "no faith" in Shepherd's remorse and addressed him directly: "Your pattern is to commit offences and afterwards apologise, and produce excuses. Your prepared statement sought to shift blame anywhere but yourself."

Because the law did not permit additional time to be added to the sentence Shepherd was already serving, the new 20-month term will run concurrently. He is due to be released in January 2029.

A history of violence and flight

Shepherd's original conviction stems from the death of Charlotte Brown, 24, in December 2015. Brown, from Clacton, Essex, was thrown from Shepherd's speedboat on the River Thames after it struck a submerged tree trunk during a first date. She was found unconscious and later died in hospital. Shepherd was pulled from the water alive.

Following Brown's death, Shepherd fled to Georgia. He was convicted in his absence of manslaughter by gross negligence at the Old Bailey and was subsequently extradited back to the UK, where he was jailed for six years and six months in 2018.

In 2019, he received a further four years at Exeter Crown Court for a drink-fuelled assault on a barman at a Devon hotel in March 2018.

Shepherd began dating his most recent victim in August 2024. By the end of that year, she had accused him of being abusive and threatening, setting in motion the chain of events that led to his latest conviction.

Source: The Sun