Isabel Cook was found dead in mysterious circumstances

A “WITCH doctor” who conned hundreds of thousands of pounds out of vulnerable people with promises of healing has been linked for the first time to the mystery of a young woman found dead in Belsize Park.

The connection between Juliette D’Souza, who was jailed for fraud in 2014, and Isabel Cook was made in the BBC documentary The Million Pound Shaman Scam – following the investigations of Sunday Times journalist Tim Rayment.

Ms Cook’s death in September 2005 had been left in the unexplained files at the Met Police and coroner’s court archives despite the unusual circumstances in which she was discovered.

Her throat was bruised, but a pathologist and then a coroner ruled this was due to a thyroid issue and hypothermia.

A fake passport and £2,500 in cash was found nearby in Ms Cook’s home in the low-rise Chalcot’s Lodge in Adelaide Road.

Documents recovered by police suggested she had herself been living under a different name – that of “Kathryn Radford”.

While there is no suggestion that Ms D’Souza was responsible for her death, it has now been revealed Ms Cook’s birth certificate was found in the fraudster’s flat in Willoughby Road, Hampstead, and clues suggest she may have been able to sell her identity to an unnamed woman trying to reach the United Kingdom.

Juliette D’Souza was jailed after conning people out of large amounts of money

Police had investigated Ms Cook’s death but detectives struggled to provide illuminating answers.

Detective Inspector Adrian Lewis told an inquest in 2014: “The landlord found the body of Ms Cook lying on her back. All the windows were shut and there was no sign of a disturbance. Her top had been pulled down exposing her breasts.

“We will never get to the bottom of it. It was a very strange case. She may have been intending to go away because she owed the landlord money.”

Coroner Dr Andrew Reid went on to close the case – seven years after Ms Cook’s death – with a verdict that there was “no third party involvement”.

He signed off the cause of death as “natural causes in circumstances which her appearance are not fully explained”.

Dr Reid left his post as the borough’s coroner in 2012 when he ran into trouble for hiring his wife to be his deputy, despite her lacking the full qualifications for the role.

He now lives in Australia and Mr Rayment tracked him down to see if he could shine any light now.

“Dr Reid gave generously of his time but could not explain why it took more than nine years to register the death of a woman found with a bruised throat and exposed breasts near a bag with £2,500 in new £50 notes,” Mr Rayment told the *New Journal* this week.

“He tried his best to help but it seemed to me that he did not remember the case.”

The birth certificate was discovered by osteopath Keith Bender, a loyal follower of D’Souza who referred clients to her in the belief that she could help heal their serious health conditions.

A requirement to provide money in an envelope so that it could be pinned to a shaman’s tree in Suriname, south America, he later discovered to be a hoax.

D’Souza, who went by a series of other aliases including Jacqueline McSherry and Vanessa Campbell, was released from prison about five years ago but Mr Rayment said it had been impossible to trace where she is now and put new claims and discoveries to her for comment.

The journalist had previously travelled to Suriname in search of her, before being tailed back to his hotel by her associates and leaving for his own safety.

D’Souza claimed to be able to get shamans known as Pa and Oma – healers posing as intermediaries who can contact the spirit world with drumming and chanting – to cure incurable illness like cancer and realign their fates.

Envelopes stacked with banknotes were supposed to be hung and burned as a “sacrifice” in the Amazon rainforest.

But in reality D’Souza was using the cash on spending sprees, buying property, plane tickets and expensive clothes.

Bags from luxury designer stores were found stacked up in her Willoughby Road flat.

She had told her clients she had been to Oxford University, had worked as a lawyer in Marylebone, that she knew talent show judge Simon Cowell and Princess Diana in a never-ending flood of made-up references and anecdotes.

The scam unravelled in 2014 when she was convicted at Blackfriars Crown Court of 23 counts of obtaining property by deception and fraud relating to victims targeted between January 1998 and June 2010.

Mr Rayment had suggested in the documentary that police did not at first know what criminal liability there was despite his special features in the Sunday Times, but detectives later realised how far her faith-healing scam had spread.

Alice Hutton, a former New Journal reporter who is interviewed in the documentary, said: “It was really when a victim took the stand who had an abortion and described how she aborted a longed-for baby. It was heartbreaking. Such was the incredible control this woman had over a rational woman.”

Tim Rayment in the Million Pound Shaman Scam

The jury came back within an hour to find D’Souza guilty.

She was sentenced to 10 years in prison but released just after halfway through her term.

The new documentary, a two-parter which concluded on Sunday and is still available on the BBC’s iPlayer service, showed the trauma that her victims had been through and tried to explain how people fall for what may seem the most outlandish stories when they are at their weakest points.

A woman who was desperate to have a baby allegedly gave her £176,000 between 2005 and 2007 believing D’Souza had magical powers that could help her. The fraud trial heard that once she had a grip on her victims she would extort further riches by claiming to predict further calamities hanging over their heads and “isolate” them from their worried friends and family.

But the programme also questioned whether D’Souza had run other swindles.

The documentary claimed that D’Souza may have offered to sell Isabel Cook’s identity to a woman she had targeted in Suriname. D’Souza had told a woman she was on a “wanted list” and needed to flee the country.

The woman is believed to have paid tens of thousands of pounds to assume the identity of Ms Cook, but never received the passport.

This was according to notes made by another investigative journalist, George Hines. Mr Hines has died since the scandal but Mr Rayment was given access to his computer hard drive to read his notes of past interviews.

Mr Rayment said: “The connection between Isabel Cook and this new victim exposes a whole new level of exploitation and criminal enterprise.

“Both were already victims, but then she uses the identity of one to defraud the other.”

Ms Cook was a close friend of one of D’Souza’s worst affected victims, opera singer Sylvia Eaves – she lost £256,000 to the fraud.

Struggling with health problems, she too was offered shamanic healing.

Mr Bender said in interviews with Mr Rayment that he had referred Ms Cook to D’Souza. “We can’t talk to her because she is dead. It really should, in a way, be investigated further because I think everybody has their own story to tell,” he said.

Juliette D’Souza used many aliases

At D’Souza’s sentencing at Blackfriars Crown Court, a group of Filipinos with links to Suriname appeared outside and told the press that they had been victims of her passport scam.

Mr Rayment added: “We will never know the full extent of her crimes and why she did them. She remains an enigma. The scale and complexity of her lies, the number she had going on simultaneously, is unparalleled. Given her track record I don’t think it’s the last we will hear of her.

“What I’ve learned is that being human means that when times are tough we need something or somebody to believe in. That’s what she exploited and that is why it is so outrageous.”

D’Souza did not comment before she disappeared after her release from prison, and the closest thing to hearing her view was a detective on the documentary describing how she tried to act like her friend during questioning, insisting: “I would never do something like that.”

Did you know Isabel Cook? Contact Tom Foot at [tfoot@camdennewjournal.co.uk]

How monkey was saved from ‘witch doctor’s cage

Angela Humphery with a picture of Joey

While questions remain about what happened to Juliette D’Souza, some who remember the story may also be wondering what happened the caged monkey left abandoned in one of her Hampstead homes.

After she failed to provide money for rent of properties that one of her victims was living in, a search revealed a home filled wall-to-wall with Satanic and ritualistic symbols, artefacts and designer clothes hand bags.

There was also a disabled pet monkey Joey, originally from Suriname, that had been kept in the house in Willoughby Road for nearly decade.

At the time, animal rights campaigner Angela Humphery, who had no idea that a monkey was trapped in a neighbour’s home, told us: “He is permanently disabled from lack of sunlight, a poor diet and no space to move. In the last two years before he was rescued he was left in solitary isolation with only the company of the television for hours on end.”

She was instrumental in raising a campaign to get Joey moved to the Monkey Sanctuary in Cornwall.

Ricky Gervais, who lived nearby at the time, and Stephen Fry also donated money to help.

The Monkey Sanctuary which was run by Wild Futures, had to shut to the public two years ago.

Joey was put to sleep five years ago after struggling with the disabilities caused by his confinement.