Day 15 26 June 2026
Down to the last two weeks of training now. The best time! When your legs feel strong and you can cycle up hills you couldn’t just two months ago. But of course, there are still those times when you are finding it so hard, that you need to check your brakes are not stuck on and you haven’t got a flat tyre. And also, it is very, very hot!
Statistics for the last week: 3 bike rides, 69 miles covered, 1300 metres of ascent, 1 bee in helmet, 0 bee stings, 1 fall on loose gravel, 0 injuries.
You can sponsor my bike ride here.
There is a brilliant organisation called AAFDA (I think it stands for Advocacy after fatal domestic abuse), but its aim is to support the families of victims of domestic abuse. I remember sitting in an AAFDA meeting with many other victims when it became apparent that we could be categorised into two groups. Those where the perpetrator went on to kill themselves, presumably either because of some underlying realisation that what they had done was wrong or because they did not want to face justice, and those of us where the perpetrator went on to trial. I think the former group felt cheated because their perpetrator had in some way escaped justice. But as a member of the other group, we had to face the reality that our perpetrator might at sometime serve their sentence and be released so that at best, they could get on with their lives and at worst, they could continue to offend or seek retribution somehow. Strangely, I think we all wished to be on the other side of this divide.
The trial really was an ordeal to be got through. Our family liaison officers had warned us that it would seem as though it was designed for “the accused” and the presumption of “innocent until proved guilty “might make us feel that it was biased against Alice. What we had not expected was the bare faced lying and the sheer volume of different stories that Trimaan Dhillon brought up in an attempt to escape justice. He started his defence by a vicious attack on Alice’s personality, although had to stop when the judge reminded him that he was on trial and not Alice. It was soon apparent that Dhillon had no understanding of the truth and just said whatever he felt would be best for him. (An observation that Alice had made about him to me a couple of weeks before he killed her.) On the very first day of the trial, Dhillon launched a counter claim that Alice had tried to attack him. An example of the way his stories jumped about is illustrated by him initially claiming not to be in Newcastle on the night of the murder, then agreeing to being there but not seeing Alice, then to seeing Alice and not going in the house, until settling on being there and watching her kill herself in front of him (in fact the severity of her injuries, made this story impossible too). He said that he rushed off without calling emergency services because of PTSD caused by seeing a helicopter pilot killed in Afghanistan. This story itself changed to guarding the aftermath of the collision and finally, when, yet again, the evidence showed otherwise, he claimed he’d seen it on a foreign soldier’s phone. In some ways these stories made the horrors of what was to come less terrible, because we did not believe anything he said. Dhillon continued his controlling behaviour, continuously passing his barrister notes throughout proceedings, but the most shocking thing was to make up stories of what Alice had said, particularly about members of the family and including her final words. These were designed to upset us, although in reality they made us angrier and probably lost him any sympathy he might have got from anyone.
In hindsight, the case against Trimaan Dhillon was watertight, but of course we had no experience of murder trials and no idea, other than the words from Richard Wright (the barrister for the prosecution) about how the trial was going. So, the terrible thought that he might be found innocent and then attack the rest of the family as revenge were always uppermost in our minds. In the event, the jury took less than two hours (including the lunch break) to decide that he was guilty and the sentencing took place almost immediately. We left the court to a barrage of cameras. We had prepared a short statement, which I read to the assembled media and the cameras chased us back to our hotel.
