Saving Gary McKinnon (3 page)

I
started learning to play the guitar just before I left Glasgow and was obsessed with it. Wilson bought me a Fender Telecaster which I used to play almost every day. After I moved to London I started rehearsing in a King’s Cross studio with other girls, who played bass and drums. Jackie Badger from Islington was the bass player, but we had difficulty finding a good female drummer until a young, slim, dark-haired American girl named Holly Beth Vincent walked in and played like a pro. This was our very first band and all three of us are still in regular contact with each other.

Holly eventually formed her own band, Holly and the Italians, and Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits became her boyfriend; a few of Dire Straits’ hits were songs that Mark wrote about Holly, including ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

My friend Jackie rang me one day and asked me to join a girl band she was in named Mother Superior, as they had lost their guitarist. I joined them on a tour of the UK; I had never played a gig before, but being thrown in at the deep end improved my guitar playing and, although daunting, it was an amazing experience.

I missed Gary and Wilson when I was touring and although
the band was getting great reviews, when the tour ended I decided to leave.

A few months later I answered an ad in the
Melody Maker
for a female guitarist. Miles Copeland rang me up and arranged for me to go to his house for an audition. Unfortunately someone told me that it wasn’t a good idea and gave me lots of reasons, with regard to the music business in general, as to why I shouldn’t go, so I didn’t.

Miles Copeland rang back the next day to ask me why I hadn’t turned up, and I was embarrassed and apologetic, and annoyed with myself. Some time afterwards Miles Copeland put the girl band the Bangles together; when the band The Police were formed, it was Miles who managed them, with his brother Stewart Copeland as their drummer.

I started writing songs and, rather than playing separately, Wilson and I decided to form a band together – named Axess, then renamed Who’s George, and finally The Walk. We advertised for a vocalist but couldn’t find one that we were happy with, so I started singing the songs I wrote.

We toured universities and played all around London – at Dingwalls, the Rock Garden, Camden Palace (now KOKO) and the Venue, among others. Our songs were played on the radio and one of my songs scraped into the charts and we had the occasional TV appearance.

At one of our Camden Palace gigs it was announced that Elvis Presley was dead. Charlie, Gary’s dad, was there and was incredibly upset by this news. Everyone in the hall was in a state of shock and disbelief. A legend had died.

Gary had always loved music but wasn’t interested in playing any instruments until he was about seven years old, when one day Wilson and I were in another room working out a song I had written. We heard Gary banging discordantly on
the piano, suddenly followed by grand chords being played in a classical style. Wondering who else was there, we peeked into the room and saw Gary playing the piano with both hands, utterly absorbed.

‘God, Wilson, can you hear that? That’s Gary. Where did
that
come from?’

There was our little Gary sitting playing these powerful, dramatic chords that left us with our mouths open as we peeked from behind the door. We were enthralled and didn’t want to leave, but we didn’t want to stay either, or he’d become aware of us and stop.

We moved home shortly after this and didn’t have a piano until a year or two later, so Gary used to go to a neighbour’s house to practise. One day she came to our door and I invited her in.

‘You really have to send Gary for piano lessons, Janis. I’ve been having lessons for years and without any guidance Gary can play much better than I can, so just think what he could do if he had lessons.’

Little did she realise that we had enough difficulty paying for our rent, let alone for piano lessons.

A year or two later we bought a grand piano from an auction for about £300. It cost us more to have it delivered than it did to buy. We spray-painted it white as I wanted it to look like John Lennon’s piano in the ‘Imagine’ video. Gary, about nine years old at the time, taught himself to play the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata in a matter of days.

The first time we heard Gary sing was another revelation. He had just come home from a local community group he attended in Crouch End called Kids & Co. They wanted the children to learn a song to perform, so Gary asked us if we’d record him singing. I said, ‘Right, what song do you want to do?’

‘“She’s Leaving Home”,’ Gary replied.

‘The Beatles song? You know it’s not the easiest song in the world to sing if you’ve never sung before.’

‘But that’s the one I want to do.’

‘OK,’ I said, thinking that this just wasn’t going to work. Gary used to wander around with headphones on and when he sang along it sounded so awful we’d decided that as far as singing was concerned he was tone deaf. So when Gary started to sing ‘She’s Leaving Home’ we were blown away by this deep, haunting voice that flowed effortlessly.

He was so modest and unassuming that no one realised what he was capable of. Unfortunately Gary was excluded from Kids & Co. shortly after that as he apparently didn’t listen to or wouldn’t follow their instructions. Becoming excluded from things was happening too often and would be difficult for anyone to take. I knew how hard Gary had been trying to fit in, to find his place in the world, but because he felt he was failing, he was becoming more and more isolated. To be so talented yet so undervalued by people seemed so damned unfair.

What is to ‘fit in’ anyway? To try to fit in is to try to become ordinary and be conditioned not to raise your head above the parapet or stand out from the crowd. If someone is ‘different’, why should they be expected to strive to become ordinary?

Encouraging people to manage their differences and to express themselves through whatever medium they can, and encouraging others to accept and value those differences, is surely what society should strive for. Whether that medium is music, art, computing, cooking, gardening or being good with animals, all are equally valid. We are all links in a chain that make our society what it is.

Not all who are different are talented, but many are. Michelangelo was by choice a solitary figure who slept in his
clothes, shunned the company of his fellow man and had no interest in food other than as a necessity.

Great thinkers such as Isaac Newton did not fit in; the suffragettes were extraordinary women who rebelled in a way that shocked society.

If someone feels that they have never achieved anything, remind them that each and every one of us swam in the race for life and won that race, when competing with millions of other sperm, so each one of us is pretty amazing.

That Christmas we bought Gary his first computer, an Atari with a memory of 8K. There were no such things as hard drives then – well, no affordable ones anyway. Gary was fascinated by the computer and could quite happily have sat in front of it day after day. I was worried about him being cooped up indoors, but he would say, ‘Mum, please don’t tell me I should go out to play.’

When, in the spring, a neighbour told me about a school summer camp in Wales, I persuaded Gary to try it for a week as I thought it would be good for him to be out in the fresh air with other children. I watched his little face at the window of the train as it sped into the distance. Gary looked so small and alone, even though the train was full of children headed for the camp. I worried that I had made a mistake but, despite the trauma of the journey, the camp was a success. He loved the woods and the campfire, and met a young girl named Rachel Glastonbury. A few summer camps later I received a letter telling me that Gary was now excluded as they didn’t have the time to deal with him. However, he and Rachel remained close and continued seeing each other – she became Gary’s first love.

Rachel’s brother Dan played various instruments and was
gentle and vulnerable; a few years later he took his own life at a time when he felt unable to cope. Rachel was very close to her brother and his death took a huge emotional toll on her.

Wilson and I were still pursuing our own musical careers; I was working on combining melodies with the power of rock. Peter Vince, one of the senior figures at Abbey Road Studios, liked some of my songs and arranged for us to record them there. In the Abbey Road canteen we met Paul and Linda McCartney with their baby boy, James, and their occasional babysitter, our friend Josie Betan, who also worked in Abbey Road. Paul and Linda invited Wilson and me over to their table to see the baby but we declined as we had a man from EMI with us, who was tipsy and star-struck and we felt, likely to impose on them. In retrospect I regret this, as we were all vegetarians and I’d love to have discussed animal protection with Linda. Ray Cameron McIntyre heard the songs we had recorded at Abbey Road and invited us to his home in Hampstead. He worked hard to help us as he loved the songs, but there were other people involved and we went in a different direction. However, we remained on good terms and worked on other projects together. Ray used to write material for the Kenny Everett TV show and he had a real feel for music and production. Sadly, he died of a heart attack some years later when he was just fifty-five years old.

Whenever I see the comedian Michael McIntyre on TV, following in Ray’s footsteps, I think how proud his dad would have been of him.

We were contacted by manager Jazz Summers, who wanted to represent us, and he arranged a record deal for us with Mickie Most, who loved the songs. We went to RAK Studios and met with Mickie, but for various reasons we turned down the management and because of this we lost the record deal. In retrospect this was foolhardy of us – Jazz Summers was very
successful and went on to manage Wham! and George Michael very shortly afterwards.

We were later offered a record deal with Warner Bros, who wanted to release an album, and the single was to be ‘Stand Up’, which was one of my more credible songs, which I was pleased about.

We were advised to use a music lawyer, which we duly did. However, after months of discussions, Warner Brothers said it was like negotiating with Led Zeppelin and pulled out. In retrospect we should probably have just signed.

I loved writing songs, but when a French record company wanted an artist called Sheila B. Devotion to do one of my songs, being naive and silly, I said I wanted to keep my songs for myself. They said in a shocked tone, ‘But Sheila B. sells millions of records!’, but being the fool that I was I couldn’t be persuaded.

Chas Chandler, who was in the Animals, released another of our songs called ‘I Can’t Resist You’, which we performed on TV. It got a lot of radio play and sold quite well. We were happy and having fun.

When we lived in Glasgow, a medium/spiritualist once told us we would go to London and should take every opportunity that came our way, but unfortunately we threw away virtually every one.

We should have taken at least some of these opportunities, as financially life would have been much less of a struggle for us. But then again, Wilson and I are happy.

W
hen Gary was sixteen years old he got a job in town and suddenly started losing his intellectual faculties. We were seriously worried. He was referred to a neurologist as it was thought he might have a brain tumour. The neurologist examined him and did various tests but there was no sign of a tumour. However, Gary wasn’t improving and had collapsed twice on the platform of the tube, which was pretty dangerous. We had no idea what to do when we were told by the neurologist that there was no physical cause.

This was a constant worry for us but fortunately Gary’s fainting fits ceased and his intellectual faculties returned. However, when he was under pressure, away from home or seriously upset, this mental meltdown would kick in again and we felt that this fragility could put his life at risk.

Gary wasn’t very good at making or forming relationships. His first live-in partner was Tamsin. The first time we saw her, Gary was in his early twenties, singing at his first and only gig, fronting a really good band made up of some of his old Highgate Wood school friends at The Bowlers in north London.

Wilson and I were incredibly nervous, rooting for Gary as he walked on stage. He’d never performed before so we figured
he must be terrified. The music started and we were shocked. Our son – this tall, slightly gaunt, quiet young man with a mop of beautiful dark auburn hair – was suddenly transformed in front of our eyes into a David Bowie-type singer/performer. Gary looked and sounded as if he had been performing all his life. He was amazing and the applause was rapturous. My sister Lorna was there with us and she filled up with tears when she heard him sing; we were all so proud.

That was when Tamsin caught my eye: watching Gary with such intensity and warmth in her eyes that I had a feeling even then that this young girl who shone out from the crowd with her yellow dress, dark tousled hair and huge smile was going to be a major part of Gary’s life.

He never really approached girls or made the first move. So some months later some of their friends apparently decided to get Gary a little bit tipsy, to give him a helping hand in getting to know Tamsin better.

Everyone always described Gary as very difficult to get to know. He never opens up about himself, hates small talk and discusses only those subjects that spark his interest.

Getting Gary tipsy must have worked as he and Tamsin became a couple not long afterwards. For a long time they seemed happy – until Gary’s obsession with his computer became even more fanatical.

One year there was a party on New Year’s Eve at Gary and Tamsin’s flat. We popped over to quickly wish them a Happy New Year before the party got into full swing. The living room was full of Tamsin’s relatives, gathering together in a corner and looking a bit uncomfortable. I turned around and there was Gary sitting in the middle of the room with a large computer on a very large table, oblivious to what was going on around him.

Gary was becoming more obsessed with the reverse engineering of UFOs that he believed had taken place but was being suppressed. He thought the world was controlled by aliens and once asked, ‘How can they be human? Humans would never treat other humans so inhumanely.’

I looked at him sitting at his computer in the middle of the party and knew I had to say something.

‘You can’t do this, Gary; you have to put the computer away,’ I said quietly.

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s smack bang in the middle of the room and is in everyone’s way.’

‘There’s enough room for them to walk around it.’

‘But they shouldn’t have to. Tamsin’s relatives have travelled from all over for this party and it’s pretty off-putting for them having you sitting at a big table in the middle of the room working on a computer when it’s supposed to be a party.’

‘But it’s my party too,’ he said plaintively.

‘Oh Gary,’ I whispered.

Running my hands through my hair I was trying to think of how to deal with this tactfully without causing upset or arguments on New Year’s Eve.

‘C’mon,’ said Wilson matter-of-factly to Gary, while moving the computer to one side. ‘I’ll help you to carry the table, you take one end and I’ll take the other.’ And Gary did. Just like that.

Wilson is gentle to the core, with a kindness and humour reflected in his eyes that is immediately recognised by children and animals. He’s one of the most innocent people I’ve ever known and this, along with his intelligence and tenderness, is what I love most about him.

We walked out into the cold night air, and looked up at the
full moon, always a magical sign to us, as so many of our life-changing events have for whatever reason coincided with a full moon.

Shortly after this I started to write a drama, which became the independent film
Lunar Girl
. It’s about a girl who is different and lives in a world of her own but is happy that way. Wilson produced the film. He used our music to create its mood, and also wanted to use our friends as the actors – but I wanted it to be as professional as possible and put an ad in
The Stage
. We were overwhelmed with the number of CVs, applications, videos and photographs we received. The postman brought them by the sack-load. I had to sort through thousands of photographs and letters and felt guilty that unless a stamped addressed envelope was included, we were unable to send the photos back as the cumulative postage would have cost us a small fortune.

I found it alarming that some very young teenage girls would offer to do virtually ‘anything’ to be in a film. So many people wanted to be famous rather than to be good actors and were willing to pay a high price for fame, which I not only found sad but dangerous. Fame was highly unlikely in this instance as it was an independent effort financed on a less-than-a-shoestring budget.

We hired a large rehearsal room in Jacksons Lane Community Centre in Highgate and the people we had shortlisted travelled from all over to audition. Jacksons Lane was perfect for us: it even had its own theatre and vegetarian restaurant.

We eventually chose a fifteen-year-old girl from Edinburgh named Charli Wilson for the lead role. Basienka Blake and Pete Gallagher got the other major roles; they had acted together in
Buddy
, a high-profile West End musical. All three were the best choices we could have made.

I used my credit card to finance the film and Wilson and I filmed it ourselves down at Covent Garden and along the South
Bank where kids used to skateboard. There was a lot of artistic graffiti on the walls – sadly later cleaned off for a visit by the Queen during her Golden Jubilee year in 2002.

We filmed in our house and garden and used our music and Gary’s as the soundtrack. Gary also played a homeless person and I directed, although at the time I didn’t have much idea how to. Luckily Charli was a natural and Basienka and Pete were incredibly professional and very helpful.

Although
Lunar Girl
was corny in some ways and we were learning as we went along, I loved how some of the scenes turned out. It was a steep learning curve into film making and Wilson and I used to sit up until the early hours of the morning editing the film. I was fascinated at how the whole feel and tone and even the storyline of the film could be altered by editing.

Amazingly,
Lunar Girl
was screened on TV many times, which I thought was awesome as we were musicians and had no previous experience of film making whatsoever.

We had no way of knowing then that 2001 was going to be our last year of happiness for many years to come.

Three things happened to me that in retrospect seem like warnings of what was to come and gave me the first inkling of the disastrous turn our lives were about to take.

There was the day in the summer of 2001 that Wilson and I were walking our two dogs, a collie cross and an Egyptian Pharaoh hound, on Hampstead Heath. Our collie was Mindy, a stray dog we had taken in few years before, and our Pharaoh hound was Jaffa, who we had rehomed. We had moved from the area ages ago but still occasionally walked our dogs on the heath because they knew it and it’s a great walk.

The north side of the heath has several meadows linked to each other by narrow tractor-sized tracks. We had just left the first meadow and paused while the dogs sniffed around when
I noticed a man, probably in his twenties, approaching us. Everyone had to pass this way but he seemed to be walking purposely towards us as though he wanted to talk.

‘What’s her name?’ he said as he stroked our collie rather than our regal-looking Pharaoh hound, which most people were drawn to.

‘She’s called Mindy, after Mork and Mindy,’ I said, smiling.

‘You’re a musician,’ he said in a matter-of-fact kind of way as he lingered and looked at me intently while continuing to stroke our dog.

‘Yes?’

‘You have a son who plays music and writes songs.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ How could he know that?

‘Well, your son is going to be famous all over the world but for something other than his music.’

I was fascinated and was trying to think of what Gary could possibly do that would lead to him being known throughout the world if it wasn’t for his music. He was stuck in a job with a computer company at that time and, believe it or not, was described as having ‘unremarkable’ computer skills.

I wanted to hear more from this softly spoken stranger who seemed to believe he had some kind of insight into our lives and was becoming more convincing by the second. He started describing other things about our lives that were uncannily correct and that he would have had no way of knowing. This was no ordinary man; he was only pretending to be ordinary.

‘Do you have an email address I could contact you on?’

‘No, I don’t have a computer,’ he said, looking back before disappearing into the woods.

I smiled and said, ‘Well, of course you don’t,’ half expecting him to fade away as they do in mystical films.

The next warning came in a dream I had.

5 a.m., 29 January 2002

‘Wilson, are you awake?’

‘I am now,’ he answered, screwing up his eyes as he tried to avoid the light.

‘I had this dream; it was strange. My sister Lorna came to me and looked into my eyes and said, “Your life is going to change just like
that
,” and she snapped her fingers. I asked her, “In what way is it going to change, good or bad?”

‘She stared at me in a cold and serious way, not like Lorna at all, and repeated in a stern voice, “Your life is going to change just like
that
,” and she snapped her fingers again.

‘It was chilling. I know it means something.’

‘Well, it probably means your life is going to change just like that. Try to get some sleep, Janis; we have to be up early.’

Sinking back into sleep I saw someone staring at me from the shadows. I recognised the face as belonging to Eleanor, my sister-in-law, but I had never seen her with such an intense look. With a fixed serious expression she ordered me: ‘Look at Gary!’ and repeated again but more urgently, ‘Look at Gary!’

I woke up and realised I’d been dreaming. But I could feel my heart beating twice as fast as normal as panic rose to my throat, staying longer than it should have on account of a dream. Even after I found my voice, that gnawing feeling of anxiety didn’t fade. I felt something was wrong and I phoned Gary to make sure he was OK but there was no answer and I panicked.

‘Wilson, we have to go to Gary’s, something’s wrong.’

Fortunately Wilson listens to me. We got dressed, grabbed our coats and got into the car.

‘Damn! Someone has parked in front of the drive; I hope he’s going to move. The entire road is empty and he blocks our drive.’

The driver eventually moved his van, with irritating slowness. We drove straight to Gary and Tamsin’s ground-floor flat
in north London, which they rented from Tamsin’s aunt, who lived upstairs.

I had a sense of foreboding as I rang the bell. No answer. I rang again. I waited and still no answer. I peered anxiously through the front window and caught a glimpse of movement. The relief I felt when Gary opened the door, still in his dressing gown with bleary eyes, hair sticking up and looking bemused as to why we were there so early in the morning, made me smile with a mixture of relief and affection.

Gary looked thinner; I hadn’t noticed before and hoped he was eating enough. We stayed for a while. I looked around and everything seemed fine, but Gary looked troubled. Only much later did I learn that Gary had been up all night on his computer and still hadn’t been to bed.

If only I’d known then, or somehow understood what the dreams meant, maybe I could have done something – like throwing Gary’s computer out of the window.

I can’t explain why dreams sometimes come true but they sometimes do.

Wilson and I had been thinking about fostering children and embarked on the cathartic and emotional process of being assessed.

The extent and type of questions asked makes you reach deep into your soul. It’s like looking into a mirror and seeing yourself for the first time. You learn much more about who you are and why you are as you are and what experiences in your life played a vital role in shaping the person you’ve become.

Fostering was always something we knew we would do when we were a bit older as we believed that if the majority of families
fostered at least one child there would be virtually no need for children’s homes. The time seemed right and we decided to foster siblings to stop them from being split up, as happens all too often. We’d just been approved to foster when out of the blue on 19 March 2002 Gary was arrested and our lives were turned upside down. Our lives really did change ‘just like that’, as my sister had foretold in the dream, and in more ways than one.

Gary and Tamsin were arrested and held in custody for about eight hours. Gary was questioned by the British Hi-Tech Crime Unit and released on bail but was not charged. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) stated their intention to prosecute Gary. They also told him that as he hadn’t caused any damage or sent any malicious codes the likely sentence would be approximately six months’ community service. The fact that Gary had accessed Pentagon computers filled me with dread but when we heard nothing further, we began to dare to hope that no charges would be brought.