A trail from Beverly Hills to Mornington Place
Jennifer Abbott will be remembered for the circumstances of her death – but there is an extraordinary life story to tell
It’s been a strange week in Camden: the summer festival season has begun and people have been happily enjoying the warm weather, but two tragic stories were on our front page on Thursday: a man falling to his death from an apparent broken balcony in Swiss Cottage and the case which had all of the national newspapers and news crews descend on our neighbourhood: the death of Jennifer Abbott in Camden Town.
Ms Abbott’s sister has been charged with murder and reporting restrictions now mean that certain details may not be published. But when somebody dies in such circumstances, the risk is that all they will be remembered for is the police investigation and some snaps online with celebrities.
So for this week’s feature, Caitlin Maskell pieces together the first fragments of an extraordinary life story, as neighbours remember a friendly face who was never short of a giggle and was always accompanied by her beloved best friend Prince, the corgi.
Look out for NewJournal+’s politics column, North London Bubble, later this weekend and a busy digest of news on Monday.
THE social media trail that Jennifer Abbott has left behind transports you to a glamourous world of private planes and helicopter rides, daring ziplines, ski adventures, scuba diving and posing for paparazzi cameras at premieres and award ceremonies.
But these posts have now all been eclipsed in your search engine by a thousand stories about how she was found dead in her Camden Town flat after neighbours and her niece broke down the door earlier this month.
It’s not just been in your local paper but all around the world – and you know the obvious contrast between the sparkling images of the 69-year-old’s showbiz moments with a later chapter living in Mornington Place has really captured attention when the Daily Mail sends reporters down to our patch to tell us that the council estates here are “hellholes”.
That article was bashed together before Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court saw Ms Abbott’s own sister, Nancy Pexton, charged with murder this week.
But it is undeniable that the intrigue about what the court hearings ahead will be told is high. There will be a full public gallery and press bench whenever this case is listed at the Old Bailey.
The circumstances around what happened in her flat and why will remain sealed until then under court orders.
But tributes are very much allowed for publication, as well as a wander through her life story. In doing so we can make sure she isn’t just known as the woman with the diamond Rolex watch who died from what the pathologists said was “sharp trauma”.
In Camden Town, neighbours, until Friday June 13 at least, may have always remembered her as that woman with the dog, doting as she did on her regal corgi, Prince.
Perhaps few of them will have watched the clips on YouTube of her stepping out of limousines in front of West End cinemas and networking effortlessly with famous faces in the worlds of TV and film.
Then there are the pictures of a past life in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles – souvenirs of meeting the likes of Paris Hilton, Kate Hudson from Almost Famous and Dan Aykroyd, Elwood in The Blues Brothers.
Whether these famous faces were on speed dial or even friends is not known, but every photo bears a radiant smile, Ms Abbott beaming with conviction about her own place in the movie world.
That said, the CV wasn’t stocked full of commercial hits, maybe because her most mentioned film saw her pivot from drama to a documentary, War of Gods in 2010.
She had quite the story to tell about what had happened to her when this challenging piece about the real power plays behind the Iraq War and other conflicts was finished.
To quote from the movie database blurb, the film aimed “to prove to the world that religion has become the weapon used both by the devout, and political leaders, to win their wars.”
In one of the promotional pieces for it, she speaks calmly and directly into the camera and suggests the White House was fuming at its content.
“The Beverly Hills police busted in, handcuffed me and detained me for three days in the Beverly Hills jail. They confiscated my movie for the period of nine months until President Bush’s team came out of office. During that period I was not allowed to communicate with anyone including my attorney,” she said.
“After 53 hours of abuse and fear they opened the cell and let me go without any explanation. All fabricated charges were dismissed at a legal review at the LA district attorney's office. I feel that the confiscation of my movie has violated my rights of free speech.”
She added: “They interfered with the unspoken rules of the creative process of filmmaking and what you are about to see is the environment in America today after the tragedy of 9/11 when we were attacked by forces we did not understand and went marching to war in Iraq.
“This documentary also aims to prove that the manner in which the government are established whether religious or political, is filled with contradiction and hypocrisy but I truly believe unless we dismiss our religious differences and walk hand in hand with each other towards peace and harmony we will never succeed to make this world a better place.”
So while there may be many pictures and videos of Ms Abbott at celebrity events and apparently enjoying the heady nights that go with being a player in the industry, several residents in Mornington Place this week said she would love conversation about current affairs and global politics, just as much as her interests in film.
She won several awards for War of Gods – not at the Oscars but she found herself on a tour of film festivals which took her from Egypt to Las Vegas, and a stop in Tamworth for the Heart of England awards (see film clip at bottom of the page) and the Swansea Film Festival, where independent and experimental works are celebrated.
As she made a speech and thanked the organisers for their hospitality and kindness at the latter, a man from the side of the stage shouts ‘well it’s easy when you’re a pretty lady’.
Perhaps this moment captures an uncomfortable clash between how Ms Abbott has been portrayed more than once – the striking light of the party in leopard print and gold, ‘vivacious’ was the word used this week – and her serious intentions for a war documentary in which she successfully brought together academics, politicians and journalists for interviews.
Peter Oborne, the former chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph who these days is ploughing new terrain as an independent journalist, reacts with a ‘crikey’ when Ms Abbott asks him about the influence of Christianity on UK politics.
There is a deep exchange with Dennis Stout, a Vietnam journalist and soldier, discussing historic war crimes and the fallout of 9/11, with dots being connected to future conflicts and the rise of terrorism.
She takes her research to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park where people tell her economic reasons lay behind the military operations – or invasion – in Iraq.
This was heavy stuff, and a new direction.
It has been suggested she spent ten years or so living in Los Angeles, and was the chief executive officer of a clutch of film companies: Grizzly films, Atlantis Rising and more.
But, while she has been described as a Hollywood film director this week, much of the output almost seem more like labours of love or pet projects than work which was ever going to trouble the box office records.
She said she had been working on making a film of Gerald’s Game, the Stephen King novel about a woman hallucinating horrors after being chained to a bed by her husband. This eventually became the base for a successful movie, but not made by Ms Abbott.
Perhaps the best illustration of what she had moved away from to make War Of Gods with its noble warning about the decline in global democracy is an interview she had made with Ron Jeremy.
She shared their chat online. It’s full of carnal descriptions, but she said the prolific porn actor would soon be moving to the mainstream and be in a “huge motion picture” that she would produce and direct. “I love Ronny, he’s a good friend,” she said.
It is not related to this case in any way or Ms Abbott, but Jeremy was later accused of multiple rapes and was potentially facing a sentence of hundreds of years in prison until he was considered too ill in old age to stand trial.
At this time, her online CV had several ‘coming soon’ entries and she openly dreamed about casting Christopher Walken and Jason Alexander, George from Seinfeld, in a film version of her novel The Other Dimension.
This did not come to pass, and instead she made Temple of Fear in 2004 – an adaptation of her book but without any celebrity stardust and it can be found on YouTube with the rough and ready feel of the age.
Two girls on a road trip through winding roads in the Arizona desert are pulled over by a cop, someone they think they can trust… but you can imagine what comes next. Violence, gore, spurting fake blood and everything else that makes a b-movie slasher.
The Other Dimension, the book, had been released in 2006. One of the glowing reviews on Amazon is written by a woman called Sarah Steinberg, a name police said this week that Ms Abbott used in some professional circles.
Even with the smiles in every photo, nobody said it was easy to get a star on Hollywood Boulevard, but it appeared – even if it was sometimes a grind – she enjoyed trying.
The shared photo albums find her in Maui, Hawaii on a boat soaking up the sun in a yellow bikini, picking grapes at a vineyard and posing for a picture in front of a red Ferrari, wearing a red top to match.
In one clip posted in 2016, Ms Abbott is singing at the top of her lungs in a car on a drive through Washington, that scenic state in north west America. You can hear her laughing and goofing about with a friend as they drive along long and twisting mountain roads.
By any estimation, it does all seem a different world from the slightly tattier streets of central London where Ms Abbott was more recently seen every day heading up to the grass of Regent’s Park with the ever-reliable Prince on a lead.
Which brings us back to that flat in Camden Town.
Without ever knowing a neighbour’s full life story, we all get snapshots and glimpses. Lines of conversation are remembered, and these were being shared only with affection this week.
Mornington Place is a classic Camden Town road where some very well known residents in expensive townhouses share the street with the low rise blocks of council housing.
At the bottom is a path to Camden High Street and Mornington Crescent, while at the top the rail tracks firing trains out of Euston split this part of the neighbourhood with the even more expensive Regent’s Park estate on the other side. Woody Allen once filmed scenes for a movie at the old Mornington Arms pub on the corner, since converted into flats.
It is not known how Ms Abbott ended up in her flat or whether it was bought from somebody who had previously exercised the right to buy on a council home.
She was described by one neighbour as “mysterious” but several residents knew enough to know that she had lived in Beverly Hills for an exciting passage and was connected in some way to film.
The information she had been happy to share online showed she had originally been from Scottsdale, Arizona, the desert city known for its spa resorts and golf courses; even if the accent didn’t scream a Grand Canyon burr.
She also told friends she had studied Arts & Science at what is now Merton Technical College and had been at Pelham High School in Wimbledon as a teenager.
Her self-declared list of interests were trans-Atlantic too: US baseball, but also English cricket – and Chelsea Football club too.
“She was in a couple of movies,” one of the neighbours told the nationals this week. “She did say that she was a movie star and that she moved from Beverly Hills and that she came over here and she lost everything.”
In Camden and in more recent years, Prince meeting another dog on a walk now seemed to have been of greater interest than the capricious entertainment industry.
“I saw her every day - she had a corgi, the same type the Queen had,” another neighbour told the New Journal.
“I saw her every morning and when coming back from work. She didn't directly chat to me but she chatted more to the other dog owners in the block. Doggy people can speak together and strike common ground.
“She was so energetic, always with a smile on her face.”
A complex but colourful, cheery character, you’d imagine that’s how she’d want to be remembered.
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This is a good report on the life of my aunt Jennifer Abbott and it is one of the best reports I have read recently from all the international news sites after her murder.
Hi.
This is a good report on the life of my aunt Jennifer Abbott. It's one of the best reports I've read recently on all the international news sites since her murder.
Jennifer Abbott is my aunt, and I know every detail of her life.
If you have any questions, you can ask me.