From The Times and Sunday Times, this is The Story.
I'm Gabriel Pogrand.
On The Story this weekend, we 've been following the case of Zach Brettler,
a 19-year-old boy who jumped to his death from a balcony in London in 2019.
We 've looked at the way his death was treated as though a suicide and how the Metropolitan Police
failed to secure charges against the two men involved.
And how the preeminent author and investigative reporter Patrick Braddon Keefe dismantled their methodology
in his New Yorker article, which is now the subject of his latest book, London Falling.
He exposed failings that call into question,
if not the police's verdict on the case, then certainly the basis on which they had arrived at it.
It is now that I come into the story.
I knew Zach and his family, and after Patrick's article,
I asked if they might benefit from a UK-based journalist who might be able to get some answers
out of local law enforcement and other authorities.
So, in 2024, their son's death became the subject of a report in the Sunday Times which,
fused with Patrick's original findings, uncovered further questions of the Metropolitan Police.
Those are questions we'll address in today's episode, questions the police have failed to answer at any point.
Who were the two other men in the apartment at the time of Zach's death?
The men who had criminal connection?
Why did police ignore key evidence that a suspect had lied about his every move that night?