The case of Zachary Brettler has been in the papers and online for years and now, we have a book that brings us answers. Not all, but many.
This is the story of two parents, Matthew and Rachelle Brettler, who want to find out what really happened to their son, Zachary, who died Nov 29, 2019.
CCTV from MI6 captured him jumping off a balcony of Riverwalk, a luxurious condo building along the river Thames. The autopsy showed that Zac (19) had a broken jaw but otherwise, there was no trauma from bullets, knives, or beatings.
As it turns out, Zac was a compulsive liar who wanted to escape his mundane family life and thus fabricated an intriguing new profile for himself. He was good at making new friends but had difficulty maintaining the relationships.
How it all started, we will probably never know. Somehow Zac got inside a charity auction in March of 2019. He met a man called Mark Foley. Foley, well respected and connected, became his verbal letter of introduction to a network where nobody is who they claim to be. A network where the personal word carries great credibility and Mark’s word opened doors for Zac.
This network was filled with businessmen who follow the same pattern. They lead a life of riches, amass great debts that they cannot pay back because on paper, they do not actually own anything. Not the house they live in, not the furniture, not even their clothes. Everything belongs to another company, an empty shell that does not have any assets either.
Many of them are predators who scan the crowd for a mark, a target, with real access to money. Then they play the long game over several months. They become part of their target’s life, get to know their families, cultivate those relationships, and then turn on the target demanding money often reminding the target they know all about their family.
In Dec 2022, an inquest took place to find out what had happened to Zac. According to UK Law, in case of a death with an unknown cause a public inquest must be held to determine the basic facts.
The presiding coroner must determine what on balance of all the evidence presented most likely happened to the victim. Coroner M. Hassell rendered an open verdict so neither murder nor suicide. She said she really did not know.
Zac had pretended to be the son of a Russian oligarch who stood to inherit a huge fortune. In doing so he made himself a con’s mark, a target. He got involved with two men. One was Akbar Shamji, a bankrupt charlatan. The other, Verinder Kumar Sharma, a gangster known for his violence.
Both men found out they were conned by a teenager. Verinder was broke, looking for one more score before retirement. He had fallen for Zac’s lies. If that came out he would be finished.
Inside Verinder’s apartment at Riverwalk, Zac was alone with the angry gangster who was known for his threats involving hot knives. Zac’s last internet searches related to burn wounds. As the author Patrick Radden Keefe wrote, Zac chose “the safety of the Thames.”
This is an incredible book filled with details about the criminal scene in London. However, the author never lost focus of the Brettlers’ battle, their grief, how powerless and trapped they were, and how many mistakes were made in the investigation.
Front and center are the changed family dynamics, the many people Zac lied to, and all the missed opportunities the authorities had. It leaves the reader emotionally shaken. You grief with the family. You scream for the authorities to do better. You want an arrest. You want a criminal trial knowing it will never happen. The charlatan was officially cleared. The gangster died. But someone knew the truth about Zac’s death.
It is ironic that a government camera filmed Zac’s last moments yet that government failed to successfully investigate those moments it captured.
There are notes, a list with abbreviations, records, proceedings, and over 400 notes.
Highly recommended reading for true crime readers but also for those wanting to understand how Zac’s parents dealt with the entire situation. How they handled their grief and never gave up researching Zac’s death, is commendable.
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