The results of a DNA test will clear the name of Nicholas Brandram, the suspect in the “Putney pusher” case, his sisters have told the BBC.
The banker was arrested in June, nine years after a woman was pushed in front of a moving bus by a jogger on Putney Bridge in May 2017. He gave a DNA sample to police two months ago but never received the results, his sisters said.
Brandram was found dead in his west London home on Tuesday. His family have insisted he was innocent and said he “took his own life after months of immense pressure” caused by the Met investigation.
The Met said it recognised the “strain that being subject to a police investigation” could cause, but did not respond to this specific claim.
‘Malicious or mistaken’
The Met added that a mandatory referral had been made to the police watchdog.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Alexia Hicks and Sophie Voelcker gave a list of reasons why they believed their brother could not have been the attacker, and accused the Metropolitan Police of being “negligent and reckless”.
The sisters told Today presenter Justin Webb it was “ridiculous” their brother – a former Army officer – was the suspect because:
- His identity did not match the profile of the pusher, saying their brother had a withered leg from an old Army injury and a prominent military tattoo on his forearm
- Their brother lived in Notting Hill, had no connection with Putney and they had evidence that he had sent an email from his Bond Street office at around the time of the attack
- The victim reported the attacker had brown eyes but their brother had blue eyes
- He willingly provided a DNA sample to the Met to speed up the inquiry but never received results, despite pleading with police to speed them up
“It’s out there on the internet what the so-called Putney pusher looked like. We provided evidence very quickly to show that this did not look like our brother,” the sisters said.
“Nine and a half years ago when the incident occurred, there’d been absolutely nothing connecting our brother to the attack.
“So this came completely out of the blue, off effectively an allegation which must have been either malicious or mistaken.”
Describing Brandram’s “hostile” arrest in June, Hicks said: “My brother woke up to a large handful of police officers wearing armed vests and with a film crew on the doorstep from the media.”
While in police custody over the Putney Bridge incident, Brandram was also arrested on suspicion of possession of Class A and Class B drugs.
The sisters said his mental health had been “deteriorating” following the arrest.
“His name was leaked on social media channels within a couple of days. And that’s when the vitriol started online. Thanks to the leak,” they said.
“He was reading everything that was online. Because he was still guilty online.”
Brandram’s sisters said: “The Met, they were negligent, they were reckless and they have, you know, failed our brother.
“They failed in their duty of care to our brother, to the wider family and arguably actually society because the Putney pusher is still out there.”
The sisters said it seemed as though the Met had an “urgency” to arrest him and tell the press.
“He couldn’t understand why there wasn’t an urgency to help clear his name,” they said.
Describing Brandram as a “very, very, very loved brother and uncle, father, son”, the sisters said he was a “real family man” and “didn’t deserve any of this happening to him”.
Brandram was linked to the incident in April when a person contacted officers with information that opened new lines of inquiry, according to the Met.
His arrest was deemed proportionate by officers in order to seize and search his devices as part of the investigation.
The force emphasised that it had not named Brandram publicly when he was arrested or at any point before his death.
The Met said the investigation into the 2017 incident remained ongoing.
It added that it had no further comment to make in relation to the sisters’ comments.
