An inquest into the death of a man who died after appearing on The Jeremy Kyle Show has heard details of the final text message he sent to his former partner.
Steve Dymond, 63, was found dead at his home in Portsmouth, Hampshire, in May 2019, seven days after taking part in the show.
He had taken a lie detector test for the ITV programme The Jeremy Kyle Show after being accused of cheating on his ex-fiancee Jane Callaghan. Following his death, the episode was never aired.
A full inquest has now opened at Winchester Coroner’s Court, with his final message to Ms Callaghan detailed on the first day.
“This will be the last time I say it, I was never, never ever unfaithful to you, in all the time we were together,” Mr Dymond wrote in a WhatsApp message.
“I hope The Jeremy Kyle Show is so happy now, as to what they have done to me.
“I did lie about my past, but not about me being a cheat, I never ever did cheat on you. They are responsible for what happens now, I hope this makes good ratings for them, I bet they keep this quiet.”
Both Ms Callaghan and Mr Dymond’s son, Carl Woolley, gave evidence on Tuesday.
Mr Dymond felt he was “thrown under a bus”, according to his son’s witness statement.
“My father was crying as he told me he had been on The Jeremy Kyle Show and that he had been deemed a liar right from the start,” Mr Woolley said. “He said he had been ‘taken for a mug’ and ‘pounced on’ by the presenter.”
Jeremy Kyle. Pic: Rex
‘Made out to be a baddie’
In his statement, Mr Woolley said he had told his father: “What did you expect going on a show like that?”
But his father told him “he hadn’t realised he would be made a mockery of”, the statement said.
“He told me he was ‘made out to be a baddie’… and that no one had given him any chance to put his point across, and that Jeremy Kyle was constantly ‘on him’. He said he felt he ‘was thrown under a bus’.”
In court, Mr Woolley said his father told him in a phone call that Kyle “egged on” the audience to “boo him”. However, he said he struggled to understand everything as “he was crying and speaking so manically”.
Mr Woolley said his father “was very upset, saying he was being called a liar, everyone had jumped on him” and he was “not with it at all”.
Counsel to the inquest Rachel Spearing asked who had “jumped on him”, to which Mr Woolley replied: “Jeremy Kyle had got the crowd to egg on, to boo at him and stuff, he was cast as the liar before he had even spoken.”
No mention of Kyle in note left for son
The court also heard extracts from a note Mr Dymond left for this son. There was no mention of Kyle or the show in the note, the inquest was told.
“In the bottom paragraph he says sorry to you, he asks you not to be mad with him and he knows that you will be but he doesn’t know what to say to you,” Ms Spearing said.
Mr Woolley said his father told him he was “getting support and aftercare from the show’s counsellors, I explained to him he needed to get in contact with them and keep ringing them to get the aftercare that he needed”.
The hearing was told father and son had not been in recent contact before the episode was recorded. It was pointed out that Ms Callaghan had previously claimed Mr Woolley had told her to “get as far away from Steve as you could and told her Steve was no good”.
Mr Woolley admitted this and said it was because he was “angry and upset” as he had not had much contact with his father up until this point.
‘After that I wanted him out of my life’
Giving evidence later in the day, Ms Callaghan told the court Mr Dymond saw the Jeremy Kyle Show as a chance to prove he had not cheated.
She told the court they met on a dating site in May 2017, broke up in February 2019, and rekindled their relationship towards the end of March that year.
Speaking about Mr Dymond’s time on the show, Ms Callaghan said Kyle was “a bit rude” to him.
The court heard Mr Dymond was “begging” her to believe the lie detector was wrong. They left separately, she told the inquest, and later he continued to protest his innocence.
“I wasn’t communicating with him really,” she continued. “After that I just wanted him out of my life.”
She told the inquest she initially believed the lie detector test was 100% reliable and accurate, but later changed her mind.
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Extracts from a note Mr Dymond left for Ms Callaghan were also read aloud in court, in which he said: “I failed because I lied about my past. Now I have lost you forever.”
Neil Sheldon KC, representing Kyle at the hearing, asked Ms Callaghan if she had told a producer from the show that the presenter had been “great”, to which she replied: “Yes.”
Mr Sheldon went on to ask a series of questions, including: “Do you remember Mr Kyle telling Steve that he wanted to put the two of you together backstage so you could work out your problems?”; “Do you remember him inviting the audience to give Steve a round of applause as he left the stage?”; “Do you remember him sitting down backstage (with Ms Callaghan and Mr Dymond)… and telling everybody to calm down?”.
She replied “yes” to all of them.
Mr Sheldon suggested there was “not a single message” to her, from what Ms Callaghan could recall, in which Mr Dymond “complains about the way in which he was spoken to or treated by Mr Kyle”.
Ms Callaghan agreed.
However, the inquest later heard the details of his final message to her.
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‘He sounded completely broken’
Following Mr Dymond’s death, ITV axed The Jeremy Kyle Show after 14 years and MPs launched an inquiry into reality TV and the way participants are cared for.
Mr Dymond died of a combination of a morphine overdose and left ventricular hypertrophy in his heart, the inquest was told. The hearing is expected to last a week.
A witness statement on behalf of his brother, Leslie Dymond, was also read aloud in court. In it, he recalled phone conversations after the episode was filmed.
“He sounded completely broken and frightened and told me he could not go on living,” the statement said.
“He did tell me that the audience had booed him, that the presenter, Jeremy Kyle, had been in his face and that he had been followed when he left the stage with cameras and microphones being put in his face. He told me he was jeered and called a failure by the presenter.”
In a statement read to the inquest, Mr Dymond’s cousin Gerald Brierley said it was he who had written Leslie Dymond’s witness statement, based on Leslie’s “raw notes”.
He also said he had agreed with Leslie to take care of legal issues on his behalf, “for which he agreed to reward me with a share of any money that he might obtain from ITV”.
Coroner Jason Pegg told the hearing that the purpose of the inquest was not to “apportion civil or criminal liability” to any person involved.
The hearing continues.
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