Max Spiers death coroner attacks 'incompetent' police

Polish officers did not examine conspiracy theorist’s body after he died, inquest finds

Polish police officers were “wholly incompetent” in their response to the death of a British conspiracy theorist, a coroner has said, as he concluded the man died after taking prescription drugs while suffering from pneumonia.

Max Spiers, 39, died suddenly on 16 July 2016, at the Warsaw home of a fellow conspiracy theorist whom he had met at a conference. But the police who attended the scene failed to examine his body or launch a proper investigation, his inquest has found.

Concluding a three-day inquest in Sandwich, Kent, assistant coroner Christopher Sutton-Mattocks said: “Max was a conspiracy theorist and a well-known one at that.

“If there was anything that was bound to excite the interest of other conspiracy theorists, it was the wholly incompetent initial investigation into his death.”

In the days before he died, Spiers had told his mother, Vanessa Bates, he feared he might be murdered, and had sent her a text message asking her to “investigate” if anything happened to him, the inquest has previously been told.

Spiers, also known as Bates-Spiers, fell asleep on the sofa of his friend Monika Duval after taking several tablets of a Turkish form of the drug Xanax, then stopped breathing, the inquest heard.

He vomited “gastric fluids” as she attempted resuscitation, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. A postmortem examination also found deadly levels of oxycodone, an opioid, in his system.

Two police officers who visited Duval’s house said they made “no examination or further investigation” after a doctor said the death was due to natural causes, the coroner heard.

Giving a narrative conclusion, Sutton-Mattocks said the cause of death was pneumonia and intoxication by drugs, which caused aspiration of gastric contents.

The 39-year-old was a journalist “dealing with the topics of conspiracy theories and paranormal phenomena”, the inquest previously heard. “He was very funny, so funny and so full of life, and humorous,” his mother said.

“He was not one of those dead hellbent on conspiracy and pointing out that the government was going to fall – stereotypically, that’s how conspiracy theorists are presented.”

Spiers was in Warsaw to attend the Earth Project conference, where he gave a lecture about participation in “secret military programmes”, the inquest heard.

He met Duval, a publisher, at the event and she let him stay at her house for several weeks before his death on 16 July 2016.

In a statement read to the inquest, Duval said that “gastric fluids” had poured from Spiers’ mouth as she tried resuscitation. Emergency services who arrived shortly after pronounced him dead at the scene.

The hearing was told paramedics called two police officers, Slawomir Mamczak and Pawel Semeniuk, after Duval grew agitated when they stopped CPR.

In a statement, Mamczak said a doctor told them the death was “due to natural causes”. He added: “The doctor said a woman who was present in the house didn’t agree with their decision to stop resuscitation.”

Semeniuk said in a statement: “After the doctor said the death was due to natural causes, we somehow didn’t delve into it … There was no examination or further investigation.”

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