Speedboat killer Jack Shepherd has pleaded guilty to violently assaulting his new partner, including attacking her with a set of barbecue tongs, a year after being released from prison.
The 38-year-old pleaded guilty over a prison video link on Tuesday to two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and damaging property at Isleworth Crown Court.
The assaults happened in February and June last year, and sparked Shepherd’s recall to prison.
He was originally jailed for 10 years for manslaughter in 2018 over the death of 24-year-old Charlotte Brown when his speedboat crashed during a first date.
Shepherd skipped his Old Bailey trial while on the run in Georgia, before he was eventually extradited back to the UK to serve his sentence.
He was set free on licence in January 2024, but faced recall to prison in September last year after he was accused of violence towards a woman.
At court on Tuesday, Shepherd pleaded guilty to three offences as prosecutors agreed to drop two other allegations, of controlling or coercive behaviour and intentional suffocation.
Shepherd entered his guilty pleas over a video link from HMP Swaleside in Kent.
He has admitted pinning down the woman and punching her in February 2025, striking her in the chest with barbecue tongs in June 2025, and damaging her keys in that same month.
Judge Martin Edmunds KC, the Recorder of Kensington and Chelsea, remanded Shepherd into custody until a sentencing hearing in September.
The judge ordered a probation report on Shepherd’s progress when he was free from prison in 2024 and the first half of 2025.
Shepherd told the court himself that his latest release date from prison, at the end of the manslaughter sentence, is in January 2029.
According to a prosecution summary of the case, Shepherd has admitted pinning down the woman and “punching her several times causing bruising to her arm and top of leg” during an argument.
In the second incident, Shepherd got angry with his partner for burning a pizza during a barbecue, and “proceeded to hit her with the barbecue tongs on her left breast which caused a permanent scar”.
In his manslaughter trial, the court heard that Shepherd, a web developer, met Ms Brown, from Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, for a first date, and offered to take her on a ride along the River Thames on his speedboat.
They had both been drinking champagne, and Shepherd handed the controls of the boat to Ms Brown just before it struck a submerged tree and overturned, tipping both of them into the cold water.
He was plucked from the Thames alive, but Ms Brown was found unconscious and unresponsive.
Shepherd denied manslaughter by gross negligence, but skipped the trial while on the run and did not give any evidence in his own defence.
After being brought back to the UK to serve his sentence, he was also jailed for four years at Exeter Crown Court in 2019 for a drink-fuelled attack on a barman in 16 March 2018 at The White Hart Hotel in Newton Abbot, Devon.
News of his latest crimes first emerged last month in a Parole Board report about his recall to prison.
