Dog-walker found body of tragic Yorkshire farmer and dad, 33, who died from cocaine use after going missing from pub following row

Luke Joseph Willetts, 33, went missing from The Black Horse pub in Tollerton on October 23 last year, but his body was not found until November 19 when a dog walker spotted his remains next to the Kyle Beck.

The inquest at North Yorkshire Coroner’s Court on Friday was told that Mr Willetts and his partner Lauren Chadwick had moved to the village near Easingwold from York in 2022 with their two children, when Miss Chadwick took over as licensee of The Black Horse, where the family lived. Mr Willetts took a job on a nearby pig farm.

The couple had been together since 2009 and had had a ‘calm’ relationship until the summer of 2023, when Mr Willetts developed an ‘obsession’ that Miss Chadwick was having an affair with a friend. He became paranoid and would constantly demand to look at her mobile phone and question her movements.

In early September he made an ‘impulsive’ attempt to take his own life in the pub, and in October went missing twice, on both occasions being found by police. Miss Chadwick said she had denied being unfaithful but that he remained ‘convinced’. On the night he went missing, although they went to bed early, Mr Willetts did not sleep, and when Miss Chadwick woke at 3am, he seemed ‘out of it’ and she suspected he had taken drugs. An hour later he was still agitated and after she refused to let him check her phone, he left the pub and was not seen alive again.

When the inquest was opened in January, the cause of death at postmortem was given as cocaine toxicity with drowning as a contributory factor, but coroner Jonathan Leach clarified at the final hearing that he had challenged the pathologist’s report after reading that there was no water, mud of ‘foreign materials’ in Mr Willetts’ airways or internal organs. The pathologist agreed and amended the report to remove drowning as a cause.

Toxicological tests found only a small amount of alcohol in Mr Willetts’ blood, but levels of cocaine associated with fatality. Evidence was heard from Mr Willetts’ GP and mental health crisis team workers, who had had contact with him in the weeks before his death and prescribed him medication for anxiety and low mood. The dog walker and friend who found Mr Willetts’ body, John Stones, confirmed that he had been at the edge of the stream, but that water levels had appeared to have receded around two metres in depth.

Mr Leach confirmed to member of the Willetts family present at the hearing that there was no indication he had told his GP he was taking cocaine and that his prescribed medications did not show up in his system at the postmortem. Recording a conclusion of drug-related death, Mr Leach added that he was not satisfied that there was intent by Mr Willetts to end his life, and that he appeared to have died before he entered the Kyle Beck.