‘The only way out for me is in a body bag’: The desperate final days of IPP prisoner Taylor Atkinson

‘The only way out for me is in a body bag’: The desperate final days of IPP prisoner Taylor Atkinson

Amy-Clare Martin

Thu, December 11, 2025 at 4:06 PM UTC

14 min read

‘The only way out for me is in a body bag’: The desperate final days of IPP prisoner Taylor Atkinson

Days before Taylor Atkinson took his own life, he told his partner exactly what he was going to do.

Using information he had found in a science textbook from the prison library, he planned to inflict a catastrophic injury on himself, telling the woman whom he called his soulmate that he was leaving prison “in a body bag” that weekend.

After 13 years trapped in prison on an outlawed indefinite jail term, he had served almost nine years longer than his original three-year, 265-day punishment for aggravated burglary.

But under the terms of his imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence, he was repeatedly denied his freedom – at times because the despair of not having a release date had left his mental health on a knife edge.

The only glimpse of the outside world he had seen – a series of day releases in the months before his death – had been snatched away weeks earlier after a prison officer had briefly lost sight of him in a busy shopping centre.

“He had a plan and I knew for a fact it was going to happen,” his partner Sam Faulder, a fellow prisoner, said of their final conversation.

She begged prison officers to place Taylor, a 50-year-old transgender prisoner, on constant watch, or allow her to share a cell with him, but “no one listened”.

“I couldn’t understand it,” she added. “I am not someone that talks to officers. I was crying and begging ... no one was listening. I couldn’t understand, still don’t understand.”

Three days later, Taylor bled to death in his cell at HMP Eastwood Park, a struggling women’s prison in south Gloucestershire. Although he identified as a man, he believed he was the last IPP prisoner in the women’s estate never to have been released.

This week, an inquest jury recorded Taylor’s death as a suicide and concluded that the IPP sentence was “likely the most significant factor contributing to the feelings of despair and mental exhaustion that led to his actions” on 9 July 2022.

They also found that, if Taylor had been under constant supervision, it might have saved his life.

Taylor, 50, was believed to have been the last unreleased IPP prisoner in the women’s estate (Supplied)

‘Why didn’t they give him a chance?’

Taylor is one of at least 94 prisoners serving IPP sentences to have taken their own lives in custody after losing hope of ever getting out.

The open-ended sentences were scrapped in 2012 following a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights, but not retrospectively, which left almost 2,500 people already sentenced trapped without a release date.

Taylor’s grief-stricken niece, Lisa Taylor, agreed with the UN’s damning assessment that the jail term amounts to “psychological torture”, having watched him struggle as fewer than four years in prison spiralled into 13.

After surviving childhood abuse growing up in Gosport, Hampshire, Taylor had turned to drugs and burgled a neighbour to fund his heroin addiction. Instantly remorseful, he pleaded guilty, and he was handed an IPP sentence in March 2010.

Under the controversial jail terms, prisoners must prove to the Parole Board that they no longer pose a risk to the public in order to be released. But for Taylor – who resorted to self-harm in times of desperation – this day never came.

He found himself trapped in a vicious cycle whereby his own mental ill-health became a risk factor that helped to prevent his release. As the years progressed and he was repeatedly refused parole, he was increasingly heard saying that “the only way out of prison was in a body bag”.

“Every time he got knocked back, it affected his mental health, and then he would end up self-harming,” Ms Taylor, 43, told The Independent.

“And then on the next parole hearing, that self-harming would then affect him getting parole. So it was just never-ending.”

She believes the only risk Taylor posed was to himself, adding: “I don’t know why, why they didn’t give him a chance.”

Taylor’s ashes were scattered with those of his beloved rescue dog, Razor (Supplied)

Taylor’s next of kin, his best friend Nicole Rose, said that all he wanted was to settle on the coast and live a quiet life as a painter-decorator.

“Taylor was very remorseful about what he went to prison for,” she said. “He was the biggest softie. He didn’t want to harm anyone.

“He stole from a neighbour in a desperate act of someone in active addiction. He always regretted that.”

She believes that if Taylor had been released, the animal lover would still be alive today and would eventually have died “an old man with rescue dogs by the sea”.

“I don’t believe he was a threat to anyone,” she added.

Giving evidence to Taylor’s inquest from prison, where she is serving a life sentence, Faulder, his partner, told Avon Coroner’s Court that Taylor saw ending his life as a way of finally escaping the IPP jail term.

“When [the IPP sentence] was abolished, at first it was hopeful because we thought they were going to get let out,” she told the jury.

“But it’s torture ... inhumane hopelessness. Getting told you will serve three years for burglary and end up doing longer than some people for murder. It was just ridiculous.”

Day releases were a ‘key moment’

Taylor was granted his first lifeline when he was finally recommended for progress to open conditions by the Parole Board in spring 2021. But the only two open women’s prisons in England and Wales refused to accept him, due to fears about managing his mental health.

They did not have intensive supervision for suicidal inmates, and were not comfortable with the five medications he had been prescribed, including methadone to manage his addiction, sleeping tablets, and medicines for anxiety and depression, the inquest heard.

Instead, he was moved to houseblock seven at Eastwood Park, where inmates were allowed to live in more relaxed conditions and granted day releases, known as release on temporary licence (ROTL).

Taylor had three successful day releases in Bristol, where he was supervised by a prison officer, in the months before he died.

Taylor was sentenced to 3 years, 265 days, but served almost 13 years (Supplied)

His friend Ms Rose, who visited Taylor at least twice a month for 13 years, added: “Most people get through prison sentences by knowing when they will get out. Taylor had no steady ground anywhere.

“As rejections happened, as each parole hearing got delayed by six months or a year, he just got worse and worse. And I really observed his physical and mental health just deteriorate every year he was in prison.

“In the last year, when he got a glimpse of freedom [on ROTLs], it did feel like I got my Taylor back a little bit.”

His prison offender manager, Claire Tonkinson, agreed that the day releases were a “key moment” for Taylor, who wanted to prove himself to the Parole Board ahead of his next hearing. But his hopes were shattered when Rebecca Hall, a prison officer, lost sight of him in a busy shopping centre in Bristol during a day release on 20 May 2022.

Ms Hall said Taylor had breached his licence conditions by not following her instructions and leaving her eyeline, but Taylor insisted he had got lost in an unfamiliar area.

When he returned to the prison, the duty governor, Peter Heyworth, met him at reception and told him he would be moved back to a closed wing, his day releases would be suspended, and he would be placed “on report” pending an adjudication into the alleged breach.

Fearing he had lost everything, Taylor reacted angrily and had to be restrained by prison officers, the jury was told.

As he was pinned face-down on the floor, he shouted: “I did everything I was supposed to have done today. Everything. After that f***ing c*** left me in the middle of f***ing Bristol. I didn’t know where I was.”

Mr Heyworth told the inquest that Taylor appeared to be “under the influence” and had purchased an unauthorised lighter, but admitted the alleged breach of his licence conditions was never investigated because the prison adjudication process never took place. Under questioning from Nick Armstrong KC, for Taylor’s loved ones, he also confirmed that Taylor was never tested for drugs or alcohol, despite offering to submit to testing.

After hearing his evidence, a member of the jury asked Mr Heyworth: “If the adjudication never took place, why was Taylor treated as if the allegation against him was factual, despite no investigation taking place?”

Mr Heyworth claimed that Taylor’s move back to closed conditions was never meant to be permanent.

In their conclusions, the jury found that Taylor’s death was exacerbated by the serious setbacks resulting from the day release incident, adding that the decision to move him to a closed wing was “hasty, poorly communicated and made without due consideration of all the facts”.

Taylor went ‘rapidly downhill’

In the weeks that followed, Taylor went “rapidly downhill” and self-harmed twice, Faulder told the jury.

“Over the space of weeks, he became very negative, lost hope,” she said. “His face went grey, he lost a spark in his eye, he aged about 20 years in a few weeks – everyone could see it. He walked differently, slower.”

He was placed under assessment, care in custody and teamwork (ACCT) monitoring for at-risk prisoners briefly in May, following the day release incident, and again on 4 July, after another prisoner took their own life on his wing.

“Taylor was fuming that the person was successful” in taking their own life, Faulder said.

When Taylor revealed his plans to end his life during a prison craft club for over-50s on 6 July, “I wasn’t asking, I was begging” them to put him on constant watch, she added. One prison officer, whom Faulder said she approached, claimed she could not recall the interaction, the inquest heard.

Faulder also asked if she could share a cell with Taylor to keep him safe, but was told this was not possible because he was a transgender prisoner, she said.

Her pleas were not acted on, and Taylor remained on four observations per hour under an ACCT, but the first six pages of the paperwork recording the lifesaving measures were never filled in by prison staff.

On the same day, Taylor attended an AA meeting for the first time and told the group he was in a dark place, saying: “The only way out for me is in a body bag.”

Fellow prisoner Clare Roberts, who saw Taylor in the visiting room on the day he died on 9 July, said he had “no life” in his eyes and kept saying: “I can’t do it any more, I can’t do it any more.”

The inquest heard that Taylor’s mental health key worker had only attended one meeting about his welfare in the 50 days since the day release incident first sparked his mental health crisis.

CCTV showed the prison’s final check on Taylor was not adequate (PA)

Zoe Short, known as the “governing governor”, who was in overall charge of Eastwood Park, admitted the prison was operating with just 65 per cent of the staff they needed in 2022 as they tried to bring prisoners out of Covid lockdown measures.

The prison officer responsible for checking on Taylor on the night he died, Andy Maggs, told the police he had spoken to him through the cell hatch at around 9.50pm and that he was using the toilet behind a privacy curtain.

However, damning CCTV footage played to the jury showed that the officer did not open Taylor’s cell hatch for the final check, but simply glanced towards the door on his way down the corridor. Ms Short admitted it was not an adequate check.

The last time a prison officer had opened Taylor’s cell hatch and looked inside was at 9.35pm, the footage revealed.

At 10.04pm, Taylor was discovered lifeless in his cell. Nurses rushed to the scene but did not attempt to resuscitate him due to the “degree of injuries” he had sustained.

His cause of death was recorded as blood loss and cardiac air embolism, when air enters the bloodstream through a major injury.

The jury concluded that, while Taylor’s complex mental health and history of self-harm had influenced his death, the prison’s ACCT management and monitoring during this period had failed to reduce his risk of self-harm, and the final check on him was “inadequate to assess Taylor’s safety and welfare”.

‘Life and death’ failures

Faulder told the hearing that Taylor was “my future, my soulmate” and someone with whom she could be “100 per cent unapologetically myself” as she paid tribute to him, describing him as “complex, caring, loyal, loving” and “absolutely hilarious”.

In a statement to The Independent, she said the IPP sentence had left Taylor in a “hopeless, desperate situation” and a “catch-22”, where he was self-harming as a result of the jail term, only for this to prevent his release.

“It is just totally unjust,” she added. “They [IPP prisoners] are suffering and dying inside with this hopeless, desperate, barbaric punishment, which has already been abolished but should be abolished for all; everyone should be let out.”

Ms Taylor sobbed as she recalled growing up with Taylor – whom she knew as Auntie Claire – at the start of the three-week inquest into his death.

She believes that if prison staff had listened to Faulder’s pleas and put Taylor on constant supervision, he would still be alive today.

“I am disgusted with the prison service itself,” she told The Independent, calling for the staff responsible to be investigated. “They had a duty of care to look after him, and they let him down.”

She also believes the IPP sentence was a “big factor” in his death because he had no release date to work towards.

She added: “If he had had that normal goal, he would have had something to work to. But it just wasn’t there.”

Taylor’s ashes were scattered with those of his beloved rescue dog, Razor. Paying tribute to Taylor, she said: “A piece of our hearts is missing,” adding: “Claire, we miss your laugh, your wicked sense of humour. We just miss you. A life cut short, taken far too early. Not a single day has passed that we haven’t thought of you.”

Taylor’s sister Caron said his “future was taken away, and so was a part of mine when he died”.

Taylor’s family said ‘a piece of our hearts is missing’ (Supplied)

Ms Rose, 37, accused the prison of “institutional neglect”, adding: “It was a life-and-death failing in my opinion.”

She believes incarcerating people is not the answer to social problems like addiction, and that it only served to further traumatise Taylor, who was already reeling from childhood abuse.

After falling pregnant a year to the day after Taylor died, she named her son in honour of her best friend, who feared he would be “beholden to the state” for the rest of his life under the IPP jail term.

She described it as a “life sentence for a minor crime” as she called for all IPP inmates to be freed.

She added: “With Taylor, there wasn’t any ego or big dreams. He didn’t want to be remembered as this prisoner who fought against this injustice.

“All he wanted was to grow old by the sea with some rescue dogs ... being able to be his true self – a gentle, compassionate guy who just wanted to live and to love other people. Instead, he was denied that. He just deserved so much more.

“I hope, in whatever afterlife there is, he has some peace and tranquillity. All he needed was an opportunity to just be normal and live a chilled, relaxed life. He would have been happy for the rest of his days.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Our thoughts remain with the friends and family of Taylor Atkinson, and we will carefully review the coroner’s findings.

“It is right that IPP sentences were abolished, and we provide additional support to prisoners serving them – including improved mental health services. We are determined to make progress towards safe and sustainable releases for those in prison, but not in a way that undermines public protection.”

If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.

If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you

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