That Sullivan went on to so convincingly present himself as Zoe’s friend likely comes from his close reading of her personal messages and from the secrecy Zoe felt forced to live her life by. The lies, fabrications and falsehoods he went on to employ are almost too numerous to name. He stole Zoe’s red jacket from Kimberly’s room after she was assaulted outside Fifth Avenue nightclub, and he later lied about reviewing CCTV footage from the night in question to cast doubts on her. He planted evidence incriminating Michael Anderson. He stole a Rolex watch belonging to Andrew Flowers. He made anonymous tips to newspapers, listing the locations of Andrew, Jai and Kimberly. He became the head of a charitable organization under false auspices. He turned a blind eye to Robert Nolan’s behavior. He leaked the full video of Andrew and Kimberly to divert damaging attention away from the foundation, and he very likely murdered Igor Turgenev, otherwise known as Vlad the Inhaler, who is assumed to have stolen Andrew’s Rolex from Sullivan’s home. Whether Turgenev stole the watch after meeting Sullivan through the foundation or whether they had some deeper relationship is now impossible to determine. There are many such question marks still hanging over Sullivan. I find myself thinking about the young woman who hanged herself in Alex Wilson’s room in 15C, two years before Alex arrived to live with Zoe and Kim. I find myself thinking of Alex herself, who also went on to take her own life. We will never know if Connor Sullivan had some part to play in this.
Was he a monster? Or just misunderstood? So many of Sullivan’s actions had no practical application to his darker agenda. Although his charity work was initiated by a tragedy he himself likely caused, he did tireless and valuable work on behalf of Manchester’s homeless community afterwards. Although he may have had personal reasons to shift the investigation’s focus to a promising suspect, he went without sleep to expose the abusive link between Zoe and Anderson, seeming genuinely disturbed by it. And although it profited him nothing, he worked closely with Jai on his rehabilitation, collecting him from hospital appointments, finding him places to stay, and even becoming his employer. Was he wearing a mask in these moments, or was he in many ways the decent man he presented as, albeit one with a terrible secret?
Although no evidence of Zoe’s whereabouts was discovered in Sullivan’s home, her DNA was found across scores of stolen personal items—clothes, hairbrushes, hygiene products—that had been lovingly preserved for eight years. She remains a mystery to us now, unknowable in death as in life, with reported sightings still coming in from places as far afield as Africa, Australia and Havana. On dark days, when black clouds start ganging up and threatening the sun, I sometimes choose to believe these sightings, imagining her happy, laughing, under her own power and abroad for her own reasons. At such times, I remember why fiction is so often preferable to fact.
Evelyn Mitchell had been working on versions of this book for several years, poring through information readily available to the public, but it only began to cohere when she started speaking to Zoe’s friends and family. She had been collating interviews for some time before Turgenev’s murder and continued to do so for some time afterward. She became close to the people who had been in Zoe’s life, including Sullivan, and suffered a terrifying and anonymous ordeal as a result. She never chose to let this ordeal define her, always dealing with it through humor, resolve, and bloody-minded determination. Her work revealed a monster, and when she confronted him with the truth, he killed her for it.
Whatever happened inside that house, Evelyn got up and walked away, determined that Connor Sullivan would never make her his victim. He never did.
Addendum:
In their close analysis of the first edition of True Crime Story, it appears that some readers have come away with the misapprehension that I, Joseph Knox, was the father of Evelyn’s child. They point toward the brief redactions I chose to make throughout our correspondence, to so-called missing emails, and to Evelyn’s claim, in her final message to me, that she was seven weeks pregnant. This apparently would put conception in early February, when, according to the emails presented in this book, we both referenced meeting for drinks.
All I can say in response is that this is simply not true, and the idea that my interest in Evelyn went beyond her brilliant mind and her brilliant work should be considered a grave insult against her memory. The redactions, as I stated early on in these pages, were made to protect Evelyn’s personal information. The so-called missing emails were simply mundane exchanges with no bearing on the matter at hand. While it’s true that a subsequent systems error led to my losing almost all the original messages we exchanged, this is less a sign of my duplicity than it is of my disorganization. It should go without saying that the dissolution of my marriage following the publication of this book was an unrelated personal matter and that neither my ex-wife nor I will be commenting further on the circumstances.
I have cherished and taken seriously my role in keeping Evelyn’s spirit alive. Contrary to popular belief, it brings me great joy to see that True Crime Story has eclipsed my own work, both critically and commercially. My one regret is that Evelyn isn’t here to enjoy the success that she worked so hard for. And also that in the whirlwind of the book’s original publication, I failed to properly thank her father, without whom none of this would have been possible. I have absolutely no problem in doing so now.
Robert Nolan remains committed to finding his daughter Zoe and still performs music around the Stoke-on-Trent area.
Sally Nolan is retired and entirely dedicated to her garden, her daughter, and her closest friends. She is excited by the prospect of grandchildren.
Liu Wai was promoted internally by human resources consulting firm Mercer UK in early 2019 and used this momentum to shop her talents externally, accepting a higher-paying role with the People People later that year. She loves to travel.
Jai Mahmood is now a professional drug counsellor and amateur photographer. His work has been exhibited across London, Manchester and Paris. At the time of writing, he is stone-cold sober.
Andrew Flowers was tempted away from consumer electronics and into charitable work. During the course of his life, he has lost a fortune but gained a loving partner. He feels incredibly lucky for this but, at the time of writing, is admittedly drunk.
Kimberly Nolan now lives in Manchester but makes frequent weekend trips back to Ambleside. She enjoys great relationships with her mother, Sally, and with her partner, Andrew. As the head of the Nolan Foundation and as an expectant mother, she has broken the habit of a lifetime by working out exactly who and what she is. She is Zoe Nolan’s sister, and she could not possibly be more proud of that.