All language subtitles for An.Amputation.Obsession.The.Monster.and.the.Surgeon.S01E02.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-RAWR_track4_[eng]

[gulls squawking]

[Chant]
I came to work on a Monday morning

to be told by our service lead
at the time,

who's one of the other consultants,
that Neil was suspended.

It's not an uncommon situation for doctors
to be suspended at any one time,

and we just assumed
it'd all blow over within weeks.

At some point, after a couple of months,

the vascular consultants were asked
to give a statement to the police.

Is there anything about Neil's practise
that I thought was abnormal?

Was there anything he'd done

that was a wrong operation
or an ill-advised operation?

I just didn't think there'd be an issue
that was of any relevance whatsoever.

But as things turned out…

I was wrong to assume that.

[Vergnault]
In 2019, Neil Hopper caught sepsis,

and he became a double-leg amputee.

But after six months, he was back at work,

and he was operating on patients.

He was like a superhero surgeon.
You know, nothing could stop him.

Until one day, in March 2023,
he just didn't come to work again.

This is the Royal Cornwall Hospital
in Truro. It's known as Treliske.

And it's Cornwall's main hospital.

It's where Dr Neil Hopper used to work
as a vascular surgeon.

At first, his colleagues
were told that he had been suspended,

but nobody really knew what was going on.

As a journalist, we do try to keep our
ears to the ground as much as possible.

A lot of people contact us
via social media, Facebook.

Um, they might have ideas,
they might have tip-offs.

And that's when
you start hearing things about him.

People questioning,
colleagues questioning,

"Why is he not here? What's going on?"

There were rumours that he was involved
with the Eunuch Maker website,

and the person behind it,
Marius Gustavson.

There were also rumours
of police involvement.

And I was kind of intrigued.

What did he do?

[Parkhouse] During the investigation
in relation to Marius Gustavson,

who had been running
a website called the Eunuch Maker,

the Met police discovered
thousands of messages

between Neil Hopper and Mr Gustavson.

So it was the Met police
who handed over these messages

to Devon and Cornwall police
to investigate.

CPS were contacted
soon after this for early advice

about the direction of
the investigation looking at Mr Hopper.

During the conversations,
they get pretty graphic--

quite disturbing, some of the chats--

and it's quite often difficult to tell
what's fantasy and what isn't fantasy.

From looking at these conversations,

it appeared Mr Hopper had watched
some of these extreme videos.

So the police were seeking
charges of possessing of extreme images.

Mr Hopper was arrested in March 2023,
and his property was searched.

The police seized a significant number
of items, including computers,

and the police examined his devices,

looking for things like messages
with Mr Gustavson

and of course extreme images
that may or may not be on his computer.

In his police interview,
he would have been asked

about his connections with Mr Gustavson,

whether he had been speaking to him.

And for all these questions,
he made no comment.

And he is then bailed,
pending further enquiries.

When someone makes no comment,
we've got to have a very tight case.

If he puts forward a defence, you can then
build a case to disprove that defence.

But because he made no comment,

we had to prove every single element
before any charges would be authorised.

Normally when you charge extreme images,

they are found in an accessible area
of someone's computer or phone.

This case was unusual

because the police never found
the extreme images on any of his devices.

And because we never recovered the images,

I had concerns about being able
to prove possession of extreme images.

The messages on their own weren't enough.

So we asked the police to do further work

before I felt I was in a position
to charge the case.

[Chant] I think all of us were being fed
snippets of information slowly but surely.

The police had been involved, and
he didn't think there was a problem.

And he told me
about his hard drives in his house,

and he said he'd willingly given them
to the police,

and there was nothing
to see on them anyway.

When I saw Neil the last time,
when I bumped into him in Sainsbury's,

he was very… very downtrodden,
if you like, and depressed and sad.

And I thought,
"That's perfectly normal. That's it.

He's now grieving for his legs."
So it wasn't a shock.

That wasn't a shock.

[Chant] I remember sitting in his garden

and him looking at the house extension
he'd had built and the wheelchair ramp,

and he said, "I could lose all of this."

And he said, "Well, somebody's suggested

that the insurance claim is wrong

and shouldn't have gone through."

I didn't think anything more of it,

because I trusted
Neil's version of events implicitly.

[Spary]
I was following him on social media,

then all of a sudden it just… it dried up.

I didn't think anything of it.

Just people come and go
off of social media.

[gulls squawking]

The police needed to obtain
production orders from the court

for things like his banks
to obtain financial transactions.

And police were able to tell from
looking at these financial transactions

that Mr Hopper had purchased
three of these extreme videos.

He'd purchased one that was £10.

There were two other videos
purchased for £35.

And during the conversations
with Mr Gustavson,

Mr Hopper says that
he's purchased the videos.

He even names them
and names the males involved.

He says he's watched them
thousands of times and how hot they are.

So we know that he purchased
these videos to view them.

November 2023, he's arrested again,
and again he makes no comment.

We were satisfied that the offence of
possessing extreme image could be proven,

but there was other evidence
found for fraud.

The police therefore
carried out a fraud investigation.

What was apparent from
the messages with Mr Gustavson

was that Mr Hopper
had deliberately amputated his own legs.

I authorised the charges
on 25 June, 2025,

and he appeared in
the Crown Court in September.

It got a lot of media attention.

[Vergnault] We got this tip-off saying,
"Oh, watch out for Neil Hopper at court."

And then I looked into it and was like,

"Oh, but it's the hero surgeon
with no legs.

Wow. Why is he in court for?"

So came up to the Crown Court at Truro,
and there was everybody.

This has to be one
of the most extraordinary cases

to ever come before this court.

BBC, ITV, The Sun, The Telegraph,
The Guardian, everyone was there.

Mr Hopper was brought up into the docks
in court and the charges were read to him:

two frauds and three counts
of possessing of extreme images.

You could tell from the way he looked
physically in the dock, he was broken.

You know, head in his hand,
in tears, sobbing.

He was meek. His voice was weak.

And then he listened to
everything that was said about him.

On the weird scale of things,
this was quite high.

This was an 11 out of ten.

[Parkhouse]
There were three counts representing

three individual videos that we know
that he bought.

They were labelled, and the Met police

provided a summary
of what each video showed.

The first one he purchased for £10,

which showed a male having
his testicles clamped.

The second one, purchased for £35,

showed Mr Gustafson tying down a male,

throwing a dice to decide
which body parts to cut off.

He then proceeds to castrate this male.

He then panics because of the amount
of blood coming out of this male

and calls an ambulance, and you can hear
him calling an ambulance in the video.

And the final one,
that he purchased for £35,

was footage of a male castrating himself.

And on one video, a gentleman
was using a scalpel

to cut out his penis

and brandished it to the camera, live.

All of us were stunned by what we heard.

This guy is an esteemed NHS consultant,

who had a sense of care and duty
to his patients and to his colleagues,

and then when you flip that,
you had this darkness.

Paying to watch videos of
people castrating themselves…

Made you feel a bit "ugh".

[Parkhouse] It's shocking,
because these videos that he was watching

were clearly dangerous.

They were being carried out
in dangerous circumstances.

They wouldn't have been sanitary.

People were not medically qualified,
and there's a risk of people bleeding out.

And obviously, these are permanent,
irreversible, lifelong injuries to people,

and he has a duty as a doctor to help
protect people from medical harm.

He takes an oath to protect them.

[Vergnault] So what was said in court
was that when he got in touch

with the Eunuch Maker, Gustavson,

he realised there was a whole world
out there of people like him.

Hopper was not just a paying member.

He was a contributor, active contributor.

[message chimes]

As text messages showed,

Neil Hopper was in direct contact
with Gustavson.

About Eunuch Maker,
about product, about new videos,

even to the point where he would say,

"When you've got new videos out,
I'll buy them from you."

[Parkhouse] And then we presented
the evidence that Mr Hopper

had deliberately frozen his own legs.

And as a result,
he had to have them amputated.

It's like, "Oh, what? What did you mean,
he may have done it himself? How?"

And what was said in court
was that Neil Hopper

decided to have his own legs amputated
for his own personal gratification.

And while Gustavson was more into
people cutting their own genitals off,

Neil Hopper asked Gustavson for advice

on how to go through a procedure
of amputating his own legs.

[Parkhouse] So the messages start with
Mr Gustavson saying, "I'm happy to help."

And the response from Mr Hopper
is excitement. "Oh, wow. Thank you."

Mr Gustavson clearly has done this before,

because he provides Mr Hopper
a how-to guide on how to freeze your legs…

which is very detailed,
surprisingly detailed.

It looks like an instruction manual.

Even with pictures in it on where
to place your legs and how to place them.

Gustavson said,
"Well, this is the process.

You've got to purchase
medical-grade dry ice."

[Parkhouse]
The police obtained financial transactions

that Mr Hopper had made
at the same time on these dates

of him buying 20 kilogrammes of dry ice.

[Vergnault] You've got to get
some crypto money like Bitcoin.

You go on the dark web,
which is known for criminal activity.

Then you purchase high-grade painkillers,

opioids, that you would need
to sustain the level of pain.

Because when you immerse yourself
for eight hours in dry ice,

you will be in agony.

Even dipping your fingers burns. It hurts.

So eight hours for your legs, without
painkillers, he would have died of shock.

[Parkhouse] So he helps him buy the drugs

and he talks him through the whole process
of how to freeze his legs.

And that starts on the evening
of the 15th of April.

He knew that his family
were going to be away then.

He spent eight hours,
eight hours in dry ice,

pumped to the eyeballs
on, like, you know,

morphine, basically,
or strong painkillers.

[Parkhouse]
You can see through the conversation,

Dr Hopper telling him what he's doing.

"I've now submerged my feet.
Checking the temperature.

I can't feel my legs anymore.
This is amazing."

[Vergnault]
He even sent Gustavson some pictures

of him immersed in the dry ice,

going, "Hey, look. Soon, no legs."

[Parkhouse] He's very prepared.

He knows exactly what he's doing
and what steps to follow.

And he's supported
throughout this by Mr Gustavson.

The conversation ends eventually,

and then the following day,
Mr Hopper's wife has concerns about him.

And that's when they found him.

[siren wailing]

- [monitors beeping]
- And his own colleagues here in Truro

worked their hardest to help him,
to save his legs.

They did what they could, and then
they took the decision to amputate him.

And on the back of that, he effectively
achieved what he had hoped to do.

It was clear from the communications

that this was a long-standing fantasy
of Dr Hopper.

So he was in hospital for about six weeks.

Not once did he ever tell
the medical staff or his colleagues

that it was self-inflicted,
so none of them knew.

[Vergnault]
When Hopper had the operation done,

he took pictures of his own stumps

and sent a photo
of his stumps to Gustavson.

[Parkhouse]
He's very happy with the results.

And he told everyone-- friends, family,
members of the public, everyone--

that he had contracted a sickness.

[Skentelbery]
How did you contract the sepsis?

[Hopper]
I think it was food poisoning.

[Skentelbery] Food poisoning? Actually,
you can get sepsis from food poisoning?

[Hopper] Yeah, I think it was, um,
because my daughter had it as well,

um, the same sort of bug, so, um, yeah,
it was probably my bad camping cooking.

[Skentelbery laughing] No!

Everybody trusted him.
He's the expert. He knows what sepsis is.

His job is to deal with sepsis on
a daily basis, so everybody trusted him.

I had the story of,
he felt a little bit off.

He had a glass of whisky,
took a couple of paracetamols.

He went to bed,
and his wife couldn't get hold of him,

so she sent his registrar around,
and they found him in bed.

That's the story he told me.

[Chant] With the benefit of hindsight,
Neil Hopper's feet were black

because they had been exposed
to extreme cold

and not because of sepsis.

To suddenly find that the whole thing
was a real fabrication

was a real, yeah,
quite a surprise, should we say.

Yeah. Staggering, really.

[Spary] When it'd actually come out,
I couldn't believe it.

How can somebody
actually do that to themselves?

It's very hard to think about,
to be quite honest with you,

because what on earth
was his mental state?

To actually put your feet in dry ice,
it must have been so painful.

How can you actually
put yourself through that?

How did he keep that hidden for so long?

From his wife, from his colleagues.
I mean, these are all professional people.

How did they miss it?
How did we all miss it?

I don't know. He just seemed normal.

I find it very troubling
that he has strung along

so many intelligent people
and so many people he loves.

I find it troubling
that I could be quite so well duped.

After he's released from hospital,
on the 4th of June,

he contacts his insurance companies

and explains that he contracted
a mysterious illness,

which developed into sepsis,
and he had to have his legs removed.

The Aviva policy
specifically says any acts of self-harm

would mean that you aren't covered,
for very obvious reasons.

People can't be allowed
to go and cut their body parts off

and then claim
hundreds of thousands of pounds.

As was said in court, he didn't think
it would be hundreds of thousands.

He thought, "Mmm, I'd get ten grand,
five grand, something like that."

When Neil Hopper made the two claims
against insurance policies,

they trusted his expertise.

He knows about sepsis. That's his job.

So they didn't question it,
and it went through.

There was that intention
of "milking it for my amputation."

"How far can I go?
How much can I get for my amputations?"

[Parkhouse]
He was paid the money in June by Aviva.

Old Mutual Wealth paid him in July 2019.

Quite a lot of money. It's £466,000.

And the most…
the biggest purchases, if you like,

were prosthetic legs.

He spent £30,000 on that.

There was a purchase
of a hot tub for about £15,000.

The biggest purchase was £250,000
towards work to his house.

And then a lot of it
was just spent on smaller things.

And by November 2022,
it had all been spent.

For him to have done what he did, freezing
his own legs, in itself is not illegal.

But the act that made that illegal

was then making a false representation
to his insurance company

that he'd contracted sepsis and
hadn't done this deliberately to himself.

That's when he broke the law.

So half a million pounds of greed, effectively.

And that was his downfall.

[Parkhouse]
Because the evidence was overwhelming,

the defence will do what's
called a plea and mitigation.

He was a man of good character.

He was a vascular surgeon,
a 49-year-old married man.

No previous record of offending,
children, family support,

and clearly was struggling
with his mental health.

[Vergnault] In his defence, the barrister
said that Hopper had body issues,

in that he didn't accept his limbs
as fully part of his body,

like they didn't belong to him.

This is a transcript
of what was read out in court.

"And he suffered body dysphoria

and a particular distaste or loathing
for his feet,

and he felt that
they were not part of him."

[First] Body Integrity Dysphoria

is a condition where people
want to have an amputation

because they believe that some part
of their body, when they look at it,

it just feels like it's foreign,
it shouldn't be there.

In this particular case with Mr Hopper,

so much of his presentation is
just classic.

The word "dysphoria"
means it gives you a bad feeling.

It's dysphoria, so gender dysphoria
means your gender makes you feel bad.

So the same thing is here.

The way your body is configured makes
you feel bad, so Body Integrity Dysphoria.

Your having four limbs makes you feel bad.

So the solution for them
is to remove the limb.

The body without the limb is the way
they feel like they should have been born.

So it's really like an obsession.

You're obsessed
with this thing you can't get.

And it's extremely rare, but the patients
who have it suffer tremendously.

So what happens with those people
is the idea is you make the leg unviable,

so when you go to the hospital,

the only treatment that's available for
someone like that is to do the amputation.

So they basically do something
that could force the amputation.

There was a case of a guy
who wanted to lay down on a train track

and wanted the train to run over his leg.

I mean, really serious stuff like that.

In this case, you call up
a dry-ice place, order a ton of it,

you follow whatever you read about
what people do, and you do it yourself,

and at least,
however horrible it is to do that,

it's more likely than not
that you'll come out of it alive.

What's interesting about this condition,

you look at them and you go,
"Looks normal to me."

They can have
this one very totally weird thing

and be totally normal in every other way.

It's like a Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde thing.

They're like a different person
when they're in this mode.

You can see it doesn't bleed over
into the other part of their lives.

In Neil's case, he was able
to successfully keep it

under wraps for years,
which is incredible.

It's not a coincidence
that he chose to be a vascular surgeon,

because vascular surgeons do amputations,
and that was his obsession.

So his obsession turned into
something very positive for him.

He was an excellent, well-respected
vascular surgeon, very, very skilled.

Given my experience of these cases,
to get what he wanted with his legs,

I think it would have cured his BID,

meaning that he would no longer
be thinking and obsessing

about this idea
of wanting to be an amputee.

He would come
to some degree of peace with himself.

His barristers explained to court,
in his defence,

Neil Hopper regretted the hurt
he caused his family, his loved ones,

he regretted the loss of his career,

but he never regretted
the actual loss of his legs,

because that's what he had always wanted.

It's almost like
he had been looking forward

to having no legs for such a long time

that when finally he had no legs,
he was ironically complete.

But that does not explain
the extreme pornographic videos

he downloaded from the Eunuch Maker.

That doesn't explain or excuse

his involvement with the Eunuch Maker
and Gustavson,

considering that people were being hurt.

Absolutely not.

The sexual angle and how extreme it is
is not typical for somebody with BID.

I suspect he had this… the wanting
to be an amputee, going all the way back,

and then somewhere, maybe in adolescence,
he developed this sexual element.

The idea of seeing somebody made
to be a eunuch was his kink.

Now, why these things develop
is another mystery.

We have no idea why it is
that people develop a kink.

I mean, usually there's something
that happens in childhood very early on

that becomes sexualised.

So I'm sure when he heard
about the Eunuch Maker

and then heard that he sold videos,

it was probably irresistible to him
not to order one.

Not only is Gustavson
dealing in castration videos,

but Gustavson has the same interest

in amputation to the degree
that he did it himself.

So I'm sure for Neil
that was like a gold mine…

the ability to be able
to share that secret

with someone who wasn't horrified by it.

I mean, that's gotta be
hugely helpful to him.

I'm sure that was a big facilitating
factor for Neil to go through.

So I think Gustavson is a serious
accomplice in that part of the story.

[Parkhouse] The evidence was overwhelming,

but because he'd made no comment, I had no
idea what he was going to do in this case.

What issues was he going to take?

Were we going to have
legal arguments about the fact

that the images were never
actually recovered from his laptop?

I didn't know.

And I frankly was pleasantly surprised
when he pleaded guilty.

And he was sentenced there and then.

And he was sentenced
to 22 months for the frauds,

and ten months concurrent on
the possession of the extreme images,

and a sexual harm prevention order
was made.

Neil Hopper was today jailed
for more than two and a half years

after admitting he had
a sexual interest in amputation.

[reporter] His downfall from
hero doctor now complete,

he's been jailed for two and a half years.

[birds chirping]

[Vergnault] There is that sense amongst
his colleagues that he betrayed them.

The resources that were used
to try to save his legs

when those resources--
NHS staff, equipment, time--

could have been used to try
and save someone else's legs.

And I think there was that sense of,

"What a waste. That could have
been used to save someone's life.

Instead, we helped you achieve
your weird fantasy."

[Chant] I suppose the thing that worries
me in some respects about the whole affair

is that there are
a lot of patients out there

who are possibly believing that maybe
they were treated by him in good faith

and had the wrong operation

or had the wrong treatment
or the wrong advice.

Some of the patients' concerns
touched on

whether Neil Hopper operated on them

for his own sexual gratification.

That was a concern.

[machines whirring, beeping]

Did he cut my leg off
because it was necessary

or because it was a weird fetish?

Did he amputate my limb because I needed
it to save my life or because he's a perv?

[First] Any patient of his once this
came out would be, I would worry too.

"Is he competent as a doctor? Was
he getting excited by doing the surgery?"

It's an obvious thing to think.

[Bird] I had dialed
into the Crown Court hearing,

and to hear that a respected
consultant vascular surgeon in Cornwall

was somehow connected with that kind
of world was a bizarre thing to hear.

I'm a solicitor. We specialise
in clinical and medical claims.

Because obviously Mr Hopper was a vascular
surgeon whose job is to amputate legs,

the question was,
well, what has he been doing?

How might had it impacted his patients?

Are there going to be patients
who are going to be looking for answers

or asking questions
about their own treatment?

And there was quite a flurry of patients
who've contacted us,

and they have almost all said,

"We feel very uncomfortable

that the treatment that we received may
not have been motivated by clinical need.

It may have been motivated
by sexual gratification.

What was going on in his head
when he had me on the operating table

if he was going to be amputating my leg?"

Like anybody else, I was pretty surprised

to see the nature of the charges
that were being brought against him,

because Mr Hopper
was quite a sort of local celebrity.

He'd done quite a lot of local news.

I'm a nightmare patient, really.

- Because I know I'm the mystery shopper.
- [interviewer] Yeah, exactly.

[Bird] He was an inspirational character
to many people,

but he deceived his family, his friends,

his medical colleagues
at the Royal Cornwall Hospital.

When he was first admitted there,
he didn't tell them what he'd done.

And so what else
might he have deceived people about?

It is my job to ask questions,

but we may never get
those questions answered.

[Vergnault] Neil Hopper may still be
an active surgeon at Treliske

if it hadn't been for Michael…

who was castrated by the Eunuch Maker.

But there's still another twist
in Michael's story.

So Michael told me, after
he was castrated, he went to Treliske…

which is obviously
where Neil Hopper worked.

He's going to hospital

because obviously, he's had cattle clamps
put to his testicles,

and he's in pain and he needs treatment,
needs help.

So you've got
the two Eunuch Maker worlds,

one a victim, one a participant,
colliding,

coming together
at the same hospital in Cornwall.

[Michael]
I believe Gustavson's modus operandi

was always to cause the injury
to such a degree

and then send the person to the NHS

and have them deal with the damage.

Treliske Hospital is the nearest,
biggest hospital to me

that has a urology department.

At the time, I didn't know Mr Hopper
was a consultant surgeon

at the same hospital I went to.

When I was sent up to Treliske,

I said to the urologist,
"I had a one-night stand with a sadist."

And he said,

"I'll go and have a look
at the report, go back

and go and have a consult with
some colleagues, and I'll be back."

For all I know, he could have gone
and had coffee with Neil Hopper.

Because Neil Hopper was a vascular
surgeon. This involves blood flow.

So, in my head, there's always
going to be the question of:

Did the vascular team
get consulted on this?

It's certainly suspicious to me

that one of the users of that website
and friend of Gustavson

was also a consultant surgeon
at the same hospital I went to.

[Vergnault] For Michael, I think that's
the mental Rubik's Cube, you know,

of, he went to hospital
for something horrific

that happened to him
at the hand of the Eunuch Maker,

and he found out that
one of the Eunuch Maker enthusiasts

was a consultant at
the same hospital here in Cornwall,

which is quite a small world,

and I think he had troubles
reconciling the two.

[Chant] We do work closely together,

and, you know, urologists and vascular
surgeons will do operations together,

so I guess if there was
a blood vessel problem,

then, yeah, Neil may well have been asked.

But I think it's exceedingly unlikely.

But as things turned out,
unlikely things happen.

Yeah.

[Bird] The Royal Cornwall Hospital's trust

said there's been
an internal investigation done.

They indicated that
as part of that internal review,

one of their own consultants

who had had experience of working

for the police in another matter
had been involved.

But my understanding is that the analysis

was done by the trust's own employees,

their own clinicians, not external.

It doesn't reassure a concerned patient

who's just heard that the person
who amputated their leg

has admitted charges
of extreme pornography and fraud.

That's a huge, huge issue,

because he's lied, and because
it strikes at that relationship,

that confidence
that one places in a doctor

to be doing the right thing
for the right reasons.

[gulls squawking]

Had he not committed the fraud,

he might have got away with it.

He might still be doing interviews
and being a TV consultant as well.

Radio, TV, Internet, podcast, everything.

He might have got his own book.

But he got done

because something else bigger
than him came apart.

And it's almost like two separate people,
almost, two separate minds.

Himself the professional…

Well, there's no surgery to be done.
There's no bypass.

…leading his normal life,

and himself, the fetishist…

on the dark side of humanity.

[Chant] In my more generous moments,

I just feel very sorry for him
being dragged along by it.

You know, you could forgive him
for injuring himself.

But I think the Eunuch Maker website…

I'm amazed Neil didn't have
the common sense to stop

before he went across that line.

[Parkhouse] The biggest impact
for Mr Hopper in this case

is clearly going to be the fact
that he's completely lost his reputation.

Losing your reputation in criminal cases

can quite often be worse
than the punishment you receive.

[Spary] A lot of people are shocked.
A lot of people are disgusted.

Was he helping people because he knew
he was doing something fraudulently?

Was that his way of trying
to right a wrong that he'd done?

That has to be why he recovered so fast:
because he got what he wanted.

He got what he thought he wanted.

I don't know.
It's a strange sort of story, really.

[gulls squawking]

All right. Come on.

Come here. Come, come, come. Come on.

Up. All right, sit. No, sit.
Come on. Sit! There we go.

I don't really know how I feel
about Neil Hopper.

He betrayed everybody.

His family, his friends,

his colleagues, his own patients,

but he also betrayed himself.

But had he been more open,

had he talked to somebody
about his mental health issues,

maybe none of this would have happened.

In Truro, which is a small city,

the ripple effects of the Neil Hopper saga
are still being felt.

There are people who still have questions
to which they may never get an answer.

And ultimately, it is a really sad story.

I've heard some crazy stuff in 25 years.

I've interviewed
prime ministers, pop stars,

but this was so strange.

The dark side of the human mind.

As interesting as it was,
and as exciting as for a reporter it was,

I don't want that shit in my head.

No thanks.