Speedboat killer Jack Shepherd will face a public parole grilling in a bid to be freed, the Daily Mail can reveal.

The Parole Board today announced that it had made a ‘preliminary decision in the interests of justice’ to grant an application for the appeal to be heard in public.

There are now seven days for anybody - including the press and the public - to make ‘representations regarding the application’ before a decision becomes final.

In theory, this can include applications against a public hearing. It is believed Shepherd’s lawyers argued that a public hearing would expose him to added pressure and he would be unable to give full evidence.

Parole Board chairperson Alexandra Marks said in a statement on its website: ‘It is the Board Chair’s preliminary view that it is in the interests of justice for the case to possibly be heard in public.

Ms Marks gave seven detailed reasons for coming to the conclusion including the serious and unusual nature of the offence.

She also considered that whilst on police bail Shepherd committed the offence of wounding with intent to cause serious bodily harm and absconded.

All representations in the case must be filed by midday on Friday, April 17. The Parole Board will then assess the statements and make a final decision. 

The case of Shepherd garnered national attention after the shocking details of the death of Charlotte Brown were revealed in court.

In December 2015, 24-year-old Charlotte had been on a first date at the Shard with Shepherd when they decided to take a speedboat down the Thames.

His trial was told that ‘Captain Jack’ Shepherd was showing off by drunkenly zooming up the Thames in the defective craft he had bought to ‘pull girls’.

When he flipped the 14ft craft after hitting a submerged log, Charlotte was thrown into the icy waters in darkness. He was rescued but Charlotte drowned.

Rather than explain his actions, cowardly Shepherd went on the run to Georgia, and was eventually tried in absence in July 2018 – when he was sentenced to six years in prison.

The Daily Mail launched an investigation to find him and successfully did so in January 2019. He was extradited back to Britain from Georgia in April of that year.

Months later, Shepherd was given a further four years for a vicious ‘glassing’ attack on a barman at a Devon hotel.

Shepherd was freed halfway through a ten-year sentence for the manslaughter of Charlotte.

He was released in January 2024, but recalled to prison in September 2025 after breaching his licence conditions.

The Daily Mail reported at the time that he was arrested after a complaint on August 4 about his ‘coercive and controlling behaviour and assault.’

Reacting to his recall, Ms Brown’s dad, Graham Brown told The Sun: ‘He’s back where he belongs.

‘He’s never shown remorse for his part in the death of my daughter. I think about her every day. The pain is never far away.

‘I’ll never forgive him and still believe he poses a risk to females.’

Brown believes his daughter’s killer has not served enough time behind bars for the crime and claimed he had never told the truth about what actually happened.

Shepherd had insisted that Charlotte was at the wheel when his boat hit a log and capsized near Wandsworth Bridge, implying that she was partly to blame.

But a witness on the balcony of a riverside flat challenged his story by saying she saw a single figure at the helm looking into the water, before the boat hit a pier.

Mr Brown told Sky News in January: ‘He’s never said what really happened. What he has said conflicts with what we do know and what came out the trial.

‘The pure fact he took my daughter out on a speed boat at 10pm, without any life jackets, on a very dangerous stretch of the River Thames and accelerated up to 30 knots and then say it was her fault. This is his pattern of behaviour. This is what Shepherd did. Nothing what he said can be believed.’

Charlotte, who lived in London, but grew up in Welling, Kent, was found to be only slightly over the drink-drive limit for alcohol after her body was recovered while rescuers said Shepherd appeared drunk.

His trial heard how he had bought vodka, before sharing two bottles of wine with Charlotte at the Shard and downing champagne on his boat which he had bought on Gumtree.

Mother Roz Wickens, 58, spoke to the Daily Mail in January 2025 about her continuing anguish over the loss of her daughter.

She said: ‘I will continue to want to know what happened on the fateful night Charlotte was taken away from us, but I don’t think I ever will.

‘Only he knows what really happened as Charlotte cannot speak for herself. But if he came out with anything now, I wouldn’t know if it was true because of all the stories he has told.

‘JS will never tell the truth and I feel that the truth may implicate him further. He will never know or fully understand the true devastation he has caused me and my family.’

Roz is certain that her daughter would never have driven a boat recklessly and believes that she was thrown out while he was showing off by performing a high speed manoeuvre.

Part-time delivery driver Roz of Sittingbourne, Kent, believes that he would have drunk far more than her daughter due to her relatively low alcohol reading, although police failed to breathalyse him on the night of the tragedy.

She said: ‘We don’t really know for sure what happened. I have got my gut feeling, but I don’t know for certain. My feeling all along is that she fell out of the boat while he was driving, and he was left there.

‘He was seen alone in the boat by a witness when he seemed to be looking round for her in the water.’

Roz added: ‘My heart will always ache for the loss of Charlotte, but no matter what happens with the release of JS, nothing will bring her back.’

Shepherd – a self-styled Casanova - got married to someone else just a day after police quizzed him about the accident that killed Charlotte.

Before being rescued he was heard crying to rescuers ‘help me’ rather than ‘us’.

In an ITV documentary about the case, Detective Superintendent Chris Davis revealed a witness saw the boat before the crash.

He said: ‘She remembered looking down from her flat, and she had only seen Jack Shepherd in the boat. She believed he was looking over [the] side of the boat. She couldn’t see Charlotte.’

The day after Shepherd’s second police interview on February 8, 2016, and nine weeks after the crash, he got married to his childhood sweetheart.

The killer and his wife had a baby, born less than a year after the death of business consultant Charlotte.

Aged 38, the web designer has now been given a chance for freedom again.