Grief After Murder: Life-changing?

Traumatic bereavement affects people in a multitude of ways, but the precise manner in which it alters or changes one’s life are not well understood. As my book about the murder of my father explains, experiencing the murder of a direct relative changed me as a person, and changed my life irretrievably and forever. Intriguingly, other victims who speak out in the aftermath of the murder of a loved one seem to go through a similar type of life-altering experience.

By: Oliver Daddow | Published: Apr 28, 2026

 

Gauging the nature and intensity of the changes to my personality and life-path following my father's murder in 1991 is rather more difficult than it seems. The main problem is that my adult life has only been lived in the shadow of this tragedy. The scientist in me would want to live the same two lives: one with the murder, one without it. Then, we could play spot the difference to see what altered in my life, and what did not. Unfortunately, however, humans do not exist in petri dishes, making us amenable to controlled experiments of that nature.

This said, with my father’s murder now three decades in the past, I am in a reasonable position to draw some conclusions about what I feel might and might not have changed in my life as a result of my father’s death. I cannot cover every aspect in one blog, but one thing I have certainly noticed is a diminished ability to feel what I would consider true happiness, of the unvarnished kind I felt as a child, before my father’s death. Maybe it is simply that adulthood naturally makes one more jaded and cynical, as responsibilities grow and the burdens of work and life become heavier. It could be that I am wearing rose-tinted spectacles about my life growing up. I nonetheless assert that something in my enjoyment of life was dulled or blunted by the grief I have felt since I learnt of my father’s death. As in many of these blogs, I will contextualise my thoughts using the lived experiences of other homicide bereaved, whose words resonate with me. This blog draws on the words of the family behind by the vile, senseless murder of Kurt Giwisser, whose killer was sentenced in 2025.

Early in 2023, a 77 year old man from Huddersfield by the name of Kurt Giwisser was savagely attacked and beaten in his own home by his neighbour, David Hill, twenty years Giwisser’s younger. According to reports, the assault stemmed from a dispute which began in 2020, over what police described as ‘a fairly trivial issue’: the return of a paintbrush by Giwisser to Hill, which Hill deemed to have been given back to him in less than pristine condition. It is the kind of incident no one with a sense of perspective, or good judgement, should let annoy them. But Hill simply could not let this ‘imagined slight’ go. Over the next few years he persistently verbally abusing Giwisser for a series of ‘imagined wrongs’, including, on one occasion, the fanciful suggestion that Giwisser intended harm to Hill’s dog. Finally, Hill snapped. On 21 February 2023, fuelled by ‘intemperate rage and excess alcohol’, Hill banged on Giwisser’s patio doors, demanding they be opened. As Giwisser did so, ‘Hill punched him in the face and forced his way inside. He then further attacked the victim as he lay on the floor, before making off’. Otherwise fit, healthy and active, Giwisser managed to call for help from the emergency services. He was reviewed and treated at hospital before being discharged. Hill, meanwhile, was arrested (see below photo) and bailed, pending further police enquiries.

Giwisser’s health deteriorated markedly in the weeks following Hill’s assault on him. Indeed, just two days after the attack, Giwisser collapsed while reversing his car. He was taken back to hospital and found to have fluid on his brain. Giwisser sadly passed away in April 2023, after his life support was withdrawn at the request of his family. A number of medical experts reviewed the case and, early in 2025, they were able to establish a causational link between Hill’s assault and Giwisser’s death. Hill stood trial at Leeds Crown Court in November 2025, and on 4 December 2025 the jury found Hill guilty of the murder of his neighbour. At Hill’s sentencing on 18 December, Judge Robin Mairs told the defendant: ‘There has been no word of remorse or contrition from you. No recognition of the damage you’ve done or the grief you’ve caused’. It could later be reported that Hill was not a person of good character and a repeat offender, who had a string of previous convictions for offences including arson, possession of underage images, and harassment. He racially abused the officers who came to arrest him. The Judge sentenced Hill to a minimum term of 17 years in prison.

As former Scotland Yard detective Steven Keogh points out in his excellent book on how murder investigations are carried out (see my review of his book on this website), ‘The loss of a loved one at any time is hard, but to lose someone through an act of violence is even more difficult’ (p15). The lack of remorse, on top of the senselessness of the attack on a completely innocent man, only adds to the horror and tragedy of this case. Later in his book, Keogh reports that ‘On so many occasions, families have told me that, after the killer has been convicted, they can start to move on with their lives’. It is not easy to make generalisations about the experiences of every co-victim bereaved by a murder. I would be more inclined to suggest, however, that, even as life goes on after such a dreadful crime, it does so in radically changed ways that fundamentally alter the character and outlooks of the family murder victims leave behind, in lasting and emotionally challenging ways.

 

 

Statements by Kurt Giwisser’s family exemplify this: ‘Since the day he was taken from us, our lives have been filled with grief, fear and emptiness… What happened didn’t only end his life, it shattered ours’. Their words resonated with me, even though my father was killed as long ago as 1991, and I did not have the same kind of relationship with him as the Giwisser family evidently did with Kurt. I still get flashbacks to joyous childhood moments with my dad – for example, sat on his lap watching snooker in front of the fire in the dead of winter in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, I still also suffer from blood-soaked dreams and twitchy, sleepless nights. During waking hours, the hollowing out of one’s capacity to feel and experience genuine emotions is a particularly debilitating feature of the grief that consumes you. It makes for a life half-lived, one in which joy is tempered and smiles mask darker thoughts. I often feel present but not-present at the same time, as if I am looking in on things from the outside. The best way I can define the experience is that it feels like living under the winter sun compared to the blazing summer sun – it looks the same but it is cooler, thinner, less nourishing, and does not do you as much good. The Giwisser family seems to have experienced the same emotional hollowing-out: ‘Family gatherings feel incomplete. There is an empty space where he should be. A silence where his laughter and music should fill the room. Even moments of happiness feel overshadowed by the fact he is not here to share them with us’.

The theme of this blog is best summarised in this passage from their statement: ‘The trauma of having to decide to end life support, the cruelty of the violence he suffered, and the lifelong grief we must now live with, has changed us forever. There’s no going back to the people we were before’(my emphasis). Experiencing the murder of a loved savagely cuts your life in two: the years before the crime and those after it. It makes the authorities, press commentators, and people who try to say helpful things, feel better to tell themselves that justice being delivered can help families start to achieve closure. It is well-meant and true to a point. However, after a loved one is murdered, whatever path you take, you never experience the fullness of that life in quite the same way. Something of you is taken away and it can never be recovered however hard you try, or however often people try to convince you that you can, or should, ‘get over it’ and ‘move on’. You can develop coping strategies – mine was to throw myself into my career and focus relentlessly on the future – and managing life’s travails does get easier. But life as daily lived reality is never the same again, however much time ticks by.

Ultimately, I would say that traumatic bereavement is life-changing, affecting myriad visible things such as life choices, career paths, interests outside work, the nature of one’s social relationships and so on. These will all be dealt with on this blog. In addition, one is forced to cope with a series of emotional challenges that sap your energy and make just getting through the day sometimes feel pretty demanding. These invisible but unavoidable challenges should be front and centre of the conversations we have about how to help ourselves and others deal with the effects of traumatic grief. I welcome your feedback on this blog through my website contact page.

Image credits:

1. Reach Publishing Services Limited

2. West Yorkshire Police

3. Yorkshire Live