I was very impressed with Mark’s academic abilities, and suggested that he might consider working for me at IBM during his ‘gap year’ after his A-Levels. He leapt at the opportunity and joined the ‘Futures’ gap-year student employment programme of IBM, working for me [2007].
“I recall feeling that Mark had a strong sense of duty to his father. It was clear to me that he cared deeply for him, and devoted a lot of time to looking after his father during his illness, and in particular after his time in hospital [2008].
I have always found Mark to be a very pleasant person, sociable, quick to make new friends and participate actively in social situations. He is intelligent and thoughtful, and has a great sense of humour. He was always careful to ensure he wasn’t taking up too much of my time, recognising that I was busy and being sensitive to that.
He was highly regarded at IBM – clearly a future star that we should nurture, and always extremely popular with friends. He was very popular with the team at Wimbledon and made a good impression. He went to work there for several months in support of the IT systems for the Tennis. Mark is very creative – a great talent that was used to great effect in the work he did.
Mark was highly entrepreneurial – during his law studies he was involved in a number of ventures in emerging internet technologies such as Virtual Worlds and Web 2.0 projects [2009]. These were around providing services to companies, like virtual business meetings. Certainly a visionary! He ran a small company that provided these software services to other companies. He mentioned a few times during his course that he had to very carefully balance his university work with his outside work.
The best words I can use to describe what I thought when I heard Mark had been arrested were: complete disbelief. From everything I know of Mark, the way he cares for people, the way he interacts with people, the efforts he went to in looking after his father during illness, his aspirations for the future, the fact he had everything to live for; there’s no way, to my mind, that he could possibly have murdered his father and disposed of the body.”
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