A forensic examination carried out in the UK has overturned the Spanish conclusion that 35-year-old Brett Dryden died from a drug-related accident at his home in Almeria last year.
The much-loved father-of-one was found dead and covered in blood inside his home in Mojacar on July 21, 2024.
Dr P. N. Cooper, a Home Office forensic pathologist, conducted a second autopsy once the body had been repatriated, and his findings point firmly away from overdose and towards a violent death.
His full report, according to Diario de Almeria, provides the scientific grounds required to reopen a case that had been provisionally shelved by a court in Vera.
Spanish authorities had maintained that Brett suffered a ‘diffuse alveolar haemorrhage’ caused by an ‘adverse reaction’ to cocaine and cannabis.
However, Dr Cooper rejects this explanation entirely. In his assessment, the lung changes cited in Spain are too nonspecific to indicate a drug reaction, and he writes that he is ‘not in the least bit persuaded’ by the cause of death recorded in the original autopsy. He adds bluntly: ‘I am not convinced at all.’
Toxicology carried out in the UK supports his position. Analysts found no active cocaine in Brett’s system, only benzoylecgonine, the inactive metabolite, along with traces of cannabis.
Dr Cooper notes that these findings are ‘relatively harmless’ and cannot account for Brett’s death. With natural causes and overdose excluded, attention in the British autopsy turned to physical injuries.
Dr Cooper outlines a scenario based on trauma, not intoxication. During the external examination in Newcastle, he documented bruising on the forehead, dark abrasions on elbows and knees, and contusions across the torso and legs.
In his view, the pattern matches an assault and could have been caused by punches, kicks or stamping, with no evidence of a weapon being used.
The report concludes that a blow – or blows – to the head was strong enough to knock Brett unconscious.
The Spanish autopsy had already recorded ‘abundant blood’ inside the trachea and bronchi.
Dr Cooper links these elements together, suggesting that once Brett was lying unconscious on his back, blood from the facial injuries entered the airway, filling it. Unable to cough or move, he died when his brain was deprived of oxygen.
The second autopsy was complicated by the fact that Brett’s body arrived in Britain without the heart or right kidney.
Dr Cooper describes their absence as a disadvantage. The organs had been removed and kept during the first autopsy in Spain and were not replaced before repatriation.
Although the missing heart meant Cooper could not directly rule out cardiac disease, he found no other natural conditions to account for the death and relied on the trauma evidence to support a conclusion of violent homicide.
