Madison Burgess
Kirsty MacColl's ex-husband has made a shocking allegation surrounding her heartbreaking death in December 2000.
For those who don't know, the 'Fairytale of New York' singer was tragically hit by a speedboat as she swam in the Caribbean Sea during a trip to Cozumel, Mexico, with her two sons, Jamie and Louis, then aged 15 and 14, just a week before Christmas Day. She was just 41.
The family was surfacing from the water in what was said to be a watercraft-restricted zone when the speedboat hurtled towards them, leading MacColl to bravely push her children out of the way.
She and her son, Jamie, were struck by the propeller, but thankfully, he only suffered minor injuries, with his oxygen tank taking most of the hit.
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However, MacColl took the brunt of the force and suffered serious injuries to her head and chest, almost instantly killing her.
The speedboat was owned by a Mexican businessman named Carlos González Nova, who has since died. However, a man named José Cen Yam claimed he'd been the one actually driving the vessel despite not being licensed to do so.
Ultimately, he was found guilty of culpable homicide and sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison, but he avoided it by paying a fine of just £61.
And now, 25 years on, her ex-husband Steve Lillywhite, who is also the father of her sons, has claimed that 'no one believes' the person who was blamed for driving the speedboat that killed her was actually responsible for her death.
Record producer Lillywhite, who helmed the iconic Christmas track, ‘Fairytale Of New York’, was married to MacColl for a decade between 1984 and 1994.
He told The Sun: "They said that it was a young kid driving, but no one believes that. I think they just didn’t want to have an enormous lawsuit because he was one of the richest guys in Mexico."
The interview also comes as José Cen Yam has spoken out about the accident for the first time in an interview with the Mail on Sunday, where he doubled down, insisting there was no cover-up and that he was in fact driving.
Yam told the publication: "'No, it was me,' he says. 'That's the truth. The family [of Gonzalez Nova] never put pressure on me to admit to anything I didn't do. I have always told the truth about this."
Recalling the incident, he further explained: "I was going at about five miles an hour. I didn’t see anyone in the water, no one.
"But then I heard a propeller make a very strange noise. It was really weird, a whirring like something hit it. There was no bang in the boat, just the noise of a propeller doing this weird stuff."
He added: "I thought, 'I've gone over something'. So I slowed and went to the back of the boat, and I saw her there."
Yam said that there 'was nothing' he could do to save the singer's life.
"She was just floating in the water all that time. I didn’t pull her body out of the water; we just had to let her be there until help came," he said.
After her death, a 'Justice for Kirsty' campaign began, organised by her mother Jean Newlove, as she hired private detectives to look into the case; however, Nova died aged 92 in 2009.
Lillywhite said: "The campaign was basically really being pushed by Kirsty’s mum. And when she decided that there was not really any hope, and she was old, it ended.
“I think you just have to sometimes accept that life isn’t fair, and you have to move on.”
While Kirsty's son Louis added: "I think we managed to raise awareness and, if it saved just one person, I am happy about that, but what we would have liked was some accountability.
“It was never about money, it was about someone taking responsibility.”