Read Dan Evan's and Tom Latchems's exclusive three-part investigation into the Caroline Flack Story in the April edition of Byline Times. Available as a digital edition online now, or in stores and newsagents from 20 March.

Read Dan Evan's and Tom Latchems's exclusive three-part investigation into the Caroline Flack Story in the April edition of Byline Times. Available as a digital edition online now, or in stores and newsagents from 20 March.

The family of Caroline Flack is hailing a breakthrough in an ongoing four-year battle for answers from the Metropolitan Police over the assault charge that led to the presenter’s suicide, it can be revealed.

New information, uncovered by a Byline Times investigation, means the arresting officer in the case must now explain their role in overturning a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to issue Caroline with a caution because of her risk of self-harming.

It follows the intervention of police in December 2019 to reject an initial “public interest” decision to accept Caroline’s admission of causing injury to her partner Lewis Burton without going to court in favour of a public trial the prospect of which, a coroner later found, led to her death.

Coroner Mary Hassell said in August 2020: “I find the reason for her taking her life was she now knew she was being prosecuted for certainty and she knew she would face the media, press, publicity – it would all come down upon her.”

Caroline’s mother Christine is now expecting a statement from Met. Detective Constable Jack Bilsborough detailing the “rationale” behind the challenge, which was raised unilaterally by a more senior officer, Detective Inspector Lauren Bateman, without notes being kept as to why.

A new three-part probe published in the April edition of Byline Times tells how DC Bilsborough left the police before the inquest and other investigations by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) and could not, until now, be compelled to speak.

However, after this newspaper learned the officer returned to service in October 2023, Mrs Flack has now lodged a new complaint with the IOPC in order to obtain his evidence.

She said: “We need, as a family, to understand. Were it not for Byline Times, I would never have even known Jack Bilsborough had re-joined the police.”

A spokesperson for the Met. added: “Any officer in the Met, regardless of whether they left the Met and later re-joined, who is subject to a complaint, would be expected to provide

an account. The officer mentioned wants to make it clear he would offer every ­ assistance as required.”

Our investigation also reveals the truth behind the worst of the news output that led almost two million people to call for a ‘Caroline’s Law’; legislation - never in the end debated at Westminster - to make it a criminal offence to publish unduly oppressive media coverage that pushed people to suicide.

Sources inside The Sun tell how the tabloid bought and published a picture of Caroline’s blood-stained bed - likely to be key evidence in the then-upcoming trial - without explaining it was her own self-inflicted injuries that had caused the scene.

And members of her former management team reveal that despite having three journalists named as authors on the piece, the paper claimed it had been too short-staffed to seek a right to reply comment from the presenter before running a story Christine says played a big part in her suicide.Christine also tells Byline Times of the emotional impact on the Flack family of having to still doggedly battle for the truth four years after her death – and how what happened to Caroline at Holborn Police Station on Friday 13 December 2019 led to changes for the police nationwide.

Read Dan Evan's and Tom Latchems's exclusive three-part investigation into the Caroline Flack Story in the April edition of Byline Times. Available as a digital edition online now, or in stores and newsagents from 20 March.

Read Dan Evan's and Tom Latchems's exclusive three-part investigation into the Caroline Flack Story in the April edition of Byline Times. Available as a digital edition online now, or in stores and newsagents from 20 March.