
Detectives called out to Demi Hannaway’s home following her death had a furious disagreement about how she died, clashing so badly they reported each other to police bosses, her family have revealed.
The two were at loggerheads, arguing in front of Demi’s distraught parents over the circumstances of their daughter’s death. One of the officers was subsequently sent on annual leave and was never seen again by the grieving family.
Demi’s family are calling for a new investigation into her sudden death at her home in Airdrie after the tragedy was written off as a suicide without being fully investigated.
They say police were far too quick to decide young mum-of-two Demi, 23, had taken her own life in May 2021, despite knowing her violent partner had repeatedly attacked her.
Andrew Brown was later jailed for sending Demi abhorrent abuse and threats which were only discovered by her family after her death.
They believe his account of events leading to her death was never questioned by officers despite a number of inconsistencies. Now they have revealed that one of those officers did have concerns – but these were dismissed by his colleague.
Demi’s father, John, said: “The disagreement became so apparent during one visit to our home, the two detectives started arguing in front of us. One wanted to hear evidence we’d gathered about Brown’s previous strangulation attacks on my daughter, and the other was glaring at him and insisting the pathologist agreed with her that Demi died by suicide.
“I handed over eight pages of new evidence of Brown’s attacks. While the male officer clearly wanted to know more, the female officer became so angry she walked out of our house. We watched as the two officers continued arguing in their car before it sped off in a rush.
“I later heard back from the male detective that his colleague officially reported him to bosses for daring to “encourage” us, and he reported her for unprofessional behaviour.
“He told us the female officer was sent on annual leave. We never saw her again.”
Police failures
Despite a growing list of police failures to identify the classic signs of what experts believe could be a suspected “staged homicide”, Demi’s death four years ago has continued to be treated as a suicide by Police Scotland and the Crown Office.
But the last person to speak to Demi before she died, school friend Dean Whitelaw, 26, said his terrified friend called him around 4.30am on the day she died, begging him to her help get Brown out of her house.
He said: “Demi was terrified. I could hear it in her voice. She was begging me to help her get Brown out of the house because she was so scared of him. I could clearly hear him shouting and bawling in the background. It sounded like he was smashing things up in a rage.
“I’ll never forgive myself for not immediately going down there, but when I called back a few minutes later around 4.40am, Demi didn’t answer. I assumed Demi and Brown must have made up and they’d gone to bed.”
Demi’s family later found her phone under her bed, smashed, and with its SIM card removed.
Dean said: “I went to sleep thinking everything was OK. Hours later, I heard Demi was dead. I burst into tears, and I’ve had nightmares ever since, tormenting myself that I should have gone down there to help her. Demi was a beautiful human being. I’ll never accept she took her own life because she loved her children and family too much to do that to them.”
And Demi’s next-door neighbour, Elizabeth Lewis, agreed. She said: “Demi loved her kids and her family. She was a wonderful mum who doted on her children. She was always happy unless Brown was playing up.
“We could hear a lot of shouting and loud banging noises. They were always falling out and making up again. On the night Demi died, I heard the two of them singing karaoke and they seemed happy. But a while later I could hear him shouting at her and slamming doors.
“He left the house around midnight, but Demi let him back in again a while later and the shouting continued for hours. I couldn’t sleep so I heard it all. Brown was calling her all sorts of horrible names. Around 5am I heard a few loud bangs and then silence. Around 45 minutes later, Brown appeared at my door with the baby in his arms. I asked him what the hell had been going on in there, and he just said, ‘Demi’s hung herself’.
“I grabbed the baby off him and said I didn’t believe him. He shouted at me to call the police. I was shaking like a leaf. He went back into the house, but I don’t know what he was doing in there. It was around three quarters of an hour before the police came, and there was a carry on about them getting into the house.”
Elizabeth challenges police comments that Demi’s house was “squalid”. She said: “Demi kept her house immaculate. She was very particular. The place was always clean and tidy.”
Demi’s parents were shocked to find kitchen rubbish had been strewn in the bedroom, drawers emptied, clothes thrown on the floor, and the bedsheet with smears of blood and what was believed to be saliva was rolled up and hidden in the wardrobe.
History of abuse
Demi secretly suffered years of strangulation attacks by Brown.
She was so ashamed, she hid the violence from her parents, who only discovered what their daughter had been subjected to after she died.
They continue fighting for justice for their beloved daughter, pressing for Brown to be charged with domestic violence offences.
But they were excluded from plea deals negotiated between Brown’s legal team and the Procurator Fiscal to remove charges and evidence pointing to him playing any part in the young mum’s death.
John said: “It broke us discovering Demi had been covering up the violence she suffered for years. She had even signed up for a psychology course because she was so desperate to fix Brown’s uncontrollable rages and jealousies. Demi had spent years making up cover stories for Brown smashing glass doors, breaking windows and lashing out at her. It became clear that he had an uncontrollable rage inside him, and she had begged family members not to tell us because she knew it would devastate us.”
Brown’s guilty plea of two charges of abusing Demi up until hours before she died was accepted at Airdrie Sheriff Court last May and he was sentenced to just 43 months in jail, meaning he could be released soon.
Lord Advocate agrees to meet parents amid claims case was ‘not properly investigated’
Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC has agreed to meet with the grieving parents of young mum-of-two Demi Hannaway.
Scotland’s most senior law officer has taken the decision after we revealed a catalogue of police failures surrounding the death of Demi, 23, from Airdrie.
Demi’s mother Helen said: “For four long years we have been raising concerns that Demi’s death may be a staged homicide, but until now nobody has actually listened to what we believe happened.
“Despite police knowing Demi’s partner Andrew Brown had previously violently assaulted and strangled her, when our daughter died, they accepted the word of a known abuser and decided within a couple of hours that this was a tragic suicide.
“We believe the whole case needs to be properly investigated as we can see no evidence that it had been in the first place.”
Last week we told how the pathologist was not informed of the previous history of domestic abuse, Labour MSP Claire Baker, who sits on the parliamentary cross-party committee on Men’s Violence Against Women, raised Demi’s death in parliament last week, calling for a review. She said: “Demi’s family have so many unanswered questions and they deserve answers.”
Responding to Baker’s parliamentary question, First Minister John Swinney said: “I understand the family’s concerns about the information that has been put in the public domain and am familiar with the fact that a complaint has been made and is being handled by the professional standards channel of Police Scotland.”
Swinney pledged to raise the case with the Lord Advocate. After weeks of saying they had previously looked at the case, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said: “The Lord Advocate would welcome the opportunity to meet the family.”
They added: “She has asked the Procurator Fiscal to look at the information held by COPFS and determine if there should be a case review.”
Demi’s father John said: “There’s no point wasting time conducting a review of the evidence they have. It’s the evidence they don’t have that is of greatest concern to us because there was never any competent police investigation into the case in the first place.”

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