The TV presenter opens up while speaking to a female inmate on trial for murder in New Orleans, who shot her husband after suffering decades of violent abuse
Katie plays cards with Tonica before they chat about the attacks they have endured
Katie Piper sometimes thinks she “should have killed” the abusive ex-partner who was behind the acid attack which left her scarred for life in 2008. The TV presenter makes her candid confession in a new documentary in which she travels to the US state of Louisiana to speak to female inmates at a prison in New Orleans, many of whom are awaiting trial on a murder charge.
Speaking to 47-year-old Tonica Mutin, who was a victim of violent abuse from her husband for years before she shot him, Katie reveals that in the aftermath of her own attack she also wished she’d taken extreme action to protect herself.
Katie was 24 when her former boyfriend Daniel Lynch raped her and then hired a man to throw acid in her face, for which she has since needed 400 operations.
Katie Piper says the women she met often trusted her because they knew she understood what they’d been through, because of her own scars
Hearing Tonica’s story about being beaten repeatedly for many years, Katie confides: “I spent a lot of time in hospital, it’s very different from prison, but I spent time in isolation and in a bed thinking that I should have killed him.”
The TV presenter, 41, finds it staggering that under the Louisiana state laws the women she meets are not able to plead self defence, regardless of what drove them to kill. Tonica is charged with second degree murder of her violently abusive husband and says that on the night she shot him she truly feared for her own life. She explains: “He wasn’t letting up that night. I truly felt like I could die. I didn’t have a plan. I was defending myself.
Asked if she regrets her actions, Tonica says she does – but not because she’s facing a life behind bars. “Do I regret it? Hell yes, because I loved my husband, I truly did, and I miss him so much.”
The mum-of-two spent a month in the prison and said the experience has changed her life(Image: UKTV)
Katie tells her: “In my situation I was attacked twice. I was beaten and raped and then a couple of days later I had acid thrown in my face. I suppose I had that moment that you had, when I felt like he was beating me, he was going to kill me. I always thought that if someone was going to kill me I would defend myself but what happened to me was – I froze out of fear and I didn’t do anything to him. And a couple of days later somebody threw the acid on me.”
Katie’s new U&W series, which starts on Sunday, comes just days after it emerged Lynch has been granted a parole hearing in June, in which he will plea for release or to be moved to an open prison.
The 48-year-old was given life with a minimum sentence of 16 years in 2009 for instructing Stefan Sylvestre to carry out the acid attack, days after he had raped Katie in a hotel room.
Sylvestre is still wanted by police two years after going missing. He breached his licence conditions when he was released on parole and is now thought to be living abroad.
Speaking in 2023, Katie confessed that Lynch’s release was on her mind. “The people that attacked me will be released,” she said. “Are they going to kill me? I’m not sure.”
Speaking months later at a screening of the new series, Katie said that perhaps if she’d grown-up in a tough neighbourhood surrounded by crime and violence, as many of the women in the programme had, she might have behaved differently.
“I think what a lot of those women had in common was their childhood. And if I compare my childhood to theirs, I had never ever experienced trauma or abuse until I was attacked – that’s not the case for those women.
Spending time in the prison helped Katie to come to terms with a medical trauma over her left eye(Image: UKTV)
“Tonica talked about seeing somebody shot and seeing a dead body at the age of six. I can’t comprehend what that must have been like and what that does to you. I think however you are raised and what you grow up around becomes your go-to and your coping mechanism. So I do believe a lot of the women in this film, and in the other episodes, were in that situation of shoot or be shot. Obviously it isn’t a path that I took, but maybe if my childhood and upbringing had been different then who knows?”
Katie says that while some of the inmates thought her facial injuries were down to ‘botox’ others made different assumptions. “A lot of people think I’m a recovering meth addict because lots of people obviously get burnt when cooking up meth. And a lot of people there thought I had HIV because they said I was so skinny.”
To make the four-part series, Katie and an all-female crew spent a month inside the Louisiana prison. Introducing the programme she says: “Fifteen years ago a violent attack changed my life forever and since then I’ve been trying to understand why people commit violent acts.
The damage caused by the sulphuric acid attack in 2008 left Katie needing multiple surgeries (Image: Instagram)
“By spending time with those accused of the most shocking crimes and becoming a part of their world, I’m getting to know the women on the inside to find out what drove them to kill, understand where they came from and ask if violence can ever be justified.”
The mum-of-two said that sometimes she witnessed extreme behaviour from the women, who were locked up with no access to the outdoors. Asked if she felt scared at times, she reasoned: “You think of prison to be unpredictable and volatile, but so is life. We never know what’s going to happen. And I suppose I always go into these projects with, well what is the worst that could happen to me? And I think to make a good show, we had to have a little element of risk. I would be more scared walking through central London at night on my own.”
Some of the women she speaks to have already given up and accepted their fate, she found. “In America, the justice system, the sentencing, the gun laws, the crime, is so very different to the UK. Louisiana, in particular, locks up so many people. And women are really failed because there is no self-defence law in Louisiana. It doesn’t exist, but so many people are allowed to carry an unconcealed weapon. So it is a flawed system, for sure.”
Katie relaxing on holiday with her husband(Image: @katiepiper_/Instagram)
But while they were accepting of their own situations, some felt that hers was worse. “That’s a sad reflection of what they feel is their self-worth and what should happen to them and what’s normal life for them and not normal life for me,” she explained. “I am the perfect victim. I’m from a loving family. I’m white. I was young, pretty, blonde, I presented as feminine. So I am believed and I am platformed and listened to. So what happens when you are not all of those things? Where do you go? Where do you end up? What’s the end of your story?”
After returning to her husband and daughters when filming ended, Katie found it hard to shake the experience. “It changed my life forever,” she says. “I really missed the women and I felt a bit guilty about coming back to my life, back on Loose Women the next day. Those women had a big impact on me and I’ll never forget them.
“I had a bit of an unexpected medical trauma with my eye before I went out there, so I had felt slightly shaken. And then I met these women that had these different things – and it was a really restorative time for me. Those women really helped me too. So I’ll always be grateful to them.”
Katie Piper: Locked Up in Louisiana is available from 27 April, 9pm on U&W, stream free on U
