At about 4 a.m. on August 26, 2008, the Shropshire Central fire control received an emergency call to respond to a fire at the Osbaston mansion residence.
When they arrived, firefighters couldn’t access the residence because of a large horse box. By the time they got in, it was too late; everything was already in ashes.
50-year-old Christian Foster, his wife Jill Foster, 49, and their 15-year-old daughter, Kirstie Foster, were the only human casualties of the fire.
Emergency personnel and police sifted through the debris, finding the bodies of three horses and four dogs, which were assumed to belong to the family.
Initial assessments revealed the horse trailer had been deliberately placed at the front of the property to delay firefighters. This eliminated the possibility this was just a tragic accident.
Footage recovered from the security cameras gave investigators the answers they sought.
At 3.12 am, a motion sensor camera was triggered when Chris stepped out of the home. He was seen carrying the bodies of his dogs into their family stables.
The cameras then showed Foster going around the stables and courtyard with heavy buckets and siphoning piping. Chris then interacted with the external heating oil tank, making a rigged pipeline to flood the property with kerosene.
According to West Mercia Police accounts, the videos obtained then showed Chris walking the estate grounds with a .22 caliber rifle.
Chris was also seen driving the family’s horsebox down the driveway and parking it in front of the electronic gates. After parking, Chris was shown getting out of the vehicle and shooting the tires.
He was last seen calmly walking away from the outer structures as they burst into flames. Chris got into his house at 3.49 am. Firefighters arrived at the Osbaston house at 5.15 am after getting the emergency call an hour earlier.
Who Was Christopher Foster?
Christopher Foster’s mother, Enid, described him as a proactive achiever who sought financial opportunities from a young age.
He shared aspirations with his younger brother, Andrew Foster, to follow in the footsteps of their late father, a sales director.
They both wanted to succeed in business, but despite their shared goal, Christopher and Andrew had a strained relationship since childhood.
Andrew said this was because of their family dynamic. Christopher was perceived as more confident and self-assured. He cast a long shadow over his quieter, more reserved sibling.
Both maintained a close relationship with their mother, Enid. She loved them both, but harbored a particular fondness for her first son.
Chris also began sexually abusing his brother from a young age. Andrew was 11 when 16-year-old Chris explained what he called the ‘facts of life’. He frequently showed him pornographic magazines, and this escalated to regular sexual abuse. These details were revealed months after the murders.
In 1987, Christopher Foster married Jill Eileen Doley, a housewife, who later gave birth to their only daughter, Kirstie, in 1993.
Chris’s journey to wealth began in the 1980s, when he worked as a salesman for a local company in Wolverhampton. He led an average life selling mattresses and cheap pizza boxes for insulation.
His fortunes then took a dramatic turn for the better after the 1988 Piper Alpha oil platform disaster. The oil rig explosion on July 6, 1988, led to a devastating fire that went on for several days, claiming 167 lives.
After witnessing the damage caused by the fire, Chris was inspired and identified a niche market for fire-protected insulation tailored to gas and oil rigs. His accountant, Terrance Baince, told The Guardian, “It came to him in a flash.”
Several companies in the sector expressed immediate interest, but they wanted proof of concept before committing to a contract. To meet the requirement, Chris took a risk and mortgaged the Foster house to fuel a demonstration.
During this test, his product, UlvaShield, showed far greater resilience than other oil rig insulation of the time. It even earned a rare A-1 fire rating.
Major oil corporations placed significant orders for the insulation, and this propelled Chris into millionaire status overnight.
As his business expanded, Chris also saw turnover rise from £50,000 to £1 million a year. And according to his personal assistant, it was almost as if Chris was placed on earth to spend money. According to the Guardian, Baines stated, “He never planned on what things would be like when he was 65 or 70. It was always, ‘What can I do now?'”
He allocated himself a monthly salary of £10,000, but was reported to regularly withdraw money from the company’s accounts for his personal use. By 2004, his net worth was believed to be £10 million.
Following a shopping excursion that year, Jill was perusing the pages of Shropshire Life Magazine when she stumbled upon a house. The Osbaston house spanned 16 acres.
This property boasted a private lake and even had riding paddocks. Even with an asking price of £1.5 million, the property still needed work. But Jill was so taken by the house that Chris submitted an offer the following morning.
The couple soon sold their home and moved into the Osbaston mansion. Chris also invested a further £50,000 into a swimming pool and landscaping at the residence.
A Life of Opulence and Impulse
After settling into the home, Chris indulged in a lavish lifestyle, acquiring one Porsche himself and another for his wife. He also bought a James Bond-style Aston Martin, Range Rovers, a tractor, and a Lamborghini.
Kirstie also attended an exclusive private boarding school. Chris bought her several horses, and she spent time with them whenever she was not in school. Friends described her as quiet, caring, and kind.
Chris bought four dogs and many doves. He kept a personal assistant and housekeeper around, and the house was adorned with over £200,000 worth of antique furnishings.
Chris’s most expensive hobbies, though, centered on shooting. This is evident considering his ownership of numerous high-priced guns. He frequently attended shooting parties, sometimes lasting three days. These resulted in bills higher than £8,000 per session.
Chris also had a tendency to leave firearms scattered across the residence. Occasionally, when his doves caused a mess on his vehicles, he would shoot them.
In one incident, Kirstie’s Labrador began bothering the sheep. He determined the dog was uncontrollable, took it down the road and shot it.
Chris’s appetites and impulsive lifestyle were not sustainable. Though many acknowledged his prowess as an entrepreneur, he lacked follow-through and the long-term vision his company needed.
Acquaintances and friends alike described Chris as impulsive. He craved instant gratification and quickly severed ties with partners he fell out with.
At home, Chris was also leading a double life. Neighbors claimed he was always doting on his wife and daughter, but in private, he had up to eight mistresses.
In 2013, Jill’s sister, Anne Gidding, broke her silence on the matter, claiming her sister knew about the affairs. Anne recounted to the Mirror that Chris once tried to seduce her; to her disgust, “For some reason I’ll never understand, my sister thought the sun shone out of his backside.”
Christopher’s personal assistant also admitted to investigators she believed the couple was in an open marriage. The family later disputed this claim, saying Jill tolerated his affairs because of Chris’s coercive control.
Debts and Financial Ruin
Christopher’s reckless spending created a financial imbalance, with money flowing out in expenditure rather than coming in through the business.
In 2003, Chris signed an exclusive contract with a company called DRC that gave them sole rights to produce the oil rig sealant, which he had patented. This was the beginning of woes.
Within a year, the extravagant spending caught up with him, and in 2005, Chris decided to go behind DRC’s back and sign a second contract with another company in California to sell his product.
DRC Distribution discovered that Chris had done business with the undercutting supplier in September 2006. After they found out, DRC sued Foster’s company in the High Court for breach of contract.
Chris was also found to be a poor taxpayer, who routinely failed to pay standard corporation taxes, National Insurance, and VAT. This and other financial indiscretions came out during the court proceedings.
Following a protracted legal battle, Foster lost the case. His solicitors agreed to pay damages and legal costs totaling £800,000. To avoid paying the distribution company and its tax bills, Chris tried to siphon his movable assets into a new holding company.
The High Court immediately stopped this and placed a £3-million freezing order on his assets, ordering the company to be liquidated. DRC Distribution legally acquired all of Ulva Limited’s assets and patents.
On February 28, 2008, the Guardian reported Lord Justice Rimer comments during the ruling, saying Christopher Foster was “bereft of the basic instincts of commercial morality. He was not to be trusted.”
In June 2008, with his assets frozen and the court order in effect, Chris faced a debt of approximately £1.8 million. This included £1 million to DRC Distribution and £800,000 in unpaid taxes to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Delusion and Depression
Despite being in dire straits between late-2007 and mid-2008, Chris tried to carry on as if nothing significant was happening in his life.
At the same time, Chris and Baines were also having a dispute. Baines reported him to Inland Revenue for tax evasion. To tackle the mounting tax obligations, Chris tried to borrow from banks to alleviate the financial tensions.
Chris had already remortgaged the Osbaston mansion three times, and tried to do so a fourth time, but the courts stopped him before he got the chance. This was due to the freezing order in October 2007 on Chris’s assets.
The land registry records indicated that the liquidators obtained a court order preventing him from remortgaging the mansion again.
Undeterred, Chris went on to overdraw more than 20 different bank accounts. He used these funds to temporarily conceal that he was deeply in debt.
People who knew Jill could not say for certain if she knew the full extent of her husband’s situation, but she did not show a reduced rate of spending. She also did not share anything with close friends that indicated distress.
Chris told friends he had a strong, unshakeable bond with his possessions and his family’s well-being. On one occasion, during a conversation about houses with a friend, he emphatically declared that he could not lose the Osbaston mansion unless he was dead.
The Independent reported this interaction where Chris said, “Jesus, they are not having my stuff, I will top myself before that. They will carry me out in a box.”
Seeing the walls closing in, Chris sought professional help. Following the loss of the case in February 2008, he confided in his doctor, William Grech, that he had feelings of depression and suicidal ideation.
According to the Independent, Dr. Grech said, “He did not give any specific details about his business problems, although I got the impression they were big.”
He even began taking antidepressants, but his doctor did not believe that he would take his own life. On August 21st, a friend texted Chris to ask how he was doing. According to True Crime with Caledonian Kitty, Chris replied, “Not good. Things are coming to a head for me soon.”
The catalyst finally came on the August bank holiday weekend of 2008. Chris found a letter from the bailiffs attached to his front gate.
The letter said they intended to return on Tuesday to reclaim the Osbaston Mansion and other assets.
The housekeeper said that when she showed him the letter, Chris looked perplexed but kept his composure. This became the trigger for the sequence of events that led to the familicide.
On Monday the 25th, the Fosters were invited to an event featuring a barbecue and clay pigeon shooting, which Chris and the family attended. John Hughes, a millionaire luxury car dealer, hosted the event.
At the event, none of the attendees noticed anything off with Chris, Jill or Kirstie. Witnesses claim Chris was his usual cheerful self. They had no idea what was boiling underneath the veneer.
Chris spent the previous week browsing and researching suicide websites. He had also been reminiscing over older photographs of him, Jill and Kirstie, taken during better times.
That evening Chris also wanted to leave earlier than usual, but Jill wanted to stay on a little longer. They finally left at 8.30 pm and got home in less than 15 minutes.
The security camera captured their last time together as they came back from the party and Chris parked the Range Rover. Jill retired to bed soon after.
Later at about 11.30 am that night, Chris went upstairs to tell Kirstie to stop texting her friend and sleep. She was reluctant, so Chris switched the internet off at midnight. This prompted Kirstie to conclude the conversation.
Murder and Aftermath
Investigators assessed that at 3 am, Chris took his silenced pistol, entered the room where his wife was sleeping, and shot her in the back of the head.
He then went to Kirstie’s room and did the same to her. The home security cameras showed Chris walking out to the dog kennels with his rifle. Each of the dogs was shot in the head as well.
Chris went to the barn, where the horses were, and executed the animals the same way. He rigged the domestic oil tank to the main house’s cellar and drove the horse box in front of the gate to block any first responders.
He then walked back into the house, knowing it would also soon be engulfed in flames. In the footage, Chris was methodical and robotic. Devoid of distress or anger.
Given his past experience with fire insulation, he knew exactly what it would take to destroy the house. The blaze’s extreme heat turned the interior structures into a clay oven. It also caused the upper flooring to collapse.
A pathologist from the home office determined Jill and Kirstie died by gunshot to the head before the fire. Christopher Foster died by smoke inhalation.
In April 2009, senior coroner John Elery recorded that Christopher Foster killed his wife and daughter, then took his own life. The three Fosters were buried on December 19, 2008. Relatives held separate funerals for Kirstie and Jill.
Christopher Foster’s funeral service took place hours later. Andrew claimed he had no interest in claiming any of the remaining stake in his brother’s assets or his remains.
The case exposed significant systemic issues, as Chris’s doctor did not have a protocol for alerting authorities that his patient was suicidal. Police chiefs had to create guidelines for improved communication between healthcare and firearms licensing departments.
The local council also eventually issued a decree to demolish the Osbaston House shell. It was cleared and sold off.
If you would like to read more creepy or unique stories, check out our articles on the 2016 Creepy Clown phenomenon and Kim Ung-Yong, the child prodigy.
