Parents of Lady Gabriella's Late Husband Thomas Kingston Break Their Silence with Emotional Plea

Mar. 15, 2025

Thomas Kingston and Lady Gabriella Windsor at Wimbledon on July 4, 2023.Photo:Karwai Tang/WireImage

Karwai Tang/WireImage

On Feb. 4, Jill and Martin Kingston spoke out in a new interview on BBC Radio 4’sTodayshow, a few weeks ahead of the first anniversary of their son’s death. Thomas, who was married toKing Charles' second cousin,Lady Gabriella Windsor, was found dead at his parents' home in the Cotswolds on Feb. 25, 2024. A spokesperson for the coroner’s office previously told PEOPLE that his cause of death was a “traumatic wound to the head” and a gun was found near his body.

According to theBBC, the financier “had stopped taking his medication” in the days before he died, and his parents now say there should be more extensive steps to prescribe selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a commonly prescribed antidepressant. Jill and Martin spoke out two months after Katy Skerrett, senior coroner for Gloucestershire, connected Thomas' death to the medication he had been taking. (“The evidence of his wife, family and business partner all supports his lack of suicidal intent,” Skerrett said then in a narrative conclusion, per the outlet. “He was suffering adverse effects of medication he had recently been prescribed.")

In a snippet of theTodayinterview shared tosocial media, Jill said that everyone prescribed SSRIs be fully informed of the potential complications of going on and off the antidepressants.

“There are two things we would really like to see changed. One is that every person who is prescribed SSRIs actually sign something that said they had been told about the difficulties of going on and the difficulties of coming off. They were aware — it’s an extreme case — but it could lead to suicide. They need to be told that and have written something that showed that they’d heard,” Jill said. “Alongside that, we’d really like to see that a person — a spouse, a partner, a parent, a close friend, somebody — was going to walk through it with them. Maybe they should be at that signing time.”

Martin spoke in the interview about how hanging up the hundreds of cards and letters his family received brought relief amid their grief.

“Part of the leaning into the pain process was to put up in our hallway at home, the over 400 letters and cards, gluetack them to the wall. In part, because so many of them told us things we never knew,” Martin told host Emma Barnett.

“I would like him to be remembered as someone with a big smile on his face while helping people to do difficult things,” he said through tears.

Thomas Kingston on his May 18, 2019 wedding day to Lady Gabriella Windsor in Windsor, England.Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images

Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images

Thomas was a financier and former hostage negotiator who married into the royal family when he wed Lady Gabriella, the daughter ofPrince Michaeland Princess Michael of Kent, in 2019. The couple frequently attended royal family events, and Thomas' death sent shockwaves when Buckingham Palace announced the news last February.

“He was normal, he was fun, we were laughing about various things — there was nothing that raised any suspicions in our mind,” she told the BBC,Hello!reported.

“We fell asleep, he fell asleep, I fell asleep. Martin, you decided to go for a walk, and then Tom got up and went to unload his car because he was bringing home some stuff they’d got in London, and it was going to be stored with us,” she said.

The couple grew concerned when they couldn’t find Thomas, and Martin broke down the door of an outbuilding to find his son’s body.

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In January, Skerrett, the senior coroner, said in a prevention of future deaths report that further action should be taken over the risk to patients prescribed SSRIs.

The coroner wondered whether there had been clear communication around the risks of the medications in a report sent to several U.K. health and medical agencies, which now have a few weeks to respond.

source: people.com