Stardust inquests finally let families paint emotional picture of their loved ones

In September 2019, the Attorney General decided it was in the public interest to hold new inquests and said there’d been an “insufficiency of inquiry” at the original Stardust inquests. Picture: Tony Harris/PA

After 42 years, two bereaved mothers and a sister became the first family members to tell the long-awaited Stardust inquests about the loved ones they so cruelly lost in the 1981 fire.

“Like a tornado, the Stardust fire ripped through the core of our beings,” Gertrude Barrett, mother of Michael Barrett, 17, told the inquests. “I am forever haunted by the thoughts of his final moments.”