Kirsty MacColl, Cozumel, and a Family’s Long Fight for Justice

Harriet Wilder
Oct 15
9 min read

People in dark clothing appear against an ocean backdrop. Text reads: "The Death of Kirsty MacColl and Guillermo González Nova's Involvement." Mood is somber.

It should have been a gentle pause in a busy life. Sunlight over turquoise water, a reef that dazzled, a mother keen to share something she loved with her two boys. Instead, late in the afternoon on 18 December 2000, a fast boat cut across a protected dive zone off Cozumel and ended the life of Kirsty MacColl at forty one. Friends, collaborators and millions of listeners knew her as the wry, unmistakeable voice behind songs that still lift off the radio each winter and summer alike. To her family she was simply Kirsty, a devoted mum who, even at her busiest, made time to plan mince pies, Christmas decorations, and a quiet holiday.

On the evening before she left for Mexico, she had supper with her mother, the choreographer and teacher Jean Newlove, and they went through the festive list like any family would. “She made out a list of groceries for me to buy. There were mince pies to make, presents to wrap, the tree to put up,” Newlove recalls. Later that night, after Kirsty dropped her home, they had the kind of parting that becomes unforgettable only in retrospect. “We hugged goodbye. I said, ‘I love you,’ as she walked away, and without looking back she called, ‘And I love you.’”

Two people smiling closely, one wearing glasses and a blue jacket, the other with red hair and a black top. Warm indoor setting. — Kirsty with her mother, Jean

Eighteen months of almost non stop work had left Kirsty due a break, and Cozumel was already familiar. The island lies twelve miles off the Yucatán, ringed by reefs inside a National Marine Park that restricts motor vessels and sets a four knot speed limit in the dive areas. It is famous for clear water, gentle drift dives, and for being beginner friendly when conditions are right. For her third visit she wanted to introduce her sons Jamie, fifteen, and Louis, thirteen, to the experience with help from a seasoned local divemaster, Iván Díaz.

They planned two dives that day at Chankanaab Reef, a popular, relatively shallow site within the protected zone. According to her younger son, the first dive was as magical as she had hoped.

“We were going to do two dives,” Louis recalled. “On the first, about 2pm, we all went down together. There were wonderful things there. I came up to the surface first, Mummy was next to me. I said, ‘Wow!’ She smiled and said, ‘Great!’ Then she suddenly screamed, ‘Look out!’ and tried to push us out of the way. The boat was already over us — I could see the propellers.”

He swam the way she pushed him, then saw the sea around him change.

“I was swimming in Mummy’s blood. I heard Jamie shout, ‘Where’s Mummy?’ I screamed that she’d been hit, and to swim the other way and not look back.”

What happened next is stitched together from witness statements and the accounts of those nearby. After slamming through the group, the 31 foot motorboat continued for several hundred feet before stopping, one of its propellers hampered by a bent metal bar that had caught in diving equipment. Díaz, the divemaster, had tried to wave and shout as the craft bore down. He later said that at first he assumed the boat would veer away, then realised the bow was riding high and the engines were too loud for anyone to hear warnings. He remembered the sensation of being pulled toward the blades, the push of the swell helping him yank himself and one of the boys out of the immediate path. What he heard next stayed with him. “Then I heard a crack and a big clang as the propellers hit Kirsty’s tank.”

Man in a suit smiles beside a docked white yacht with visible fenders in a marina. Water reflects under a clear sky, creating a calm mood. — González Nova and the boat that killed Kirsty

Back on land, the first calls Kirsty’s mother received in London gave almost no detail. The British consul had not been in touch, and early media reports used words like unavoidable and freak accident. To Jean Newlove, the fragments never added up. Her daughter was careful and experienced, the dive site was controlled, the boys were under supervision, and the park’s rules were meant to prevent precisely this kind of collision. “Kirsty was an experienced diver. She had taken courses and would not go out without a dependable guide. Most of all, she would never have done anything reckless that might endanger the boys. It was surprising that this wealthy Mexican would allow his powerful, valuable boat to be driven by an inexperienced deckhand, especially with a small grandchild on board.”

The autopsy findings

Two post mortem examinations were carried out. The first took place in Mexico soon after the collision. A second, more comprehensive examination was conducted in London by Dr Richard Shepherd, a senior consultant forensic pathologist. Both concluded that the injuries were catastrophic and incompatible with life. The reports described deep, extensive incised wounds consistent with high energy propeller strikes along the left side and back of the torso. In plain terms, the blades had acted like a series of rapidly repeating knives, producing multiple, overlapping cuts that together formed one devastating trauma track.

In Mexico, the initial report recorded a fatal transection through the upper back that extended down toward the waist, damaging the spine and the major blood vessels. In London, Dr Shepherd confirmed that her left leg and part of her chest were virtually severed, and that a single continuous wound ran “from the back of the neck to her waist.” He noted what he called a massive amount of missing tissue and, because the chest wall had been torn away on one side, even remarked that the pattern of absence briefly raised a theoretical question over prior breast surgery. That observation was simply a pathologist’s cautious note. The mechanism of injury was not in doubt. It was violent, mechanical and immediate.

Four men in uniforms carry a stretcher on a beach. A cruise ship is visible in the distance, creating a serious mood. — Investigators collecting evidence on the beach near the dive

Although drowning is a common contributory factor in many propeller incidents, here the cause of death was essentially instantaneous blood loss and destruction of vital structures. There was no meaningful survival interval. The divemaster and other rescuers saw the change in the water within seconds. Paramedics at the jetty could do nothing. Jean Newlove, who last saw her daughter in the coffin and was struck by how peaceful her face looked, did not learn the full extent of the injuries until she travelled to Mexico years later to meet witnesses. “The full details of Kirsty’s injuries are too awful for me to describe. Apparently the paramedic threw up on arriving at the scene. But two boys have to live with those last memories of their mother for the rest of their lives.”

However clinical such language sounds, that is all an autopsy really tries to do. It reconstructs the moment. Which way the blades were turning, where the first impact landed, how the cuts aligned with the ribs and spine, what that means for timing. In this case those facts lined up with the eyewitness accounts that placed a fast moving hull in a place where it should not have been.

Who was at the helm, and how the courts handled it

The boat that struck the group was a powerful craft called Percalito. Mexican and British reporting at the time described members of the González Nova family on board. Early statements from the family and crew said the boat was well outside the park and moving slowly. Divers nearby and the captains of other boats described the opposite: a fast approach over Chankanaab, bow high, engines loud. The question of who was driving became the pivot on which everything else turned. Within hours, a deckhand, José Cen Yam, stepped forward to say he had been at the controls. He did not have the appropriate licence for a boat of that size and power. He claimed he was travelling at one knot and saw no divers or dive boats in the vicinity.

Iván Díaz did not believe that account and said so immediately. “After they ran over us, I saw Cen Yam jump forwards from the back of the boat, to the controls. I couldn’t see who was at the wheel because the bow was so high out of the water.” He and other witnesses gave statements to local and port authorities in the days that followed, while the island absorbed the shock and the family tried to navigate unfamiliar procedures far from home. In a climate like that, where wealth and influence meet a small community that depends on tourism, people choose their words carefully. Many preferred to stay quiet. One of the local captains, Félipe Díaz Poot of the Nazareno, put it wryly. “We are poor people. He [González Nova] is the Don — what more is there to say?”

In 2003 a local court convicted Cen Yam of culpable homicide. Mexican law allowed him to pay a fine in lieu of jail, calculated against minimum wage rates. It came to a sum reported in the UK as about sixty one pounds, with additional compensation to Kirsty’s sons assessed on a similar basis. For Jean Newlove, that number felt like the definition of insult. “I was sickened, the boys dumbfounded. Is £61 really what the authorities consider my daughter’s life to be worth?”

A mother’s campaign, and the limits of the system

Jean Newlove did not leave it there. With friends and musicians who loved Kirsty’s work, she helped launch Justice for Kirsty, a sustained effort to push the matter beyond local handling and into federal review. The aim was not vengeance but basic accountability. Was the park’s protected status enforced. Did the boat break the speed limit. Were the right people questioned under oath. And perhaps most painfully, was the young deckhand simply absorbing the legal force on behalf of his betters.

The campaign gathered witness statements, commissioned legal advice, pressed the British government to engage, and met with Mexican officials. A BBC documentary followed her trip to the island and helped set out the contradictions. There were small but significant acknowledgements along the way. A federal prosecutor in Cozumel, Emilio Cortez Ramírez, was later found liable for breach of authority in his handling of aspects of the matter, which validated at least some of the concerns about process. Yet the central facts as far as the courts were concerned did not move. The local conviction stood. The figure at the heart of the family’s longer questions did not face trial over the collision.

In December 2009, after nine years of steady effort, the Justice for Kirsty committee announced that it would end the campaign. It said that, within the constraints of the law and the time that had passed, most of what could be achieved had been. Remaining funds were donated to charities that matched Kirsty’s interests. Later that year, Carlos González Nova died. In 2017, Jean Newlove died too, remembered both for her work as a Laban movement teacher and for the grace and resolve she showed while fighting for her daughter.

The music she left, the person she was

It is always tempting to let the last event in a life cast the longest shadow. Kirsty’s work pushes back. She was never the cookie cutter version of an eighties pop star. She wrote with bite and handled melody like a storyteller. She debuted as a songwriter at seventeen with They Don’t Know, which Tracey Ullman later turned into a hit. There was the gleeful There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis and the annual migration of Fairytale of New York back onto playlists as nights draw in. Collaborators queued up to praise her. Morrissey called her “a supreme original.” Bono placed her in “a long line of great English songwriters that includes Ray Davies, Paul Weller and Morrissey. The Noelle Coward [sic] of her generation.” Johnny Marr said she had “the wit of Ray Davies and the harmonic invention of the Beach Boys, only cooler.”

She married producer Steve Lillywhite in 1985 and their sons Jamie and Louis arrived soon after. After the divorce, she carved a rhythm that gave room to motherhood and to the music she wanted to make, working with artists she respected, landing sharp, humane records like Galore, and finishing Tropical Brainstorm with its Latin tilt shortly before the trip to Mexico. Two weeks before she died she had completed an eight part BBC radio series about Cuba’s music and history. She was happy. She was in love with the musician James Knight. She was planning Christmas. On the last afternoon of her life, she was doing exactly what she had set out to do. Share a reef with her boys, surface, smile, and say it was great.

Where things stand in 2025

A quarter of a century on, the official record is blunt. The deckhand’s conviction remains the only criminal accountability attached to the case. The protected status of the Chankanaab dive area remains in place, the speed limit still exists on paper, and Cozumel is still one of the world’s busiest dive destinations. Divers and boat operators everywhere know that rules only keep people safe if they are seen and enforced, and the stark physics of engine, hull, propeller and human being do not change with a new calendar. Families who love the water teach each other to look, listen and signal. Good captains throttle back in dive zones and keep a bow lookout. Those are the quiet lessons that endure.

What also endures is the way those who loved Kirsty talk about her. That last exchange at the car door. The boys’ memories of the first dive. The plain voices of the men on the water that day. And Jean’s remark, the one that sounds so exactly like a mother who refused to meet tragedy with hollow words. Her tears, she said, were anger more than sorrow. It is a line that cuts through the noise with the same frankness that made her daughter’s songs feel truer than they had to be.