Sian Davies, 44, was identified as a member of an extreme-left Maoist collective who died after falling from a South London home in 1997, according to a report.
Davies fell out of the window on Christmas Eve in 1997 while she was living at a house where the Maoist collective--described as a “cult” by members--lived. The collective is believed to have been the place where three women were held captive for 30 years.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Davies joined the commune in 1973 after she went to London to study. Members of the Maoist group did not tell her family that she was in the hospital after falling out the window and instead said she was on vacation in India.
The group’s leader and the prime suspect in the slavery case is Aravindan Balakrishnan, or “Comrade Bala,” who has been identified as a Maoist supporter. He married a Marxist named Chanda Pattni, who has also been charged in the case.
The coroner for Southwark, Selena Lynch, told the Telegraph that it was odd Davies fell out of the window.
She said, “I wanted to call everyone in the house as we had a mystery, there’s no other way of describing it. I still find it hard to know how she fell out of the window, indeed what was she doing opening the window at that cold time of year.”
Davies’ family told the Daily Mail and Telegraph they were furious that the collective didn’t say anything about her death.
According to the Daily Mail, investigators are looking into her death.
Regarding the slavery case, Metropolitan Police commander Steve Rodhouse told the Daily Star: “We believe that two of the victims met the male suspect in London through a shared political ideology, and that they lived together at an address that you could effectively call a ‘collective.’”
“The people involved, the nature of that collective and how it operated is all subject to our investigation and we are slowly and painstakingly piecing together more information. I will not give any further information about it,” he added.