For avid ultramarathon runner Stephen Chamberlain, the morning had begun with one of his regular runs through the Cambridgeshire countryside.
The Strava exercise tracking app he was using reveals he had jogged 6.4 miles in an hour last Saturday morning, on a route that took him along the Black Fen Waterway Trail alongside the River Great Ouse. The weather was fine.
Chamberlain, an accountant and technology company executive, had taken up running ultramarathons (sometimes competing in races as long as 230 miles) after facing the immense pressure of becoming a defendant in one of Silicon Valley’s largest and longest-running fraud cases.
Just weeks earlier, he and his co-defendant Mike Lynch, the billionaire tech rock star hailed as “Britain’s Bill Gates”, had been sensationally acquitted of all charges in a San Francisco court after the jury at their 11-week trial rejected the US government’s claim that they had manipulated the accounts over the £8.6bn sale of Lynch’s company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard.
Chamberlain, an accountant and technology executive, had taken up ultramarathon running since facing the immense pressure of becoming a defendant in one of Silicon Valley’s largest and longest-running fraud cases.
Just weeks earlier, he and his co-defendant Mike Lynch, the billionaire tech star hailed as “the British Bill Gates,” had been sensationally acquitted of all charges in a San Francisco court.
Chamberlain, 52, whose career was put on hold after being forced to take “administrative leave” in June last year, was looking forward to new work challenges and spending more time with his wife Karen and their children, Ella and Teddy.
But that was not to be. At around 10.10am, as he was turning out onto the busy Newmarket Road, he was hit by a blue Vauxhall Corsa and was fatally injured.
The Mail has analysed the route he was taking, as revealed by his Strava app. At the point where the car hit him, the path Chamberlain was running on leads to a narrow path leading to the A1123, a single-carriageway where the speed limit is normally 60mph.
At this point, between the villages of Stretham and Wicken, the road crosses the River Great Ouse via a humpback bridge.
To cross at this point, pedestrians must step over a barrier. Drivers approaching the bridge from Stretham (northwest) may have limited visibility, while those coming from Wicken will have to take a slight bend.
It is, in short, a potentially dangerous place to cross, even in good weather.
The driver of the Corsa, a 49-year-old woman from the nearby village of Haddenham, stopped at the scene and assisted police with their enquiries. Police say there is no evidence the incident was “suspicious or inappropriate”.
Stephen Chamberlain pictured with his wife Karen
The humpback bridge on the A1123 Newmarket Road between Wicken and Stretham, Cambridgeshire, where Stephen Chamberlain, the co-defendant of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, died after being hit by a car.
Chamberlain, who lived in nearby Longstanton, was taken to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge where he was treated for his injuries and put on life support, but was pronounced dead on Monday night.
But by then, hundreds of miles away, an extraordinary and tragic coincidence had occurred, one that for some has put Chamberlain’s death in a new and sinister light.
Around dawn that same Monday, Mike Lynch’s £30m, 184ft superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily, claiming his life and the lives of six others.
Lynch had arranged the Mediterranean excursion to celebrate her legal victory in the United States and her newfound freedom with family, friends and people who had played key roles in her acquittal, including the head of her defense team and a banker who had been a character witness.
Until now, Chamberlain’s role in the long-running Autonomy franchise has gone largely unnoticed, overshadowed by the larger-than-life Lynch, with his passions for James Bond and breeding rare cows.
The yacht Bayesiano sank on August 19 off the coast of Sicily amid severe stormy weather
Bank boss Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy also died in the disaster.
Clifford Chance’s attorney, Chris Morvillo, and his wife, Neda Morvillo, were also aboard the boat.
However, while it seems unlikely that even the most nefarious actors could have successfully staged a freak tornado that sank a yacht in the Mediterranean and orchestrated a fatal road collision in the UK, that hasn’t stopped feverish speculation on social media that the deaths were somehow connected.
Speculation was fuelled by reports this week that Darktrace, the cybersecurity firm co-founded by Lynch where Chamberlain (after leaving Autonomy) was finance director and then chief operating officer, has deep ties to UK and US intelligence.
One of Darktrace’s co-founders, Stephen Huxter, was a senior member of MI5’s cyber defence team and hired GCHQ veteran Andrew France as chief executive.
Also on the board were former MI5 director general Jonathan Evans and Jim Penrose, the former head of the US National Security Agency. To complicate matters further, Lynch’s first company, Cambridge Neurodynamics, which specialised in computerised fingerprint recognition, had contracts with UK intelligence agencies.
Autonomy, which he founded in 1996, also had obvious intelligence potential, producing software that could analyze data from sources such as intercepted phone calls and emails.
It was rumoured that his clients included the intelligence services of the United States and the United Kingdom.
It is not clear why such links to US and UK intelligence services might have put the defendants’ lives in danger following their acquittal in court. Nor is it clear why anyone else might want them dead.
Chamberlain’s past was also far removed from the world of spies: he studied mechanical engineering and management at the University of Birmingham before becoming a chartered accountant.
He joined Autonomy in 2005 – a high-pressure workplace under Lynch, a demanding and driven boss. After HP bought Autonomy in 2011, Chamberlain left the company and went to work for Sepura, a “secure communications company” based near Cambridge.
The body of chef Recaldo Thomas (pictured) was discovered on the day of the sinking
Search crews at the site of the Bayesian sinking this morning as they prepare to continue the search for the last missing person, Hannah Lynch
Lynch, meanwhile, co-founded Darktrace and in 2016 hired Chamberlain as its chief financial officer. That year, Chamberlain, a man of giving spirit (whose social media posts are littered with contributions to charities), volunteered to be the unpaid finance director of League One football club Cambridge United, a role he held until 2018.
Club director Graham Daniels said this week that Chamberlain, who grew up six miles from Cambridge, “was a winner in every sense. He cared about people and knew when to put them first.”
But in 2018, US prosecutors alleged that Chamberlain, who owned about 99,000 shares of Autonomy, had made $4 million from the sale of the company to HP.
In November 2018, US prosecutors charged Lynch and Chamberlain with wire fraud and conspiracy. They were accused of “artificially inflating” Autonomy’s balance sheet and falsifying its accounts to improve the company’s perceived performance, position and prospects.
While Lynch fought for years to avoid extradition, Chamberlain turned himself in to US authorities, appearing in court in early 2019 and securing a lenient deal that allowed him to travel freely between the US and the UK.
Gary Lincenberg, Chamberlain’s trial attorney, said his client was a “courageous man” with “real backbone and integrity” who knew that only a fraction of defendants prosecuted by federal prosecutors in criminal trials ever win, leading many to accept a plea deal.
Speaking to the Mail, Steve said: “I’m not going to accept a deal that forces me to admit something that’s not true. I don’t think I know anyone I admire more than Steve.”
Lincenberg said it was “incomprehensible” and “difficult to process” that the two defendants had died within hours of each other.
After his acquittal, Lynch said he had been granted a “second life.” Incredibly, for both of them, that second life lasted just over two months.
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