As Max Lintott stepped out into a snowy Margate evening, he turned and said: “Won’t be long. Love you, Ma.”

Those parting words still ring in his mother Gloria’s mind. It was the last time she ever saw her youngest son alive.

Just hours later, four teenagers discovered his cold body, face down in a Morrisons car park.

A coroner ruled that Max - 49 at the time of his death - died of heart failure.

But more than two years later, Mrs Lintott is struggling to move on.

She has many questions: Why wasn’t key CCTV checked in time? Why are the police so sure his death wasn’t suspicious? Who was the tall dark figure spotted leaving the scene?

Furthermore, an internal Kent Police probe found that not all relevant lines of inquiry were pursued by officers when Max was left bleeding on the floor with a life-threatening head injury in a separate incident four months earlier.

To add to her angst, Mrs Lintot says she is being badgered by strangers who claim Max, who had a history of drug abuse, was murdered - despite the lack of evidence.

Even worse, they claim that the suspected perpetrator has been heard bragging about it.

Speaking to KentOnline at the flat she shared with her youngest son, the 80-year-old said: “People keep stopping me in the street.

“I’m on a bus, or I'm sitting having a cup of coffee and they're saying: ‘[This person] did it. Why haven't you done anything? You’ve got a big enough family.’

“It’s absolutely terrible - I’ve had it for two years and it’s got to the stage where I feel like I just can’t go out.”

The widowed pensioner has been so affected by the harassment that her doctor prescribed her antidepressants.

“I’ve even cried in the middle of Margate high street saying, ‘Just leave me alone - go to the police and tell them or just don’t talk to me about it anymore’.

“They think they know what happened to Max - they say he got bashed about the head because that’s what they’ve heard.

“But when you know, or you think you know, that something bad happened to your son and you’ve got people telling you and telling you and telling you - it doesn’t really do any good.”

The police investigation

In a Kent Police report, seen by KentOnline, investigating officer DS Frampton says Max was found in the supermarket car park off College Walk on March 30, 2022, with a small laceration to the bridge of his nose and a graze to the right side of his forehead.

These injuries, he writes, are consistent with the theory that Max fell to the ground: “Paramedics found him slumped on the front of his head in a ‘prayer’ position.”

As to how he died, police defer to the findings of assistant coroner for North East Kent, Bina Patel, who, after reviewing the results of a post-mortem, ruled that Max died from acute left ventricular failure caused by ischaemic heart disease.

In a letter to Mrs Lintott, coroners investigation officer Denis Fogel explained: “In essence, Max’s heart failed due to the arteries in his heart being restricted.

“This type of heart condition is very common and very hard to identify.

“A person can live a very normal life with this condition with no obvious signs - you really mustn’t blame yourself.”

Mrs Lintott says she does not know why Max went to Morrisons, but she does not buy the official narrative and says she cannot grieve until she knows what really happened.

“I just can’t move on,” said Mrs Lintott.

“All I can say is that Max went out - he stood at the door and he went: ‘Love you, Ma. Won’t be long.’

“I’ve got that, but all I can see is him on the ground in Morrisons’ car park.

“I want to grieve. I want to know. I just want answers.”

What the witness saw

A few weeks after the incident, Mrs Lintott visited one of the youngsters who found her son’s body.

Mrs Lintott keeps a note handwritten by the witness recounting what she saw that night in a large pink envelope along with other documentation regarding Max’s death.

It says: “I entered through the bottom entrance. As I walked up the slope a tall dark figure was leaving through the bottom gate by Poundstretcher.

“I continued to go into the car park where I then discovered Max Lintott.

“He was cold and obviously had passed but it didn’t feel like normal because his feet were uncomfortably placed in such an awkward position - it didn’t seem like a fall.”

Speaking to KentOnline last month, the witness said a few days after she made her statement to police, she received a call from an officer.

“He was very passive-aggressive and basically told me I was lying about seeing a male figure when I entered the car park,” she continued.

“He said that’s how people fall and land from natural causes.”

KentOnline understands that the officer had watched CCTV footage that did not match up with the teenager’s account, and so had called her back with some follow-up questions.

The review into the investigation

A short time later, Mrs Lintott complained to the police professional standards department about the way the case had been handled.

She claimed the death was suspicious and that police did not investigate to an acceptable standard, including the fact officers failed to obtain some CCTV recorded inside the car park at the time of the death.

In Kent Police’s investigation review report, the author writes: “I am satisfied that DS Frampton has pursued all [reasonable lines of enquiry] in order to establish whether there was no third-party involvement in the death of Max Lintott.

“I have reviewed the injuries sustained by Mr Lintott. They are consistent with how he was found by members of the public.

“Further, injury is very minor, and Mr Lintott has a medical history of epilepsy.”

On the matter of the lost CCTV footage, the author adds: “CCTV from a private company has been lost but it was only kept for seven days. DS Frampton has apologised for this.”

Police were able to check five other cameras in the area for footage.

The report adds that a public CCTV camera on King Street was reviewed and - though the image quality is very poor - appears to show a lone figure walking towards the car park.

“Looking at the footage, the clothing matched that of Mr Lintott,” DS Frampton reported.

“I was satisfied that several minutes prior to his death he was on his own and was not walking with anyone.”

But Mrs Lintott still has doubts. She believes this “tall dark figure” is the individual she keeps hearing about and that her son died as a result of a violent assault.

The ‘attack’ four months earlier

Four months before he died, Max ended up in a coma near Palm Bay school in Cliftonville - with all the evidence suggesting he was the victim of an assault.

Unconscious and suffering from hypothermia, he was found by a dog walker at around 7am on November 16.

A police report says almost an hour later an “informant calls Kent Police reporting that an intoxicated male has fallen over. However, Mrs Lintott attends front counter and reports that she believes her son Max Lintott has been assaulted.”

When police attended, body-worn video footage showed visible injuries to Max’s head.

“There was significant blood on the floor, lots of medication,” added the report.

“It was clear he had sustained a significant head injury. Attending ambulance crews confirm that it was life-threatening.

“There is no evidence to the contrary immediately available to disprove that Mr Lintott was not assaulted.”

But despite this, the matter was never recorded as a crime.

In retrospect, the police admit that all relevant lines of inquiry were not pursued. The author of a professional standards department investigation into how the matter was handled wrote: “I have reviewed this investigation and I do not believe all [relevant lines of inquiry] were pursued, namely that officers did not attend the hospital to obtain medical evidence, injury photographs and did not speak to the victim after he recovered.

“The contact log records that Mrs Lintott was informed that the investigation had been filed despite actions being shown as outstanding on the investigation.”

A police spokesman said last week: “An investigation into the circumstances of the incident found no evidence of any criminal offences.”

Were drugs the cause of the tragedy?

Another questionable factor in the story of Max’s death is the matter of drug use.

Max had a long history of heroin abuse and a handful of convictions for shoplifting - his mother says to fund his addiction.

Mrs Lintott says with the help of rehab and an opioid-dependency medication he had not taken hard drugs in two-and-a-half years.

However, a risk assessment report in February 2022 revealed around that time he had begun using ‘spice’ - a synthetic cannabinoid which can have dangerous and unpredictable side effects.

A witness reported that Max had purchased the drug on the day of his death and officers who searched Max’s body found a “small amount of cannabis or spice” stuffed into his sock.

His post-mortem toxicology report showed no trace of drugs in his system, but the tests did not check for spice.

Mrs Lintott said: “Max was no angel. He was horrible when he was on the heroin. It was heartbreaking, but he wasn’t like that all the time.

“Addiction is an illness. A lot of people don’t see it that way but he wasn’t an armed robber or anything - he was just a pain in the bum.

“But then he had his good points. He was kind, he’d help anyone - give them his last penny if they wanted it.

“He looked after my husband brilliantly when he had cancer - he was even there with him when he died.”

Kent Police’s statement

A Kent Police spokesperson said last week: “Officers attended a car park in College Walk, Margate on the evening of Wednesday, March 30, 2022, following the death of Max Lintott.

“A thorough investigation was then carried out into the circumstances of his death, which found no signs of or injuries consistent with a struggle. Statements from a number of witnesses were also gathered and CCTV from the area was reviewed.

“A post-mortem examination indicated Mr Lintott had suffered a heart attack and a report was prepared for the coroner setting out the reasons why senior detectives were not treating the death as suspicious.

“Following a complaint received by the force, a senior officer reviewed the actions of those who had investigated the death and found that they had completed all reasonable lines of enquiry and made reasonable conclusions.

“The force offers its condolences to Mr Lintott's family as they continue to recover from the shock of his death.”

Max’s funeral was well-attended and held on what would have been his 50th birthday.

He is remembered as a happy-go-lucky father of three who’d “had good and bad times, but when he was good he was brilliant”.

As a child, he attended Cliftonville Primary School and King Ethelbert’s School in Birchington-on-Sea before taking courses in hairdressing and cookery at Broadstairs College.

He later worked briefly in construction and enjoyed jet skiing, as well as making and mending things with his hands.

Speaking at the service at Thanet Crematorium, Mrs Lintott lamented: “He didn’t get to be the son, the father he wanted to be…”