Mark in happier times, poses with his mom
Mark clings to life, but died shortly after this pic was taken
He fell to his death after a confrontation with Pete Doherty, yet police dismissed it as suicide or an accident. Now Marco Blanco's mother has forced them to reopen the case.
The grainy image of a figure tumbling through the air like a bundle of clothes lasts only a few seconds.
It is hard enough to watch when you know you are seeing a young man who does not survive.
But for Sheila Blanco, it is excruciatingly painful viewing because it shows her only son, Mark, plunging 30ft to his death.
The grisly scene was captured on a security camera at a block of flats in Whitechapel in London's East End. It is where Mark, a 30-year-old Cambridge University philosophy graduate, died in the early hours of the morning on December 2 last year.
It was the night of her son's encounter with drug-addict Pete Doherty - the night that ended in that mysterious fall.
Mark had been at a party in the second-floor flat of a friend of Babyshambles singer Doherty. All that is known for certain is that people had been drinking, there was a fight involving the troubled pop star and, at 12:57 am, an ambulance crew discovered Mark dying on the ground outside the block.
The death was ruled an accident, but now the police have reopened the case! Poor Pete, just when he was doing so much better.
