Vidal Sassoon hairdresser who joined cult found dead
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AN inquest has heard how a Carlisle-born hairdresser who once worked for Vidal Sassoon, and later joined a ‘religious sect’ in London, was found dead by her brother at her home in Longtown.
Anne Margaret Little, 76, died on Tuesday, July 15, 2025. Area Coroner for Cumbria Margaret Taylor heard statements from police, mental health services and Ms Little’s family.
In a statement read to the court in Allerdale House, Workington, Ms Little’s brother Roy said she trained as a hairdresser and moved away to work, including living with an aunt in Kent and working in a hair salon.
He said she was later approached by Vidal Sassoon and went to work in one of his salons ‘outside the BBC studios’.
‘Everything changed’
Mr Little said his sister made contacts which led to her travelling to America and Canada to work on a horse ranch.
He said she later returned to London and met ‘a guy who manipulated her to join a religious sect based in a house in Kensington’.
“That’s why everything changed,” he said.
He told the inquest Ms Little came home three times – in 1971 for their father’s funeral, in 1974 for his wedding, and in 1976 for their uncle’s funeral.
During the third visit, he said, ‘she turned up on the doorstep in just the clothes she had on. She’d ran away.’
From then on, he said, she suffered serious mental health problems, including being sectioned, and had electroconvulsive therapy in the 1970s.
“The last seven years her problems derailed terribly and her anxiety was at another level”, he said. “She was like a tortured soul.”
In a statement, Police Constable Lancaster said he attended Ms Little’s address on July 15 after an emergency call-out.
He said North West Ambulance Service was already there and Ms Little was pronounced dead at 1.34pm.
He said the property was secure and ‘clean and tidy’, with no obvious marks or injuries, and police concluded there were no suspicious circumstances.
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