Dr Neil Hopper was feted as a hero surgeon who lost his legs to sepsis. Then the hideous truth about the sick sexual thrill he couldn’t resist emerged. Special report by BETH HALE

Five years ago, as the nation reeled from the toll of Covid, vascular surgeon Dr Neil Hopper was proud guest of honour at a virtual awards ceremony for bravery.

The title of the award he was presented with, in a ceremony hosted by the BBC’s Rachel Burden, Against All Odds – an honour awarded to ‘a member of the public who has overcome adversity to take on an exceptional challenge’.

And certainly, it seemed that devoted father-of-two and consultant Neil Hopper had done just that.

Not only had the man who had spent his working life operating on the limbs of hundreds of patients grappled with the enormity of losing both his own legs, below the knee, to sepsis, he had managed to get back on his hi-tech prosthetic feet and back into the operating theatre (this time holding the knife) within just six months.

As the judges of the Amplifon Awards for Brave Britons, noted at the time: ‘Neil’s is an extraordinary story. He has gone far beyond the normal realms of human expectation and endurance.’ Some of that glowing commendation is undoubtedly true.

How many vascular surgeons, after all, can lay claim to have experienced what it is to be an amputee as both surgeon and patient?

In different circumstances it might be the stuff that tug-at-the-heart strings television dramas are made of.

But this is a drama with a deeply disturbing twist. For today, the reputation of Neil Hopper lies in tatters, his career and marriage to his nursing matron wife destroyed, after his admission that his tale of how he came to lose his legs was an act of singularly horrifying deception.

In a tense, at times jaw-dropping, two-hour hearing at Truro Crown Court yesterday, it was revealed how, rather being a victim of sepsis, he had in fact inflicted his own injuries – sitting with his legs in wet and dry ice for eight hours in order to cause damage so irreparable that the only remedy was amputation.

He had, the court was told, a ‘sexual interest’ in becoming an amputee.

The full, gruesome detail of the deception was laid bare as he admitted two counts of fraud by false representation and three charges of possessing extreme pornographic images, and was jailed for 32 months.

Two insurance companies would go on to pay out nearly half a million pounds in compensation to the 49-year-old surgeon, who was, right up until yesterday’s hearing, lauded by many across the amputee and medical worlds as nothing less than a hero.

We now know, however, that Hopper, who’d graduated top of his year from the University of Wales College of Medicine and whose remarkable post-operative journey was the subject of a 50-minute documentary on Welsh language channel S4C, was a follower of a man whose twisted predilections led to him styling himself The EunuchMaker.

‘Arch-manipulator’ Marius Gustavson was jailed for life last year, after it emerged he had mutilated paying customers with procedures including castration and penis removal, and streamed it online to thousands of subscribers around the globe, who he charged £100 a year.

It was the unravelling of Gustavson’s twisted web that led police to Hopper’s door, in March 2023. Just months before Hopper had performed his own gruesome deception, it emerged Gustavson too had frozen his leg in dry ice, so it had to be amputated.

Hopper was initially charged with encouraging cannibalistic ringleader Gustavson in the commission of causing grievous bodily harm – victim or victims unknown.

But yesterday, he instead admitted three counts of possessing extreme pornography – namely three videos, bought for £10 and £35 respectively. They showed men willingly undergoing appalling procedures.

In one, an ambulance had to be called because of the sheer quantity of blood.

And then there were the messages: 1,500 pages of them, including Hopper seeking advice from Gustavson on how to carry out his own amputation: how much dry ice to use, and how to order powerful painkillers on the dark web. While freezing his feet, he continued to message Gustavson, at one point telling him: ‘It’s going to be awesome being a double amputee.’ He sent an explicit photograph documenting just how awesome he found it.

Hopper, a shadow of the smiling man who once chatted so merrily about his experiences, hung his head and wiped away tears as his actions were described in court.

‘It is evident from the messages that Mr Hopper wished to become an amputee and it was always something he had dreamt of,’ said prosecutor Nicholas Lee. ‘Something he has been obsessed with and he had a sexual interest in becoming an amputee.’

That anyone might contemplate removing a healthy limb is almost impossible to comprehend; that a surgeon, whose career has been spent trying to preserve limbs, only amputating when medically necessary, is unfathomable.

The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, where Hopper had worked from 2013 until he was suspended, following his arrest, was last night insistent that there was no evidence to suggest any risk to patients.

However, the Daily Mail has learned that six former patients of Hopper have already come forward to law firm Enable Law with concerns about their own treatment, including at least two amputees.

Partner Mike Bird last night told the Daily Mail: ‘Neil Hopper has caused shock and grave concern among his former patients. Some have had life-changing surgery and are now worried it was not really needed.’

So how did it come to this?

To say that until now Neil Hopper had been an inspirational figure would be an understatement.

His achievements since becoming an amputee are myriad – the campaigning work for better NHS after-care for other amputees, becoming patron of Daring To Dream (a Welsh charity supporting and promoting emotional health and well-being). He’s been on the breakfast television sofa and on podcasts. He also documented his own journey on YouTube and Instagram, using the name bionicsurgeon.

But it all began with losing his legs, after apparently falling ill with a stomach bug on a camping trip with his two children, aged 12 and 15, in April 2019.

While the children recovered, he didn’t, and when his wife suggested a trip to visit her family, he stayed at home alone.

He described having a whisky and going to bed, and the rest, he said, was a blur, culminating in the moment he woke in intensive care and realised his toes were turning blue.

In truth we now know this was the moment opportunity landed.

Using the ice and drugs he had sourced online, he proceeded with the act, which he had already attempted and abandoned once before, in 2007, when he suffered superficial burns.

At one point, he received a call from his wife, who was so alarmed at his garbled response that she summoned help from a medic friend, who called an ambulance.

With no other explanation, Hopper’s injuries were attributed to sepsis.

He was treated on the very wards on which he worked, before he was transferred to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth for hyperbaric oxygen therapy – normally used to treat divers suffering decompression sickness.

How terrible it must have been for those attempting to save his legs to have to tell him the treatment wasn’t working.

In a BBC interview just days before his arrest in 2023, Hopper spoke of the moment in detail.

‘I couldn’t help but imagine the mechanics of it,’ he told the BBC. ‘I do quite a lot of amputations and the one thing that kept going around in my mind was power tools, because you use power tools. The thought of power tools being used on me was icky.’

Elsewhere, he has spoken of having a panic attack on the night before surgery.

‘I felt like there was a massive weight on my chest and I could not breathe. I could not stop thinking about what was going to happen to me.’

In truth we now know he was still communicating with Gustavson, sending him a post-surgery photograph saying: ‘It feels so cool. No feet!’

No wonder he embraced recovery with such gusto. He was told it would take four to six months to walk on prosthetics, but it took just three hours, a fact he proudly shared with his growing band of followers on social media.

The smallest details are all now tainted with the knowledge this was something he wanted. The extra inch on his height (now six feet) and with feet three sizes smaller (down from a 13 to a 10), the latter particularly notable given we are told Neil Hopper had a particular dislike of his feet.

Former Paralympic swimmer and medallist Mark Williams, who met Hopper twice and knew him through his business Limb-Art, making funky prosthetic leg covers, struggles to make sense of what has happened. ‘From my brief meeting with him and emails, he seemed a perfectly normal chap, a decent chap who had gone through a fairly traumatic experience,’ he says.

What Mark can say, having lost his left leg following a car accident while riding his bike home from school, is that half a million pounds is ‘not a lot for losing your legs’.

The money was, said Hopper’s defence barrister, not a motivating factor, but the costs were certainly high: not just the insurance payouts, but £44,000 claimed from the Department for Work and Pensions as well as the unquantifiable cost of his NHS care.

Nevertheless, the court was told he spent £256,000 of his pay-out on home improvements, £15,000 on a hot tub, £6,000 on a woodburner and £22,000 on a campervan.

It is the home where his wife and children still live. But whether they can continue to live there is one of the most agonising twists of all, because Hopper now faces having to pay back the money he received.

There was no sign of Mrs Hopper yesterday. But her mother, who lives in Hereford, told the Daily Mail: ‘We’re all terribly upset but it’s happened and we just have to deal with it.’

As for Hopper’s own relatives, (he has a sister, who is a teacher, in Canada and his retired parents live in Swansea) it is thought they had been supporting him, but how they feel now is unclear.

In court, Hopper’s defence barrister delivered an impassioned account of a man who was ‘deeply sorry’. Andrew Langdon KC said his client felt he was ‘in the wrong body’ from a young age. His feet were an ‘unwelcome extra’ and a ‘persisting never-ending discomfort’ to him. Hopper does not regret the operations, but ‘bitterly regrets the ‘dishonesty’ about their cause, he said.

In the months following his amputation Hopper often spoke about the toll taken by the loss of his limbs.

Just after his ‘one year ampuversary’, there was a flicker of truth when he wrote: ‘I just miss my feet so much. I was never in love with them. They weren’t the best feet, they weren’t exactly pretty – but good God do I miss them!’

It is desperately sad that all the personal outpouring, all the inspiration he delivered, is now tainted by what we do know.

He didn’t need to lose his legs at all. 

• Additional reporting: Simon Trump