An inquest into the death of Lady Joan Templeman, wife of Virgin Records founder Sir Richard Branson, has concluded that her passing could have been avoided.
Professor Fiona Wilcox, senior coroner for Inner West London, revealed that Templeman did not receive the blood-thinning medication that could have stopped the blood clot that ultimately killed her.
According to Wilcox’s findings, Templeman was never given anticoagulant medication during her stay at The Lister Hospital in London. Had she received it, she likely would not have died from a pulmonary embolism — a sudden, dangerous blockage in a lung artery caused by a blood clot that had formed in the deep veins of her legs.
Wilcox determined that the missing medication was probably a direct contributing factor in Templeman’s death, and that with proper treatment, the outcome would likely have been different.
Templeman, married to Branson for 36 years, died at age 80 on November 24, 2025 — roughly two weeks after suffering a fall at the family’s Necker Island home.
Meanwhile, Templeman’s daughter also raised a concern before the investigation. Before the hearing, Templeman and Branson’s daughter, Holly, wrote to the court about how her mother had been cared for in hospital.
She noted that her mother routinely took anti-clotting injections and said she found it hard to believe her mother would have turned down that treatment on her own. She added that if she’d known her mother wasn’t receiving her usual medication, she would have been alarmed — especially given her mother’s recent long-haul travel and prior medical history.
The Doctor’s Account
Dr. Basir Kunduzi, the physician on duty at the time, told the coroner he believed Templeman should have been given the medication but chose to withhold it over concerns about bleeding risk following her fall. Instead, he ordered a CT scan to rule out internal bleeding and documented in her records that the anticoagulant had not been administered — assuming, he said, that another doctor would later review and revisit that call.
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Asked directly whether he ever went back and reconsidered his decision, Dr. Kunduzi answered plainly:
“Again, with great regret, I did not.”
Richard Branson, 76, first shared news of his wife’s death on Instagram in November 2025, offering no further details at the time beyond saying he was “heartbroken.”
In his tribute, he described Templeman as an extraordinary mother and grandmother to their children and grandchildren — the kind of family matriarch, he said, that he could never have hoped for more.