Persons Unknown

Nairn is a small Highland town situated on the North East coast of Scotland. In 2004 it was the home of Alistair and Veronica Wilson and their two young boys. At the end of November that year, 30 year old Alistair was about to begin his last week working for the Bank of Scotland before starting a new job. It was a Sunday evening, the Wilson children had just been bathed and Alistair was reading th...

Providence House lay in the picturesque village of Peasenhall in East Suffolk. The large property was owned by Mr and Mrs Crisp and in 1900 Rose Harsent, a young local woman, came to live and work as their domestic servant. Rose was a colourful character with a love of music and she attracted a fair amount of male attention. The night of the 31st May 1902 witnessed a fierce storm, and as the wind...

A move from London to the South Coast seemed like the perfect opportunity for a fresh start for Billie-Jo. The 9 year old had not had the easiest start to life and found herself placed into foster care with Lois and Sion Jenkins and their four daughters in London. Coincidentally  Billie -Jo shared her foster family's last name. The family relocated to Hastings for Sion's new job as a dep...

In the mid 1980’s the bodies of numerous murdered women and girls were found alongside  Interstates across the Bible Belt. Many of the victims remained Jane Does for decades, and even today some are unidentified. Most were vulnerable individuals, hitchhiking far from home. The most striking commonality was that they all had red hair. There has been much debate over whether this may be coincidence...

March 26th 1991 witnessed the first local elections in South Korea for three decades. The country was a hive of activity and five school friends, all boys aged between 9 and 13, decided to take advantage of the day off from school and go on an adventure together. U Cheol Won, Jo Ho-Yeon, Kim Yeong-Gyu, Park Chan-In, and  Kim Jong-Sik set off at 9am and headed towards the wooded slopes of Mount War...

Just a few weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War, 4 year old Joyce Cox was found murdered near a disused railway station in Cardiff, South Wales. Joyce had disappeared on her usual lunch time walk home from school on the 28th September 1939. Her body was found the following day. For decades the case has been shrouded in mystery, and there has been talk of a cover up, but in 2017 the pol...

The school bus dropped Muriel Drinkwater at her usual stop, leaving her to walk the last part of her journey home to the family farm in Penllergaer,  West Wales. The 12 year old loved to sing and there was a skip in her step as she started on the winding path through the forest. Just before she entered the woods she looked up to see the farm in the distance. Her mother was in the kitchen and they...

Three siblings: Michael, 29, Norah, 27, and Ellen, 18, set off for a Boxing Day dance at the small Queensland town of Gatton. The year was 1898 and their mode of transport was a sulky, a small horse-drawn carriage. They arrived at the hall to find the dance cancelled and, feeling disappointed, began to make their way back to the family farm. The following morning, when they failed to return, their...

April chatted with some friends as she fussed over Judy the Donkey in a field in the hamlet of Metton, Norfolk. It was a couple of days after Easter 1969 and the 13 year old had stopped at “Donkey Field” on her way to her eldest sister’s house in the neighbouring village of Roughton.  After a short time April was back on her bicycle and on her way. April never made it to her sister’s house and she...

Two brothers  travelled  to the Clocaenog forest in North Wales in 2015 to watch  a stage of the Wales rally GB event. Although it was well into November they decided to brave the wintry Welsh weather and wild camp in the forest rather than stay in a hotel or hostel. On their first night, whilst searching for firewood amongst the trees, they stumbled upon some bones that  were very obviously human...

On Halloween 1966, Joseph Bates awoke early in the morning to find that his 18 year old  daughter, Cheri Jo, had not slept in her bed the previous night.  Cheri had been studying in the River City College library and it was completely out of character for her to stay out all night, so Joseph contacted the police.  A short time later Cheri’s body was found face-down in an alleyway on the college ca...

GCHQ, the UK government’s intelligence and cyber agency, recruited Welsh-born Gareth Williams in 2000 when he was still at university completing a PHD. He had come to their attention due to his extraordinary intellect, problem solving abilities and computer wizardry. By the time Gareth was 31 he had spent a decade protecting the national security of the UK and had been involved in several projects...

Over an 18 month period between 1971 and 1973 three girls aged 10 and 11 years old were abducted and murdered in the City of Rochester upstate New York, USA. Their names were Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz and Michelle Maenza. They all had first and second names that began with the same initial, and each girl’s body was found in a town which began with the same initial as their name.      Sources:...

It was the school holidays in April 1959 when the bubbly and confident 6 year old Carol Stephens was sent by her mum on an errand to the local shop in the Cathays area of Cardiff. When she returned she quickly dropped off the shopping and hurried back out of the front door determined not to let the rainy Welsh weather stifle her fun. Carol never came home and two weeks later her tiny body was foun...

During the summer of 1990, in Llangollen, North Wales, 52 year old antiques dealer Trevaline Evans put a sign on her shop door which read “back in 2 minutes”. She popped across to a local market stall and purchased some fruit for her lunch. Around an hour and a half later a witness saw Trevaline walking near her home, a short distance from her shop. There have been no confirmed sightings of Treval...

On a Saturday afternoon in September 1956 Jean Chalinder took advantage of her day off from work and headed out on her bicycle. She had decided to make her way to some farmland just a half-hours ride away from her home in the Penylan area of Cardiff.  It should have been a pleasant time picking blackberries in the beautiful Welsh countryside and enjoying the autumnal sights and fresh air. What act...