Vanished on Heworth Road

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery. I'm Jill and I'm Dick.
She was a vibrant young woman with a close knit
family and a promising life ahead. Then one ordinary March evening,
Claudia Lawrence vanished without a trace, no signs of a struggle,
no clear suspects, just a multitude of unanswered questions. Join

(00:52):
us for Vanished on Heworth Road. Today we dive deep
into the mystery that has haunted York for over a decade.
Extensive investigations, searches, and media coverage. No trace of Claudia
has ever been found. The case remains unsolved, and it
continues to raise questions about trust, secrets and the people

(01:15):
who were closest to Claudia. And what are we having
for a beer? I'm really really impressed that you were
able to find a UK beer on such short notice.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, this has been around for a while. We're going
to have a Scotch yell. It's a good example of
its style. This is brewed by Meantime Brewing Company in London.
So this scotchyell is a nice dark brown color with
a medium sized handhead, very nice aroma, caramel and some fruit.
When you taste it, you get the caramel, very little

(01:47):
hint of molasses and some amount of raisin. I guess
that's the fruit part. So it is a really nice beer.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
All right, let's open it up. I don't know if
raisins are my favorite fruit, but I've I've had them
in that flavor and beer before and it is good.
So let's do it, okay, Dickie, So come on down

(02:26):
to the quiet end and we're going to talk about
a case that was recommended to us by Clare in
the UK. So Claudia Elizabeth Lawrence was born in nineteen
seventy four in the North Yorkshire town of Malton, a
close to perfect place to grow up. Located sixteen miles
from York, it has a quaint small town atmosphere. So

(02:48):
in March of two thousand and nine, the month that
Claudia disappeared, the town had launched the We Love Malton
campaign and put it on the tourist map, including the
Malton Food Lover's Festival, which brought Michelin starred celebrity chefs
to her hometown. So this is an annual event that

(03:08):
she would have loved, but she was never able to
attend it.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
This location in England, that's where Downtown Abbey. I don't
know if it's film there, but they talk about driving
to York.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Oh that's true. Yes, I do love Downton Abbey.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
So you thought I was sleeping through all those episodes, huh.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Nope, you were paying attention. So Peter and Joan Lawrence
had brought up Claudia and her older sister Ali in Malton,
and that's near York. They had relocated there from Darlington
just after Ali was born. Formerly a solicitor dealing with
criminal cases, Peter had switched to commercial law, which was

(03:48):
more lucrative and had hours that were more conducive to
his family life. And this was especially important to him
and Joan when their daughters were growing up in the
nineteen seventies and eighties. So, according to her father Peter,
Claudia was a happy young girl at home and at school.
She had a lot of friends. She did not like dolls,

(04:10):
but teddy bears. Yeah, they were okay. Claudia preferred horses
and she had her own pony at a very young age,
and she would spend hours with her pony. She was
actually never without a pony or a horse from then
until the summer before she disappeared, and that's when her
last horse had died of a very old age, so

(04:31):
they were well taken care of now. Claudia had a
close relationship with her older sister, Allie, who's almost three
years older and just always looked out for her. Claudia
attended Saint Andrew's School and then the Independent York College
for Girls, and she seemed to enjoy both of these.
Claudia was always friendly and made friends pretty easily, and

(04:53):
Peter would speak about the differences between his daughters, Allie
and Claudia. Allie was also into horse, but not as
much still no dolls, but she was born to books.
Alie was actually more academic, and in an interview with
The Daily Mirror, Allie remembered her relationship with Claudia as
being very close. They would socialize together, go to parties, shopping,

(05:18):
and they had their first parent free holiday together to
gran Canaria. Allie was eighteen and Claudia fifteen, and their
parents really trusted Allie because they let her look out
for her sister, and she did so. Allie described Claudia
as having a great sense of humor. Peter agreed that
she had a really fun personality. As she grew older,

(05:40):
Claudia visited bars and restaurants in town with others and
really rarely left town except for holidays. Claudia grew up
into a pretty young woman with blonde hair and brown eyes.
She was quiet, She had a stable job and really
a good circle of friends, and she also kept in
shape and was a vegetarian. So when Claudia left school

(06:03):
and decided to do a catering course at York College,
Peter fully supported her. Claudia soon proved herself to be
a very creative and skilled chef, getting on well with
the kitchen staff and really respected as a professional. In fact,
Claudia would often do much more than just cook. She
also dealt with supplies and other logistics, making her almost

(06:26):
like a catering manager as well as a chef, and
she did these tasks for no extra pay. She just
really enjoyed her job and wanted to do it well.
She loved being with colleagues, and she loved talking to customers.
She met colleagues out of work and seemed content with
her single life. She wasn't ready to settle down and
get married, and she liked her time with her friends.

(06:49):
So Claudia was more of a free spirit than her sister,
dreaming of a life traveling, and she really did not
want to be tied down. When Allie got married, Claudia
was a bride silk, and when Allie's children were born,
she was a very doting aunt. The last time that
Ali had seen Claudia was back in the autumn of
two thousand and eight, and Claudia had made her Yorkshire puddings,

(07:12):
which was one of her favorites, and then had chased
her nephew Luke around the garden having a water fight.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
I'm just wondering if they're so close and they live around.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Each other, right, No, Allie moved a bit away.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Okay, because I was wondering why if she hadn't hadn't
seen each other since two thousand and eight.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, well that's some three Yeah, it's like six seven months.
I don't think that's that long if you're busy working
and they don't live in the same town.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, I thought they all lived relatively close to each other. Nope,
if there is some distance, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Thank you. Now, overall, Claudia was a girl with what
they would describe as normal tastes for her age. After
leaving her catering course, but before getting her position at
the Roger Kirk Center, she had positions in the kitchens
of the King's Head pop in Malton and at the
Gold Cup Inn in low Catton, East Yorkshire. At the

(08:10):
King's Head, Claudia made friends with Liz Holder, who was
working there as a waitress. Now Liz is now a
pharmacist and she kept in touch with Claudia, and she
said that Claudia may have seemed very reserved in quiet,
but once she got comfortable with you, she would really
open up and be a really true friend. So Claudia

(08:30):
did move to York in two thousand and five, and
then she worked at the Monk Bar Hotel, where she
made friends with Anthony Nuby, a kitchen porter with whom
she would stay in contact. Claudia had holidayed in Cyprus
and had planned another trip there. She loved it there
and she also had friends there she could stay with,

(08:51):
but at this point in her life, her job had
to come first. So at the time she disappeared, Claudia
had lived on her own for many years in Norton,
Old Malton and then York. She was happy and seemed
okay living on her own. In the past, Claudia had
shared her house with her best friend Jen King for

(09:12):
about eleven months, and that was before Jen found her
own place. When Claudia bought her house on Heaworth Road,
her local pub, the Nag's Head, was just four doors
down and she would go there to meet Jen and
her other best friends Susie, sometimes as many as four
or five nights a week. So she did have a

(09:32):
busy social life. I find that people who work in
restaurants tend to have busy social lifes. That's been my experience.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Well, yeah, I think this type of personality it would
work in the restaurant, would be someone who's open and
fun to be with.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, and sometimes they work late and then they have
drinks and things afterwards.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
She did have good friends and met up with them
often in the Nag's Head. The Nags It really wasn't
a trendy place, but more of just a local hangout.
Dive bar kind of yeah. She met other friends in
other places too, including seeing Susie and Jen in her
own house some evenings. Claudia was really proud of her
little terraced house. Her job as a chef at the

(10:17):
university allowed her to pay the mortgage on it, pay
for her car, which wasn't great, and go on some holidays.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
This seems like a good, good job, good place to
be when you're young in in your thirties.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Sure so. Her life in Heworth seems to have been
very comfortable, with a strong community and friends around her.
That was until March eighteenth and nineteenth of two thousand
and nine. Wednesday, March eighteenth had been a normal day.
That morning, Claudia had an early shift in the kitchens
at the University of York. She was awoken by her alarm,

(10:53):
and she knew enough not to press the snooze button.
She had to get right up and get into working mode.
Her backpack was already packed with her chef whites neatly
folded inside, and she closed the green door of her
small house and stepped out onto the pavement in the
quiet early morning air. Claudia walked past the nag's head pub.

(11:15):
Directly across from the pub, the Embassy Racing betting office
was closed, with still hours to go before any horses
would start running. Now, as an American, I feel like
if you're right down the street from a pub and
there's horse racing across the street, it could be a
little bit of a sketchy area, But it really didn't
seem to be.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
I don't think that just hearing about the Nag's Head
pub and the horse racing and stuff doesn't sound like
a crime area.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Well, I just feel like racing betting can you attract
some people who are not the most stable, you know,
people who are addicted to gambling and such.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
I just I don't associate a racetrack with undesirables.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah, okay, well, and you could be right, but that's
my experience. Now. At the main junction at the end
of Heworth Road, Claudia crossed over outside the shops at
Heworth's Heart. Walking down Melrose Gate, the road that leads
from Heworth out towards the University of York campus, Claudia
walked past tang Hall Lane on the left, then a

(12:21):
park and a church on the same side. Another small
block of shops was on her right, with the melrose
Gate Post Office and the York Mini Market. Melrose Gate
then runs into Hull Park Road leads to Hull on
the left side and York City Center on the right.
So going straight, Claudia began to walk uphill and continued

(12:42):
down the road as it veered left toward Heslington Village
and came off on a small byway on the right
and onto University Way. Now I've taken you through many
streets here, but the basic gist of it is she
was heading towards the University right.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
She walked to work. Yeah, yes, so it must not
have been too far.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
No. So, the University of York campus is quite sprawling though,
And to get to the kitchens at the Roger Kirk
Center where she worked, Claudia walked past woodland. On her right.
Ahead were some tall trees spaced out and partially shielding
the university blocks. She did make good time that morning,

(13:22):
and a CCTV camera caught her arrival at the University's
Roger Kirk Center at five point fifty seven am. That's
three minutes before the start of her shift, so that
day she had a normal shift. Everyone in the kitchen
would say that later, at two thirty one pm, that
same camera recorded her leaving the college, but Claudia didn't

(13:45):
walk home that day. She hadn't gone very far when
a woman that she worked with pulled up and offered
her a ride home. So Claudia accepted, and they chatted
on the way back to Claudia's house. They said they'd
see each other the next day, but Claudia didn't stay
home for long. She went out again and as she
was walking past the nag's head, she stopped to talk

(14:08):
to another woman she knew, Linda Chapman, who they call
a childminder like a nanny. She was about fifty years
old and she was pushing a pram. Linda Chapman would
later say Claudia seemed to be her usual, happy, cheery self,
and this was around two fifty p m. So Claudia
then walked part of her work route again down Melrose

(14:32):
and at three o five p m, after Claudia had
posted a letter at the Melrose Gate post office, another
CCTV camera picked her up walking past heading back towards home.
The image was grainy and blurred, but it showed Claudia
relaxed and walking near two advertising sandwich boards and the

(14:52):
letter box. After that, Claudia Lawrence faded from public view permanently,
at least so far, hasn't been seen disappeared. Yeah, so

(15:24):
why don't you continue and tell us a little bit
about her family and what happened when they couldn't find
her well.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
Claudia's next known contact that day was with her parents,
Peter and Joan, who had divorced in two thousand. At
around seven thirty that evening, Claudia had a conversation on
the phone with her father Peter, and between eight and
eight thirty she spoke with her mother Joan. Mother later
remembered that both she and her daughter were watching the

(15:52):
Channel four property finding program Location, Location, Location, This is
a favorite for both of them. They had the kind
of conversation that mothers and daughters have every day. Nothing
seemed out of sorts. And then at eight twenty three
that evening, Claudia said a text to a friend.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah. So the final known outside contact that evening was
also on her mobile phone, right, yes. So. The police
reported that at nine to twelve pm, her phone received
a text message from a man she knew who worked
in a bar in Cyprus, but It's never been confirmed
if she had read that message or not. Claudia may

(16:31):
have already gone to bed to get some sleep before
another early shift the next morning, but the next day
was anything but routine. The camera at Roger Clerks Center
never recorded Claudia just before six am, or in fact
at all, and neither did the camera at Melrose Gate
Post Office. And these are cameras that had recorded her

(16:54):
the previous afternoon.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
So now you see her, now you don't.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yes, pretty much. She never arrived for work that morning Thursday,
March nineteenth, and Claudia did not keep her appointment with
one of her closest friends, Susie, at the Nag's Head,
where they often drank cider and chatted with the regulars.
She just didn't show up.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, it's like she just vanished, it really is. Nobody's
heard from her, no, and she sounds like she was
in contact. She spoke with on a daily basis.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
She did, yeah, and then it just stopped. But you know,
she lived alone, so it would take a little while
for everyone to realize she's missing.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Susie did call Claudia's mobile phone, which was either switched
off or out of battery. Power, and she left a
series of messages, one was jokingly thanking her for standing
her up. Then by ten thirty am on Friday, March twentieth,
there was still no reply from Claudia, and by now
Susie was getting really worried. When she called her phone,

(17:56):
she only got an unavailable message. She called the landlord
of the nag's head, George, who was a good friend
of Susie and Claudius. But when Susie called George that
Friday morning, he said he hadn't seen Claudia either. Coming
back from a shopping trip in York City Center, he
walked four doors down from the pub and he knocked

(18:18):
on Claudia's front door, but there was no reply. And
then he told Susie.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
That so by this time she's getting really concerned, and
Susie called the local hospital in case Claudia had been
in an accident, but no one by her name had
been admitted. Susie then called Claudia's father, Peter, at his
home in the village of Slingsby. She told him what
had happened. Nobody had seen Claudia at all the previous day,

(18:43):
and there was no reply from her mobile phone or
at her house. Now this is March twentieth.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Right, yeap, So her dad, Peter was really worried. He
called the University of York Kitchens and that's when they
told him that she had not come into work the
day before and that they had left a voicemail on
her phone asking where she was. So Peter told the
author of a book about this case titled Gone by
Neil Root, having checked with the university, I was really worried,

(19:13):
as it was not like Claudia at all to fail
to turn up for work. She was ultra conscientious in
that respect. So Peter himself drove the twenty miles to Heworth,
and luckily he had a set of keys to his
daughter's house. He also knew the Nags had landlord George
Foreman pretty well, so he met up with George and

(19:35):
they both made the short walk to Claudius. Peter later
said that his biggest fear was finding his daughter dead
or incapacitated inside, and having George there did give some
sort of support to him. That Friday, there was no
sign of Claudia in her house though, and it looked
like she had just left it setting out early for

(19:56):
her shift and never arriving at work or returning home,
so Peter had feared finding his daughter injured or dead
in the home. The normality that he found in the
house made him even more confused. It was just shocking.
He was immediately convinced she'd been taken after she'd left home.
So Peter contacted the North Yorkshire Police and unfortunately his

(20:20):
nightmare was just beginning.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Cloyda Lawrence had made that last walk to the University
of York campus on that very early March morning in
two thousand and nine. She was not born in Heworth,
but she was considered a local, a regular of the
Nag's Head, and during any walk she made through Heworth
she was likely to see someone she knew, just as
she had on that last day. When she's walking in

(20:46):
friend of her stops by and drive her home. Sure, yeah, Now, unfortunately,
between five thirty and six am on Thursday March nineteenth,
there were not that many people out and about.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Well, no, that's early, it's still dark still. The reaction
of the North Yorkshire Police to Claudia's disappearance was not
just the standard procedure in a missing person case. When
Peter contacted them on the twentieth. They did take his
concerns very seriously. A major search began early and showed

(21:19):
just how grave the concern was for her well being.
Within two minutes there was a policeman and policewoman at
the house, and they took Claudia's family and friends concerns seriously.
Detective Chief Inspector Lucy Pope was in charge at the beginning.
She'd actually gone to school with Claudia. Pope immediately realized

(21:42):
that this was potentially a very serious case. Claudia wasn't
like some teenage runaway. She was an attractive and popular
single woman with a job where she was very responsible,
and she owned her own house even and so there.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Was none of this. Well, she's an adult, she could
be going by herself.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
No, Fortunately, no one really thought that now. A search
of Claudia's house was not reassuring. The only items missing
were the backpack that she took to work and her
mobile phone, which she'd always kept with her. Claudia's passport
and bank cards were where they were normally kept, and
her handbag was sitting neatly on her bed, which was made.

(22:23):
Claudia's hair straighteners were missing, which caused some to wonder
if maybe she'd made plans to go somewhere right after work,
but that wouldn't make sense because she already had had
plans to meet her girlfriends that evening at the Nag's Head,
and she would have had plenty of time to go
home and fix her hair. Remember she's only four doors down,
that's right. One other strange thing, though, was there were

(22:47):
some used box hair dye in her bathroom trash. So
Claudia had just recently had her hair professionally colored brown
with blonde highlights, and this boxed hair color was blonde,
so it would be kind of odd if she changed
the color, you know, a short time after having it
professionally done. But I mean it's possible she didn't like

(23:10):
it and wanted to make some changes. But it's just
one of the many curious things. So on her bathroom
scale there were shoe prints. Her friend said that she
was very weight conscious and she would never have weighed
herself with her shoes on. Now, the prince also looked
bigger than her shoe size, so there would be rumors

(23:31):
that the scene had been staged, but staging it to
make it look like Claudia left on her own made
no sense because her passport and bank card were left behind.
So this whole scene immediately signaled to police that this
was not a stressed person who just snapped and decided
to run away from her life. Over that weekend of
March twenty first and twenty second, there were over forty

(23:54):
detailed searches that were made of the local area and
the route that Claudia took to work. She was a
petit woman walking along Heworth Road very early in the
morning in the dark. It might have been risky in retrospect,
but Claudia had walked that route safely numerous times in
the past three weeks, and that's because her car was

(24:15):
having a new engine installed, so she really would have
had no reason to feel afraid as far as anyone knew.
So that many university students had just gone home for
the holidays kind of complicated the investigation as well, as
police tried to find students for questioning and tried to
find possible eye witnesses. The fact that Claudia worked on

(24:37):
the university campus meant that she would have been walking
towards it when she vanished, and there was a university
residence hall almost directly behind her house too. So now
we get to Monday, March twenty third, three days after
he knew she was missing, and Peter gave a press
conference at York's Fulford Road police station. The emotion really

(25:01):
got to him when he appealed for help in finding Claudia,
and he burst into tears. Her sister Allie saw this
on the internet, and, never having seen her father cry before,
her initial denial about her sister's disappearance really hit home,
and she too fell into tears. Her crying would continue

(25:22):
for weeks, especially at night, when she said she would
wake up from nightmares of her younger sister being grabbed
from the street where she was walking to work. Now,
at his press conference, Peter had called his daughter's disappearance
a living nightmare. D c I Lucy Pope added that
the possibility that Claudia had been abducted could not be

(25:42):
ruled out. Also on that day, Peter asked his close
friend Martin Dales, who already had professional pr experience, to
help with the family's campaign to find Claudia. Martin agreed,
and the next day Peter walked some of his daughter's
route to work, the path thought to be where her
final steps would have been taken. On the way, he

(26:04):
and Martin handed out missing posters that they had printed
with Claudia's smiling face on them. Friends said that Claudia
was a person of habit and that this was completely
uncharacteristic of her. Their fear increased as the days passed,
you know, especially because it's widely known that the first
forty eight hours of a missing person investigation are the

(26:26):
most crucial.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
The Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway, a very experienced police officer,
was put in charge of her case. Galloway had already
led several complex murdered investigations, but nothing compared to Claudia's case.
For him, he knew that if the worst case scenario
was true Claudia had been abducted and murdered, the odds

(26:49):
were that she was taken by someone she knew, but
there were no clues. Early on, it was if Claudia
had vanished from the face of the earth. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
By a week later, Wednesday, March twenty fifth, Galloway announced
that Claudia may have come to some harm and the
likelihood was that it was at the hands of someone
she knew. He added that about one hundred police officers
were working on the case, and that reinforcements would be
brought in from other forces as well. Both the scale

(27:20):
of the investigation and the pressure on police were really
growing by the day. Claudia had likely disappeared on her
way to work for her early shift between five thirty
and six am on the morning of Thursday, March nineteenth.
But if she had been grabbed and put into a vehicle,
there was no CCTV footage of it, and there was

(27:43):
no evidence that she had willingly walked away either. So
we've got no evidence of an abduction really, and no
evidence that she had walked away. So really they've gotten
nowhere if you think about it, they got nothing. No.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
So in late March, around ten days after Claudia had
that's been seen, Galloway appeared on the BBC's Missing Live program.
The program's cameras had been following Peter and Martin Dale's
around for a week, and that footage was included in
the report. Galloway said the next day that he had
received some very interesting calls from the public. There were

(28:18):
some calls regarding previous relationships of hers, and the focus
shifted to Claudia's love life, primarily because there were no
other strong leads, so.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
No witness had come forward saying that they'd seen anything
strange on the eighteenth or nineteenth of March, particularly on
Claudia's work route on the early morning of March nineteenth.
Most murder victims know their killer, and as Claudia's friends
and acquaintances were being checked out, the focus really moved
to any of her love interests. As far as anybody said.

(28:53):
Claudia was single, but she had had relationships in the past.
The police were looking for information about any of her
current romantic connections. Though House of Commons research from the
nineteen nineties show that in that decade, eighty percent of
female murder victims in Britain knew their killer, compared to

(29:14):
just over fifty percent of male victims. A present or
former partner or lover killed almost fifty percent of British
female murder victims in that time, so the police were
pursuing a legitimate and very credible line of inquiry. Claudia's
abductor or killer could have been a stranger, but it

(29:35):
wasn't likely. It was more likely someone she knew. Parts
of the University of York campus were still under construction,
so any worker on their way to the site could
have been driving that route to start their shift that morning.
So it could have just been like a random sexual predator,
a stranger who saw this cute young woman walking alone

(29:56):
in the very early morning and just took that opportun
tunity to grab her. But it also could have been
an acquaintance, someone who knew Claudia by sight but not well.
While it is statistically likely that Claudia was taken by
someone she knew, that definitely doesn't mean that that's what happened.
We just don't know. So that same day that the

(30:19):
Missing Live program aired, Liz Holder, one of the close
friends of Claudia from Malton, made an appeal for anyone
with information to come forward. Liz made the appeal from
the Spotted Cow pub in Malton, and Liz broke down
in tears as she spoke. The public's response to the
search for Claudia had been very positive and empathetic, but

(30:43):
then as time went on, the first bits of negativity
were starting to crop up. Somebody had set up a
website for the Claudia Lawrence Appeal, and this wasn't authorized
by her family or friends. North Yorkshire Police strongly advised
the public not to make donations to this website. Another
problem for the police was the huge volume of information

(31:06):
that was being posted on a Facebook page that had
been created by Claudia's friends to help in the search
for her. So they'd had good intentions, but it was
kind of bad for the investigation. There were just a
significant number of people who contributed to the site, and
some of them were posting what could potentially have been

(31:27):
information important to the investigation that maybe you didn't want
out there. Some of them are by nickname and some
were completely anonymous, so the police really urged the tipsters
to contact them with their information. Then it was April

(32:04):
fifteenth when the police were first contacted by a witness.
The narrow focus on the very early morning of March
nineteenth was bound to mean a shortage of witnesses as
there are usually very few people around on the streets
at that time, especially on Claudia's route from Heworth down
Melrose Gate toward the university campus.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yeah, but somebody on this one point six mile route
that Claudia walked must have seen something that morning.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Well that's what they hoped.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
So when this lead came in so much needed boost
for Galloway and his team.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
It was it was a witness driving by that morning
who'd seen a man and a woman arguing on a
grass verge next to a parked vehicle on University Way,
near the campus and close to where Claudia would walk
to work. So Galloway announced to the media that the
man and woman appeared to be in some type of
verbal altercation, so argument. They didn't have a description of

(33:02):
the two people really either, but they did know that
the vehicle was parked on the side of the road
and the passenger side door was open, so that makes
me think the passenger got out, was angry and got out, yeah,
which you know, you think might be Claudia. The witness
had looked into his mirror as he drove past the
couple on the bank, and the man was standing slightly

(33:24):
higher than the woman. It really was a significant line
of inquiry. The police thought it could have been someone
who was just dropping off a friend, a partner, or
a son or a daughter and an argument had taken place,
so there could be a really innocent explanation. It was
close to the University of York campus, so somebody could

(33:45):
have been dropping off someone, But it was curious that
the argument happened up on that raised bank with the
car pulled over and the door still open, So it
really seemed like an urgent argument, and anyone going to
the campus would likely have driven on to the usual
place for dropping off in the parking area, which would
seem to be the most likely place for this argument

(34:08):
to occur. This happened at about six ten am on
March nineteenth, and remember her shifts started at six, so
she would have been running late for work. If that
were the.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Case, she would have been So.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
If Claudia was the woman, she would have been late.
And we know that she had arrived at work at
the Roger Kirk Center at five point fifty seven the
previous morning. But if she was in an argument, she
could have been delayed. That's not unrealistic.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
Yeah, but she still have gotten to work well of course.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, good point. So could she have been walking along
Melrose Gate when someone she knew honked and pulled over,
offering her a lift. Did an argument happen in the car,
forcing the driver to pull over and thus explaining the
open car door, Or could she have been approaching University
Way when the car pulled over. It's doubtful that Claude

(35:00):
would have gotten into an argument with a stranger, and
Peter was certain that she would never have gotten into
a car with a stranger willingly after that argument. Could
the man have forced Claudia back into his car. It
was unlikely and out of character for Claudia to have
decided not to go to work and to have gone
off with the man. No one thought that happened. But

(35:22):
still nobody's come forward to identify themselves as the couple.
And you think if it was just an no, unrelated
thing with two people, they'd let the police know. There
was a lot of publicity here.

Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah, I mean, if you have nothing to do with
her disappearance, you come forward and say that was me
and my.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Girlfriend exactly right. So on March sixteenth, that was the
Monday before Claudia disappeared, a witness reported seeing a young
man in his early thirties walking on Heworth Road while
talking on his cell phone. This guy was about five
foot ten and carrying a nearly empty backpack, a tan

(36:00):
hiplank coat with dark hair with banks or as they say,
over their fringe, oh okay. Claudia was seen on her
cell too, and she was looking surprised to see the man.
Then she looked up and down the street and let
him into her apartment. So could this have been a
new boyfriend someone no one knew about. We don't know.

(36:21):
On March seventeenth, which was the Tuesday, a coworker of
Claudius said that he had told her she looked a
little rough, she looked tired, and she told him she
hadn't had much sleep Monday night because she'd been out
all night drinking with a new boyfriend. But it's just
really odd because the coworker didn't tell the police about
this until years after the disappearance. So what the fuck

(36:44):
is that? That's very, very very sketch.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
Well, maybe it's a very retrieved memory.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, so you mean made up really basically?

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
People can start imagining things because they want to be helpful, right,
It doesn't necessarily mean they're trying to be misleading.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
No, I wouldn't say that, But someone who's had some
information for several years, I'm less likely to give much
credence to that.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Oh sure, Now, this guy had occasionally given Claudia rides
to work, but he was vague in his timeline, and
he would be interviewed by the police more than once,
and I guess nothing came of it. Another witness did
come forward and stated that she'd been driving past Claudia's
green front door at forty six Heworth Road in slow

(37:33):
moving traffic on either the tenth or the thirteenth of March,
and she had seen two suspicious men. So the end
of Heworth Road coming out of Heworth leads to a
small roundabout that links roads to York City Center on
the left and Stockton laying on the right. A third
road heads toward Heworth Golf Club and the Highway, So

(37:55):
due to this, at certain times of the day, the
traffic can be pretty congested on that road. The female
witness had been in this traffic, so she'd had time
to see what she saw quite clearly. The dates were
obviously at least five days before Claudia was last seen.
But it was this driver passing by Claudia's home in

(38:18):
very slow moving traffic who said she'd actually seen two
men at Claudia's front door. So that's kind of disturbing, Yes,
it is. One of the men was described as Asian,
but they didn't know the race of the other man.
The description of the Asian man was approximately five feet
eight inches tall in his early twenties, with a slim build,

(38:39):
a thin pointed nose, and dark rings beneath his eyes.
So it sounds like she really got a good look,
but at him, I guess, and not the other guy.
There really no description of the other guy, but the
witness did think that he had looked nervous. She did
say the other man was taller, with the heavier build
and short dark hair, and was wearing a Crombie style coat,

(39:02):
which was described as quite unusual. But that wasn't all.
She saw them stand at the door and one of
the men, the Asian man, appeared to try and open
the door. So whether it was with a key or
if he was just testing the door handle, no one knows.
But that's pretty creepy, I know, with everyone having these
ring doorbells. If you go on that next door app

(39:25):
there are many videos of people testing people's doorknobs to
see if the door's unlocked. That's really scary.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
Now.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
The next development came soon after and was more disturbing.
On Friday, April seventeenth, the body of a woman was
found in the river ouse in York. This was almost
exactly a month since Claudia had disappeared. Now, on that day,
Peter Lawrence was in London with his friend and the spokesman,
Martin Dale's. They had appeared on ITV's This Morning magazine

(39:57):
program appealing for information about Claudia. So when the call
came in from the police telling Peter about this discovery
of a woman's body in the river, he was absolutely terrified.
Martin was luckily there to console him and try and
keep him up beat, and they got on the next
train to York from King's Cross station. Now, the body

(40:21):
had not yet been identified, but not many bodies are
found in that river, especially a female body, just one
month after Claudia disappeared. Now, after a little over two hours,
the train pulled into York station. Peter and Martin were
just getting off the train when the police called to
tell him it was not Claudia. So Peter was overcome

(40:43):
with relief, but you know, he felt really sad for
the family of the dead woman. He knew quite well
about the shock and devastation they'd been dealing with while
their loved one had been missing. And even though he
still didn't know where Claudia was. He did feel lucky
that she could still be alive. He still had some hope.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
There's some hope still, yep. One of the emotions sold
by Peter and the rest of Claudia's family was guilt.
This is common, and I was coping with the disappearance
of a loved one, especially a child. Peter's guilt stemmed
from the fact that it was increasingly believed that Claudia
had been abducted while walking to work between five thirty

(41:22):
and six in the morning on Thursday, March nineteenth. She
was walking because her car was in the garage and
Claudia saw the walker's good exercise. Peter had offered Claudia
the use of his car, but Claudia had turned him down. However,
this didn't stop Peter from feeling guilty.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Well, no, he said, I should have just insisted.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
Yeah, right, take the car.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
But you know, Claudia was a responsible and independent thirty
five year old woman. She wasn't a kid, and she
made her own decisions. But of course the if onlies
would still catch up with him at vulnerable moments. Claudia's
close friends would also feel guilt. In those first days,
they would feel bad about laughing at a joke or
just an everyday situation, and as time progressed, the guilt

(42:08):
became more about moving on with their lives, as Claudia
could not. There was also anger which affected both Claudia's
family and her friends, and there was also media pressure
on those closest to Claudia in the first weeks after
she disappeared. Now, from the beginning, most of the media
were supportive, like I said, but there was a small

(42:29):
number who were being intrusive and that's not surprising. But
Peter realized very early on that the media was just
a critical tool in raising public awareness about Claudia. So
despite what they had to say, he had to deal
with them, and he had to make sure that they
knew what was going on, both locally and nationally. So

(42:52):
the North Yorkshire Police announced a ten thousand pound reward
from crime Stoppers for information leading to an arrest or
the arrests of those responsible for Claudia's disappearance. It became
a suspected murder inquiry. Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway knew that
somebody somewhere must have seen something, even if they didn't

(43:13):
realize it, and then a promising lead did come in.
A witness had seen something at about five thirty five
am on Wednesday, March eighteenth, the day that Claudia had
last gone to work and been recorded on the CCTV
entering the Roger Kirks Center and finishing her shift. Claudia
had also been recorded on CCTV that afternoon at three

(43:37):
oh five walking past Melroe's Gate post office after mailing
a letter. But that morning, at five thirty five am,
which would have been when she was walking to work,
a cyclist had ridden past Melrose Bridge, on Claudia's regular
work rout. This cyclist reported to the police what he
had seen on the bridge. He had seen two people

(43:59):
having argument. There was a tall man, maybe six feet
two inches tall, who was wearing black combat style trousers
with pockets and buttons and a dark blue hooded top
with the hood up over his head. He had a
cigarette in his left hand, and next to him was
a young woman fitting Claudia's description, wearing a blue jacket

(44:21):
like she would have been. So these two were facing
each other, and they were pointing fingers at each other
and waving their arms. So could this have been Claudia
On her work route on that early morning to start
her six am shift the day before she disappeared. If so,
was this hooded guy a stranger who had randomly picked
an argument with her, or had it been someone she knew.

(44:44):
It was unusual to have a sighting of a woman
matching Claudia's description on her known walking route. Like we said,
it was very early in the morning, and not many
people were around at that time.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
There was a lot of stuff that would make that
seem like a true sighting. Yes, right time, right, A
man and a woman seem to be arguing. That's good info.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Well, you would think this was enough for Gallowing his
team to take it seriously, and they did appeal to
the public for help in identifying the two people, calling
it a significant sighting at the right time in the
right location, But unfortunately there was really no response.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Well there wouldn't be. If this was the person who
did the thing, He's not going to respond, well.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Of course not. No. So Peter gave an interview on
May fifth, two thousand and nine, and he expressed his
disappointment that nobody had come forward. On that same day,
seven weeks after Claudia went missing, Peter and Martin Dale's
launched the website find Claudia dot co dot uk for

(45:48):
anybody with information to leave a message. Peter and Martin
had realized the importance of social media, and a website
was a way of reaching the public, especially the younger
people who may have seen something. As well as walking
the streets, handing out leaflets and putting up missing posters
with Claudia's face on them. Peter and Martin started using

(46:09):
the Internet. The police weren't finished with the hooded man
line of inquiry yet either. On May twentieth, the sighting
on Melrose gate Bridge was re enacted on the National
BBC Crimewatch program, so that tells you they took it
quite seriously. Two actors played the hooded man and the
woman who could have been Claudia, which also showed the

(46:31):
actress walking Claudia's work route. Galloway was also interviewed on
the program and he indicated publicly what the focus and
direction of the investigation was and one angle that would
be followed in the long term was Claudia's love life.
In early February of two thousand and eight, a year

(46:51):
and one month before she disappeared, a hooded man had
tried to abduct a young boy from a primary school
in York Woodthorpe Primary School has students between three and
eleven years old, and at the end of the school
day on Tuesday, February fifth, a boy was approached by
a man in his late twenties or early thirties who

(47:11):
was wearing black jeans and a black hooded top. This
man told the boy that the boy's mother had sent
him to collect him. Fortunately, this boy was suspicious and
when he asked questions, the hooded man ran off. In
late January that year, less than two weeks earlier, a
hooded man who had also had a scarf around his face,

(47:32):
had approached two students from car Junior School. These children
also refuse to go with the man.

Speaker 4 (47:38):
Now.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Attempted child abduction is very different from trying to abduct
an adult female like Claudia, but it's possible. Could the
man have become desperate and decided to try his luck
with an adult Could he have been the hooded man
seen arguing with a woman who fit Claudia's description on Wednesday,
the day before she disappeared. If Claudia disappeared while walking

(48:02):
to work the following morning March nineteenth. She must have
been taken between her house on Heworth Road and melrose
Gate post Office, but there were no CCTV cameras before
the post office. There was one outside of the Costcutter
convenience store, but Claudia would not have needed to walk
past there. The Costcutter was closed at five thirty am,

(48:25):
when Claudia would have been leaving for work, so it's
very unlikely that she would have taken a detour that
early in the morning when she had to work or shift.
Peter was sure that Claudia would have screamed and fought
for her life if anyone had tried to drag her
into a vehicle. There are houses all down Melrose Gate
between Hayworth and melrose Gate post Office too, so likely

(48:50):
someone would have heard something.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Then in mid May, Galloway released CCTV footage to the press.
It showed images captured around Claudia's terraced house in Heworth
Road at five point fifty in the morning on Thursday
March nineteenth. This is the time when Claudia was thought
to have disappeared, probably after leaving for work at the
Roger Kirk Center kitchens to start her shift at six

(49:34):
in the morning. Now, the most important image recorded was
of a man walking behind Claudia's house Onlyme's Court, which
is in turn off Heworth Road. He was seen there
and then went out of view, but then about a
minute later he reappeared outside the front of Clodia's house,
very close to the nag's head on Heworth's Road.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Well Galloway said in a press conference from the York
Police Station that the man was white, about five foot
eight inches tall and appeared to be walking with purpose.
He added that they had made inquiries to try and
identify whether this was somebody with an innocent explanation. With
all the local people they had discussed the case with,

(50:16):
they still couldn't identify him. What was he doing acting
in a strange way at that time? It may have
been completely innocent, but if it's not explained away innocently,
it really heightened suspicions. It was a little suspicious. Heworth
Road is a relatively busy road, but at that time
of the morning it is quiet, and the fact that

(50:39):
the man appeared to be surveying Claudia's house front and
back did seem really strange. There was also another man
captured on CCTV that morning on Heworth Road, but on
the opposite side of Claudia's house. He was wearing a
light colored jacket and carrying something in his right hand,
possibly in news paper or a bag. This man was

(51:02):
also seen on CCTV a few minutes later walking past
the Costcutter convenience store, and this was in Heworth's main
row of shops. The sighting of the second man was
not suspicious like the first because he didn't seem to
be paying any attention to Claudia's house like the other
man had and was probably just walking to work, but

(51:23):
the police did want to speak to him as a
potential witness of the first man who was seen looking
at Claudia's house. Claudia would usually have left earlier to
allow time to walk the one point six miles to
work for six am, so one important piece of evidence
was that Claudia's cell phone was on until twelve ten
pm on March nineteenth, but then it was deliberately turned off.

(51:48):
It was confirmed that it was not lost or destroyed
and the battery did not die. Someone had turned it
off at that time on purpose, so it was determined
that the phone had been connected to a tower in
the Heworth area of York throughout the morning and up
to the point when it was turned off. This means

(52:09):
that the phone did not leave the local area. The
only CCTV camera on Claudia's most direct route to work
was at the Melrose post office, and the recording from
the morning of March nineteenth did not show her walking by,
although she may have walked out of view of the
camera or she could have used a parallel street. So

(52:31):
more than seven months after Claudia disappeared, North Yorkshire Police
announced that a new lead was being investigated. A female
jogger who wanted to remain anonymous, had seen something on
Melroe's Gate, along Claudia's work route on the morning of
March nineteenth. This jogger had seen a van smaller than

(52:51):
a transit van, which was old and white, but also
dirty and rusty, the kind of van often used by
a tradesman who was transporting their tools. The van had
been parked on Melrose a short time before Claudia went missing,
but the sighting of the van wasn't all. The woman

(53:12):
had been jogging past the van when a man the
van's driver, attempted to speak to her, but she ignored
him and continued running. There was no real physical description
of the man, unfortunately that was released publicly, and it
was unlikely that the woman really did get a good
look at him. She said she was very preoccupied with

(53:33):
getting away, so he did give her the willies. She
did feel uncomfortable. Why did he try and talk to her?
Why would you try and talk to a strange woman
who's jogging by. You think you would know that that's
just going to be concerning for.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Her, you would think so.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
There was an unnamed source who told The York Press
that the woman had told them that she had seen
the van repeatedly before that occasion, and that she had
never seen the van there again again after Claudia vanished.
So if that's true, that would be suspicious.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
If that's true, again, we're looking at months since she disappeared.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Well, and we'll be looking at years. Yeah. However, a
police spokesperson pointed out that the extra information had not
been supplied to them when the witness was interviewed, and
that they would be speaking to her again. The spokesperson
also said that there was nothing definitive that would link
the van to Claudia so the police also appealed for

(54:32):
any member of the public with information about the man
in the van to tell them what they knew, and
almost a month after that the police announced that another
witness had come forward about a man with a van
in the Melrose Gate area. So back in June, around
three months after Claudia went missing, another woman had seen

(54:53):
a similar van on Melroe's Gate. Shortly afterwards, she'd been
walking on a road nearby when a man and a
van approached her to speak to her. But again there
was no description of the man released, and Galloway was
very cautious in his statement about a possible connection between
the two men in the van's sightings. Could have been

(55:14):
the same.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
Guy, I guess it could have been, so, Galloway said,
the description of the van by the second witness was
not the same as the first. The van in the
second incident had not been white. There have been numerous
cases over the years were random predators, sometimes a man alone,
sometimes two men, and on rare occasions a man and
a woman have searched for their prey by driving around

(55:37):
the streets, sometimes parking and trying to start a conversation
with somebody walking alone. Who's caught their eye? But could
this have happened to Claudia that morning of March nineteenth,
between five thirty and six. From early in the police inquiry,
Galloway had made it clear that it was likely that
Claudia had been taken by someone she knew, but there
were still random attacks by a particular sexual predator. The

(56:02):
man in the van incidents were the closest lead pointing
to that possibility. So a sex trafficking gang would almost
never attempt an abduction using just one gang member. It
would be too risky. Although the police was still focusing
on Cloydia's private life, suspecting that her abductor probably was
close to home, they still could not rule out around

(56:22):
abduction and investigations are made in this direction.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
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(56:56):
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(57:19):
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(57:45):
were additional rumors revolving around Nag's Head pub. The Nag's
Head was also a bed and breakfast and there was
a rumor that a mattress and sheet were removed from
one of the rooms and that a room was remodeled
just after Claudia disappeared. So this led to suspicions against
George Foreman, the landlord and a friend of Claudius, so

(58:06):
he moved away in twenty eleven. There was a parking
lot behind the nag's head that was connected with the
alleyway behind Claudia's house and the fore houses. Between hers
and the pup. There were fire escapes out back of
the B and B rooms where people often entered and exited.
So although there were cameras out back, they weren't functioning

(58:28):
at the time of Claudia's disappearance, and many people would
find that suspicious. Seems like the kind of place that
you would want to monitor.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
It does so.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Claudia's social life, and of course especially her relationships with men,
were beginning to get scrutinized. Some acquaintances and friends said
that she really kept her romantic relationships private and she
was just a type of person who compartmentalized her life.
If Claudia had a new boyfriend who she spent the

(58:58):
night with on the Monday before her disappearance, remember what
one of her coworkers said, then his identity remains a mystery.
If he was with her, why didn't he ever come forward?
That's super suspicious. But anyway, information came out, true or
not that Claudia had been involved with forty men, and
about half of them were either married or in other

(59:21):
committed relationships. Claudia's friends said she was not promiscuous, however,
and her mother Joan agreed. Now to me, I don't
care what she did with her private life. Who are
we to judge her? That's true, But if you have
more men in your life, it probably does put you
at a little more risk because men can be just
real shits, right, That's true. They can. A lot of

(59:43):
them are.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
But I'd like to know. I mean, as far as
her friends and relations, Claudia was not pronoscious. No, So
where did this information come out? Did she was involved
with forty men?

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Yeah? Around the town. Just the gossip, It's just really
gossip and rumors. Augh, there were, you know, a few
guys that she probably was with that were spoken with,
but I don't know about forty. I mean, some people
really said unkind things.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
Well, you know, it's the nature of people.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
That's the nature of people. And it's kind of the
same way with eyewitnesses. Even though the eyewitnesses may have
the best intentions, eyewitness stuff is really one of the
least reliable things you can use in an investigation.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
Well, you know, what you see and what I see
might not be the same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
It rarely is the same right, yeah now. In September
two thousand and nine, the search for Claudia was extended
to Cyprus. Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway stated that she knew
several people who live on the island, and she may
have received job offers while she was there. Some people
who'd been interviewed had been less than candid when spoken to,

(01:00:53):
and a team of officers had been sent to Cyprus
to interview the people who Claudia had met there. It
was reported that the last text message received by Claudia
was from a man on the island. At nine to
twelve pm, her phone received a text message from this
man she knew who worked in a bar in Cyprus,

(01:01:14):
but it's never been confirmed if she had read the
message or not. Claudia may have already gone to bed
to get some sleep, and the man who had texted
her was actually her good friend Steve Salmons, who had
been a part of her close group of friends along
with Susie Cooper and Jen King and another guy, Pete,
and all of these people regularly drank together in the

(01:01:37):
Nag's head. Steve Salmons had left York and the UK
and moved to Cyprus, where Claudia had actually visited him
several times, and she'd made other friends while there. She
really did like it there. The last time that Claudia
had visited Cyprus was in October two thousand and eight,
that's like five months before she went missing. But if

(01:01:58):
she'd gone there, she would have had to have her
passport come on and her bank card. She'd have to
have money. And why would she secretly do it? She's
thirty five, She could do what she wants.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
And why was she do that at five point thirty
in the.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Morning, Yeah, right when she's expected at work. Yeah, makes
no sense. But in the very unlikely event that she
had disappeared voluntarily, she would have been traveling there in
a false passport, and if she'd been abducted, she would
have had to have been smuggled to Cyprus. But you know,
it could also be possible that somebody who Claudie had

(01:02:32):
met in Cyprus had been in Heyworth on March eighteenth
and nineteenth. One person who thought this was a possibility
was her ex boyfriend Dan Whitehand, who had gone out
with Claudia for about eighteen months after meeting her at
a rugby tournament in her hometown. Of Malton back in
April of two thousand and four. This wasn't very long

(01:02:53):
after she'd broken up with Patty McGuinty. You like that name.
Patty McGuinty sounds irish, doesn't it. This was her other
long term boyfriend, whom she had been with for nearly
a decade. The first extended interview with white Hand about
Claudia was to The Daily Mirror that September. A thirty

(01:03:14):
four year old insurance broker living in Newcastle, white Hand
described how he'd first met Claudia. He'd seen her sitting
there on her own talking to the bar staff, and
he thought she was just stunning. They got to chatting
and at the end of the night they swapped numbers.
They didn't have their first date for another week, and
he remembered that Claudia had been deeply affected by her

(01:03:37):
almost ten year relationship with rufer Patty McGuinty and this guy.
Patty had a long term girlfriend and a daughter, so
she had told white Hand that she had wasted nearly
a decade of her life waiting for him to leave
his partner. White Hand also gave some insight into Claudia's personality,
as he knew it. He said. Claudia is a kind,

(01:04:00):
a beautiful girl who was desperate to be loved. There
was a very romantic side to her, which made her
naive about men, more naive than you'd expect for a
woman of her age. She was quite gullible in fact.
And that's the concern that she's now come to harm
because of a guy she may have fallen for. And
I could see that. I could definitely agree with that.

(01:04:23):
I've had so many friends like that that's not hard
for me to believe. So. Dan and Claudia had first
gone to Cypress on a two week holiday in July
of two thousand and four, four years before her friend
Steve Salmons moved there. They parted in August of two
thousand and six. White Hand said that Cypress was Claudia's
second home. If she had a week off, she'd fly

(01:04:46):
out there, and she had no problem going on her own.
She already knew a lot of the bar and restaurant
owners there. But when white Hand remembered one man whom
Claudia knew, a bar owner in the resort. But white
Hand did remember for one man whom Claudia knew, and
that was a bar owner in the resort of Coral Bay.
He also said that although he and Claudia had been

(01:05:08):
there together as a couple, it was obvious to him
that many men in Cyprus found Claudia attractive, so plenty
of opportunities for her there. Dan had received a text
from Claudia when she was on her last known trip
there in October of two thousand and eight, and at
that point she was with an older bar owner whom
Dan thought was very intimidating.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
Aha, So as obvious how significant the police thought Claudia's
links to Cypress were because of the cost of sending
officers there to follow up on leeds. Galloway confirmed there
were several people that Claudia knew in Cyprus, all of
whom were British and most of them expatriates living there.
One of the people in Cyprus was in a country

(01:05:50):
on March eighteenth he had spoken to and he gave
an account of his movements. However, in order to definitively
establish his whereabouts, a level that is required of a
murder investigation, he had to be spoken to personally.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Yeah, the police did continue to focus on Claudia's relationships
and Galloway gave a statement to Crime Watch about her
apparently mysterious and complex relationships, whatever he meant by that.
In an interview Claudia's mother, Joan, gave to the media,
she mentioned something else that she thought was significant to

(01:06:25):
Claudia's disappearance. There was another thirty five year old woman
who went missing about six months before Claudia. Lizette Dugmore
was thirty six years old when she went missing, almost
eight months before Claudia. Lizette was last seen in July
sixth two thousand and eight, recorded on CCTV outside of
supermarket in the northeast of York City Center, which is

(01:06:49):
located southwest of Heworth but not very far away. Lizette's
parents were in their eighties and she was close to them,
as Claudia was to her parents. Lizette his father reported
her missing the next day. Early on in the police
investigation into Lizette's disappearance, the police did not rule out
that she may have vanished on her own accord, although

(01:07:11):
there was no direct evidence of this, and then as
time went on it seemed less likely, just like it
did with Claudia. Lizette had lived in Clifton in York
and was a local woman. She was slim and about
five feet six inches tall, with shoulder length brown hair
and blue eyes. According to her family, it was entirely
out of character for Lizette to go missing with no word,

(01:07:35):
but unlike in Claudia's case, in the five days before
she disappeared, there was something that was out of the ordinary.
Lizette had knocked her head three times and it was
thought that she may have amnesia and not remember where
she lived or who she was. That's highly unusual, it
sure is. CCTV footage did show Lizette outside the supermarket

(01:07:57):
at six thirty pm in July sixth, which was a
Sunday earlier. Lizette had fallen over and an ambulance crew
had been called, but she didn't need hospital treatment, so
I guess she wasn't really evaluated at that time. But
there were several sightings of a woman matching Lisette's description
in the weeks after she disappeared, much like in Claudia's case,

(01:08:20):
but the police said that this could not be verified
and that the CCTV recording had to be taken as
the last time she was actually seen that Sunday Lizette
had been with a male friend, but he'd been eliminated
from the list of suspects, although he did say that
he feared that Lizette might have been heading towards the
River Ouse, which runs through York. Then when Claudia went missing,

(01:08:44):
police divers were searching for Lizette in the river, but
no trace of Lizette was found in the river. Lizette's
family and friends would continue to try and keep their
search going, and the police would regularly appeal for information,
but the effort to finally that would attract just a
fraction of the attention given to Claudia's case, and there'd

(01:09:05):
be speculation about that was it did her father have
some kind of power because he'd been a litigator, or
one of the more far fetched things, well, I guess
not that far fetched, was that she was having an
affair with a policeman and the policeman was trying to
cover it up and getting that investigation going so he

(01:09:25):
could control it. So that's another rumor, but we have
no evidence.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
Of that, just the fact with eight months apart for
these two abductions or disappearances.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
Seven or eight months apart, so then we have.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
Two women about the same.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Age yep, yep, within a year of each.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
Other, within a year of each other, in the same area.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Right, disappear, Yeah, so that makes.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
Me think, I gotta think of a serial killer.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
Kind of makes you think that way, right, Yeah, a
sexual predator out there. Yeah, that would make more sense
than a lot of these than a lot of these
imers would. So. The general finding from the original investigation
on Claudia's disappearance was that she probably had been abducted
and murdered shortly after leaving home on the morning of

(01:10:11):
March nineteenth. It was considered probable that her killer was
a local man who she had known. In July of
twenty thirteen, the police announced the three hundred thousand pound
creation of a new Major Crime Unit MCU, set up
to lighten the load for day to day policing. This
MCU was tasked from October twenty thirteen to handle crimes

(01:10:35):
including rape and kidnapping, as well as reviewing cold cases.
So in July of twenty thirteen, the unit said that
they would assess several stall cases, which would include Claudius.
So they assessed the case and conducted new forensic searches
at her home using what were described as advanced techniques
not available. In two thousand and nine, the MCU found

(01:10:58):
additional fingerprints and a man's DNA on a cigarette butt
in her car. Her mobile phone showed from cell site
activity that she had spent time in the ACoM area
of York in the weeks leading up to her disappearance.
So the fifth anniversary of her disappearance, there was a
new appeal that was made on Crime Watch CCTV. Footage

(01:11:22):
recovered in two thousand and nine showed a silver Ford
Focus hatchback car manufactured between nineteen ninety eight and two
thousand and four driving along the road where she lived,
and the car's brake lights came on as it approached
Claudia's house, So it could be something it could be.

(01:11:42):
This new investigation did result in some arrests. In May
twenty fourteen, a fifty nine year old man was arrested
on suspicion of Claudia's murder. He'd lived close to her
home and had been a colleague of hers at the
University of York. He often ate lunch near her workplace.
His son's steeper even worked at the nag's head over
the holidays. The two were reported to have been on

(01:12:04):
friendly terms and he had often given her rides in
his car to and from work. But searches were made
of the suspects house in York and his mother's house,
and he was released on bail the next day, and
then released from his bail without charges that November.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
Then in July twenty fourteen, police arrested Paul Harris, the
landlord of another pub called Acomb located in York, on
suspicion of perverting the course of justice, but Harris was
quickly released without charges. He complained that the police had
excavated a section of the cellar floor of his pub.
Harris said that Clodia had been a customer at his

(01:12:42):
pub in the weeks before her disappearance and he had
spoken to her, but that was his only connection with her.
Other arrests were made later, but all were soon released
and no one had been charged. Still know what's been charged?

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Nope.

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
Clodia's friend Jen released a statement on social media then
she did not believe any of these men arrested were involved.

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Yes, they knew these men from the bar. They're all
kind of friends. Yeah, But one name did keep coming up,
and that's Peter Ruin, one of the suspects who hung
out at the Nag's head. From all accounts, Peter metched
Claudia's type, a construction contractor who'd been in a relationship
with her friend Jen. If Claudia and Peter had an affair,

(01:13:27):
it could be that she was going to come clean
and he eliminated her, or it's possible that he was
just trying to talk to her and an altercation happened
where Claudia ended up murdered. Peter's brother, Shane Ruin, was
a locksmith, so he could easily access Claudia's home. Of course,
it's all speculation, but Peter would have been able to

(01:13:48):
lure her from her home, and he and his brother
would have been able to hide her body in a
construction site, maybe even buried in a foundation where she'd
never be found. It's also been speculated that she could
have been blackmailing one of the men she was involved with,
but there's no evidence of that and that just doesn't
seem to go with her personality.

Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
In twenty fourteen, police revealed CCTV showing an astrovan parked
outside Claudia's home around nine pm on the night of
her disappearance. Then in twenty fifteen, police released CCTV footage
of an unidentified man walking nearby to the alleyway at
the rear of Clodia's home on March eighteenth, two thousand

(01:14:29):
and nine, at seven fifteen pm, and on March nineteenth
at five oh seven am. No one's come forward and
no one's been arrested.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Well. Then in twenty sixteen, the Crown Prosecution Service refused
to pursue a case submitted by NYP against four men
who'd been arrested on suspicion of murder, citing that there
was a lack of evidence. These suspects had all been
regular customers of the Nag's Head and they all denied
any involvement in Claudia's disappearance, but the York Police complained

(01:15:03):
about a lack of cooperation from these witnesses. So really
the second investigation ended up with very little being accomplished.
Hopes were high, looked like maybe they were getting somewhere,
and then it just fizzled out, Yeah, it did so.
In August and September of twenty twenty one, police in
the Claudia Lawrence case searched sand Hutton gravel Pits, a

(01:15:27):
wooded area about eight miles northeast of York City Center.
The search was prompted by new evidence, but the police
would not reveal what that new evidence was. Police even
drained one of the lakes on the site to allow
examination of the lake's bed. Round penetrating radar equipment and
cadaver dogs were also used in the search, but at

(01:15:48):
the end of the search, Claudia's loved ones were again
disappointed nothing came of it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:53):
In a twenty seventeen book, Catching a Serial Killer, My
Hunt for Murderer, Christopher halliwell I even Fulcher, the senior
investigating officer in the murder of Sean Callahan, writes that
there are similarities between the Lawrence and the O'Callahan cases.
O'Callahan left Swindon nightclub about three am and started a

(01:16:14):
twenty minute walk home. Licensed taxi driven by Hallowell pulled
up beside her and she was offered a ride home.
Now she seems to have accepted this offer, but instead
of taking O'Callahan home, Hallowell drove her to a secluded
place where he murdered her. O'Callahan was murdered by Hallowell
on March nineteenth, twenty eleven, and her body was hidden.

(01:16:36):
Although convicted of two murders, Hallowell has been linked to
many other violent crimes against women, including assaults, rapes, disappearances,
and murders.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
That's just so horrible and scary. If someone's driving a taxi,
you kind of feel safe, right, you would generally, and
then for that to happen. I can't imagine the terror
that this woman must have fell. So I'm skeptical that
the date March nineteenth figures into several of the cases,
and this date is believed to have had significance to Hallowell.

(01:17:09):
One case is the disappearance of teacher Linda Razzle on
March nineteenth, two thousand and two, while she was walking
to work, but her husband was convicted of her murder,
and her family says they have no doubt about his
guilt and his conviction. Back in two thousand and nine,
Hallowell was living in Swindon, Wiltshire, the location of the

(01:17:30):
two murders of which he was convicted, But Hollowell had
links to Yorkshire because his father lived there, although his
father had died several years before Claudia's disappearance. Police have
said that there is no direct evidence linking holliwell Claudia's case.
They have disclosed that they have CCTV evidence of Hollowell

(01:17:52):
buying gas in Swindon the evening before Claudia disappeared. So
I look that up and it's it seems to be
about two hundred miles from where Claudia disappeared, So that's
a significant distance.

Speaker 3 (01:18:06):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
Regarding Hollowell's possible involvement, Claudia's mom said, the police may
not have proved he had anything to do with my
daughter's disappearance, but they haven't disproved it either. True. I mean,
that's a point.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
That's the point.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
So Claudia's dad, Peter Lawrence, died in twenty twenty one.
He had campaigned for the Guardianship Missing Person's Bill, also
known as Claudia's Law, which was passed in April twenty
seventeen and came into force two years later. And this
is a law that allows family members to make decisions
concerning the property of missing persons. So, I mean, I

(01:18:45):
guess that's a good thing because her mom was trying
to use that property for people who needed, like maybe
unhoused people stuff like that. But usually when I think
of these laws named after a victim, it's a law
that will change things as far as prosecuting people and
investigating people. Right. Yeah, So in February twenty twenty two,

(01:19:29):
a floral tribute to Claudia with her photo on it
was found in an unidentified location and there was a
letter saying she's in the water with an arrow next
to it. So whoever did this has never been identified,
but this was seen as kind of a creepy thing.
You think, yeah, now, it could have been a murderer,

(01:19:49):
but it could have just been some asshole kids that
thought it was funny. You just don't know. Wayne Fox
from North Yorkshire Police has said that silence is the
only barrier to solving Claudia Lawrence's disappearance, and this seems
to be a pretty steady thread in the police's opinion.
They really think that people could come forward and solve this,

(01:20:12):
but they aren't. Okay, silence from the people who know
or may suspect what happened to Claudia but have for
reasons only known to them, been unable to come forward
to the police or pass on information to crimestoppers. Anonymously.
Joan Lawrence recently participated in a podcast about Claudia's case,

(01:20:33):
and that's titled Answers for Claudia. So if you really
want to do a deep dive, I would look that up.
They explore the unsolved disappearance. One person associated with the
case is dci Lucy Pope, who has been mentioned in
relation to the investigation and potential new evidence, such as
the possible discovery of Claudia's backpack. So the podcast is

(01:20:57):
a deep dive into the disappearance of Claudia. Yeah. It's
hosted by journalist Tom McDermott, who works alongside Claudia's mother
to try and find answers. I'm always a little skeptical
of these because how many times have we been fooled
to watch a long, drone out documentary or listen to
a podcast which really there is nothing new.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):
No rehash everything.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
They rehash and they come up with all kinds of speculations,
which isn't that different than what we're doing, I guess.
But the mother was participating, so I think that gives
it a little extra validity. So in twenty twenty five,
new developments in the case include the release of an
age progressed facial reconstruction of Claudia.

Speaker 3 (01:21:41):
Yeah, because we're what sixteen years two thousand and nine,
sixteen years, sixteen years?

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
So the Answers for Claudia Podcasts has not solved the
case either, but it has brought potential new leads and
theories to light, primarily through new witness accounts and discoveries
in Claude home, many of which have been submitted to
the police. So key information and theories include Claudia's mother,

(01:22:07):
Joan Lawrence, discovered a previously unnoticed small loft hatch in
a wardrobe in Claudia's bedroom. Items found in the wardrobe,
including a packet of chewing gum and tissues in a
jacket pocket, were sent for potential DNA analysis. Following the
discovery and discussion of the loft hatch, Joan reported suspicious

(01:22:29):
activity at the house, including an internal door left open,
a lock on the front door scratched, and items in
the wardrobe moved. This suggests someone may have entered the
home after the podcast team's visit, so if that's true,
that is eerie.

Speaker 3 (01:22:46):
Sure is.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
There was a woman named Bev who told the podcast
that she found a purple and blue Carramore rucksack identified
as the one Laudia owned near the River Tees shortly
after her disappearance. So this woman said she initially left it,
but when she returned after hearing the police appeal from
DCI Lucy Pope, the bag was gone. And I'm sorry,

(01:23:09):
but I'm skeptical now that it was gone. Why would
you leave it if you really thought, you know that
it wasn't anything to do with a crime. You think
you'd pick it up, he would think. There was a
van driver named Dave who reported seeing a petrified and
soaking wet woman on the A one m motorway near
Weatherby the night before Claudia was last known to be alive.

(01:23:32):
He said he recognized the woman as Claudia from the
news reports and reported the citing to police, although it
may have been dismissed at the time. Then, a collection
of personal letters written by Claudia to a close friend
years before her disappearance were also shared on the podcast,
which I guess offered some insight into her relationships. But

(01:23:54):
those were old letters. Yeah, it was way before the disappearance.
A strong theory emphasize by the podcast and former detectives
is a conspiracy of silence in the local community which
I've mentioned. They really think someone knows and isn't speaking
besides just the person who did it right, And this

(01:24:14):
is particularly around the pubs that she frequented. Many people
who knew Claudia were allegedly unwilling to speak to police
due to fear or they think maybe to protect others.
The original police theory that Claudia was abducted and murdered
by a local man known to her is reinforced with
the podcast, suggesting that crucial information about this individual may

(01:24:39):
be being withheld by the community. The mysterious occurrences at
Claudia's home after the loft discovery point toward the theory
that someone might be trying to hide evidence related to
the case. So if you have taken the plunge into
that speculation that maybe she was having an affair with
the policeman, or maybe a group of these men from

(01:25:01):
the pub were hiding it together, then you could see
how you might end up at that thought.

Speaker 3 (01:25:07):
Oh yes, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
North Yorkshire Police continue to investigate, with a new investigator
appointed this year. They are assessing new information and urging
anyone with details to please come forward. Claudia's home was
broken into multiple times in twenty twenty five, according to
her mother, with the most recent incident in September, so

(01:25:31):
just like three months before we're doing this podcast. The
break in and tampering with belongings have prompted a renewed
forensic search of the home. Now, police said there's still
confident that any information from the public will help the
investigation progress. They're not giving up. So if you know anything,
say something, as they say, that's right, yep, because you

(01:25:54):
really your heart has to break for her mother.

Speaker 3 (01:25:57):
Oh yeah, you're looking at all these years since the
thing's happened, since her abduction happened, and it hasn't been solved,
and you're positive that somebody somewhere knows what's happened, right frustrating?

Speaker 2 (01:26:12):
Sure. Okay, Well, if you've got nothing more to add,
I'm going to wrap up and move on to feedback.

Speaker 3 (01:26:18):
Okay, let's do that.

Speaker 4 (01:26:26):
It's time for listener feedback.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
All right. So our first email is from Joan T.
With a case suggestion. Joan writes on December thirty one,
twenty twenty two, on a Walsh, a thirty nine year
old real estate executive an immigrant from Serbia and mother
of three, hosted a New Year's Eve dinner with her husband, Brian,
at their home in Cohasset, Massachusetts. She disappeared the next

(01:27:06):
day and was never seen again, and investigators quickly turned
their attention to Brian Walsh. So, actually, while we're recording this,
this trial's going on.

Speaker 3 (01:27:16):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:27:17):
Opening statements began Monday, December first, and prosecutors argue that
he stood to benefit financially from her death, and as proof,
they're pointing to a two point seven million dollar life
insurance policy that listed him as the sole beneficiary. Anna,
a real estate manager who was living and working in Washington,

(01:27:37):
d C. Was reported missing after her employer requested a
welfare check at her home on January fourth, twenty twenty three.
In interviews with authorities, Brian said Anna left their house
during the morning of January first for a work emergency. Well,
I just watched that this morning with her coworker, and

(01:27:58):
there was no work emergency. We know that, No, there wasn't. Now,
this isn't the first legal issue of Brian Walsh's either.
In a separate case, he's pleaded guilty in twenty twenty
one to one count each of wire fraud, interstate transportation
for scheme to defraud, and unlawful monitory transaction. So Walsh

(01:28:20):
participated in a years long, multifaceted art fraud scheme involving
two purported Andy Warhol paintings. Walsh agreed to sell these
paintings to a buyer in twenty sixteen for eighty thousand dollars,
claiming they were part of the artist's Shadows series from
nineteen seventy eight. He included a photo of an invoice

(01:28:42):
from the Warhol Foundation with authentication numbers in a sale
posting on eBay. However, the buyer quickly realized that the
artwork was a fake and made some unsuccessful attempts to
contact Walsh for a refund. An investigation revealed Walsh had
sold the original Warhol paintings to a gallery. In twenty eleven,

(01:29:04):
Walsh was sentenced to thirty seven months in federal prison
and three years of supervised release. That same month, he
was also ordered to pay four hundred and seventy five
thousand dollars, so he did have big financial problems. The
fraud case may also be relevant in his murder trial
because court records show Anna Walsh was preparing to leave

(01:29:25):
her marriage and move with her children to Washington, DC,
partially because you know he was going to go to prison,
and here's this successful woman with children to support. The
defense wants the jury to know that he will be
going to prison for the charges besides murder, but the
prosecution doesn't want that to be admitted as evidence. So

(01:29:46):
the crazy thing here is he has admitted to disposing
of her body, right, but not to murdering her. He's
using this like SIDS of adults type of defense, no
sudden death. So what do you think of that?

Speaker 3 (01:30:01):
I can't even comprehend how you could think you'd get
away with it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
I'm just kind of blown away. It's very far fetched,
but you never know with jury's right. Look at Casey Anthony.
I never would have believed her lines, I know. So
it is a little scary that people might believe it,
but it is doubtful. What in the world he says.
He finds her dead and doesn't know what to do,
so it goes immediately to Google and asks how to

(01:30:27):
dispose of a dead body. So instead of calling a
funeral home or an ambulance or trying anything, he just
went out to Loew's with his son because we've seen
the footage, and but a bunch of cleaning products, a
hack saw a hammer. I hate to think what he
did with the hammer. It's just horrendous. Any of these

(01:30:47):
dismemberment things are beyond me. I can't even believe it's real.
Who could possibly do that. It's almost worse to me
than the murder itself. Right, it's so horrid. It's really hard,
and her body's never been found. They did find some
bags that he dropped in different dumpsters around town. It
did have clothing and other very suspicious things. I believe

(01:31:09):
some things with her blood on them as well. But
on January first, when she just died or he killed her,
he was throwing out a lot of these things, which
was probably, let's be honest, body parts, and by the
time police knew she was missing, it had all been
hauled away.

Speaker 3 (01:31:27):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:31:28):
Just really sad. Thirty nine year old woman with three children.
Heartbreaking young children, yes, very young, so oh. Joan also
writes thank you for the podcast. It cheers me up
on bad days and keeps me good company the rest
of the time. Thanks Joan. I always loved to hear
that that's us. Yeah, And we have one more email

(01:31:48):
I want to read from Leah M and she says,
keep an eye on this case. It's so sad. So
this is something I have heard of. I don't know
if you have dick about Anna kept her on the
cruise ship.

Speaker 3 (01:32:00):
Hadn't heard of this, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
So, eighteen year old high school student Anna Kepner died
while traveling with her family on a Carnival cruise ship
in early November of this year. So another really recent one.

Speaker 3 (01:32:13):
A month ago.

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
Anna was last seen on the ship's surveillance footage returning
to her room and wasn't seen ever leaving again. The
next day, when his sister still hadn't returned, the family,
who were from Titusville, Florida, realized she was missing. While
her father, Christopher Kepner, forty one, searched the ship for
any sign of his daughter, a medical emergency was announced

(01:32:38):
over the PA system. And then I think it was
a housekeeper who located her body under a bed in
the cabin she was sharing with her sixteen year old
and fourteen year old stepbrothers. So Anna's sixteen year old
stepbrother is under criminal investigation. He was the only one
that was in the room with her at the time.

(01:32:58):
Anna was on the cruise with her dad, her stepmom,
her grandparents, her stepbrothers. I think it was a total
of eight or nine people, and why these three were
sharing a cabin is not known. I could see the
fourteen and sixteen year old brothers sharing a cabin.

Speaker 3 (01:33:13):
Yeah, but throwing an eighteen year old girl.

Speaker 2 (01:33:16):
Yeah, There's definitely been a lot of talk about the
sixteen year old being obsessed with Anna, and the fourteen
year old has said that he overheard the two arguing
in the cabin.

Speaker 3 (01:33:27):
Oh, I'll certainly consider the sixteen year old a very
strong person of interest.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33):
Oh yes, yes. And there's just so many twists and
turns in family dynamics here because you know, of course
it's a blended family. It was the stepmother and father
that were on the ship, and then there's all these
custody issues and the father saying he didn't want her
going on the cruise.

Speaker 3 (01:33:52):
Huh.

Speaker 4 (01:33:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:33:54):
Anna's stepmother has invoked her Fifth Amendment right telling the
court that the testimony she gives could be used against
her or her child in the federal case, because of
course they're looking at did the child drink. The sixteen
year old was also on Concerta and klanaity and was
he getting his medications? That's another thing. She went to

(01:34:15):
sleep early and didn't give him his quantity. Although I
don't think that would make you kill anyone.

Speaker 3 (01:34:20):
Shouldn't shouldn't know something don't have to keep track of.

Speaker 2 (01:34:24):
Yeah, Anna was a high school senior and a cheerleader,
and according to court documents, the stepmother, schan Tell Hudson,
asked to judge to delay a custody hearing because one
of her minor children may soon face charges. Actually now
the charges probably have been filed. The younger brother, the
fourteen year old, unknowingly went to sleep just feet away

(01:34:47):
from his dead sister. He didn't know, and after he
noticed she wasn't in the cabin, he'd assumed she'd gone
up to spend time with her parents. Then there was
this big emergency on the ship which was upsetting to
everyone on the show, and she was found kind of
crammed under the bed with some life rafts in a blanket.
So madness, madness, real madness on that one. So we'll

(01:35:09):
keep an eye on that, all right, let's do that, Okay, Well,
thank you, Leah, we really appreciate it, and let's keep
that feedback coming. I love to get it. We do, okay. Well,
I hope everyone's having a good holiday season so far.
We'll be back soon and we'll see you at the
quiet end.

Speaker 3 (01:35:28):
Mind Dad plenty your room.

Speaker 4 (01:35:30):
Bye bye bye, guys. Was a

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