Persons Unknown
Persons Unknown
Lee Boxell and Kevin Hicks (Missing Persons)
16 year old Kevin Hicks vanished on a Sunday evening in March 1986 after going on an errand to the local corner shop. Two and a half years later 15 year old Lee Boxell disappeared on a Saturday afternoon, he was thought to be on his way to watch a football match. Both boys lived relatively close to each other in neighbouring boroughs of South London. Neither of the boys have been seen since and their families continue to search for the truth. In the last decade police have said they suspect foul play.
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Websites
https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/14977602.Schoolboy_missing_for_30_years_was_groomed_before_he_was__murdered___detectives_believe/
https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/9036610.how-cheam-child-rapist-william-lambert-was-finally-caught-20-years-after-his-crimes/
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/disappearance-of-lee-boxell/
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/08/lee-boxell-disappearance-three-men-arrested
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boy-died-trying-to-expose-youth-club-abuse-say-police-wq79mcj2l
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Website with Transcripts:
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Lee Boxell and Kevin Hicks
Lee’s small single bedroom is like a time capsule. The walls are adorned with posters of eighties football stars from Shoot magazine and pop artists like Madonna and Bananarama. The calendar, which features glamour model Sam Fox, is still displaying September 1988. A neatly pressed school uniform hangs on the cupboard door and there are a few unopened letters containing payslips from Lee’s paper round lying around. About £40 in cash is still stuffed into a Manchester City mug, saved up for something long ago. Lee’s parents, Peter and Christine Boxell have kept their 15 year old son’s bedroom exactly as he left it since he disappeared without a trace over thirty years ago. Being in the room makes them feel close to him and still brings tears to their eyes. They will never alter the room, let alone move house, they couldn’t bear it. Lee’s birthday is in February and in 2022, as in so many previous years, they use the occasion to make an appeal to the public for information about their son. Peter and Christine are both in their seventies and there is an urgency about their request. Peter says he isn't getting any younger and time is running out for him to discover answers. He says he is no longer interested in justice or hatred, he just wants to lay Lee’s remains to rest so he can find some peace.
In a similar vein, 50 year old mother of two, Alex Hicks made an appeal through social media on the anniversary of her brother Kevin’s disappearance. On 2nd March 1986 the sixteen year old vanished, never to be seen again. Alex describes her life as living in a permanent state of limbo. Her brother has missed out on so much and she longs to know where he is and what has become of him. Alex’s parents, Mum, Terry, and Dad, Derek, have both passed away without finding out what happened to their son.
Both boys lived in South London, only 20 minutes from one another. Kevin in Croydon and Lee in the neighbouring borough of Sutton. What happened to the teenagers has been shrouded in mystery for decades. In recent years, after police reviews of both cases, new information has come to light and detectives suspect that both boys are no longer alive and that they were harmed by a person or persons unknown. Though on the surface there is nothing to connect the boys, the similarities in the details and location means there has always been a suspicion that the cases could be related. There are probably several people alive today that are carrying a terrible secret and know exactly what happened to both Kevin Hicks and Lee Boxell.
Persons Unknown is a true crime podcast dedicated to unsolved murders and disappearances. The podcast is based in Wales, UK and covers cases from Wales, the rest of the UK and the wider world. New episodes are released every other Monday. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Persons Unknown Podcast. For a list of sources please see the episode notes on your app. If you enjoy the podcast please give us a review and you can help others get to hear about Persons Unknown by sharing and recommending on social media. Thank you so much for listening. Now back to this week’s case.
Lee Boxell was football (or soccer) crazy, and was passionate about the beautiful game. He supported his local team Sutton United, who in September 1988 played in the National conference league. That is the 5th tier of football and certainly back then most of the players would have been semi-professional. There were other, more prestigious teams in the region but this was his club and he enjoyed the family atmosphere at the team's home ground of Gander Green. It was less aggressive and more welcoming than some of the other South London professional clubs.
Lee is described by his father Peter as a good, well mannered boy who had a caring nature. He was trustworthy and sensitive. He enjoyed music, and would often tape the top 40 off the radio. His father had recently taken him to see the Cardiff-born singer Shakin Stevens perform. Lee didn’t have a girlfriend at the time he disappeared but his father says there was a girl he liked and Lee would often take a neighbour's dog for a walk for the chance to go past her house. Lee was a pupil at Cheam High School, and while he was academically an average student, he was popular and had lots of friends. His father says Lee was not particularly street-wise. In terms of his physical appearance, Lee was 15 years old and 170cm tall. He had a slim build with light brown hair.
When Lee woke up just before 9.30am on the morning of Saturday 10th September 1988 he made his way downstairs still wearing his pyjamas. His dad Peter was already awake and just about to head out to do some shopping. Lee was still half asleep and was less than forthcoming when his dad asked him what his plans were for the day. He mumbled something about meeting a friend. Lee would often spend his Saturday watching his beloved Sutton United but that day they were playing away to Blackpool in Lancashire. Lee was a committed fan and did follow the team on away fixtures but Lancashire would be a ten hour round trip; it was too far on this occasion.
Peter informed his son that his Mum, Christine, had gone to visit her elderly mother in Bromley, about a 50 minute car journey away. His 12 year old sister Lindsey was going out with friends and would be gone most of the day. Peter left to go shopping shortly after 9:30pm, telling his son he would see him later.
Lee dressed in a pair of black jeans, a Flintstones t-shirt and brown suede shoes. He also wore a Swatch, which was the accessory of choice for any fashion conscious teen in 1988. He left the house with £10 in his pocket and met up with his friend Russell. The pair went window shopping around the main high street in Sutton. Lee then suggested that they go and watch a football match. As I’ve mentioned, Sutton United were playing away, but there was a game happening at Selhurst Park between Charlton Athletic and Millwall. Lee had never been to that ground before and he fancied going. Pictures from his bedroom show a Charlton Athletic poster on the wall so he obviously had a soft spot for them.
Unfortunately Russell couldn’t go as he needed to head home. The friends parted at around lunch time. Some reports say this occurred at 1pm and others as late as 2:20pm. What is known is that Lee was spotted by someone on Sutton High street at 2:20pm. This could have been when Russell left him or someone else who knew him may have spotted Lee at this time.
This sighting is significant as it would not have allowed him time to get to Selhurst Park in time for kick off at 3pm. Selhurst Park is at least a 30 minute car ride and he would have had to make the journey on public transport. As he had never travelled to the ground before it was thought very unlikely that he would leave it that late. The sighting of Lee on Sutton High Street at 2:20pm is officially the last time anyone saw him.
Alarm bells began to ring for Peter Boxell shortly after 5pm. Lee rarely stayed out late, if he was ever delayed he would always find a telephone box and ring home. An hour or so later, Lee's mum Christine phoned the house from her mother’s in Bromley, she was just checking in on the family. When she heard that Lee had not returned and his whereabouts were unknown she began to panic and immediately returned home via taxi.
Peter and Christine spent the rest of the evening contacting family and Lee’s friends to see if they could locate their son. They also phoned local hospitals in case he had been involved in an accident. They kept drawing blanks until Peter remembered that one of Lee's friends, Anthony, had planned to go to the coast with his family that day. Perhaps Lee had decided to tag along and had been unable or forgotten to phone.
When Anthony and his family returned later that evening and Lee was not with them, the Boxells decided to phone the police and report Lee missing. The response the couple got was not particularly helpful and did nothing to ease their fears. They were told to wait as Lee would probably turn up overnight. Needless to say, it was a sleepless night in the Boxell house. When morning came and there was no sign of their son the Boxells contacted the police again, this time they did respond, and the early stages of what would turn out to be a decades long search began.
A plea was made to anyone attending the Charlton v Millwall game at Selhurst Park to come forward if they remembered seeing Lee in at the ground. No-one did. CCTV footage of the crowd was studied in painstaking detail but Lee was not spotted there. With this information, coupled with the 2:20pm sighting, police suspected Lee had not attended the game and instead travelled somewhere else. There was thought that he may have attended another match, possibly at Wimbledon’s Plough Lane or at another local non-league club, Carshalton Athletic. Again, police enquiries could find no evidence that he was at these matches. One theory was that Lee may have accepted a lift from someone driving to one of the games and had been abducted, but there was no evidence to back this up.
A man who lived near to Lee and had convictions for sexually abusing young boys was brought in for questioning, but he was released when the alibi he provided checked out. Very early on the thought was entertained that Lee might have deliberately left home.The police wondered if perhaps he was trying to get away from overprotective parents. This however seemed to fly in the face of everything they learnt about Lee and his family. They had a good relationship together. It doesn’t seem that anyone genuinely believed the 15 year old had run away. He seemed happy and wasn’t in any trouble. His friends and teachers provided no reasons for Lee to disappear and there was no history of major family arguments.
Leads were few and far between and very quickly Lee’s case went cold. In 1989 his family kept hope alive by offering a £25,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of their son. The money consisted of Christine's life savings. It was a small price to pay if it would lead to her seeing her son again. 5000 posters were put up across London and Lee’s younger sister Lindsey even wrote to the pop group Bros asking for them to help publicise her brother’s disappearance. No significant information was brought forward and the money remained unclaimed.
An article in the Daily Mirror in July 1990 highlighted a study by a former BBC producer Gordon Thomas into the international porn trade. He said there was evidence that London, and Soho in particular, was a hotbed for the creation and distribution of snuff videos. Gordon Thomas said these videos depicted the abuse and murder of young people and sold for thousands of pounds. The study came at a time that Operation Orchid was in the process of investigating the crimes of convicted sex offender Sidney Cooke and the paedophile ring he was part of. Persons Unknown covered this story in episode 15, the unsolved murder of Vishal Mehrotra. In 1990 there was a belief that Cooke’s gang may well have been involved in this abhorrent trade.
Gordon Thomas suggested that some missing or murdered children and young people may have been killed in snuff films. He named 6 year old Barry Lewis and 9 year old Christopher Laverack as potential victims killed in snuff films. Barry was abducted from near his home in South London in 1985. His body was found two years later near Waltham Abbey in Essex. Christopher was murdered in Hull in 1984. Both boys had beens sexually assualted.
In 1991 Leslie Bailey, one of Sidney Cooke’s accomplices, was found guilty of the murder of Barry Lewis and in 2012 it was determined that in all likelihood Christopher Laverack was killed by his uncle, Melvyn Read. The convicted paedophile died in jail before he could be brought to justice for his nephew’s murder. In 1990 there was a theory that perhaps Lee had fallen victim to a paedophile ring, like Cook’s or to other nefarious people producing snuff films.
Peter Boxell was a busy civil servant, but spent all his free time searching for his son. On evenings and weekends he would travel to Victoria Station, a well known haunt for sex workers and pimps, showing strangers pictures of his son to see if they recognised him. Peter feared his son may have been sexually asualted and felt too ashamed to return home.
Life was exhausting for the couple and both relied heavily on sleeping tablets to get them through the long nights. The stress of living life without knowing what had happened caused Peter to become physically ill and he suffered with stomach and back pains. Eighteen months after Lee had vanished Peter had resigned himself to the fact that the worst had happened, though Christine still held on to hope that Lee was alive.
Over the years there were numerous public appeals, and Peter and Christine led several initiatives to help locate their son. In 1993 Peter met with Diana, Princess of Wales, as part of an event highlighting what was at the time a state of the art computer program that could produce age-adjusted images of missing people. A year later this technology was put into use when a brewery placed the age-progressed image of Lee on a beer mat as part of an advertising campaign.
In 1993 the American alternative rock group Soul Asylum released their single Runaway Train with a video highlighting missing people. The video was directed by Tony Kaye and several different versions were made. Three American, one Australian and one for UK audiences. Lee’s image featured in the latter. Peter was asked by a journalist if he thought his son being a part of the video cheapened what had happened to their family. He said not in the least and he’d been inspired by Eric Clapton's song “Tears in Heaven” about the death of his young son to get involved in the project. The video got a lot of attention and some of the missing young people featured in the story were found safe and well. Unfortunately there was no news of Lee.
The Boxell family lived in a perpetual state of not knowing with no resolution for closure. Christine would continue to make sure there were always fresh flowers in the house on Lee’s birthday and extra food in the cupboard at Christmas, just in case her son returned.
For decades there was very little movement on the case, until 2009 when a shocking news story broke in the local and national press. After a counselling session a woman began to remember details of abuse that had happened to her twenty years before. The repressed memories of the unnamed survivor began to surface about the sexual abuse she had experienced at a church youth group in the 1980’s. The woman went to police with these allegations and straight away Detectives from the specialist rape unit “Sapphire” got involved. The survivor was able to give details of three other girls who were also abused by the same person. When interviewed all the women gave similar stories of what had happened to them when they were children, and they all named William “Bill” Lambert as their abuser.
During the mid 1980’s Bill Lambert, who was a former soldier and around 50 years old, managed to get himself a job as a grave digger and general grounds person at St Dunstan’s Church in Cheam, South London. The church leadership also allowed Lambert to run an unofficial youth club out of the dilapidated outhouse on the side of the church building. It was known locally as the “Shed” and young people from the surrounding area would congregate there to smoke and drink, as Lambert was happy for them to do this. He would get close to the young people by offering a sympathetic ear or shoulder to cry on but his intentions were always far more sinister. Just a note to say that some of the details that follow are disturbing, so please skip forward a minute or so if you'd prefer.
Lambert told the teenagers that attended the Shed that he was a warlock and that he had magical powers. He would tell the children that by having sex with him he could pass on his powers to them. Lambert was brought to trial in 2011 and during proceedings evidence was heard from one survivor that she was raped on a tomobstone and told she would then receive power from a levitating black monk who haunted the graveyard. On another occasion a teenage girl disclosed to him that she was pregnant and he told her that if she had sex with him the pregnancy would magically be terminated.
At the end of the trial, William Lamber, who was now 75 years old was found guilty of one count of rape, two counts of indecent assault and two counts of procuring girls to have sexual intercourse by deception. His victims were between 11 and 15 years of age. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
During the investigations into William Lambert, detectives working Lee Boxell’s case began to look into possible connections. Apparently Lambert confessed to a cell mate that he had killed Lee and buried him in the graveyard. When Lambert was spoken to by detectives he did not admit to this and denied having anything to do with Lee’s disappearance.
Police officers had never heard mention of the Shed before in connection with Lee’s disappeance, but enquiries undertaken in 2010 found that Lee Boxell had attended the Shed numerous times. St Dunstans was only about 1.5km from Lee’s home. They even discovered evidence that suggested he was at St Dunstan’s on the day he disappeared. The working theory was that Lee had caught someone in the act of sexually abusing a young person. He had threatened to inform the police about what he had seen and he was killed in order to silence him.
Between June and September of 2012 parts of the graveyard at St Dunstan’s were dug up and searched. Nothing was discovered but the following year police received an anonymous tip off that Lee had indeed been buried in the graveyard. A full scale excavation of the site was undertaken and at around this time it came out in the press that there were two persons of interest in the case.
It was the longest running archeological dig the Met police have ever been involved with and cost in the region of a million pounds. Again, despite all their efforts and hard work nothing suspicious was found. This was a huge blow to police and the family as it appeared they were back at square one; however 2014 would see the biggest development yet in the case.
Three men aged 78, 42 and 41 were arrested on suspicion of murder, conspiracy to pervert justice and indecency with children. A 42 year old woman was also arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert justice and indecency with children. None of these people were named and they were eventually all released without charge. It is believed that these people were linked to the abuse that happened in the grounds of St Dunstan's Church in the 1980s. Investigators continued to work the case and this angle and four years later, in August 2018, the Daily Mirror reported that cold case detectives had interviewed a person that could lead to the finding of Lee’s remains. Yet again nothing came of this lead.
A Channel 5 documentary in 2019 came up with more new information surrounding the Shed youth club. A witness known only as “Sally” said she saw a blood soaked mattress near the outbuilding where the youth club took place around two weeks after the murder. Following this, in September of that year, the Met police made the unusual decision to appeal to a survvior of sexual abuse to come forward. This person they believed had vital information that could prove Lee Boxell was at the Shed on the afternoon he disappeared. They were urged to take responsibility for their part in what happened to Lee and told that although any role they may have played would need to be looked into, the circumstances would be taken into consideration. As of yet this person has not come forward.
Detective John McQuade has spoken in the press saying that he believes that Lee was assaulted by one person but that one or more others were involved in covering the crime up. He says there is a possibility that the death was not intentional but things got out of hand and Lee was killed.
Peter Boxell continues to receive information about William Lambert and what went on at the Shed youth group. In February 2022 he received a message via facebook by a person who says that Lambert was a regular at a DIY store they worked at. He remembers when the accusations first came to the publics attention in 2009 that Lambert spoke quite openly about being accused of raping a child. He was heard saying the police were useless as when they had searched his house they did not find his shotgun. Another person said they had heard Lambert say with a wink “the best way to get rid of a body is under a lead lined coffin”. Peter believes his son was likely murdered by someone linked to Lambert and was buried in this way, though not necessarily in the graveyard of St Dunstan’s.
At Christmas last year my brother-in-law Josh, who is a serving police officer, brought to my attention the story of 15 year old Kevin Hicks. Kevin disappeared from Croydon in South London in March 1986. Josh grew up in the same area and remembers hearing about this case when he was younger. I had never heard of Kevin Hicks before but when I looked into it I realised that others had connected his disappearance to that of Lee Boxell. Geographically the two cases are very close, with the two boys living about 11.5km apart.
Kevin Hicks lived in Sissington Road in Addiscombe, Croydon, with his Father, Derek, and Mother, Terry. He also had a sister Alex, who was one year younger than him. Kevin was a pupil at John Ruskin's school. He is described as a happy boy who didn’t appear to be stressed or worried about anything in the weeks before he disappeared. He had actually been spending quite a bit of time applying for part-time jobs in order to start earning some money. On the Facebook group “Kevin Hicks is missing” which is run by Kevin’s sister Alex, she has said that Kevin had a girlfriend at the time he disappeared.
On Sunday 2nd March 1986 Kevin spent much of the day engaged in his favourite hobby, racing remote controlled cars. He had done this in Ashburton park and had taken the family dog with him.In the early evening Kevin and his sister Alex argued about whose turn it was to do the dishes. Nothing major, just typical teenage sibling stuff and he was described by his family as being in good spirits. At around 8.30pm Kevin suddenly mentioned that he had an O-Level (GCSE) home economics cooking exam the following day. He needed eggs for the project, but there weren't enough in the house, so he told his parents he was going to pop down to the corner shop to pick some up. He took £1 with him. He left his keys at home and some reports state he did not take his pedal bike with him and instead preferred to walk. As we will see later there is some confusion over this issue. He left the house at 8.40pm saying he was going to the Sperrings community shop on Lower Addiscombe Road. This was only about 230-300m down the street. It was the last time his family ever saw him.
Hours passed and Kevin's mother began to get worried. Derek had been called out on a work emergency at 9:00pm and got back to the house at around 11:00pm to the news that Kevin had still not returned. The worried father got in the car and started driving around looking for his son. If Kevin ever did decide to stay out late he would always ring to let his parents know where he was and what he was doing. Though of course in this instance he had said he was literally just popping to the shop. When Derek saw no sign of Kevin he returned and started to phone friends. When this brought no positive news the police were called. Alex, Kevin's younger sister, says she remembers being sent to her bed and not really being talked to about what was going on. She said she stayed up, listening at the door as her parents phoned around and talked about what on earth might have happened. Feeling desperate, Derek went to South Norwood police station at 1am to give more information to the police.
The following day a description of Kevin was given out to local press. Kevin was 178cm tall with light brown hair. He had very distinctive eyes as they were different colours. The right eye was blue and the left, hazel. He was wearing a red, white and black Lacoste bomber jacket, dark blue jeans and Hi-Tec trainers.
Investigators first focused their enquiries on pupils at John Ruskin school. The morning after Kevin went missing they were at the school conducting interviews. Alex tells the story of being taken out of class and questioned in tears by police officers. She describes the ordeal as like an interrogation, with no sensitivity to what she was experiencing as Kevin's sibling. Alex says that a lot of things were kept from her at the time by her family and police which led to a feeling of helplessness. Friends in school also continued to bombard her with questions which she could not answer.
There was no CCTV at the Sperrings shop where Kevin had said he was going, and when questioned none of the staff could remember if they had served him. There is one confirmed sighting of Kevin on the night he disappeared. At 10pm he was spotted by someone who knew him near a Tesco shop on Shirley Road, heading in the direction of home. From here it should have taken him just fifteen minutes to get to Sissington Road where he lived. This location is also about a 15 min walk east from the corner shop he said he was going to visit. Why Kevin was in this area is unknown.
Police carried out a fingertip search of the surrounding area, with particular attention paid to nearby parks like Ashburton and Addington Hills as well as railway stations. Derek Hicks says he had no idea where to even start looking, so he would spend every spare moment searching everywhere. Two months after Kevin vanished, his story was featured on the BBC programme Crimewatch. There was a plan for Kevin to be highlighted again in July that year but the feature was dropped as the episode centred on the disappearance of the London estate agent Susie Lamplugh. The 25 year old disappeared on the 28th July after an appointment with a client called “Mr Kipper”. She was never seen again and was declared legally dead in 1993. John Cannan, who is a convicted murder and rapist, is the chief suspect in her believed abduction and murder, though the case officially remains unsolved.
Terry Hicks made contact with Susie's mother Diana and the pair offered each other mutual support and a shoulder to cry on. Diana helped to set up the Susie Lamplugh Trust which became the national Missing Person’s helpline. Terry also reached out to the Boxells after Lee went missing in September 1988 and the families became close.
There seemed very few leads for investigating officers to follow. Police got a tip off that a boy matching Kevin’s description was working in a hairdressers in the South London area. When officers went to question the boy, his resemblance with Kevin was so strong they had to go to the parents house and ask them to produce his birth certificate. It was the first of many false leads. Other sightings came in from Birmingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Often Derek and Terry would drive to these locations to check on these sightings themselves but eventually so many started to come in this became impossible.
Over the years the family had to put up with several people falsely claiming they were Kevin, including a man from Australia who contacted Alex and attempted to persuade her that he was her brother. This was despite the fact he was not the right age and his appearance was markedly different from Kevin. In 1994,there was an incident that did give hope that Kevin may be alive.
That year Terry, Kevin's Mum, passed away from a brain tumour aged just 42. At the funeral Alex and her father counted up the many cards and bouquets of flowers left by mourners. The following morning they counted again and found another set of flowers unaccounted for. Alex and her father wondered if perhaps these had been left by their missing son.
Two years later, in 1996, came the biggest development in the case, when on the 25th October an anonymous woman phoned the offices of the newspaper The Croydon Advertiser. There was no-one there to take her call but she left an answer phone message saying that she knew where Kevin Hicks’ body was buried. Police made requests for the woman to make contact again but she never did.
In 2005, Kevin’s father Derek passed away, and ever since Alex has continued to take on Kevin's cause and publicise her brother's story. Shortly after her father’s death she talked to the Croydon Advertiser stating the belief that Kevin may have run away and joined the navy or army. This would have been out of character but she believed he was persuaded by someone to do this. She struggles to think that Kevin could have been abducted as Kevin was a big guy and could throw a punch.
In 2015 police reviewed the case, and the following year announced that they believed Kevin Hicks was deceased and that he had been attacked by someone the night he disappeared. This, police said, may not have been premeditated and the person may not have meant to kill him. When this did happen they then disposed of the body. This may involve more than one person. They believe that the decision to go and buy eggs for a school exam was a ruse. Kevin had left the house to meet someone and had been assaulted by them. It was added by DI McQuade that police believed Kevin had been the victim of grooming prior to his vanishing. They revealed that a set of audio speakers had been found when Kevin’s bedroom was searched in the days after his disappearance. These speakers were expensive and it seemed that he had tried to hide them from his parents. They did not know how Kevin could have afforded them and had no idea who would have bought them for him.
There are no named suspects in this case or even persons of interest. Some elements of the timeline have thrown up some questions. The obvious question is: where was Kevin during the hour and half between leaving home and being seen on Shirley Road? There is a possibility that he took a bus into the town centre, but no bus drivers working at that time remembered him. If Kevin was assaulted and killed by the person he met with, why wait until he was walking home to do this? The witness who saw him at 10pm said he was alone at this time.
The expensive speakers found in the teenager’s bedroom and the police’s statement that he was groomed have led to speculation about whether Kevin was the victim of a paeodophile or paedophile ring. There have been other ideas that theorise that Kevin was gay and decided to run away as he felt unable to come out. I must make it clear that there is no evidence that Kevin was gay. Alex has said that he had a girlfriend at the time he vanished. Other possible explanations of the brand new speakers have included the idea that Kevin could have been involved in illegal activity. Again there is no evidence of this and his school and the area of Croydon where he lived had a very low crime rate.
Detective Inspector John McQuade is confident that what happened to Kevin lies in his relationships at John Ruskin school. The school closed in 1988, but he is sure a fellow pupil is keeping a secret and the answers lie in the local Croydon community.
Alex has said carrying on your life when a loved one is missing creates a feeling of paranoia. Every time she hears the name Kevin she looks around, in hope. When she's sat on a bus she wonders if the man next to her is her brother, as she fears she would not recognise him. At the back of Alex’s mind there is also the constant knowledge that someone, somewhere is holding on to a secret.
On 2 March 1987, exactly one year to the day after Kevin’s disappearance, another 15 year old boy, Mark Garvey, went missing. Mark lived in Walton, Liverpool, in the north west of England. This is a long way from South London, around a five hour car drive. Nevertheless the obvious similarities with Lee’s and particularly Kevin’s cases have caused online sleuths to wonder if they could be connected.
Mark was last seen at a bus stop outside the Jolly Miller pub in the north Liverpool suburb of West Derby. He had just left his girlfriend’s house in tears after having a row with her. I have read this because she had been seeing his best friend. Mark was usually on time, and always let his mother know if he was going to be out late. She assumed he was out with his girlfriend or babysitting with her. When he didn't drive back by midnight she began to panic.
The police questioned everyone at Mark’s school, De la Salle in Croxteth, and searched nearby Walton park with dogs. Appeals were made in the local and national media, but no information was brought forward. Mark was said to be happy before the argument with his girlfriend and did not have any worries. It did not seem that Mark had planned to disappear as he had saved a large amount of money for a school trip to France but he didn’t take it with him. He only had enough money with him for his bus fare.
A few years after his disappearance his mother, Dot, received a letter from a man in Croydon claiming he was sure he had seen Mark. For years she clung onto the hope that her son was still alive. At the time of his disappearance Mark was 160cm tall and had light brown hair. The day after he went missing was his 16th birthday.
For Peter and Christine Boxell and Alex Hicks, birthdays and the Christmas period are particularly difficult, and the absence of Lee and Kevin respectively is felt all the more at these times. Living with a loss without being able to grieve is an increasingly difficult space in which to live your life. In both cases, and with that of Mark Garvey too, there is still time for the truth to come out. There are people alive today who undoubtedly know what happened to the boys. Allegiances evolve and circumstances change so there is every chance someone will talk.
Christine still hopes her son may return one day. Peter seems more resigned to believing the worst has happened but he still allows himself a slither of hope. Alex too holds on to the belief that her brother is out there somewhere.
As listeners the best thing you can do is continue to publicise the boy’s stories. I recommend you join the Facebook group Kevin Hicks is Missing which is run by Alex and has members of the Boxell family involved.
On 22nd February 2002, what would have been Lees 49th birthday, Crimestoppers announced a £20,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those linked to Lee’s suspected murder. This can be done either online or by calling Crimestoppers' freephone 0800 555 111. It can be done anonymously..
In 2016 The Met police put up a £20,000 reward for information pertaining to the disappearance of Kevin Hicks. Officers working the case can be contacted at the incident room on 020 8721 4005. Alternatively you can call crime stoppers anonymously.
Missing People is an organisation to help anyone affected by someone going missing, for a person currently away or considering leaving, for people with a loved one missing, and for reporting someone missing. Go to missingpeople.org.uk or call or text 116 000.
