Persons Unknown
Persons Unknown
Katrice Lee (Missing Person)
It should have been a happy day. The 28th November 1981 saw the Lee family, celebrating the second birthday of their youngest daughter, Katrice. The Lees lived in West Germany as Richard, Katrice’s Father, was stationed there with the British Army. A party was planned later that day but first they needed some supplies from the British Forces supermarket. During the short trip the toddler was out of sight for a matter of seconds, but it was long enough for Katrice to vanish without a trace. What happened to her remains a mystery to this day.
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BBCKatrice Lee's dad angry over Boris Johnson Hartlepool meeting1 day ago
Disappearance of Katrice Lee: How the investigation has unfolded
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/i-never-give-up-search-25507505.amp
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10007227/dad-katrice-lee-still-alive-37-years/amp/
https://www.falkirkherald.co.uk/news/crime/robert-black-could-have-snatched-toddler-1239190?amp
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Katrice Lee
This episode deals with a crime committed against a child. Please exercise self-care when choosing to listen.
It was a joyful morning in the Lee household as the day began with the family singing happy birthday to two year old Katrice. The brown eyed and curly haired toddler was typical of children her age, endlessly curious and full of fun. One of her favourite activities was dancing around the living room to the pop group ABBA as the family laughed and clapped. The 28 November 1981 was a rainy drizzly day but that didn't dampen spirits and everyone was excited for the party later, especially the cheeky toddler and her 7 year old sister Natasha.
The family had lived in their red brick flat in SchloB Neuhaus, a district of Paderborn in Western Germany for the last two years. Mum, Sharon, and Dad, Richard, had married in 1972 and were originally from Portsmouth and Hartlepool respectively. They had moved to Paderborn in 1979 when Richard was posted to the British army base in the city; he was a Sergeant in the 15th/19th King's Royal Hussars. Sharon was pregnant with Katrice as they travelled, and gave birth in the British military hospital in Rinteln, 65km north of Paderborn.
Katrice’s birthday celebrations continued with a trip out to pick up some supplies for the party. The family headed to the Navy, Army and Airforce Institutes (NAAFI) shopping centre near to where they lived. NAAFI is an organisation that continues to provide services and amenities across the world for the British Forces community. The store the family visited was specifically to serve the garrison at Paderborn and its personnel. Seven year old Natasha stayed at home with a babysitter but little Katrice joined her parents and her aunt, Wendy, Sharon's sister, on the excursion. Katrice was wearing a turquoise duffle coat with a green fur lined hood, a green and blue tartan pinafore dress, and a white blouse with a blue collar and cuffs. To stop her feet getting wet in the rain she wore a pair of red wellies.
The shopping complex was very busy as the regiment had just returned from a three day exercise and the day before had been the last pay day before Christmas. A local college was also having an open day, with people from the garrison and locals in attendance. Those at the event and in the shopping complex that day came from all over Europe, including Germany, France, Belgium, Poland and the UK. The car park was so full the family couldn't find a space, so while Sharon, Wendy and Katrice went into the shop, Richard waited in the car park. He was only expecting them to be five minutes or so as they didn't need to get much.
According to a Daily Mirror article from November 2021 recapping the case, the shop was fairly large, similar to a medium sized Tesco store. Apparently Katrice was having fun choosing her sweets for a birthday treat, though after a bit she did get tired and Sharon picked her up.
When they got to the cashier, Sharon suddenly remembered she had forgotten to pick up crisps. She asked Wendy to keep an eye on Katrice and went back to the aisles to pick up the savoury snacks. When she returned, approximately 40 seconds to one minute later, Katrice was nowhere to be seen. Sharon asked Wendy where Katrice was and she replied that when Sharon had left the toddler had followed her. She assumed Katrice was with her mother. Already beginning to worry they looked around, calling her name, but could not see her.
Just a quick message to say at the end of the episode I have included an update about two of the cases I have covered on Persons unknown. So please listen right to the end to hear this new information.
Also a big thank you to my brother-in-law Josh who suggested this week's case to me. He has been discussing the story of Katrice Lee with his police colleagues and thought it warranted an episode. I was familiar with the case and as soon as I started researching it properly I knew it had to be the next episode.
As always, thank you all for listening.
Meanwhile Richard, still outside waiting next to the car, began to realise that something was amiss. Sharon had only needed to pick up a few things and time was passing. He waited for around thirty minutes and then decided to go in and look for them. He first tried the cafeteria as he thought they may have gone for a snack. They were not there. He then thought that perhaps they had gone to another shop to pick up an extra present for Katrice. As he was about to leave the supermarket he noticed Sharon through the open door of the manager's office.
When Richard was informed that Katrice was missing his military training kicked in and he immediately went through the shop rounding up men from his unit to help him search for his daughter. He managed to find at least twelve people to do a ground search of the shop and the surrounding area but they found no trace of Katrice.
The Royal Military Police (RMP) were on the scene promptly, but in the following years Richard has criticised their initial response. The RMP did not close the store, or take the names of people who were shopping at the time. The cashiers were not spoken to for six weeks, with one member of staff not being interviewed for another twenty years. Police tracker dogs were not brought to the scene until 24 hours after Katrice had gone missing - far too late to be effective. Katrice had an eye condition that was going to require a couple of operations to correct. If the child had been taken to a hospital or Doctor’s surgery the condition would have been immediately apparent, which would easily identify Katrice. This information was not shared by the RMP with medical centres in the region. Katrice had a distinctive birth mark at the bottom of her spine but this was not shared either. Checkpoints were never set up and border guards were not informed of the incident.
Richard Lee believes the RMP and German police made up their mind as to what had happened to Katrice very early on. Richard says both he and Sharon were interviewed separately within hours of Katrina going missing and asked if their daughter liked ducks. The inference being that she had gone to the river Lippe that ran 50m or so from the supermarket to watch the ducks and had likely fallen in and drowned. IThe RMP and the local German police who liaised with them on the case both believed that what had occurred was a tragic accident. The river was searched extensively and dragged but nothing was found. What made matters worse was the refusal by German police to make an appeal for information in the press. Unbelievably the incident wasn't reported in the local news for six weeks.
Richard Lee has said continually over the last four decades that he doesn't think the police theory is likely. For Katrice to leave the shop she needed to get through three separate barriers without being stopped. The only other option was to have exited via the back doors, but they had no handles on the inside. It was a busy day with the complex chock full of soldiers who were extremely proactive and would have intervened if they had seen a child of Katrice’s age alone. He also says that Katrice was not that interested in water and doesn’t think it would have attracted her. Richard has also pointed out that the river was not deep at the time and there were 29 gates set up to catch debris floating in the water. If Katrice had fallen in and drowned her body would have been located. Richard points to evidence carried out by experts in 2013 who studied the weather and river flow of the day and have agreed it is unlikely that the two year old lost her life in the river.
The idea that kept swirling around the heads of the family was that Katrice had been abducted by a childless couple or by someone meaning to sell her to a couple unable to have children of their own. This is the theory Richard Lee still clings to. He believes his daughter has been brought up living a lie and that her true identity is unknown to her. Another possibility entertained by Richard at the time was that this had been perpetrated by someone from the army who held a grudge against him and wanted to get back at him for some reason, though he was unable to name a specific person who might feel this way.
In the days after the incident Richard wanted to contact the British press and give as many interviews as he could to publicise the plight of his daughter. The British army refused him permission to do this, citing his signing of the official secrets act on entering the forces as the reason for their decision. The RMP and local law enforcement did continue searching the area but the numbers of personnel involved slowly decreased. It was a horrific situation for the family who felt helpless and trapped. Natasha, Katrice’s older sister, remembers hearing the screams of her mother coming from the other room in the house. At just seven years old she found the situation completely overwhelming.
The RMP investigation limped on but came to an end eighteen months after Katrice had vanished. It seemed no one could help them and Richard and Sharon were left attempting to deal with the situation while also trying to parent Natasha and juggle work. The couple were not ready to give up and continued fighting for their story to be heard. What is astonishing is the lack of coverage of Katrice's disappearance in the British press. Searching newspaper archives I came across very few articles about the case from the time. In 1982 they were promised a meeting with the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher but it was cancelled due to the outbreak of war in the Falklands and was never rescheduled.
Living life without Katrice took a huge toll on Richard, Sharon and Natasha. Richard speaks of trying to keep it together in front of his family because he had always been told that men don't cry. He said he would wait until he was alone and then go to the bathroom and weep for hours. The family stayed in Paderborn for another 8 years. During that time Katrice’s bedroom was left untouched, with her soft toys still arranged as they were on her second birthday.
In 1989 the Lee family moved back to Britain and Richard and Sharon separated. They divorced a year or so later. Richard continued in his military career, becoming a warrant officer, and was stationed in Ripon, Yorkshire. He eventually left the army as a sergeant major in 1999 after 34 years service.
In the year 2000 the case was reopened by the RMP under the code name Operation Bute and a computer generated picture of Katrice aged 19 was released. The publicity brought forward a young man who said he was at the cash registers at the time Katrina vanished. But the most significant development came when a woman contacted police to say her ex-boyfriend had served in the same regiment as Richard Lee and had once confessed to her that he had killed a child. A man was subsequently arrested in Northumbria, in the North of England, but he was released within a day or so. The man denied any involvement and police concluded that he was a fantasist. The woman who made the accusation died not long after these events.
The following year a £10,000 reward was offered for information leading to Katrice’s whereabouts. The money went unclaimed and there was very little movement on the case over the next decade or so. The BBC featured Katrice on the morning tv programme Missing Live in 2008, but nothing of note resulted from the broadcast.
In 2012 the RMP issued an apology to the family and admitted that the investigation at the time of Katrice’s disappearance had been inadequate. This had been a long time coming and in many ways was too little too late, as still no answers had been found regarding what had happened to Katrice.
It was at about this time that former police detective turned writer and cold case investigator Chris Clark began research for a book about infamous child serial killer Robert Black. Persons Unknown has come across the work of Chris Clark before, most notably in Episode 2 which focuses on the disappearance of Trevaline Evans from Langollen, North Wales in 1990. The crimes of Robert Black featured in episode 7 about teenager April Fabb who has been missing from Norfolk, England, since 1969. Black is a suspect in that case.
In 1994, Robert Black was found guilty of the murders and sexual assaults of Susan Maxwell, aged 11 from Norththumberland in 1982, Caroline Hogg, 5 from Edinburgh in 1983 and Sarah Harper 10 from Leeds in 1986. In 2011 he was sentenced for the murder of Jennifer Cardy aged nine from Northern Ireland in 1981. For his crimes Black was given twelve life sentences.
He died in prison in January 2016 at the age of 68. Chris Clark and his co-author Robert Giles released the book on Black titled “The Face of Evil: The True Story of Serial Killer Robert Black” in 2017. They put forward that Black should be considered a suspect in the disappearance of Katrice Lee.
Clark doesn't believe that Katrice was the victim of an accident or that she was taken by a childless couple. He says everything points to an abduction by a paedophile and says her disappearance mimics the crimes of Black, who was able to abduct children swiftly from public places and drive them away in his car or van.
Black worked for a poster company and travelled throughout Europe delivering and displaying advertisements for alcohol and cigarette companies. British army camps throughout West Germany were part of his route. In 2016 Black’s case file was in the hands of the Devon and Cornwall police, as at the time of his death he was about to be charged with the abduction and murder of Genette Tate. I mentioned Genette’s case in episode 7, as it is often linked to the case of April Fabb. The 13 year old disappeared without a trace while delivering newspapers in Aylesbeare, Devon in 1978.
Clark believes that petrol receipts from Black’s work records contained in the police files could prove he was in Germany at the time Katrice went missing. This method was used to find Black guilty in 2011 for the murder of Jennifer Cardy. That said, it is known that some of his receipts and work documents were lost by the Police back in the early 1990’s, when his crimes were originally investigated.
Robert Black is a suspect in other child disappearances and murders in Germany. Ten year old Silke Garben vanished from Detmold, just 45km from Paderborn, in 1985. Her body was found strangled and left by the roadside. Romona Herling aged 11 disappeared from Bad Dreiburg, 22km from Paderborn, in 1989. She has never been seen since. As well as those I've mentioned and Katrice herself, Black has been linked to a further 9 cases across Europe.
Chris Clark and Robert Giles’s theory concerning Black and Katrice Lee seemed to be cautiously welcomed by her father Richard as an avenue for police to explore. He later spoke out against the idea, as he felt that his daughter's case was being cynically exploited by the authors to promote their book. Richard discovered that Black had been previously looked into by police, but they said he wasn’t in Germany at the time Katrice went missing.
Over the years the family have had to deal with hoaxers and online trolls who have caused them much distress. In 2012 a woman named Donna Wright contacted the Lee family claiming she was their long lost daughter, Katrice. She stalked and abused the family for months. In the end she was taken to court and given a twelve week suspended sentence for the ordeal she had put the members of Katrice's family through. DNA was employed to definitively prove she was not Katrice Lee. A few years later a 40 year old woman, Heidi Robinson created a Facebook account under the name Katrice Lee and repeatedly sent messages to Natasha Lee. The family requested that she stopped doing this but the woman refused. Eventually DNA was used to confirm that she was not Katrice. In October 2019, Heidi Robertson was given an eighteen month suspended jail sentence for harassing relatives of Katrice and required to complete mental health treatment for one year.
In 2017 the UK government agreed to review the case and, extraordinarily, a previously unseen e-fit was released of a man seen putting a young child into a green saloon car in the car park of the shopping complex in Schloss Neuhaus shortly after Katrice disappeared . I'll put the image on the Persons Unknown Instagram. The man has thick hair, parted and almost reaching his eyebrows. He has smallish lips, and a double chin. I'd say he could be anywhere between 25 and 40 years old. This description had been given in the early days of the investigation and it is unknown why it was not circulated earlier. Until 2017 Richard Lee was unaware of the existence of it. Twelve months later a person came forward to say they had served in the RAF with a man who looked strikingly similar to the image. The informant had not seen the person in 38 years but gave the name of the man to police. It’s unknown what happened with this informtion.
As part of the review the RMP claimed that evidence in the case notes pointed towards the banks of the River Alme as being a location of significance. The River Alme is a tributary of the River Lippe and flows into the larger river in SchloB Neuhaus. This spot is just a few kilometres from where Katrice disappeared. A man in a green saloon car, like the one spotted in the car park of the shopping complex, was seen crossing a bridge over the Alme river a couple of days after Katrice went missing. In 2018 a five week excavation of the area was carried out, a project costing approximately £100,000. Some bones were uncovered by the team but they were identified as belonging to a horse. The family found out that the bones were not human remains via social media, something upsetting to them at the time, as it demonstrated a complete lack of thought on behalf of the police.
In September 2019 Richard Lee was working out in his local gym when he received a phone call from the RMP. To his shock they told him they had made an arrest in connection with his daughter's case. This wasn’t due to new information. The review team had found the man's name in the original case notes from 1981. Obviously this was incredibly hard for the Richard, Sharon and Natasha to take. If they had the name all this time why had they waited so long to act?
The man was a former soldier who was based at Paderborn in November 1981. In 2019 he was 74 years old and living in Swindon in the west of England. A house in the Moredon area of the town was searched and the garden dug up. Neighbours said two tents were erected in the backyard and police found a black package around 30cm in length under the patio. Locals described the man as well-dressed and bespectacled, friendly and always ready to joke with his neighbours. He was released a couple of days later without charge. He apparently was completely shocked that he had been a suspect in the case. Richard Lee said he recognised the name of the person from his Paderborn days but didn't really know him. He was philosophical about the arrest and subsequent release of the man. He’s quoted in the Daily Mail Newspaper in 2019 as saying everyone is innocent until proven guilty. From his comments in the press I sense that perhaps he felt police had done this to try to prove the review of the case was making progress. Within months of this incident the reinvestigation ground to a halt and police said they would only be looking at the case again if new leads arose or new evidence was presented.
This did not stop Richard , Sharon and Natasha and they continue to fight for truth and justice on behalf of Katrice. For decades Richard has been attempting to meet with the prime minister. Finally in November 2021 Boris Johnson said he would meet with Richard “father to father” after a question about Katrice’s case was asked in parliament. This meeting was delayed several times due to Covid and then the war in Ukraine but in the first week of May 2022 it finally happened. However, it was somewhat sprung on Richard at the last moment, meaning he didn't have time to adequately prepare. He was very angry about this fact and expressed his feelings in the press, though he also said he hoped some good will result from the meeting.25.37 He is currently asking for a public enquiry into the way his daughter's case was handled and for the case to be transferred from the RMP to the civilian police. Richard has also requested that the government provide £1 million to the charity Missing People.
There isn’t any hard evidence to back up Richard’s belief that Katrice has been brought up by a surrogate family but that is true for any theory in this case, so it shouldn’t be dismissed. It’s certainly a possibility and a quick Google search will find instances of people being arrested throughout Europe for similar offences, though many of these cases tend to be new born babies. Obviously Katrice was already talking and only spoke English when she disappeared. This fact plus the her eye condition would have made her stand out. That being said, as I have mentioned, the news of Katrice’s disappearance was not widely distributed.
There have been numerous stories over the last decade of parents who have been reunited with their kidnapped children.Two year old Mao Yin was abducted from the city of Xian in central China. He was sold to a childless couple. In 2020 after over three decades of searching and three hundred dead ends his mother Li Jingzhi finally found her son and they were reunited. Similar events took place in India in 2016. After 9 years apart, parents Asfar and Fareeda were reunited with their son Shahd who was taken from a hospital in 2007. In both these cases DNA was used to prove the identity of the missing person. These examples are few and far between but then a toddler disappearing without a trace is an extremely unusual events in itself. Keeping an open mind is a necessity when examining this case.
As I have been researching the case, what comes across so strongly is the love Richard Lee has for his daughter. He firmly believes Katrice is alive and that he and the rest of Katrice's family have been badly let down by the authorities. Richard is constantly learning new things about the investigation that have not been made public for decades. In 2020 in a meeting with the RMP he found out that at the time of his daughter’s disappearance there were fifteen sex offenders living in the near vicinity. There seems to be no evidence that this fact was acted upon at the time Katrice went missing.
Richard, Sharon and Natasha still carry Katrice in their hearts and minds. They think about her every day. When Natasha got married in 2018, a button from one of Katrice’s favourite cardigans was stitched onto her wedding dress. This way Natahsa could feel close to her sister on her special day. The burden of living with not knowing what happened to Katrice has been unbearable for all three. In 2021 Richard told the BBC that it never gets any easier to deal with. There has been no peace or closure, just unanswered questions and a string of dead ends. Richard, Sharon and Natasha will never give up. Richard spok very movingly in the Sun newspaper in 2019 about how fortunate he is to have spent two wonderful years with his daughter Katrice. He continues to cling to the hope that they will one day be reunited.
If you have any information about Katrice lee you can call or text the Missing People helpline on 116000. Alternatively you can email 116000@missingpeople.org.uk
I have an update on the case of Trevaline Evans which I covered in episode 2 of Persons Unknown. The 52 year old grandmother disappeared from Llangollen in North Wales on June 16th 1990. She left her antique shop just before 1pm with a message on the door reading 'back in five minutes'. Her car was left parked by the shop. The last confirmed sighting was at 2.30pm near her home on Market Street, a short distance from the shop. One of the most recent developments in the case occurred at the beginning of January 2021 when a message was inscribed on a plaque affixed to a bench on a popular walking path 50km from Trevaline's hometown. The message on the plaque read “In memory of Trevaline Evans Vanished 16/6/1990. Found - Rhuddlan GC 14/3/2019 Removed 19/3/2019 RIP". The identity of the person or persons responsible for this message is unknown.
The plaque was believed to be in reference to a theory put forward by two brothers, Lee and Andrew Sutton, who said that in a conversation they overheard in a pub it was said that Trevaline's remains were buried underneath the clubhouse at Rhuddlan golf club. The brothers used heat seeking equipment that they said pointed to something being buried under the flooring. The police acted on this information but found nothing. The brothers denied being responsible for the plaque on the bench, which was later removed by the local council.
Ust a couple of weeks ago on the 4th May 2022 Wales Online and the Daily Mirror newspaper reported that a new message about Trevaline Evans's disappearance had been discovered on a bench at Pant-y-Fachwen, the remains of a 200-year-old miner's cottage near Prestatyn, an hour's drive north of Llangollen.
The new inscription reads:
“Justice awaits those responsible for the removal and disposal of Trevaline Evans (in this life or next) from Rhuddlan Golf Club on March 19, 2019 at noon. May the Lord have mercy upon their soul." Again the identity of the person behind this message is unknown. What is clear is that someone believes Trevaline was murdered and buried at Rhuddlan Golf club .The clubhouse is near the place where the Evans's owned a holiday bungalow. Trevaline’s husband Richard was staying there the day his wife vanished. He was arrested in connection with his wife’s disappearance in 2001 when the case was reviewed by police but he was released soon afterwards without charge.
I will keep you abreast of any future developments. I have heard that Channel 4 are making a documentary on the case which will be out later this year.
One other case which has seen a development in recent months is the unsolved murder of Billie Jo Jenkins, covered by Persons Unknown in episode 14. Police are currently reviewing the DNA evidence in the case. If you have listened to the episode you will remember that the tiny microscopic blood particles found on the clothing of Billie Jo’s foster father Sion Jenkins clothing were key evidence. In 1998 he was found guilty for her murder, the forensic evidence played a vital role. Eight years later, in 2006, he was acquitted, largely based on the undermining of the same evidence. Advances in technology are such that police believe another look at the forensic evidence is now worthwhile. They have been under pressure to do this for some time. Police have been keen to stress that the case is not being re-investigated, it is just the existing evidence that is being re-examined.
Again I will let you know of any further developments.
