The Missing

The Missing is BACK - Launching on June 12th - a brand new series with TEN more stories of long-term missing people.

Once again brought to you with the support of the charities Locate International and Missing People, and hosted by Pandora Sykes.

A What's The Story Sounds Production

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rachel Pickthall has been birdwatching for as long as she can remember. It's a passion she shared with her older brother Simon and as children, the pair spent many an evening together camped out in their back garden, bird guide in one hand and binoculars in the other.

In late December 2013, Simon, then aged 48, travelled to Bempton Cliffs on the Yorkshire coast, the UK's largest mainland seabird colony. The last few years hadn't been kind to him...

What would you do if the police knocked on your door one day and told you they had just arrested your parents for your brother’s murder? That was the nightmare scenario facing Victoria Orr, whose beloved mother and father were taken into custody in September 2020, suspected of killing their own son. Steven Clark had vanished during a walk in the seaside village of Saltburn almost two decades earlier, when he was twenty-three years old...

When Carmel Fenech went missing in London in the summer of 1998, her mother Deirdre, of Broadfield, Crawley, didn’t panic. She was well practised at bringing her daughter home.This wasn't the first, second or even tenth time her child had gone AWOL. Carmel had a well documented drug problem, one that had pulled her into the orbit of people and places that no-one, let alone a sixteen year old girl, should find themselves...

It doesn’t matter how old your children get, whenever they go on a trip you’re always dreading that phone call…The one that often comes in the early hours of the morning…The one with the solemn voice at the end of the line. 

The Nutley family of the Welsh village of Caerwent, received one such call in October 2004. James, who at 25 was the eldest son, had failed to return to his hotel after the first night of a golfing trip...

Consider what the average person goes through when they’re trying to locate a missing loved one. For starters there’s the ongoing dialogue with the authorities, where you’re doing your utmost to provide the investigation with the information it needs to progress. Then you have the media, as well as poster and online campaigns to manage, in an effort to get the word out as quickly as possible...

Sandra Gant of Clacton-on-Sea in Essex has three daughters, Carrie, Michaela and Lauren. Their relationship with their mother has always been fraught, complicated as it was by her struggles with alcoholism. Sandra lost a lot of battles with her demons over the years but as we all know, addiction is a war…one Sandra was very much still fighting when she disappeared on the 14th of November, 2003. The Gant siblings knew the police could only be so helpful.....

Rachel Pickthall has been birdwatching for as long as she can remember. It's a passion she shared with her older brother Simon and as children, the pair spent many an evening together camped out in their back garden, bird guide in one hand and binoculars in the other.

In late December 2013, Simon, then aged 48, travelled to Bempton Cliffs on the Yorkshire coast, the UK's largest mainland seabird colony. The last few years hadn't been kind to him...

500 yards is a relatively short distance. Its about the length of four and a half football pitches, a journey most of us could make in six minutes or less.

It also happens to be the distance between Sperrings community shop on Lower Addiscombe Road in Croydon and the home of the Hicks family. On a cold spring night in 1986, sixteen year old Kevin Hicks walked out his front door with nothing but a pound in his pocket and headed in the direction of the local shop to buy some eggs...

On the 23rd of March 2020, due to the growing threat posed by the coronavirus, the United Kingdom locked down. For most of us, it marked the start of many months spent trapped in our homes, where the lack of freedom and face to face contact with others, had a profound effect on our collective mental health. 

One such person was James Miller, a thirty-seven year old mechanic, who on the night of December 22nd 2020 walked out of his family home, never to return...