Distraught families’ seven days of agony
IT HAS been the longest and hardest week of the lives of the parents of missing 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
From a world of summer barbecues and sunny holidays, they have been plunged into a nightmare of televised appeals and searches for shallow graves.
The girls’ plight was first made public last Monday morning, when Cambridgeshire police said they were “increasingly concerned” for their safety.
That afternoon came the first of many press conferences by Holly’s father Kevin, 38, a contract cleaner, and mother Nicola, a 35-year-old secretary, and Jessica’s dad Leslie, 51, a maintenance engineer, and 43-year-old care assistant mother Sharon.
Clinging to hopes that the pair may be messing around, Mr Chapman said: “Come home, all is forgiven ... It is just a complete mystery as to why she has not phoned us.”
On Tuesday Manchester United soccer star David Beckham appealed to the girls to go home, saying: “You are not in any kind of trouble. Your parents love you deeply and want you back.” Holly and Jessica are both massive fans and both were wearing red replica Beckham shirts when they disappeared.
At another press conference later that day, Mr Wells fought back tears and said: “We have had to experience friends and family searching ditches and rivers looking for shallow graves for our children. It doesn’t get any more difficult than that.”
Wednesday brought the first admission, by senior officer Detective Superintendent David Hankins, that the girls may have been abducted.
Both sets of parents gave another press conference. “We just want them home,” said a sobbing Mrs Wells.
Express Newspapers offered a £1 million reward for information, while the Sun and the News of the World offered £150,000.
On Thursday detectives changed tack, making a direct appeal to “any possible abductor” who might be holding the girls and trying to avoid provoking them into any hasty action.
By Friday investigations were focusing on the internet, which the girls may have used in the 24 minutes they spent on the computer immediately before their disappearance.
Detectives said “significant” leads had emerged from studying the computer. It was believed they were looking at the possibility that the girls might have been lured by e-mail or a chatroom.
Holly and Jessica’s friends Jennie White, Natalie Parr, Sean Flack and Reece Jarvis, all aged 10, made renewed pleas for their safe return.
Sean had a silver Valentine’s card that Holly had sent him containing a picture of her.
Officers had by now virtually finished their search of Soham itself without any breakthroughs, although they were continuing house to house inquiries and began searching outlying areas of the town, including fields, ditches, drains and waterways.
