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E277: April Fabb
1.5k Plays22 hours ago
A bent bell. A bike tossed six feet into a field. A rush of leads that cancel each other out: a bloody handkerchief, conflicting train sightings, a black Morris, a red-and-gray van. In this episode, we trace April Fabb’s 1969 disappearance minute-by-minute and ask the question residents of Norfolk, England have asked for decades: what happened in the nine minute window during which April disappeared?
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Transcript
Transforming Case Files into Personal Stories
00:00:00
Speaker
I always say that one of the most important things to do in our coverage each week is the task of turning a case file back into a person where the focus should be.
00:00:13
Speaker
This week, it hit me especially close to home. I kept thinking about how much time i spent as a child on a bike, hugging the shoulder of the big highway that ran past our trailer, then ducking off onto those skinny back roads where you could hear every bird and every car long before you saw them.
00:00:34
Speaker
on the outskirts of an already small town like that that I lived in, i felt safe. It felt like freedom. and only now, hindsight being the loudmouth that it is, do I catch myself thinking, how many times did that freedom depend on the right stranger driving by instead of the wrong one?
00:00:59
Speaker
That's a question that we'll grapple with in our case this week as well.
Introduction to April Fab's Disappearance
00:01:04
Speaker
This is the case of Fab. April Fab
00:01:42
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases, where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron. We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement so justice and closure can be brought to these families.
00:02:01
Speaker
With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee in Cases Podcast, because, as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive.
00:02:14
Speaker
So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
Background on April Fab and Norfolk
00:02:19
Speaker
In our case this week, we are headed across the pond. We're going to North Norfolk in England.
00:02:27
Speaker
Picture small villages, hedgerows, and ribbons and lanes. We're going to the home of the Fab family who lived at three council houses in the tiny village of Metton.
00:02:41
Speaker
Parents Albert and Olive had three daughters. April, the youngest of the three, was 13 years old on April 8th, 1969, when this case takes place.
00:02:53
Speaker
She was to turn 14 in just two weeks time on April twenty second April's older sisters, Diane and Pamela, had already moved out of the home. Well, some sources said Diane still lived at home, but if that is the case, it doesn't sound like she was present on the day this case took place.
00:03:15
Speaker
I think April's case hit me so hard because she could have been any one of the students Maggie and I have taught. Shy, but friendly, sensible, crafty, kind.
00:03:29
Speaker
April loved animals, especially the family's terrier, Trudy. And she was a typical teenager in the 1960s. Her hobbies were stamp collecting, needlework, including making her own clothes,
00:03:43
Speaker
and music. Her favorite show was called Top of the Pops, where musical artists would perform their chart-topping hits. And April's favorite band, Amen Corner, whose posters hung all over her room, had been on the show before.
00:03:59
Speaker
April also babysat for a local family and went to church, St. Andrews, with her family. And like me when I was younger, and even more popular in the decades previous to mine, she loved to ride her bike to get to friends' houses.
00:04:15
Speaker
She would ride it to their homes, to the local phone box, because home phones weren't necessarily common at the time, especially in rural areas like where she lived. So she would ride her bike to that public phone to call friends who did have home phones, or she would ride her bike to her sister Pamela's house in Roughton, where she lived with her husband and young son.
00:04:40
Speaker
British schools have a two-week break around Easter, and April's break was about halfway through by April 8th, but it was still a great time to relax and spend time with friends and family.
April's Activities on April 8th
00:04:54
Speaker
On that day, April eighth April slept in until around 10 and then started washing some dishes until her mom, Olive, got home about 15 minutes later.
00:05:07
Speaker
And I'll go ahead and tell you that I owe special thanks to the Still at Large podcast for many of the details in the timeline for April 8th. The most details I found were on that particular podcast.
00:05:24
Speaker
It was from that podcast that I learned that April's mom, Olive, was cleaning a local rectory or a clergyman's house and had come home to get a duster before heading back out.
00:05:38
Speaker
When Olive finished that cleaning, she came home and had lunch with her youngest daughter, april During lunch, April told her mom about some plans that she had to make the most of the rest of her school holiday by going to Norwich with her friend Jillian.
00:05:53
Speaker
April had planned to go with her friend Susan too, but Susan worked at a local hotel and wasn't able to get off work to go. On this particular day, after she finished up lunch, April was going to ride her bike to the public phone nearby to call her friend Jillian to confirm plans for the next day.
00:06:13
Speaker
And after lunch, April did just that. And she came home thrilled that plans were finally confirmed for their outing to Norwich. With nothing much else to do at home, April then decided to go visit her sister Pamela.
00:06:28
Speaker
Remember that Pamela lived close by, only about two miles away, or about a 10 to 15 minute bike ride, and April visited her often, so this was a normal trip. except it had a special purpose for April.
00:06:42
Speaker
She wanted to take a birthday present to her brother-in-law, a pack of 10 players' weights cigarettes, which she wrapped up in a handkerchief along with some change, five-pence, half-penny, and she put that in the saddlebag of her blue and white bicycle.
00:07:00
Speaker
She dressed in a green sweater, wine-colored skirt with white knee socks, and and wooden-soled shoes. She pulled her hair back with a brown ribbon and dabbed on a little lipstick. And you know she probably loved dabbling in makeup at this age.
00:07:16
Speaker
In fact, of April, here is what Maurice Morrison, former head of the Norfolk Criminal Investigation Department, said of her, that she, quote, may have been described as a child, but she was approaching young womanhood.
00:07:32
Speaker
blue-eyed, fair-haired, well-developed young girl with a pretty oval face." end quote And this young girl was excited to take this gift to her brother-in-law.
00:07:45
Speaker
She knew that he would love the cigarettes as the gift. And I'm thinking that she took the change with her because according to that podcast, there was a sweets shop along the route. And I mean, why not?
00:07:59
Speaker
It was a decently warm day for the month of April in England, so April and her mom discussed whether or not she would need a coat for the short ride, and April eventually decided against it.
00:08:11
Speaker
With that and a cheerio to her mom, April grabbed her bike from the garage and set off for her sister's house right around 2 April had only gone about 100 yards, the length of an American football field, before she ran into some friends beside Donkey Field, ah appropriately named since the local farmer, Farmer Harrison, kept his donkey there.
00:08:36
Speaker
And April chatted with these friends for a little less than 10 minutes before getting back to her route headed to her sister's.
Discovery of April's Abandoned Bike
00:08:43
Speaker
April decided to take a quiet country road called Bath Lane, which would take her by that candy shop for the rest of the ride.
00:08:52
Speaker
Around 2.06 p.m., Father Harrison, for whom April and her friends sometimes babysat, So he was someone who knew April, passed April in the lane, he and his vehicle and her on her bike.
00:09:06
Speaker
He remembers because he noticed that she was riding on the wrong side of the road, but she was going in the direction of Roughton, where her sister lived. A short nine minutes later at 2.15 p.m.,
00:09:21
Speaker
three ordinance survey workers, like field surveyors who update maps, noticed a discarded bicycle in a field near the road down a six-foot bank from the lane.
00:09:36
Speaker
Around 3 p.m., the bike was still there, and this time was noticed by David Empson, who was driving his mother when she noticed the bike from the passenger window.
00:09:48
Speaker
They talked about what they should do, whether the bike might have been stolen and discarded or what, since it looked like it had been almost tossed over the embankment from the road. Eventually, Emsund climbed over to where the bike was and took it to the police station in Roughton.
00:10:06
Speaker
The police noticed the bell on the bike was slightly bent. Maybe it had been thrown from the road, but it was otherwise in good shape. In the saddlebag, they found handkerchiefs holding 10 cigarettes and some coins.
00:10:24
Speaker
Meanwhile, back at the fab home, April's mom was none the wiser with hours passing, thinking that April was just enjoying herself visiting with her sister.
00:10:34
Speaker
However, by around 8.45 that evening, when April hadn't yet returned home, her mom started to worry, mostly because it was dark and April's bike didn't have a headlight.
00:10:47
Speaker
Remember that there aren't home phones out here in the country, so April's mom decided to ride herself over to Pamela's house.
The Search Begins: April is Missing
00:10:56
Speaker
But when she got there, she found that April had never even arrived.
00:11:01
Speaker
on the road, way home, she passed her husband, who used the phone at the local rectory to start calling around to April's friends, the local hospital, every place that they could think of.
00:11:12
Speaker
But no one had seen April, save for the friends she stopped to talk with. But remember, that was around 2 p.m. But at least they could say the last time that April was seen.
00:11:24
Speaker
It was around 10 p.m. when Albert Fab called police to describe his missing daughter and her bicycle. Immediately, the officer on the phone, Police Constable Chittick, recognized the description.
00:11:40
Speaker
It was the bike that David Empson had brought to him. Through that night, torchlight searches were conducted along Back Lane and among the hedgerows.
00:11:52
Speaker
Then in the early hours of Wednesday, April 9th, the head of Norfolk CID, Detective Chief Superintendent Reg Lester took charge. This was standard when police feared foul play and Reg Lester suspected from the jump that Averill had been abducted.
00:12:11
Speaker
On day one of the search on Wednesday, 40 officers and every police dog in the county descended on tiny Metton, nearly doubling the Hamlet's population.
00:12:25
Speaker
RAF helicopter quartered the fields from above and Aylsham Roundtable pitched in. Descriptions of April, five foot four inches tall, light brown hair, blue eyes went out everywhere.
00:12:38
Speaker
April's father was quoted in the press saying, quote, she's the sort of girl that if she saw some primroses, she would likely go and pick them, end quote. And for a while, that image held the family together.
Emerging Clues and Dead Ends
00:12:52
Speaker
This thought that maybe she wandered off and afraid of the dark and with the path home unclear, had decided to wait it out until morning. but no one found her.
00:13:03
Speaker
Day two Thursday, became what the Eastern Daily Press called a quote, day of clues, end quote. Someone found a bloody handkerchief embroidered with the letter a Reports trickled in about a speeding van.
00:13:17
Speaker
Train passengers remembered a teenage girl boarding a Norwich-bound train, and remember that was where April said she was going to be headed the next day. So police widened the net.
00:13:29
Speaker
Frogmen searched the lakes, posters went up at train stations, at cafes, hotels were checked. All the while, detectives started a formal timeline and a house to house canvassing that would reach 419 questionnaires and 1,971 statements in that first verse of activity in april's case By day three, Friday, April's parents appealed through the press.
00:14:01
Speaker
They left the porch light on and the door unlocked overnight just in case their girl came home. Those lights never got to do their job of guiding their baby girl, though.
00:14:13
Speaker
Police pressure mounted day by day into a sweeping inquiry that officers would later describe as Norfolk's biggest for half a century.
00:14:24
Speaker
Leads were chased in every direction. Two lady residents in Rowton reported a scream and that Tuesday night just before 11 p.m., though no engine noises were heard.
00:14:36
Speaker
An elderly couple who'd been parked near the field recalled nothing suspicious between the last confirmed sighting of April around 2.06 p.m. and the discovery of the bicycle at 2.15 p.m. by the surveyors, though the couple did admit that it was warm outside and they may have dozed off.
00:14:54
Speaker
and a bus driver remembered a girl who looked like April asking for a shilling at the Victoria coach station in London. Those leads though, didn't pan out.
00:15:04
Speaker
That London claim was ruled out and the quote unquote scream was never tied to April. The two train sightings, Cromer to Norwich at 3.45 p.m. and Waiting on the Norwich platform at North Walsham at 6.15 p.m., both on April 8th, were hammered hard with public appeals and passenger interviews.
00:15:26
Speaker
Ultimately, investigators concluded that those were lookalike sightings, not April And then there were the vehicles seen passing through the area, including a red and gray minivan and a black Morris.
00:15:42
Speaker
Witnesses in Metin reported a scruffy black Morris, described as a van by some. So scruffy meaning dirty or shabby, black Morris car. This is a car, Sleuth Hounds. I will post a picture on social media so you can see it.
00:16:00
Speaker
But this car, they reported, was driven erratically that afternoon with two people in the vehicle. Police traced it. The registered owner was in prison at the time, but he only co-owned the vehicle.
00:16:14
Speaker
The other owner, a known petty criminal, matched the description of the man seen behind the wheel. ah builder almost collided with that vehicle on april eighth A shopkeeper recalled a man, same description, out-of-towner, trying to change a fistful of sixpences into paper money.
00:16:37
Speaker
So police found him and hauled him in He admitted to being in the area, admitted the near-mists in what would have been a collision with the builder.
Theories and Suspects Examined
00:16:47
Speaker
admitted trying to change the coins, but he wouldn't say where the sixpences had come from, he wouldn't give up the name of his accomplice, and he denied knowing anything about a missing girl.
00:17:02
Speaker
Well, forensics found no link to April in the vehicle, Eventually, the working hypothesis came. He and an a unknown person, his accomplice, were breaking into public phone boxes, smashing out the small change, and had fled erratically after being seen, hence almost hitting the builder.
00:17:24
Speaker
This man's partner has never been identified, so doubts still lingered. Might they have hit April on her bike and disposed of her somewhere?
00:17:36
Speaker
Or could they have abducted her? But the evidence never connected them fully. On the bicycle itself, Detective Sergeant Dick Brass gave it the careful look you would expect.
00:17:50
Speaker
Like I said, it was a well-kept, almost new-looking blue-and-white bike. The only obvious damage was a slightly bent bell, consistent with it being thrown over the embankment and hitting at that angle, not with being hit by a car." The position where the bike had been seen by all the witnesses, about six feet from the field edge, suggested whoever tossed it had some strength.
00:18:20
Speaker
And remember, inside the saddlebag, the cigarette and coins and handkerchief sat undisturbed. If these two men in the Black Morris were taking change from phones, if they had something to do with April's disappearance as well, in my mind, they would likely have checked the saddlebag and taken the coins.
00:18:42
Speaker
and Unless, of course, if they did hit April, they had been too shaken to do so. Now, here's the part that's both very small town and very 1969.
00:18:55
Speaker
Kids in the area had been car spotting, so standing by the road and writing down license plate numbers. police actually collected 406 numbers from those lists that those kids had.
00:19:10
Speaker
Now, plenty were miscoffied and some even invented because these kids made it into a competition. so we're just making some up to pad the tally. But the logs still covered the crucial window starting at 1.45 p.m.
00:19:26
Speaker
And those lists became critical to evaluating claims about who was where, when. Police at least had somewhere to go, but quickly they found that those leads didn't bring them any closer to finding April.
00:19:42
Speaker
The red and gray minivan driver was never identified. That brings us to the man whose name gets thrown around unfairly in some retellings, the motorist who turned in April's bike, David Empson.
00:19:59
Speaker
His name gets tossed around likely because one fingerprint not belonging to April was lifted from the bike and it belonged to David, probably because he picked up the bike to bring it to the police.
00:20:13
Speaker
And because people do that thing that whoever finds the thing must be the one who did the thing. so police did take a hard look at him, which to be fair, they should.
00:20:27
Speaker
One witness had placed David near the area around 2.10 p.m., smack in the middle of the disappearance window rather than at three when he said his mom spotted the bike.
00:20:40
Speaker
But the car spotting logs didn't support that earlier sighting and none of the vehicles that David Empson had access to appeared in the car spotting logs.
00:20:50
Speaker
So after interviews and checks and an alibi established, the focus moved on. What lingered in the public is what always lingers in a vacuum.
00:21:02
Speaker
suspicion. By week's end, officers had drained the obvious leads. The bloody handkerchief embroidered with the A, well, a woman came forward. She had used it on her son's skinned knee.
00:21:16
Speaker
The runaway idea? It too fell away as alibis were checked and the timeline tightened. Police formally discounted the idea that April had just decided not to come home.
00:21:28
Speaker
Months the headlines turned from clues to still no news, and as anniversaries ticked by, the case settled into a long winter of cold case work.
Ongoing Searches and Unsolved Mysteries
00:21:41
Speaker
Years later, Morrison said of April, quote, "'She's Norfolk's Mary Celeste, our Lord Lucan,' end quote." And that name, Norfolk's Mary Celeste, stuck because April's story felt like the abandoned ship that Maggie covered in episode 110, like a life paused mid-errand.
00:22:09
Speaker
And yet the case never truly went to sleep. In 1997, police used thermal imaging to re-survey the area. In 2010, they excavated a well after a landowner reported seeing black polythene at the bottom around Easter 1969. Those efforts and others, unfortunately though, found nothing.
00:22:34
Speaker
Some locals still believe construction at the gas terminal swallowed secrets from that spring, but police say pipelines were searched thoroughly to no avail.
00:22:46
Speaker
The police appeals came again at the 50th and 55th anniversaries. Retired Detective Chief Inspector Andy Guy, who has learned April's file pretty much inside out and has said the case has, quote, never been closed, end quote, has said this plainly to news reporters, quote, April was either abducted by someone from away who just happened to be in the area at the time or it was close to home.
00:23:15
Speaker
somebody she knew. If it was the latter case, there may be people in Norfolk who suspect what happened and never came forward. There may be somebody who every anniversary acts oddly, who doesn't want to have the TV on or want to discuss this particular event.
00:23:35
Speaker
It may be something simple that raises concern amongst other people who live with them." end quote for our head of Norfolk CID, Maurice Morrison, who took the case on in 1983 and whom I've referenced several times in this episode already, wrote a book about April's case.
00:23:54
Speaker
And he too still gets notes and hand-drawn maps shoved under his door around each anniversary, but none have led to solid answers.
00:24:05
Speaker
So we only have the theories. Let's get into those now. Okay, I'm gonna really run the board this time, slow and careful, and stress test every theory against what we actually have, which isn't a whole lot.
00:24:23
Speaker
We have the nine-minute window between 2.06 p.m. and roughly 2.15 p.m., the quiet rural geography of Back Lane, the bicycle hurled six feet into a freshly plowed field, and a saddlebag still holding the contents that April had packed.
00:24:41
Speaker
Theory number one, runaway. In 1969, that was practically a reflex headline, but the internal logic just doesn't hold.
00:24:53
Speaker
Averill had a plan for the next day to go to Norwich with Jillian. Her errand parcel for this day was still in the saddlebag, the plan she made for this evening.
00:25:06
Speaker
She was also shy and sensible. And runaway has to explain the bike being tossed off the lane six feet into the field rather than abandoned somewhere ordinary, like f leaning it against a fence or left outside the sweet shop.
00:25:26
Speaker
The fact that it was thrown shows, remember, according to police, that it would have taken someone strong to do that. not April. And even at the most basic level, this theory doesn't fit.
00:25:41
Speaker
If she had meant to run away, she would have needed the bicycle or the money or both. Still, investigators did the legwork. They interviewed hundreds of passengers off the train leads. They checked the London bus station tip.
00:25:58
Speaker
and they discounted at the end of the day their runaway theory pretty fast. I bring it up as a theory only so we can get it out of the way and move on to others.
00:26:09
Speaker
Theory number two, a hit and run with disposal elsewhere. This is the one people reach for when a bicycle is found without a body. A driver hits a girl, panics, hides her somewhere, then throws the bike to confuse the scene.
00:26:25
Speaker
Could someone theoretically do that in nine minutes? If, and it's a big if, he struck her on a nearby empty lane, lifted her, shoved her into a car, reversed, scrambled up the bank, chucked the bike, scrambled back, and drove away, all without anyone seeing or hearing a thing.
00:26:46
Speaker
It's not impossible, but the bike itself argues back. Tidy, cared for, only a slightly bent bell, no rash of road impact scars, no bent frame congruent with a strike by a car.
00:27:02
Speaker
The field was freshly plowed and the bike sat roughly six feet from the bank. Law enforcement read that as a throw, not the impact from a collision.
00:27:14
Speaker
There were also no tire marks noticeable along the lane. If there were an accident, it almost certainly wasn't there. In short, you could force the pieces to fit, but the scene doesn't really fit this theory.
Examination of Key Figures and Theories
00:27:31
Speaker
i
00:27:35
Speaker
a Theory number three, the finder did it theory. I bring this up really because if I don't, some listeners will.
00:27:46
Speaker
David Empson, remember, is the man's name. He was in a brown car with his mother. They turned at Pillar Box Corner and came back along the back lane. David had climbed the bank, crossed the furrows, picked up the bike, and taken it to the police station in Roughton.
00:28:05
Speaker
He suggested to the officer to whom he turned the bike in that it might be stolen. So why did suspicion focus on him Because that one witness I told you about who tried to place David there at 2.10 p.m., which, if true, would pin him right inside the nine-minute window,
00:28:24
Speaker
and because police had found one serviceable fingerprint on the handlebars consistent with Empson's handling, and his footprints were the only ones in the plowed field, which again is consistent with him crossing it to get the bike.
00:28:43
Speaker
What did the inquiry do with that? Well, they checked it against the kids' car spotting notebooks. At the same time I recognized that the list the kids made wasn't known to be particularly accurate, his car wasn't on the list At the time, that would have been consistent with 2.10 p.m.
00:29:03
Speaker
The forensics actually lined up with David's story. The behavior lined up with that of a good Samaritan. The logs didn't put him where the innuendo needed him.
00:29:16
Speaker
That's not, we like him, so we looked away. That's how a proper elimination sounds. You test the thing that makes your stomach not. and the thing doesn't hold.
00:29:27
Speaker
and my mind, David Empson can be eliminated. Theory number four, the driver and accomplice in the Black Morris, or the driver of that red and gray van.
00:29:39
Speaker
It does seem odd that the driver of that Black Morris questioned by police was helpful up to a point. Recall, he admitted being in the area. He admitted the near collision. He admitted trying to change the coins, but he stonewalled on where the sixpences came from. He refused to name his accomplice.
00:29:58
Speaker
He denied knowing anything about the missing girl, but... Could that be because of the theft of the phone box change and he didn't want to get in trouble? Or is it because he knows more than he's letting on?
00:30:11
Speaker
As I mentioned earlier, though, a search of the vehicle produced nothing to tie it to April. And I ask this, could the bungling car that almost hit a builder because of driving erratically have also pulled off a silent, almost surgically precise abduction inside nine minutes, a bicycle tossed into a field and all left without a trace?
00:30:40
Speaker
Now we do still have the red and gray minivan that was reportedly seen within the area and never identified. The fact that the driver was never found does dangle a thread where you want to tug. And I feel that same tug, but years later, we still have nothing to either prove or rule out this possibility.
00:31:05
Speaker
Theories number five through seven are focused on abduction. Now the fork DCI i Andy Guy keeps underlining. A local abductor versus a predator, quote, from away, end quote.
00:31:19
Speaker
And we will look at two specific people for that portion of the theory. i will make the best case I can for each of these because listeners deserve the honest tension.
00:31:31
Speaker
Theory number five, for quote unquote local, it had to be a man, and I only say man because of the strength comment from the thrown bike, who knows back lane, knows the hedgerow sidelines, knows when the lane would be more busy or more quiet.
00:31:48
Speaker
I did read that lots of tourists actually visited the area during Easter holiday, so this knowledge would have come in handy. If someone local or recognizable to April, it could explain her getting into the car without a sound or a scream, though it doesn't fully explain why she didn't do either of the two when the bike was thrown.
00:32:07
Speaker
He could even have possibly gotten her off the lane with a practiced story, like, your dad asked me to fetch you, or there's a phone call at the phone box for you, or your sister sent me to walk you the rest of the way, or any number of things.
00:32:23
Speaker
He could have hidden a vehicle in a way that looks ordinary in farm country because he understands it. He could even lob a bicycle and be gone down a byway that no outsider would risk or perhaps even know about.
00:32:36
Speaker
This version has plausibility because it shrinks the number of things an outside offender would need to guess. However, if someone local, that's a very long time to keep a secret.
00:32:49
Speaker
For perpetrators, quote, from away, end quote, it was likely someone like the predators our generation of parents learned to fear and told us about with stranger danger.
00:33:01
Speaker
Those honed for roadside snatches, using a van sliding door made for speed. He or he and an accomplice needs only a quiet minute and a blind patch.
00:33:12
Speaker
He stops, the door opens, he closes the distance, the child is inside, the door slides, the bicycle is ejected, the van is rolling. The choreography fits the nine minutes too well not to discuss it.
00:33:25
Speaker
If you add in the absence of any trace of April FAB, despite all the types of searches police conducted, you get exactly what a practiced abductor can produce, a vacuum where a person used to be.
00:33:39
Speaker
All right, names for theories number six and number seven, and I do want to take a moment to issue a warning.
Potential Links to Known Criminals
00:33:47
Speaker
i am about to talk about very sensitive crimes against children, so listener discretion is advised.
00:33:56
Speaker
Theory number six, Peter Tobin. Tobin's name legitimately threads through Norfolk in terms of abductions. The outline is stark. He is a man who drifted between addresses and jobs, who used aliases, whose movements in 1969 and 1970 are genuinely murky at best.
00:34:15
Speaker
He is also a man who holidayed on the Norfolk Broads near where April lived, and it was, remember, a school holiday. He is also a man who was later convicted of three murders, Angelica Klug, age 23, and separately, both Vicki Hamilton and Dinah McNichol, who were both teenagers.
00:34:37
Speaker
And he was suspected of many more. In fact, he told a prison psychiatrist that he killed 48 women. In the language of criminologists, he's called a quote, sexual sadist, end quote.
00:34:51
Speaker
And crucially for April's profile, quote, Tobin was opportunistic murderer, end quote. Someone who sees victim when circumstance presented the opportunity.
00:35:04
Speaker
specifically why he is linked often to April, according to an article for Ipswich Star titled, Did Peter Tobin Kill in Norfolk? Quote, Furthermore, the abduction took place on Easter Monday, which fitted with Tobin's habit of taking bank holiday breaks in Norfolk, end quote.
00:35:23
Speaker
So holiday, check. Norfolk broads, check. A teenager on a bicycle carrying a small gift down a rural country lane with no one around?
00:35:34
Speaker
The geography of chance and opportunity? Check. What's more, Norfolk is, as that same article put it, a quote, important hotspot in relation to Operation Anagram, end quote.
00:35:49
Speaker
And that is a name referencing the nationwide scoping of Tobin's past addresses, jobs, travel, and aliases to see who else he may have harmed.
00:36:01
Speaker
So they are saying that Norfolk, This area where April Fabb went missing is a hotspot of activity for Tobin. While his first known killing happened in 1991, a criminologist at Birmingham City University, Professor David Wilson, told the Ipswich Star reporter, quote, several of the Norfolk cases were soon found to contain his hallmarks.
00:36:28
Speaker
He did not start killing in 1991 when Dinah McNichol was killed. Serial murder is a young man's business, and people tend to start to murder in their late teens or early 20s, end quote.
00:36:43
Speaker
Wilson believes April Fabb might have been one of Tobin's first victims. But here's the counterargument. absent a receipt, an eyewitness, a tenancy stub, a work slip, or a scrap that puts him in Metton's back lane on April 8th, 1969.
00:37:03
Speaker
All the holiday habit and opportunism talk helps us understand the kind of offender whom could have taken April, but it doesn't turn Tobin into that offender without that evidence.
00:37:15
Speaker
Is it possible for Tobin? 100%. Is it proven? No. And law enforcement in April's case have been very clear. They said Tobin was investigated, but as of yet, there is no evidence to link him to her case.
00:37:33
Speaker
Now, our final theory, theory number seven, Robert Black. This monster, i don't even want to say person, let alone man, has to be one of the most disgusting I've read about in quite some time.
00:37:47
Speaker
Before the van and the fuel receipts and the headlines that we'll discuss in a minute, there was a baby boy born in 1947 Fulkirk to a single mother, Jesse Hunter Black,
00:37:59
Speaker
who was placed in foster care right after birth. By the time Robert Black was 11, both of his foster parents had died and he was removed to a children's home.
00:38:11
Speaker
According to an article titled, and get ready because it's a long one, Robert Black was Britain's most prolific child killer, says policemen who investigated him. Pedophile now linked to 19 murders over two decades. Yes, that was the entire title.
00:38:28
Speaker
As a child, he, quote, claimed his desire to self-abuse and his fascination with young girls, end quote, had already started. At 12, he was accused of trying to rape a young girl and was sent to an all-boys home, where he also later said he was abused by a male staffer.
00:38:47
Speaker
At the time, he would walk to Portobello to swim and work as a lifeguard. This was two decades before a five-year-old Caroline Hogg vanished from near those same pools.
00:39:00
Speaker
At age 15, he left for Greenock. A year later, in 1963, a lured 7-year-old from a swing park with the promise of kittens, choked her to, quote, within an inch of her life, end quote, violated her, and left her unconscious in an air raid shelter.
00:39:22
Speaker
for which he received only a caution for lewd behavior as a punishment. He later abused the daughter of the family who was lodging him, and in 1967 was convicted on three indecent assault counts and sent to prison for one year.
00:39:44
Speaker
Immediately after release, he moved to London and according to that same article became, quote, immersed in the sordid world of under the counter child pornography, end quote.
00:39:55
Speaker
He took pool attendant jobs so he could watch young girls and he privately acted out a swimsuit fetish. When he was finally caught in 1990, police found a one piece swimsuit, quote, sized to fit ages eight to 10, end quote, in his van.
00:40:13
Speaker
In the 1970s, he began out of the country trips to Copenhagen and Amsterdam for hardcore child abuse material. Around that same time, Black got a driver's license.
00:40:26
Speaker
And in 1976, he took a poster delivery job that required him to continually drive around the country and in essence, turns the back of his van into a roaming lair.
00:40:41
Speaker
Now we know that Black targeted girls in daylight near Rhodes. He got them into the van and drove away quickly. He moved bodies far enough to break jurisdictional spines, as I'll tell you about here in just a moment.
00:40:58
Speaker
When law enforcement finally caught him in 1990, he had a six-year-old in the back of his van, thankfully still alive in a sleeping bag in the back, though he had violated her in the moments just before he was caught.
00:41:16
Speaker
The prosecution then built their case on the mountain of evidence that showed Black's movements in the years of his crimes. Fuel receipts, delivery dockets, timings, maps.
00:41:30
Speaker
They matched his roots to the abduction window of Susan Maxwell, age 11, in 1982, Caroline Hogg, age 5, 1983, Sarah Harper, age 10, 1986,
00:41:43
Speaker
sarah harver age ten in nineteen eighty s and finally to Jennifer Cardi, age nine, in his earliest verified crime in 1981.
00:41:56
Speaker
Sadly, the narrative of those cases is painfully similar. A child on the edge of the road, a slice of time, ah van, a rush of searchers, and a body found at a great distance.
00:42:11
Speaker
According to an article by Russell Myers for The Mirror, quote, his psychopathic tendencies were constant. He was every parent's worst nightmare, and his lust for killing was endless, end quote.
00:42:26
Speaker
He also was, in the words of one former prosecutor, quote, an aggressive, predatory pedophile, quote, methodical and careful, and, quote, extremely cunning, end quote.
00:42:41
Speaker
Black himself admitted, quote, I've always liked young girls since I was a young kid, end quote. So let's lay out the known murders of Black with the details that echo fril's case.
00:42:58
Speaker
Jennifer Cardy, age nine, abducted while riding a bicycle to a friend's house on April 12th, 1981. Her body was found six days later in a dam near Hillsborough.
00:43:12
Speaker
Detectives scoured close to half a million fuel receipts and finally found one with Black's name that placed him driving south from the scene of this crime the next day.
00:43:26
Speaker
Susan Maxwell, age 11, vanished on July 30th, 1982, after a tennis game. Two weeks later, her body was found 264 miles away in the Midlands.
00:43:40
Speaker
Work records showed Black traveling between Edinburgh and Newcastle that day. He usually drove back to London through the Midlands to visit a friend who lived about 20 miles from where Susan was found.
00:43:55
Speaker
Caroline Hogg, age five, Portobello, July 8th, 1983. Last seen on the swings. A witness noted a quote, scruffy looking man, end quote, nearby.
00:44:08
Speaker
Ten days later, her body was recovered. Black had been making a delivery in Portobello that day. Remember, this is the same place where, when he was younger, he had swum and worked as a lifeguard as a teen.
00:44:23
Speaker
Sarah Harper, age 10, March 26, 1986, disappeared on an errand to the corner shop during Easter break and was last seen heading down an alley on her way home.
00:44:35
Speaker
Three and a half weeks later, her body surfaced in the River Trent near Nottingham. Post-mortem showed violent sexual assault and drowning. Black was delivering in Morley that evening.
00:44:47
Speaker
His normal return via the River Trent route matched the path toward his friend's place in Donesthorpe. The cross-border peace also matters with Black.
00:44:59
Speaker
Investigators actually compared his movements to child murders near Paris in 1987 and girl Amsterdam 1986. and a girl in amsterdam in nineteen eighty six Black had access to a van in France and and he traveled there frequently in the 1980s.
00:45:17
Speaker
This monster used borders to feed his deviance and hide in movement. Black's MO reads like a grim template for what happened to April.
00:45:30
Speaker
Daylight, proximity to a road, speed, distance. The pattern is the pattern in April's case. And then there's Jeanette Tate called Jenny, the loudest echo.
00:45:44
Speaker
August 19th, 1978, Ailes Bear, Devon. Jenny was 13 and was riding her bike to deliver some papers, route that she had picked up while a boy in the neighborhood was on holiday.
00:45:58
Speaker
Along the route, Jenny saw two friends and stopped to talk to them before she pushed her bicycle uphill to continue the route. seven minutes later, her friends found Jenny's bike in the road, papers strewn all around it.
00:46:14
Speaker
The search for Jenny was massive, but there was no trace of a body, just the bicycle and the scattered papers. Detective Superintendent Paul Bergen told the Daily Mail, quote, Robert Black did kill on a number of occasions around the country, and we would attest that Jeanette was one victim in that reign of terror he committed from 1978 until his arrest in 1990, end quote.
00:46:39
Speaker
and nineteen ninety end quote The fit is awful. School holiday timing, a young girl's bike left behind near the road, and an abduction that happened in just minutes.
00:46:54
Speaker
Those parallels loop us back to April. They were both 13, both in that holiday window, both on quiet lanes, both seen just minutes before. Both bikes were found. Averill's hurled six feet into that freshly plowed field off that lane.
00:47:15
Speaker
Jenny's left in the roadway with newspapers scattered. While some still have doubts, police are fairly certain that Black is responsible for Jenny Tate's disappearance.
00:47:27
Speaker
And if responsible for hers, then we have to talk about him as a major suspect for April Fabb, especially given all the similarities.
00:47:39
Speaker
With that being said, unfortunately, though, there is no quote-unquote evidence to support the theory that Black took April. Unlike Tobin, Black has no ties to Norfolk.
00:47:52
Speaker
He didn't have a driver's license in 1969, and he was working in London at the time. It's not that he couldn't have been there. People did drive without licenses at that time. It was a bank holiday. It's that the boatload of evidence that convicted him in other crimes, receipts, logs, dockets related to his job, doesn't exist for April's nine minutes.
00:48:18
Speaker
Without a receipt, without a witness, without a work log, belief... can't become a charge. So we hold both truths at once. On Pure M.O., Black's crimes are startlingly close to April's.
00:48:35
Speaker
On Evidence, he remains outside the ring because April's 1969 paperless. We have nothing to tie him to that area.
00:48:46
Speaker
The reasons he's in the conversation for theories are the specifics. His childhood and early sexual violence escalated into opportunistic roadside abductions.
00:48:59
Speaker
He crossed borders to feed his deviants. He abducted a young girl on a bicycle, Jennifer, and is long suspected of another bicycle abduction, Jenny, whose timeline also mirrors April's.
00:49:11
Speaker
He was committing sexual offenses far before 1969, and he was already out of jail for that one year that he served. Everything fits, save for the problem.
00:49:24
Speaker
Nothing yet puts him on back lane between 2.06 and 2.15 on April
00:49:34
Speaker
What are your thoughts, sleuth hounds? On April 8th, 1969, a 13-year-old did a kind thing that should have been the most routine thing, a bike ride of a country road to deliver a tiny present.
00:49:49
Speaker
Within minutes, someone made her disappear. Norfolk police have said plainly there is, quote, no evidence, end quote, linking Robert Black to Norfolk in 1969.
Current Status: Open Case and Continued Hope
00:50:01
Speaker
They've probed Peter Tobin through Operation Anagram and also found, quote, no evidence, end quote, tying him to Norfolk offenses like April Fabb's disappearance.
00:50:12
Speaker
They have chased and cleared local suspects and out-of-area vans, canvassed hundreds of houses, and taken nearly 2,000 statements. The case remains open, though, and every anniversary still stirs phone calls and memories.
00:50:30
Speaker
April's parents, Olive and Albert, have passed away. Her sisters and cousins now live on with the ache, which is both the cruelty and the charge.
00:50:40
Speaker
If you know something, if you remember someone acting strangely on April 8th, 1969, or every anniversary, if you recall a vehicle that should have been noticed and wasn't, if you heard a conversation years later, please come forward.
00:50:57
Speaker
As DCI Guy put it, quote, loyalties and circumstances change, end quote, and credible information, even now, could be a game changer. If you lived in or around Metton, Routon, or Cromer then, if you were the kind of person who took the long way home on a bank holiday weekend, think back.
00:51:18
Speaker
April's family still waits for truth and justice. so do we. Norfolk police have made fresh appeals as recently as April 2024. The case is still one of the most high-profile, unsolved files in the county.
00:51:35
Speaker
If you have even a strong suspicion, they want to hear it. As for me, I'll leave my porch light on for April tonight. Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases Podcast, to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode.
00:51:53
Speaker
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00:52:04
Speaker
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00:52:14
Speaker
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