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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To not be able to stop wondering about this unidentified woman?

124 replies

SirWibbles209 · 16/09/2017 12:47

I remember coming across this case back in 2010, a woman's body discovered in Manchester. She remains unidentified and they theorize she was murdered many years before possible 1970-1980. They called her the angel of the meadows.

I guess my aibu is how can she still be unidentified? How has nobody reported her missing? I think what gets me the most is that the area she discovered is a pretty busy one and she lay undiscovered for all those years in central Manchester!

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/angel-meadow-murder-mystery-victim-8846364.amp

What are your thoughts?

OP posts:
HakunaStigmata · 16/09/2017 13:30

Just read the link about the Angel of the Meadow - it sounds like she was never even buried by her killer, just dumped under heavy carpet and left there. That's even sadder somehow: she was right there, above ground, on the edge of the city centre for decades and nobody even realised. I do wonder if she was a prostitute - the fact that it was on the edge of the city centre (kind of area streetcrawlers use) and that, perhaps because she had already slipped to the margins of society, she was never missed.

Sara107 · 16/09/2017 13:34

It is very sad, isn't it? Some people are never found, or never identified and you do wonder what their lives must have been that nobody missed them. Or were there people who missed them desperately but could never trace them? A couple of years ago the police finally identified the last victim of the King's Cross fire, which was back in the 1980s. It took nearly 40 years to put a name to him.

chirpyburbycheapsheep · 16/09/2017 13:35

Fudgemummy that is tragic. I was only reading about Andrew Gosden the other day...think it's now 10 years since he disappeared. My question is - where was he going, was he meeting someone or did he just up and leave with no plan at all?

brasty · 16/09/2017 13:36

She may have been missed. But if she was prostituted, then it may have been assumed she had simply moved away and would be back.
I live an ordinary life, but there are people I interact with regularly, who I would just assume had moved if I no longer saw them.

MiddlingMum · 16/09/2017 13:41

A few years ago there was a story in the news of an elderly lady who was found dead in her flat in Edinburgh. She had died about 8 or 10 years earlier, and nobody had noticed. She had no family (although a distant cousin was later traced) and local people who knew her by sight didn't miss her, or assumed she'd moved away. Her pension went into her bank account and her bills were all paid by direct debit all the time she lay there dead Sad

MarthaArthur · 16/09/2017 13:41

[http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/pictured-charles-manson-victim-identified-7850113]

opheliacat · 16/09/2017 13:44

It is pretty easy to drop off the face of existence.

Six years ago, I moved suddenly and unexpectedly. I completely vanished. Not planned that way, but still.

No one to my knowledge was concerned!

SemiNormal · 16/09/2017 13:45

I don't understand how people can't be identified? I know that many people now do DNA tests at home for genealogical purposes and there are some massive databases out there, could the police not upload this persons DNA profile to one of those databases ie Gedmatch - see which relatives come up? Even if it only gives a 4th cousin match they can then DNA test other family members of that 4th cousin to narrow it down and see if anyone knows of a missing relative in the family. It baffles me that they can't/won't do this!

I'm a member of some Facebook groups that help track down adoptees and foundlings families via DNA - even through 4th cousin matches or even more distant matches it can be done. Perhaps they haven't the resources?

opheliacat · 16/09/2017 13:46

Costs a lot, in terms of time and finances. The police have difficult decisions to make sometimes.

SemiNormal · 16/09/2017 13:46

Oops - just read the link and it sounds like that's what they may be doing next. Just don't understand what has taken them so long to do this?

bigballsofevil · 16/09/2017 13:52

I can see how as a teenager you could take off and be by yourself... and mean to link up with the family again ... but just can't face the questions and put it off until it really is way too late.

I also sometimes wonder if - in some cases - people are fleeing extreme abuse either in the home or outside it - and they just can't go back to their families.

Some heart wrenching cases.

opheliacat · 16/09/2017 13:54

Or, they might not have any family.

I don't have any. But many prostitutes and drug addicts were raised in care to add to the mix.

WetsTheFinger · 16/09/2017 13:55

How strange you brought this up, it's something I think often about as my daughter was living in student flats looking over the site when the Angel of the Meadows was found. I went to see them excavating her. Our first thought was the Yorkshire ripper as they thought this lady may have been a prostitute.

brasty · 16/09/2017 14:22

Good point about family. My parents are elderly. Once they have died, I doubt I will be in contact with my siblings. Not a no contact, just don't think any of us will care. So I could see how someone can have no concerned relatives if they go missing, live alone and have no close friends.

brasty · 16/09/2017 14:25

Also when people are travelling around different countries, it would be a nightmare to try and find them if they went missing. Which country do you start in? I went inter railing many many years ago. Spent a month going to different countries on a whim. Countries who keep records of who has entered would be fine, but back then I don't think any countries
did.
So I would have been clearly missed, but might have been impossible to find.

MarthaArthur · 16/09/2017 14:30

True brasty but surely that would be quiet rare? Surely after a while you would wonder about your relative you havent seen in years and try get in touch. Or if you last heard from say your child 5 years ago and then the news says a body of a 20 year old female is found in the area fitting the discription surely you would wonder if it could be them. Maybe we should have a show like crimewatch except for missing people /found bodies. Maybe people could phone in with info.

AbsentmindedWoman · 16/09/2017 14:36

I think about people in these categories too, mainly the young women missing in Ireland, whose disappearances happened over a certain period in the nineties. Where are they?

Came upon an article about Joyce Carol Vincent recently and found it very sad. Haven't seen the film, interesting that somebody said upthread that some of the friends interviewed were awful? In what way? I got the impression that some of her friendships were very surface level as she was very private, but I thought some old friends were genuinely very upset once they heard?

MarthaArthur · 16/09/2017 14:43

Has anyone watched Changling with Angelina Jolie? That true story upset me greatly as well. In 1920s/1930s a woman left her 5/6 year old son home alone when she went to work and returned to find him vanished. She reported to the police and months later they said they found him but gave her a different child and tried to make out she was mad when she insisted he wasnt her son. Think it turned out this kid ran away to find fame. Anyway her son was actually killed by a sick serial killer of small boys and a surviver placed him at the farm with the other murdered boys. She never found his body.

wowfudge · 16/09/2017 14:43

Where the woman was found in Manchester is a bit of a no man's land area - it's right on the periphery of the developed city centre and a really busy road runs alongside it. As far as I can remember, there's no bus stop there and nothing you would have any reason to go there for. It is very sad that not only was the poor woman not missed, but despite extensive tests and appeals they are no further forward in finding out who she is.

KungFuPandaWorksOut16 · 16/09/2017 14:44

Amy Bradley is one of them missing cases that makes me think.

Her disappearance was featured on
VANISHED with Beth Holloway.

If anybody is on Reddit the subs

  • unresolved mysteries
  • unsolved mysteries

Are absolutely fascinating to read. It honestly makes you wonder how they haven't been solved. Some of the cases somebody must know something and a few of the cases back from the 70/80s look like botched investigations. It's so sad.

There is also another about a family house being burnt down and I believe it was 4 children the police claimed had perished in the fire. The parents suspected foul play because they never found the bones I'll try and find a link now.

KungFuPandaWorksOut16 · 16/09/2017 14:48

It was the case of the Sodder Children

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodder_children_disappearance

opheliacat · 16/09/2017 14:50

Not really Martha - if you don't have a big extended family and/or have sporadic or no contact with them, no reason to think anything sinister.

Original poster
SirWibbles209 · 16/09/2017 14:54

To the PP that asked about the friends in the Joyce Vincent documentary, I found her older friends sad that it had ended that way, but some of her newer work colleagues seemed a bit jealous of her and slightly gleeful ? that she had ended up in a council house , could just be the way I took it though, and of course is just my opinion. KungFuPanda I love those subreddits, spend hours reading the cases! I think this one though sticks with me because she was undiscovered for so long. I heard they had traced a link to Tanzania? I'll try find the link, haven't heard anything lately though, or any follow ups Sad

OP posts:
dustarr73 · 16/09/2017 14:55

Or the boy in the box.Thats a really sad case,they think maybe one of the nuns was the mother but couldnt come forward.
Apparently he was well looked after.