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

[SirWibbles209]

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?

Lee Boxell is such a sad case, even more so because his parents are getting older I really hope they have some form of closure before they die

@SleeptightDaisy Was that in Staffordshire? The young man with some mental health issues?

@MarthaArthur Its making me want to contact everyone i know to make sure they are ok

I posted exactly that on Facebook after watching Dreams of a Life. Not just those I know now but everyone I've ever known!

It happens even to the nicest families for strange reasons as I've seen myself. A youngish man in my family disappeared 6 years ago after arguing with his parents, but as he had a habit of disappearing for months or weeks and then turning up again, he wasn't reported missing. He was so troubled and had such a turbulent relationship with his parents that although they worried very much, they felt he wanted to disappear and didn't want to know them anymore. Two years later another family member read in the local paper about an unidentified body and how the police were closing the case, and something in the article chimed. The parents followed up, then discovered it was indeed their son and he'd died (suicide or an accident, they don't know), shortly after he originally disappeared. So so sad. They always wonder what would have happened if someone close to them hadn't stumbled across that news article and put 2 and 2 together.

A childhood friend disappeared. But he had a habit of doing this. He turned up back at his parents nearly 20 years later and lives round the corner. His parents had missed him, but knew what he was like, so hadn't reported him missing. He could easily have been an unidentified body with nobody reporting him missing.

alphasox I'm really sorry to hear that I suppose and least you got some closure, although I'm sure it doesn't make things any easier.

The one that always sticks in my mind is Genette Tate who disappeared in the 70s whilst delivering newspapers - I'm a similar age to what she would be now if still alive (I'm assuming she was abducted and murdered)
Does anyone else remember this case? I don't think it's been solved

I think Genette Tate was one of Robert Black's victims.

Everything I have read indicates he was responsible for far more murders than the four he was convicted of.

I was in foster care for a bit whilst my mum was ill, several of the kids I met had no family or friends outside the care system, they didn't go to school and then they'd be moved on to council flats, where if they kept up with the rent no one would contact them for months at a time. One girl i kept in touch with just stopped calling me one day, I did try contacting her SW after I found her flat was empty and was told it wasn't uncommon for people to decide to move on and forget everyone from the home, I hope the SW was right and she just forgot about me and has gone off and built a wonderful life for herself somewhere but I can all too easily see how someone could go missing and no one know to look for them or where to start.

@GingerAndTheBiscuits yes it was

I've lived in the area immediately around Angel Meadows for the last 12 years. The meadows itself is now a park since undergoing regeneration in 2004. Her body was found in land nearby which was sort of rough wasteland, used as a carpark. The area was extensively bombed in the second world war and the slum housing which had been here wasn't rebuilt. The area she was found looked like this in 1976, the Co-op CIS building is directly opposite.

The area on all other sides of the meadows isn't and wasn't wasteland, but it was largely factories and warehouses, converted into apartments in the 1990s and early 2000s, so the area WOULD have felt isolated at the time, especially at night when office workers had gone home.

CheeseGirl4 Thank you that is really interesting, still strange though as the area seems a lot more open than I expected! So so weird that she laid there undiscovered for 30 odd years! Unless she was moved there from somewhere else 🤔

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2236808/Manchester-Angel-Meadows-murder-victim-East-Africa-Tanzania-family-link.html] here's the link that discusses the possible Tanzania connection, but then I just saw another article from march this year that didn't mention it so I wonder if they disproved that line of enquiry?

Sorry I'm so bad at links

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2236808/Manchester-Angel-Meadows-murder-victim-East-Africa-Tanzania-family-link.html

I have lived in an around Manchester all my life and actually was working in the CIS building in 1978.

My immediate thoughts on this case was that the poor woman would have been a victim of the "Beast of Manchester" Trevor Hardy. I was a teenager living in the north of the city (where his victims were found) and I remember feeling very scared at that time.

Andrew Gosden really upsets me and I often think of him particularly when I go into London through King's Cross. I suspect someone truly dreadful through his love of music must have groomed him. He made the wrong decision and trusted the wrong man. He was really really into the band Muse. A child that young would really not have the resources to live off grid and undetected indefinitely. I suspect something awful happened. The thought of the slow dawning realisation that something wasn't right and his fear ... his poor poor family. My son is only a year younger and it just makes me want to cry.

BoJolly that does fit the timeframe and it's eerily similar how one of his other poor victims was buried in a shallow grave on a building site.

I had forgotten that case Pennina that poor child, I agree, I think he met someone online pretending to be who they were not and something terrible happened to him. His poor family. I can't even stand to imagine living with such a loss.

Except he did not have access to the internet. And the police checked the school and library computers, and found nothing.

They think it may have been via his PlayStation which he had with him. So frustrating that by the time police took this seriously all the CCTV in the area had been wiped.

I recently read Missing by Shelley Mckenney, really good. She suffered a breakdown and basically took off with £30, got the first bus out of London and spent years living anonymously in hostels and refuges. For years her family thought she was dead until they managed to trace her. Fascinating and shows you how easy it is to just 'snap' and leave your life, and the longer it goes on, the harder it is to go back.

I recently read Missing by Shelley Mckenney, really good. She suffered a breakdown and basically took off with £30, got the first bus out of London and spent years living anonymously in hostels and refuges. For years her family thought she was dead until they managed to trace her. Fascinating and shows you how easy it is to just 'snap' and leave your life, and the longer it goes on, the harder it is to go back.

Pennina I agree that he was probably groomed via the PSP. I used to have one and pretty sure you could access the internet on it.

Luckily I have wonderful in-laws who would ask questions if I dropped off the planet, however my OWN family, if the suddenly never heard from me, would probably just spend a few years bitching amongst themselves about how rude I was to not reciprocate their Christmas cards any more. They'd never give me the benefit of the doubt and assume something must have happened, they 'd be too busy enjoying the drama of thinking that I was not speaking to them. I might get a few letters telling me how they were the bigger person and wanted to resume contact, but NONE of them would come looking for me. They're such drama llamas that it would make more sense to them to just assume I was deliberately not talking to them!

I'm a bit late to this thread but I agree with the poster who mentioned "the Beast of Manchester". It' s so desperately sad.
On a side note, I lived a couple of doors down from Carol Morley, the director of Dreams of a Life. She is a lovely, lovely person and I actually have some clothes worn by the actress playing Joyce. Whenever I wear them, i think about her and how sad it all is. I think what really upsets me is thinking about the life people had before they died. There are so many isolated people out there, whether by choice or by circumstance.

@IcI, I remember those murders.
The barmaid was found on the allotments off Harlaxton Road, if I remember correctly.
So sad