Cheam is a suburb of London, England, 10.9 miles (17.5 km) southwest of Charing Cross. It is divided into North Cheam, Cheam Village and South Cheam. Cheam Village contains the listed buildings Lumley Chapel and the 16th-century Whitehall. It is adjacent to two large parks, Nonsuch Park and Cheam Park. Nonsuch Park contains the listed Nonsuch Mansion. Parts of Cheam Park and Cheam Village are in a conservation area. Cheam is bordered by Worcester Park to the northwest, Morden to the northeast, Sutton to the east, Epsom, Ewell and Stoneleigh to the west and Banstead and Belmont to the south.
Susannah Jane Lamplugh was a British estate agent reported missing on 28 July 1986 in Fulham, London, England, United Kingdom. She was officially declared dead, presumed murdered, in 1993. The last clue to Lamplugh's whereabouts was an appointment to show a house in Shorrolds Road to someone she called Mr. Kipper. The case remains unsolved with Lamplugh still missing.
On 21 March 2002, Amanda Jane "Milly" Dowler, a 13-year-old English schoolgirl, was reported missing by her parents after failing to return home from school and not being seen since walking along Station Avenue in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, that afternoon. Following an extensive search, her remains were discovered in Yateley Heath Woods in Yateley, Hampshire, on 18 September.
The murder of Danielle Jones was an English child murder case involving a 15-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared from East Tilbury, Essex, England. There was a large and exhaustive search to find Jones' body and it was considered one of the biggest cases Essex Police had to deal with at the time. Despite the police's best efforts, her body was never found.
Madeleine Beth McCann is a British missing person who, at the age of 3, disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Lagos, Portugal, on the evening of 3 May 2007. The Daily Telegraph described her disappearance as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history". Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown, although German prosecutors believe she is dead.
It is possible to convict someone of murder without the purported victim's body in evidence. However, cases of this type have historically been hard to prove, often forcing the prosecution to rely on circumstantial evidence, and in England there was for centuries a mistaken view that in the absence of a body a killer could not be tried for murder. Developments in forensic science in recent decades have made it more likely that a murder conviction can be obtained even if a body has not been found.
Cornelius Gerhardus van Rooyen, better known as Gert van Rooyen, was a South African paedophile and serial killer who abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered at least six young girls between 1988 and 1989. He was aided in his crimes by a female accomplice, his mistress Joey Haarhoff. In early 1990, when faced with arrest after the escape of their latest kidnap victim, Van Rooyen killed Haarhoff and himself in a murder-suicide. Despite later evidence against them, the two were never formally convicted due to their deaths and the bodies of their alleged victims were never found.
Philip Cairns disappeared on the afternoon of 23 October 1986 while walking back to school in south Dublin, Ireland from his home in Ballyroan. A large-scale investigation was carried out but no trace of the boy has ever been found. His disappearance is now treated as a high-profile child murder case; the only similar incident in Ireland was the murder of Robert Holohan in January 2005. It is one of the most high-profile disappearances in recent Irish history.
Melanie Hall was a British hospital clerical officer from Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, who disappeared following a night out at Cadillacs nightclub in Bath. She was declared dead in absentia in 2004.
Katrice Lee is a British toddler who has been missing since November 28, 1981. She was last seen in 1981 in Paderborn, West Germany. As of July 2024, over 40 years has passed with her whereabouts still remaining a mystery.
Sidney Charles Cooke is an English convicted child molester, murderer and suspected serial killer serving two life sentences. He was the leader of a paedophile ring suspected of up to twenty child murders of young boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Cooke and other members of the ring were convicted of three killings in total, although he was only convicted of one himself.
John David Guise Cannan is a British murderer, serial rapist, serial abductor and suspected serial killer. He was convicted in July 1988 and given three life sentences for the murder of Shirley Banks in Bristol in October 1987; the attempted kidnapping of Julia Holman on the previous night; the rape of a woman in Reading, Berkshire, in 1986; the rape of his girlfriend in December 1980; and several other abductions, attempted abductions and sexual offences. He became eligible for parole in September 2023, which was refused in October 2023.
Sian Emma O'Callaghan was a 22-year-old British woman who disappeared from Swindon, Wiltshire, England, having last been seen at a nightclub in the town in the early hours of 19 March 2011. Her body was found on 24 March near Uffington in Oxfordshire. On 19 October 2012, at Bristol Crown Court, 48-year-old Christopher Halliwell pleaded guilty to O'Callaghan's murder.
Martin Allen is a British teenager who mysteriously disappeared on 5 November 1979. No trace of Allen has been found and his fate remains unknown.
Mark Anthony Tildesley was a seven-year-old English child who disappeared on 1 June 1984 whilst visiting a funfair in Wokingham, Berkshire. A widespread search of the Wokingham area, involving both police officers and British Army soldiers, did not locate him. Thames Valley Police initially suspected that his body was buried near Wellington Road in Wokingham, near the funfair from which he was abducted, but they now believe that he was probably buried in a shallow grave on abandoned farmland.
The murder of Roy Tutill occurred on 23 April 1968 in Surrey, England, United Kingdom. The victim was a 14-year-old schoolboy who was raped and murdered on his way home from school. The murder went unsolved for 33 years, until Brian Lunn Field confessed to the crime after DNA evidence surfaced in 2001. It was the oldest cold case to be solved in the United Kingdom until the conviction of David Burgess for the 1966 murder of Yolande Waddington in 2012.
Patrick Warren and David Spencer were two English schoolboys who disappeared on 27 December 1996 in the town of Solihull, near Birmingham. Although initially treated by the police as runaways, they are now presumed deceased. Despite a BBC Crimewatch special report on the boys, along with numerous appeals from both their families, the case remains unsolved.
Simon Parkes was a radio operator in the Royal Navy who went missing in Gibraltar in 1986. Parkes was serving aboard HMS Illustrious when he disappeared whilst on shore leave in the overseas territory. In 2001, Parkes' disappearance gained renewed interest when it was noted that convicted murderer Allan Grimson also worked on Illustrious at the same time.
Andrew Paul Gosden disappeared from Central London on 14 September 2007 when he was 14. On that day, Gosden left his home in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, withdrew £200 from his bank account and bought a one-way ticket to London from Doncaster station. He was last seen on CCTV leaving King's Cross station. Despite numerous national appeals for information in the years following his disappearance, Gosden's reason for travelling to London that day, and his subsequent fate, have not been established.
Vishal Mehrotra was an eight-year-old boy who was abducted from Putney, London, England, on 29 July 1981. The child's partial remains were discovered on 25 February 1982 on an isolated farm in Sussex. The killers were never identified and no one has ever been charged with the murder.
