Police have taken the unusual step of appealing for a victim to sexual assault to step forward in a bid to solve a 32-year-old missing person case.
Lee Boxell was 15 when he was last seen on Saturday, 10 September, 1988 and detectives now believe he is no longer alive.
The original inquiry into Lee’s disappearance led police to believe the teenager went to watch a football game, but the last known sighting placed him on Sutton High Street at 2.20pm, meaning he would not have had enough time to get to the football ground for a 3pm kick-off.
A review of the disappearance, some 24 years after Lee went missing, provided evidence which suggested that he had visited an unofficial youth club at an out-building at St Dunstan’s Church, in Church Lane, Cheam, which was known locally as “the shed”.
The shed was where some teenagers gathered to drink and smoke, and was a hang-out that was targeted by sexual predators. Detectives believe Lee visited it on the day of his last known sighting.
It is there that they believe Lee witnessed someone, probably another teenager, being sexually assaulted and intervened to either stop it or threaten to report it.
Detectives also believe Lee was then fatally attacked himself in order to stop his from identifying and exposing the suspect.
Despite a year-long dig starting in 2013 in which the Met Police excavated St Dunstan’s churchyard – the longest ever forensic archaeological dig – nothing was found.
In 2014 three men were arrested on suspicion of murder, but they were later released on bail.
This week, review officer John McQuade, from the Specialist Crime Review Group, said: “I would like to appeal to that young person who was sexually assaulted to come forward.
“Your evidence would confirm Lee’s presence at the shed and help to identify his assailant.
“I believe that Lee was assaulted by one person and that they had help from one or more others to dispose of his body and/or cover up the death. I would appeal to those people to come forward and confirm this and help us to locate Lee’s body.
“I accept and wish to make it clear that it may not have been the intention to kill Lee and that your role in assisting the main attacker will be taken into account. But you have to take responsibility for your actions and face the consequences before it is too late for Lee’s family.
“Someone knows what happened to Lee and where his body is buried.”
On the 30th anniversary of his disappearance, Lee’s father Peter issued an appeal through the charity Missing People, urging the public to end his limbo and lead him to his son’s remains.
He said: “I have been living in limbo for 30 years, not knowing if he is alive, safe and well, or if he was murdered. I am almost 72 now and do not want my life to end without discovering what happened to my son.”
Peter reached the final of Britain’s Got Talent in 2017 with the Missing People Choir, which sang I Miss You, in memory of his son.
Writing in a blog for HuffPost UK, he said: “I can’t think of a better way to illustrate the helplessness of searching for a missing loved one than singing out over the rooftops of London.”