When Missing Turns to Murder

22-year-old insurance clerk Helen McCourt was returning home from work in Liverpool before going out on a date with her new boyfriend that evening. She got off the bus on Rainford Road in Billinge - just 500 yards from her home - and went missing.

In December 1988, 22-year-old Lorraine Benson arrived at Raynes Park tube station after going to a work Christmas party. She'd arranged to meet her friend Peter, but he wasn't there as planned. Peter was due to move to Australia the following day. Lorraine called Peter's mother to ask where he was, and his mother told her that he wasn't back from meeting friends yet.

Young mother of three children, Natalie, was killed by her boyfriend Paul Hemming in their family home whilst her three children slept upstairs. He had a history of coercive control. Their 6-year-old son witnessed Natalie's body wrapped in a rug in the lounge and it was his evidence that was used to charge him.

On June 5, 1998, 11 year- old Wesley waved goodbye to his mother Liz and rode off on his bike to go to the local shop to get some sweets, he was a popular lad and well-liked by the community. Liz reported him missing to the police when he failed to return home and it was getting dark.

In June 1985 Carole Packman left a note to say she was leaving the family home for good. Sam Gillingham was 16 when her mother, Carole Packman vanished from the family's suburban home in the seaside resort of Bournemouth. She remembers running up the stairs to check her parents' room, as her father Russell looked on. Gazing at her mother's untouched belongings, he said: "She'll be back."

School girl, Danielle Jones, aged 15, was last seen on the morning of June 18th, 2001 near her home in East Tilbury, Essex. Like hundreds of thousands of other children that day, she was on her way to catch the school bus. But Danielle never got on the bus and didn't arrive at St Clere's School.

Shafilea Ahmed was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in July 1986, to Farzana, when her taxi driver father was still married to a Danish woman, with whom he had a baby son. He married Farzana, his cousin, after bowing to pressure from a relative in Pakistan - ironically his own arranged marriage. The family moved to Warrington, a town with a small but well-established Asian community.

17-year-old Jayden Parkinson met Ben Blakley when she was just 15 years old through her friendship with Ben's younger brother. Jayden and Ben started a relationship when she was just 16. She had been living with her mother Sam but moved to a hostel which provided emergency 24-hour accommodation for 20 homeless young people, aged 16-25.

Evelyn Lund's first husband Arthur, a successful businessman, had died of cancer, leaving her a wealthy woman. Within 18 months, she had fallen for the charms of Robert Lund, a divorced tree surgeon. Her three daughters disapproved of the match, not least because Lund was living in a caravan when they met, and they thought he was only interested in her money.

Janet Muller was a bright and fun loving 21-year-old German exchange student studying at Brighton University. She had no previous history of mental illness but became unwell ahead of her final exams, and in March 2015, she was admitted to Mill View hospital in Hove after being found by the police at a bus stop in her night clothes.

Joanna Parkes from the Isle of Man, against the advice of everyone around her, marries a narcissistic British Airways pilot.

Mihrican ("Jan") Mustafa, a 37-year-old Turkish-Brit mother disappears.

Mark Cummings, an 8-year-old boy vanishes from a high-rise estate in Glasgow, Scotland

Carol Taggart, a mother in Fife, Scotland

Jamie Lavis, an 8-year-old boy in Manchester, England

Surjit Athwal returns to the house where her family had arranged her murder, then disappears.

Joe Pooley, 22, of Ipswich, England disappears.

Louise Smith, after a childhood in and out of foster care, turns 16 and is only marginally supported by the government in halfway houses. Shady characters there draw her into a group of sociopaths who victimize her before causing her disappearance.

Debbie Griggs, a pregnant mother of three boys in Kent is taken from her children.

Adam Alexander

Five months after jovial London resident Sinead Healy disappears, her family finds law enforcement’s prime suspect impossible to accept.

Investigators scour CCTV footage in their search for a Buckinghamshire student last seen returning home in a taxi after celebrating final exams.

A divorced mother finds a boyfriend - but his dominating and abusive personality soon raises alarm bells and isolates her from her family members.

After a week passes with no word from a Manchester woman to her family, a burnt body is discovered in an obviously staged, smoke-filled crime scene.

A successful London automotive businessman seemingly fails to return from a holiday to France with his girlfriend — a jeweler with royal connections.

A blatant lie alerts a woman's family that the jet-setting, controlling boyfriend who troubles them is deceiving them about her whereabouts.

When a seven-year-old child suddenly vanishes, suspicions fall on his mother's boyfriend — who was last seen playing video games with the boy.

Authorities discover that the disappearance and murder of an Ipswich woman is linked to another local killing, and to a hard-drinking social group.

An 80-day search for a young mother in Durham ends in a tragic discovery and two painful trials in which the victim's character is maligned.

The Sikh community in London reels at the bizarre murder of a prominent TV producer whose body is discovered bound in the trunk of a burning car.