@Be More Pacific are you following the joe dix murder trial? I’m sure it was you who had it on their list? I only ask as I live in the same county as the murder and it’s now in the papers. Debating whether to go sit in the public gallery
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Yes, it was on my list and now moved up to "ongoing" as of last night when I saw their names in the listings. Just read the report from the opening day - drug related and sounds like the victim was involved even if just on the periphery. How predictable.
Might be worth a watch though. If you do go, let us know!
That area is well known for drugs and being very ‘rough’. So as soon as I saw where the murder took place I knew it was drug related! Horrific how these young people with their whole lives ahead of them, get mixed up in drugs and all that wannabe gangster nonsense and lose their lives. There was another murder just up the road (the court case has just finished, man in his 50s found guilty of murder) and that was over drugs as well. That’s all there ever is over that area, drugs, theft and violence.
Since I looked up Janet Brown the other day I've been reminded about Kate Bushell (it was a suggested case at the bottom of the Wikipedia page for Janet Brown).
I was absolutely terrified at the time as we were/are the same age, and I used to go out on my own with the dog. It was also closer to my location than a lot of other high profile murders at the time. It still gives me the creeps now. I would love for someone to be caught for it, I see police think the similar murder of Lyn Bryant could be linked.
I was absolutely terrified at the time as we were/are the same age, and I used to go out on my own with the dog. It was also closer to my location than a lot of other high profile murders at the time. It still gives me the creeps now. I would love for someone to be caught for it, I see police think the similar murder of Lyn Bryant could be linked.
Oh, was that the Mark Franklin case? I followed that one too.
Yes it was! Now I think about it, there’s been loads of murders or people charged with attempted murder over there, maybe they just make the local papers and not National most of the time
A lot make national at the beginning, usually before the victim is named - that's how I pick them up - it's just nowhere near as big when it comes to trial. Maybe just one update on conviction sometimes. The tabloids will pick it up if it's something salacious, sensational or the victim is very active on social media (YouTube or TikTok) or white, blonde (usually) and pretty.
It takes something really spectacular (as in horrific) to make the actual national TV news - like the Killamarsh quadruple murders or Sarah Everard.
It’s definitely been reported
I’m not surprised but it’s still disappointing, I really like the prosecutors but this does put me offI love listening to the Prosecutors and try to ignore their political beliefs
True Crime Fans Livid Their Fave Podcast Hosts Are MAGA Loyalists
Brett Talley earned a rare “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. Now he’s a hit true-crime podcaster.www.thedailybeast.com
I was gutted as they are my favourite true crime podcast.I’m not surprised but it’s still disappointing, I really like the prosecutors but this does put me off
my mum gave me her mothers book to read but I couldn’t get past the first few chapters, just talking about herselfHi everyone! New to this thread, hope you all had a lovely new year!does anyone remember the missing girl from Blackpool, Charlene Downes?
I haven’t heard anything about it since the Vice documentary (which is quite old but excellent for those who may have not seen it.. it’s all on YouTube!)
Hi all! Loving this thread so far! You all seem like my kind of people! Has anyone seen this on Netflix? I binged it tonight and can’t believe I hadn’t heard anything about it!
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It's become quite big in the media again (locally) in the last year due to the private investigator getting involved. There's a Facebook group which is very useful and regularly updated if you wanted to look further into it. It's opened my eyes for suremy mum gave me her mothers book to read but I couldn’t get past the first few chapters, just talking about herself
I haven’t heard anything about it since the Vice documentary (which is quite old but excellent for those who may have not seen it.. it’s all on YouTube!)
This is one of the craziest docs I’ve seen on a relationship conman. Mental!
I've done this before but will do it every time I have to. All you need to know about Charlene Downes is contained in this article from the times written in 2013 - it's now paywalled so I've transcribed it. I would also go as far as to say that I am 99% certain that she will never be found and her case will never be solved.
Too little cared for and too little mourned
"There goes Charlene Downes, ten years ago today, skipping towards the bright lights of Blackpool. Never to be seen again.
It was late autumn, the final night of the season. During the evening, the 14-year-old was spotted in a bar at the seaside resort’s North Pier. Someone bought her a vodka and Coke. She left with a young friend. They headed for a dark, waste-strewn passageway lined on each side by the rear entrances to several takeaway food premises.
This was “Paki Alley”, where chips and alcohol were in plentiful supply for children smart enough to know that one good turn deserved another. Arcades and kebab shops were a cheap escape from teenage boredom but on that particular night, November 1, 2003, a crime took place which meant that Charlene never came home.
A decade on and the unsolved murder has barely registered with the mainstream public. By contrast, Britain’s far-right parties have taken such an interest in the Downes case that banners demanding “Justice for Charlene” were raised on football terraces by sections of hardcore fans.
Their focus was triggered by a 2007 criminal trial at which it was alleged that the child was killed by a Jordanian kebab-shop owner who later disposed of her body with the help of his Iranian business partner. No remains were discovered.
Lacking concrete proof of murder, the prosecution was built on hearsay evidence from an unreliable witness and on a police officer’s transcription of low-quality recordings from bugs placed in the flat and car of one of the suspects. Its accuracy was repeatedly challenged by the defence.
On the eve of a scheduled 2008 retrial, after the first hearing led to a hung jury, the case collapsed. Both defendants were acquitted. The far-right’s conspiracy theory — dark-skinned men getting away with the rape and murder of a white girl — gained strength in 2011 when it emerged that an unpublished police report identified more than 60 girls who were groomed for sex by Asian workers at a cluster of takeaways.
Today, Charlene’s disappearance will be marked by a memorial service in the town, organised by the British National Party. Tomorrow, its supporters will stage a demonstration against “Muslim grooming gangs”. Leading the tributes will be her parents, Robert and Karen Downes. They are cherished icons of the nationalist movement. But they sit on a hollow throne.
The truth, hidden until now, is that so many men of all creeds and colours were suspected of sexual offences against Charlene that when she first went missing the police did not know which way to turn. One of the trails led directly inside the Downes family home. Confidential witness statements, social services records and internal police reports reveal that the child protection authorities first became concerned about Charlene’s home environment in 1989, the year she was born.
Then, the family were living in the West Midlands. Police and social services launched a joint investigation because a convicted rapist, jailed three times for buggery and indecent assaults on two young girls, was a regular visitor to the house and was allowed unsupervised access to a child.
Mr Downes, now 52, was “strongly advised” by social services not to allow the man inside his home but the visits were suspected to have continued. A witness told the authorities she saw the rapist “fondling [a child] in the house and that the parents were present”. They deny that any such incident happened.
In 1998, when Charlene was 9, she and another girl alleged that they were being sexually abused by a man “trusted by Mr and Mrs Downes to take them to school”. He was charged with rape but the case collapsed when the other girl failed to give evidence.
Charlene’s parents told The Times that the man seemed trustworthy because “he had a girlfriend”. They rejected a police officer’s report that they “had some knowledge of the abuse but failed to act”.
The family moved to Blackpool in 1999 after Walsall social services threatened to prosecute the parents for wilful neglect and to have the children taken into care. In the North West, a succession of men were introduced to the family after meeting Mr Downes in local pubs. Some stayed overnight or even longer.
They included a man in his 50s who described Charlene, then 13, as his girlfriend, and a 40-year-old who later admitted to police that he paid her to carry out a sex act. Three days after Charlene vanished, a 34-year-old man, staying with the Downes family while on bail, was jailed for crimes that included indecent assaults on three young girls. He admitted indecently touching the missing child.
An account of life inside the Downes home came from an environmental health officer, visiting one morning on council business, who walked into a downstairs room to find Charlene, then 12, lying on a bed in a “skimpy” nightgown. Lying alongside her was a man in his 60s. The girl jumped up and “started to scoop a number of pound coins off the bed”. The man, “shaken and trembling”, began “pulling his trouser zip up and fastening his belt”.
In a witness statement, the council employee described his shock at “the situation I had stumbled into”. He said Charlene was quick to tell him that “it’s OK — he’s my uncle”. Mr Downes then entered the room, apparently unconcerned, and explained that the man was “a family friend”. The incident was reported to social services but “it was decided not to pursue the matter further due to lack of evidence, lack of co-operation from the family and no complaint from Charlene”.
Her parents described it as a misunderstanding. Mrs Downes blamed the council worker for being too “nosey”. They said that the man on the bed with Charlene was “a lovely, nice old man” who had merely been adjusting his trousers. Mr Downes said he did not know, at the time, that any of the men he brought home had a sexual interest in children.
The couple did not comment on a hospital doctor’s report from June 2000, when Charlene was 11, warning of suspected sexual abuse, nor on the 13 visits she made to an NHS walk-in centre over a 12-month period in 2002-03, when she regularly sought help for sexual health problems.
Her mother insisted this week that her husband always sought to protect their daughter. She described the documents seen by this newspaper as “widely exaggerated and untrue”.
This is the mother of a child who apparently made regular visits, aged 11, to a Salvation Army soup kitchen and was seen dancing for men outside a pub, aged 12. Her parents explained that she enjoyed going “to church” and often danced to “music that she liked”. It was against this background that Charlene began swapping sexual favours, during the final months of her life, with Asian and Arab takeaway workers.
The Times understands that, three months before she vanished, she was one of two girls driven by Asian men from Blackpool to a lay-by in Blackburn. There, at midnight, she walked down an alley with one of the men, returning an hour later. Back in Blackpool, she was handed an envelope. Her friend asked what was inside and was told it was “what I got for what I did in Blackburn”.
Another Asian man is known to have taken her to Manchester in an old BMW less than a week before she disappeared. Neither incident was connected to the two men who stood trial over her murder.
It can also be revealed that a week before she went missing, a white man with the “motive and opportunity to murder Charlene” gave her £40. He met her again on her final night. A police report described him as a “compulsive, perverted paedophile” living in “a squalid flat knee-deep in pornographic material of all types including those featuring young children”.
Lancashire Constabulary today announces a new investigation, pledging “an open mind” about the murder. Its inquiry will not be short of suspects. Some are white; some are not.
Evidence shows that Charlene Downes was failed throughout her life. Until now, she has also been failed in death. The reports suggest that she was let down by her parents, by care professionals, by dozens of sex abusers, by her killers and by a police force that mismanaged a murder inquiry.
Today, the BNP distorts her story to sow seeds of divisive malevolence. Too little cared for, too little mourned. She deserves better."
Too little cared for and too little mourned
"There goes Charlene Downes, ten years ago today, skipping towards the bright lights of Blackpool. Never to be seen again.
It was late autumn, the final night of the season. During the evening, the 14-year-old was spotted in a bar at the seaside resort’s North Pier. Someone bought her a vodka and Coke. She left with a young friend. They headed for a dark, waste-strewn passageway lined on each side by the rear entrances to several takeaway food premises.
This was “Paki Alley”, where chips and alcohol were in plentiful supply for children smart enough to know that one good turn deserved another. Arcades and kebab shops were a cheap escape from teenage boredom but on that particular night, November 1, 2003, a crime took place which meant that Charlene never came home.
A decade on and the unsolved murder has barely registered with the mainstream public. By contrast, Britain’s far-right parties have taken such an interest in the Downes case that banners demanding “Justice for Charlene” were raised on football terraces by sections of hardcore fans.
Their focus was triggered by a 2007 criminal trial at which it was alleged that the child was killed by a Jordanian kebab-shop owner who later disposed of her body with the help of his Iranian business partner. No remains were discovered.
Lacking concrete proof of murder, the prosecution was built on hearsay evidence from an unreliable witness and on a police officer’s transcription of low-quality recordings from bugs placed in the flat and car of one of the suspects. Its accuracy was repeatedly challenged by the defence.
On the eve of a scheduled 2008 retrial, after the first hearing led to a hung jury, the case collapsed. Both defendants were acquitted. The far-right’s conspiracy theory — dark-skinned men getting away with the rape and murder of a white girl — gained strength in 2011 when it emerged that an unpublished police report identified more than 60 girls who were groomed for sex by Asian workers at a cluster of takeaways.
Today, Charlene’s disappearance will be marked by a memorial service in the town, organised by the British National Party. Tomorrow, its supporters will stage a demonstration against “Muslim grooming gangs”. Leading the tributes will be her parents, Robert and Karen Downes. They are cherished icons of the nationalist movement. But they sit on a hollow throne.
The truth, hidden until now, is that so many men of all creeds and colours were suspected of sexual offences against Charlene that when she first went missing the police did not know which way to turn. One of the trails led directly inside the Downes family home. Confidential witness statements, social services records and internal police reports reveal that the child protection authorities first became concerned about Charlene’s home environment in 1989, the year she was born.
Then, the family were living in the West Midlands. Police and social services launched a joint investigation because a convicted rapist, jailed three times for buggery and indecent assaults on two young girls, was a regular visitor to the house and was allowed unsupervised access to a child.
Mr Downes, now 52, was “strongly advised” by social services not to allow the man inside his home but the visits were suspected to have continued. A witness told the authorities she saw the rapist “fondling [a child] in the house and that the parents were present”. They deny that any such incident happened.
In 1998, when Charlene was 9, she and another girl alleged that they were being sexually abused by a man “trusted by Mr and Mrs Downes to take them to school”. He was charged with rape but the case collapsed when the other girl failed to give evidence.
Charlene’s parents told The Times that the man seemed trustworthy because “he had a girlfriend”. They rejected a police officer’s report that they “had some knowledge of the abuse but failed to act”.
The family moved to Blackpool in 1999 after Walsall social services threatened to prosecute the parents for wilful neglect and to have the children taken into care. In the North West, a succession of men were introduced to the family after meeting Mr Downes in local pubs. Some stayed overnight or even longer.
They included a man in his 50s who described Charlene, then 13, as his girlfriend, and a 40-year-old who later admitted to police that he paid her to carry out a sex act. Three days after Charlene vanished, a 34-year-old man, staying with the Downes family while on bail, was jailed for crimes that included indecent assaults on three young girls. He admitted indecently touching the missing child.
An account of life inside the Downes home came from an environmental health officer, visiting one morning on council business, who walked into a downstairs room to find Charlene, then 12, lying on a bed in a “skimpy” nightgown. Lying alongside her was a man in his 60s. The girl jumped up and “started to scoop a number of pound coins off the bed”. The man, “shaken and trembling”, began “pulling his trouser zip up and fastening his belt”.
In a witness statement, the council employee described his shock at “the situation I had stumbled into”. He said Charlene was quick to tell him that “it’s OK — he’s my uncle”. Mr Downes then entered the room, apparently unconcerned, and explained that the man was “a family friend”. The incident was reported to social services but “it was decided not to pursue the matter further due to lack of evidence, lack of co-operation from the family and no complaint from Charlene”.
Her parents described it as a misunderstanding. Mrs Downes blamed the council worker for being too “nosey”. They said that the man on the bed with Charlene was “a lovely, nice old man” who had merely been adjusting his trousers. Mr Downes said he did not know, at the time, that any of the men he brought home had a sexual interest in children.
The couple did not comment on a hospital doctor’s report from June 2000, when Charlene was 11, warning of suspected sexual abuse, nor on the 13 visits she made to an NHS walk-in centre over a 12-month period in 2002-03, when she regularly sought help for sexual health problems.
Her mother insisted this week that her husband always sought to protect their daughter. She described the documents seen by this newspaper as “widely exaggerated and untrue”.
This is the mother of a child who apparently made regular visits, aged 11, to a Salvation Army soup kitchen and was seen dancing for men outside a pub, aged 12. Her parents explained that she enjoyed going “to church” and often danced to “music that she liked”. It was against this background that Charlene began swapping sexual favours, during the final months of her life, with Asian and Arab takeaway workers.
The Times understands that, three months before she vanished, she was one of two girls driven by Asian men from Blackpool to a lay-by in Blackburn. There, at midnight, she walked down an alley with one of the men, returning an hour later. Back in Blackpool, she was handed an envelope. Her friend asked what was inside and was told it was “what I got for what I did in Blackburn”.
Another Asian man is known to have taken her to Manchester in an old BMW less than a week before she disappeared. Neither incident was connected to the two men who stood trial over her murder.
It can also be revealed that a week before she went missing, a white man with the “motive and opportunity to murder Charlene” gave her £40. He met her again on her final night. A police report described him as a “compulsive, perverted paedophile” living in “a squalid flat knee-deep in pornographic material of all types including those featuring young children”.
Lancashire Constabulary today announces a new investigation, pledging “an open mind” about the murder. Its inquiry will not be short of suspects. Some are white; some are not.
Evidence shows that Charlene Downes was failed throughout her life. Until now, she has also been failed in death. The reports suggest that she was let down by her parents, by care professionals, by dozens of sex abusers, by her killers and by a police force that mismanaged a murder inquiry.
Today, the BNP distorts her story to sow seeds of divisive malevolence. Too little cared for, too little mourned. She deserves better."
I've been reading about it, what a twisted cow.Has anyone been following this?
Woman who lied about grooming gang guilty of perverting course of justice
Eleanor Williams, 22, claimed she had been trafficked by Asian gang and made false rape allegationswww.theguardian.com
How Eleanor Williams’s lies about grooming and abuse unravelled
With one horrific viral post, a young woman set off a domino run that derailed lives, damaged community relations and created fear among the Asian community in BarrowWarning: graphic imagery
www.theguardian.com
Also shows the utter toxicity of social media and how so many morons can be so easily swept up by bullshit.Charlene Downes was completely let down by the people that should have protected her. I too will be very surprised if they find out what happened. Too many people with things to hide and not enough that care.
Police confirm further sighting of missing man - BBC News
Police say after he got off a bus at Aldershot Kiran Pun walked along East Station Road.
www.bbc.co.uk
Has anyone seen this? Missing kiran pun. People arrested on suspicion of murder but not very much information about why they think this.. seems a bit of a strange one. Wondering what information they have to think he could have potentially been murdered. Horrible
I can't believe she literally bashed her own face in to aide her lies. She even looks happy beneath the injuries in the pictures after the "attack"...What an absolute monster.I've been reading about it, what a twisted cow.
I hope they throw the book at her for the damage she caused and not let her off with a slap on the wrist because "she needs help".How Eleanor Williams’s lies about grooming and abuse unravelled
With one horrific viral post, a young woman set off a domino run that derailed lives, damaged community relations and created fear among the Asian community in BarrowWarning: graphic imagery
At least the truth came out in the end. Too many times liars don't get found out.
this is shocking and she’s been at it for years with the rape allegations first. I hope they throw the book at her. It makes a mockery out of people of who have really suffered in similar circumstances.
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