Unsolved Mystery Of The Missing Mother Who Vanished | Our Life

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] welcome to case unsolved tonight we reopen the files of the strange disappearance of a young woman from Manchester we start by turning back time 70 years to the city of Liverpool in the midst of the Great Depression the murder of Julio Wallace is one of the most infamous crimes of all time her husband was found guilty of the crime here in this very courtroom and was later acquitted non appeal no one else has ever been charged Julia Wallace was murdered in her own home she was battered about the head 11 times but she was dead by the time the second blow fell it was a dramatic end for a woman who in life had been described as a rather drb butterfly Julia has had a very bad press You' be described as older than she said dowy in the same clothes not interested in her appearance she's been described as quite plain and that is the best description Julia Wallace was an educated lady I believe she was a French descent she come from a a pretty wealthy background she was upper middle class and some people regarded her as marrying out of her class when she met William Wallace who was originally a draper Julia and her husband William moved to Liverpool in 1915 they spent the next 16 years in a small Terrace House in the anfield area of the city Julia kept house by day as William did his rounds in the city collecting insurance money they lived what can only be described as a quiet life if you believe Williams diary and much of it was written later it was music um piano and violin he played badly she played the piano better um he tries to create the idea of uh halfside musical duets it's impossible to penetrate their marriage exactly it's impossible to get behind the front door of wolton Street the ity of their lives was abruptly shattered on January the 19th 1931 by a telephone call from a mysterious stranger in just over 24 hours Julia would be dead Waris had a successful Insurance round in his own area his main social activity which Julie did not join in was chess Monday night was tournament night warus was due to attend a f call is made to the club he is not there the captain be takes the call Liverpool 319 which tells him to advise W afraid he's not here that if he goes to an address the next night in men of gardens he will have business to his Advantage when Waris arrives BT Faithfully gives him the message William pondered the mysterious call during his chess match that evening after taking advice on where the address might be he resolved to investigate the promise of new business the following night he went on that mission to find the address which did not exist he even went to the house with the right number but West instead of East and he ascertained from an occupier that such an in address did not exist his Pursuit is a pursuit in vain and he return returns home to find his wife dead upon the Heth Julia was dead but who was responsible the only certainty was that whoever was behind the strange phone call to the City Cafe was the killer from the beginning of the police investigation William Wallace became the prime suspect I think that in the choosing of Waris as the target the police cannot particularly be blamed in most most cases you will look for a domestic Connection in these matters the police took the view that there was a dead wife and therefore there must be a guilty husband William Wallace became the chief suspect to a fault of the forensic investigation when Whitley McFall called at the house he didn't take the temperature of the body so through this mistake this gross error of calculating the time of death he he put William Wallace in the frame immediately he must be lying he he couldn't have been being going to man Gardens he supposed to be Mar and his wife there was a great deal of evidence at the trial concerning this phone call the strangest aspect of the folor is the name not a Smith nor a Jones nor in even an Evans but a qualo of which there were not many the proximity of the phone box to Wallace's house was only 400 yge from 29 wolon street so he thought why would this person who want to talk to Wallace called from so close to his house unless he tells it was Wallace phoning up the chess club in a disguise voice leaving a message for himself to provide himself with a perfect Alibi he was bound to have stuck the priest as a most curious Alibi and was bound to have set them towards the obvious solution which I suppose was husband murder wife 14 days after the murder Wallace was finally arrested in April of 1931 he was brought to this room for his trial which lasted three and a half days he was found guilty and sentenced to death by roal Justice right and then in may he was freed by the court of appeal a most unusual surprising judgment though William Wallace was eventually cleared of his wife's murder rumors about his guilt hung over him for the rest of his life 2 years after Julia's death in 1933 Wallace passed away but when you look at the Diaries of William Herbert Wallace you see that he really loved Julia you know these di stretched back over 10 years or more you know and about his undevoted love for her the motive just doesn't stand up why he would kill her in his own house although Wallace had been acquitted a question remained if he didn't kill Julia then who did 50 years after the the murder of Julia Wallace A Man Came forward just one man out of the many people who were involved in the maer and he said uh a man named Richard Gordon Parry had gone into Moscow Drive garage on the night of the maer with a bloody gaunet in the glove compartment of his car all right could he clean this for me inside and out if you find this I'll be hanged I've never bought the party Theory I think P was a dreamer he wanted to become an actor he actually knew all this he at one time an employee of the credential insurance company but got the sack after stealing £30 and it's been held uh perhaps as a the most have been Revenge he start I'll get back at the person who s of blew the whistle on me who who the alleged was William Wallace I always found it rather fanciful that a man having committed murder would go and have his car washed out in dead of night and then would say to somebody if the police find that Grove they'd hang me my view on it was that it was no better and probably worse than some of the other theories 70 years on interest in the cases as strong as ever Tom slemon believes his new research finally proves who killed Julia Wallace I can reveal after 70 years in the opinion of myself and my colleague who's a criminologist Keith Andrews that the maer of Julia Wallace was not other than John Sharp Johnston the next door neighbor one person did come for forward and what he told us just blew us apart he said I knew John Shar Johnston in his latter latter days of his illness at Westminster Road he was actually in a place called Westminster house on on Westminster Road in cdale it's basically an old people's home and the man was dying of SE Al dementia and he kept going on about the the anfield made it and at one point while he's rambling to himself he said I killed Julia Wallace it's a tragedy really I think it's a robbery that's G horribly wrong I do not believe that the building blocks now exist or that the evidence exists that would help us to solve this case but nonetheless the field is still open for any new theories for the wace database the case will forever remain a mystery legendary crime novelist Raymond Chandler once wrote that the case was unbeatable within the history of crime others have labeled it the perfect murder however such accolades can only match the true horror of what happened that night in Wolverton street because this case is better than the greatest of novels people have had fun with it but there are victims poor Julia battered to death in her own house whatever she was she was certainly harmless Waris whatever he was died within a year and a half a most miserable and tragic death with four people at his funeral and other people's lives that were affected by this Dreadful case yes it is a novel yes it is the best of the who done it but it also destroyed people's [Music] lives after 70 years it seems likely the killer of Julia Wallace has taken his guilty secret to the Grave still to come though the strange disappearance of a young mother from man welcome back to case unsolved we now reopen the files on the tragic case of young mother Zoe Simpson Zoe led a trouble life in the Autumn of 1996 she disappeared from her home in Manchester she vanished with no money no change of clothes and no real motive for leaving detectives are now convinced that she was murdered yet Zoe's body has never been found and the killer has never been caught mfield Zoe Simpson's Hometown and where she grew up the youngest of two children was a little girl that always liked socializing she was friend to everybody she loved children as a teenager she was still very outgoing she didn't like being in the house she hated the rain when she had to Stu in but apart from that she was just normal normal teenager she's typical of you know any little girl really she was uh very Lively very bouncy always full of energy very outgoing um a typical brother and sister we never you know nothing unusual we fought just as much as any brother and sister would she was uh pretty much the opposite of me I was always the quiet one she was um the outgoing one you always the first one to go up to somebody and say hello if you had a visitor at the house and I'd be hiding behind the sofa as a small kid and she'd be running up there going hello who are you then and uh yeah very much out of her shell very much ready to meet somebody um put herself forward at the age of 16 Zoe's lifestyle changed dramatically when she met and fell in love with KL Richardson he was quite a few years older than bit wild um always up for a party always plenty of cash and I think she was quite intrigued by you know the lifestyle he was you know always had a bit of money to spend on her and uh always up for a laugh and because she couldn't decide what to do with herself she just fell in with other people a lovely person thought the world of her you know she's very faithful she was kind she was honest you know I spent a fair few you know years of me life of what I enjoyed the relation ation ship was sealed when Zoe was 18 and she gave birth to a little girl Nicole unfortunately Nicole's birth triggered a severe bout of postnatal depression for Zoe she was hospitalized in MA for it uh she was in hospital quite a while and Nicole was kept in hospital she was very lonely in that place you know she didn't mix with any of the other people cuz I think they had to room where they could go I just don't think she realized where she was and what they were doing and I suppose she came out when they thought she was fit to be out she wasn't looking after herself every time she turned up she'd be looking uh unkempt um like she'd not been eating very well and uh just not taking care of herself like she used to nobody had been doing it for her you know there' been nobody there looking after her to see that she wasn't her normal self there'd be nobody to say you know what's [Music] wrong Zoe's Detachment from her family increased when she moved from mfield and bought a house in the longsight district of Manchester for herself and Carl Richardson there's a lot of time that she wasn't in touch uh we wouldn't hear anything and uh we couldn't get in touch with them if we try and phone them they wouldn't answer the phone if they're in and uh you wouldn't hear anything from them you wouldn't know if she was safe or and then all of a sudden she'd appear on the doorstep Zoe lived a very private life she'd moved to Manchester and she knew very very few people in fact hardly anybody in Manchester all her friends and family still were in mfield her partner was out working most of the day and he worked throughout out the Northwest so that sometimes she would go out with him but more often than not she would be left at home in the house to the surprise of a family Zoe had another child a little boy called Joseph I never saw Joseph she she she didn't even ring up to let me know he'd been born but if she was Ill with Joseph as she was with Nicole I shouldn't think she knew what she was doing Zoe's isolation grew and earlier in 1996 she disappeared from home for two nights and was found wandering the streets of Stockport she was very ill and she was so disorientated so depressed she didn't know what was going on and she just wandered and uh again it wasn't reported and it's just lucky that no harm came to her during that time the last independent sighting of Zoe was on September the 16th she was attending a daycare center for help with her postnatal depression she went to the center on Monday and was due to return on the Tuesday but Zoe never turned up for that [Music] appointment uh be the 26th of October 1996 one Saturday morning when I went left for work when I returned she wasn't she wasn't there you know well first of all she was reported in October of 96 by a partner's mother we the police would then treated it as a missing from home she was a missing person at that stage but we were very very concerned even then because we've got a young 24 year old woman who's gone missing a no trace of her at all and she had two young children and a young child was quite ill at the time when she went missing and when she was reported missing I thought it was another case that she got very depressed that she had lost you know she didn't know who she was and that she was in just such a haze that she'd wandered off somewhere and for several months I was hoping that maybe she'd been picked up by somebody maybe she was in a hostel somewhere um that she just wanded off in somebody somewhere was caring for her she just totally disappeared she'd been to the clinic on the Monday she had a very good day and she was looking forward to going back the following day and it was a surprise to the hospital staff that um the clinic staff that she didn't turn up on the Tuesday this was strange uh no money was missing and no contact with the children again this was all strange and this all suggested that something serious has happened to Zoe well over the weeks of months that followed are reporting missing uh the police found uh bits of evidence which suggested that zoy was now dead we contacted as many people as we possibly could who were friends relativ who knew it um previously mfield and of course throughout Manchester uh but no one at all had any information as to where she might be we were then realized we were treating this as a murder investigation as the investigation progressed information came in again over in mfield and as a result we did some searching in the uh the turf Moss area an area which was known to Zoe that she would have uh visited uh but unfortunately we found no trace it was to be 2 years before detectives had another lead in the case this time it took them to a scrapyard in STO on Trent the intelligence suggested at that time that Zoe's body was disposed of by use of a particular piece of Machinery in this scrapyard it's referred to as a shredder most cars in scrapyards are not disposed of this way they are what they refer to as bailed where they are made into cubes uh by Hydraulics this machine actually dismantles a car by crushing it and uh it takes it apart in seconds I think to say to look for nean hyack was optimistic that's the kind of scale we're talking about it's a huge piece of machinery and it would dispose of literally thousands of cars a week one of the main highlighted areas was like a sludge come slurry tank which is towards the end of the process the way it cleaned itself uh allowed a possibility of there being material in it that could have been there uh for quite some time and uh then uh specialist U tactical a unit officers rope access team were able to empty the tank somewhere in the region of around about two tons of material removed from the tank some taken away to the University of Manchester where it was searched in great detail by the staff there and some was we were able to search on site so far the search has provided no concrete evidence there were some finds which even to this date uh technology is not in a position uh to identify exactly what they are they're such small fragments of material smaller than a pin head um hopefully we we obviously keep possession of those and as technology advances who knows 5 years after her disappearance Zoe's body has still not been found and the events that led up to her murder have still not been explained do say she's dead to me she's just a messy person what know where's the proof that she's dead how can they honestly say that she's died she's dead she's been murdered they don't know this they know as much as I know and that's that just at the beginning I thought she may have just gone cuz everything was too much for her but as time go on and the police make their inquiries and nothing happens then you really think about it you know and think I don't think she's alive but there's no body this is the worst thing if there was a body you could put an end to everything you know he could bury it and everything but there's nothing well we are convinced that there are people people out there perhaps very close to Zoe who know what's happened know what's happened to Zo and where Zoe is we believe she's dead it's an ongoing murder investigation Zoe has left two young children it's now time it's years on and it's now time that people search the conscience and come forward I accept that she's dead and uh that's it I still want Justice I want uh justice for Zoe for her children I want the person that killed her to be brought to Justice and I want the family to be able to lay it to [Music] rest detectives are still determined to catch Zoe's killer so if you've got any information that can help please call in confidence the Crim Stoppers number will'll be showing in a moment next week a single stab wound to the back killed ly trenholm it was then that her family discovered that she was leading a double life until then good [Music] [Applause] [Music] night

Channel: True Lives

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Id: fCfAUYJSH1s

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023