One man, two wives called Debbie, and a body hidden in plain sight for two decades

Telegraph

5 days ago

If this were a drama on Netflix, reviewers would say the plot was too far-fetched to take seriously. Small-town man murders his wife, marries another woman with the same name and lives with her in the house where his dead wife is buried in the garden. Over decades he insists that he's done nothing wrong, and that the mother of his three young boys just ran away… until finally, once the net has closed in, he asks a diabolical question of his loyal son.
Just before 5.30am on Thursday 6 May 1999, Andrew Griggs, a former fisherman from Deal, rang his father, Jonathan, who was also his business partner, to tell him he would not be at work that day. He explained that Debbie, his wife of nine years, had walked out on him – again – leaving him to care for their three young children. Griggs repeated the same story to concerned members of Debbie's family and to her wide circle of friends.
It seemed like an odd thing for her to have done. The couple's sons Jeremy, Jake and Luke were aged six, four and 18 months at the time – and she was pregnant with their fourth child.
But Griggs insisted their marriage had been in trouble for a while and claimed this was not the first time Debbie had left him. He suggested she was a bad mother who would often fly off the handle with the boys when they were naughty. Griggs painted himself as a paragon of patience who strived tirelessly to provide for the family, while trying to shield the children from their mother's outbursts.
Debbie was a former nurse, and for those who knew her well, this description did not seem credible. Helen Cheeseman, her best friend from childhood, remembers her as 'kind, funny and caring', and says she was a wonderful and devoted mother. 'Debbie idolised her boys and was looking forward to her fourth child,' she says. In short, the polar opposite to the way her husband described her.
Cheeseman says she had never really liked Griggs, describing him as a 'loner' and a 'bit strange'. But, she explains, Debbie was besotted with him, so she tried her best to get on with him and support her friend.
Pat Pilgrim, who lived a few doors down from the Griggses' former home, also remembers Debbie very fondly. 'She was just a really nice lady. I remember her apologising to me once when her dog barked at me as I was walking along the path behind her house. Not everybody would have done that,' Pilgrim recalls.
But Debbie was known to have struggled with postnatal depression after the birth of her first two sons, and with no trace of her whatsoever, her disappearance seemed like a genuine mystery. Griggs informed friends and neighbours that she 'had not been taking her pills' and had been 'acting like a madwoman' before she went missing.
It was 24 hours after Debbie had apparently wandered off in a state of anxiety that Griggs finally contacted the police and reported her missing. In a recording of the 999 call, he does not sound especially panicked and at one stage even seems unsure of how old his wife is. He can be heard telling the call handler: 'Yeah, I'd like to report a missing person.' When asked Debbie's age, he replies, '34… 35'. He goes on: 'She is suffering from depression – postnatal depression. We've got three little boys and she's just wound up too much.'
Almost a week later, Debbie's white Peugeot 309 was discovered just over a mile away from their home. The boot liner had been removed and there was a smear of blood in the car, but nothing that offered any significant clues as to her whereabouts.
The last known sighting of Debbie had been on the afternoon of 5 March, when she had attended a children's party with her sons. Other mothers reported that she had been her usual bubbly and content self, and there was no reason to suspect she was preoccupied with anything.
At 7.38pm she spoke to her friend Lisa Vickers, and again there was nothing to suggest she was contemplating walking away from her life.
As the local community became consumed by her disappearance, a neighbour came forward to report seeing someone – Griggs – driving Debbie's car away from the house at around 2am on the night she went missing.
Pilgrim describes the dark cloud that descended over the community. 'I remember coming back home after being abroad for a few days and seeing police all over the house, including forensics officers. It was awful. I knew something terrible had happened.'
On 25 May, three weeks after Debbie had disappeared, Griggs was arrested on suspicion of his wife's murder. Police had become aware of rumours that he was involved in a relationship with a 15-year-old girl, but he denied it. Over two days in custody he was interviewed 11 times but steadfastly stuck to the story that his wife had simply walked out on him.
In 1999 there was not the wealth of CCTV or doorbell camera footage available to the police that there is today, and with the lack of forensic evidence pointing to foul play, Griggs was released on bail.
Then, on 8 June, just a month after his pregnant wife went missing, he put the family home up for sale and began planning a move to Dorset.
Despite the fact that detectives only had circumstantial evidence to go on, they were convinced that some harm had come to Debbie and wanted to bring a murder charge – but prosecutors did not feel there was enough evidence to secure a conviction.
In July 2001, Griggs moved to a detached house in the village of St Leonards in Dorset, along with his parents and sons. By that stage he had begun a relationship with another woman, also called Debbie, and when that ended he married another woman, who in a twist stranger than fiction, was called Debbie too.
The children, who had endured enormous turmoil in their young lives, were particularly close to their father and grandparents.
When Griggs married 'Debbie three' she unofficially adopted them and started to bring them up as her own.
Meanwhile, Debbie's friends and family were in purgatory waiting for any news that would help unlock the mystery and reveal her whereabouts. Her sister, Wendie Rowlinson, later explained that she and the rest of the family had always known in their hearts that she was dead, but had tried to cling on to hope.
She also said her mother, Patricia, walked everywhere hoping to one day catch a sighting of her daughter. 'She was looking for an 'anything', each time returning home again heartbroken,' Wendie continued. Cheeseman says Griggs would regularly claim there had been sightings of Debbie, but only he ever had the details.
In 2001, police were contacted by the new owners of the frozen fish business that Griggs and his parents had sold when they moved to Dorset. They had come across a love letter sent to Griggs from the 15-year-old he had previously denied having an affair with. It appeared to confirm the allegation that the pair were involved in a sexual relationship and that Debbie had found out about it.
Griggs was rearrested and questioned about the affair but continued to deny it. Kent Police submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service, but again prosecutors concluded there was not enough evidence to charge him.
Retired detective Alan Davies, who worked on the cold case, says, 'In 2002 there weren't that many bodiless murders, so it was harder for the CPS to charge. We always thought if we could put the case before a jury they would convict Griggs, but it was getting it past the CPS that was the hard part.'
Meanwhile, Griggs got on with his life, and Jeremy, Jake and Luke grew up believing their mother had chosen to turn her back on them.
But while the passage of time may have dulled the children's memory of their mother, it did not diminish the determination of the detectives working on the case to get to the bottom of what had happened. Women, especially ones who are pregnant with three young children at home, do not just disappear – police were convinced there had been foul play.
Speaking at the time, the officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Dean Barnes, said, 'Kent Police do not close investigations such as this and will continue to examine any new information that is provided.'
Cheeseman says she visited Jeremy, Jake and Luke several times in Dorset, but Griggs always seemed nervous and did not talk much.
'It was like he was expecting a knock at the door'
In March 2007, the Griggses' marriage was officially dissolved by a decree of presumption of death and a memorial service was held. The following year Kent Police's cold case unit launched a review of the investigation but there was no significant evidence available to change the state of play.
Then in 2015, Debbie's family, who never gave up campaigning and were in close contact with the police, asked for the case to be looked at again. She had been missing for 16 years with no proof of life. At that point, the investigation was formally changed from a missing person to a murder inquiry.
In 2018 the senior investigating officer asked the CPS to reconsider its earlier decisions not to charge Griggs with murder. The senior prosecutor who looked at the case felt differently from his colleagues in earlier years, and recommended that Griggs should face trial.
On the morning of 12 March 2019, detectives arrived at Griggs's home. 'I had the pleasure of arresting him,' says Davies. 'It was interesting because he wasn't surprised. We turned up in the early hours to search the house. Sometimes when you arrest people in the early hours they get quite upset, but it was like he was expecting a knock at the door one day.'
Despite the fact Debbie's body had never been located, Griggs was charged with his wife's murder.
The breakthrough came just weeks after Debbie's devoted mother died. She had campaigned tirelessly to discover what had happened to her daughter, but went to her grave without ever knowing her fate. Debbie's father, Brian, later said he believed his wife had died of a broken heart.
The trial began at Canterbury Crown Court in October 2019, and the prosecution case described how just weeks before she disappeared, Griggs had told a friend he wished Debbie were dead.
Jurors were also told he did not accept their unborn child was his – and during one row had kneed his wife in the stomach.
An extract from Debbie's diary revealed that in the weeks before her disappearance, she had voiced her suspicions that he was having an affair with a teenage girl. The entry described how he was 'out every night', and spent more time with the 15-year-old than with his own family.
In a separate statement, Debbie had also written, 'Everything we have together is in fact his, and I am only allowed to enjoy anything that is a joint matrimonial asset by reason of being with him. He does not let me go out by myself. His needs come first.'
Prosecutors laid out how in the months before Debbie's disappearance, Griggs had consulted a solicitor to work out how much a divorce would cost him. After finding out that Debbie would be entitled to half of their business, he went back to her and agreed to try to patch things up. But just before she disappeared, Griggs successfully transferred the contents of their joint business account into his own name.
Davies describes how, over the years, more and more information emerged about Griggs's motive for killing his wife. 'One of the things we always tried to work out was why he killed her that night. The thought was initially that it was to do with this young girl.
'But we later learnt that he had tried to get her out of the business. He wanted to divorce her but he was advised that if he did she would get half the business and half the house; then we found that the day before she disappeared, she was effectively written out of the business, so we had a really detailed timeline as to motive.'
Wendie Rowlinson said that throughout the trial the family sat with baited breath as they listened to Griggs's lies and denials.
'Lie after lie'
While the evidence was circumstantial, it was extremely compelling, and on 28 October 2019, 7,484 days after she went missing, Griggs was found guilty of his wife's murder.
At the subsequent sentencing hearing, Debbie's father described the terrible impact her disappearance had on the family. 'Unfortunately her mum passed away in January this year,' Brian said. 'I know she longed to know where Debbie was… Knowing finally that Debbie was murdered was also difficult to take in. It will always be painful to not know what happened in her final moments.'
Addressing Griggs, the trial judge, Mr Justice Spencer, said, 'The jury convicted you on the most compelling circumstantial evidence. You told lie after lie in the witness box, just as you did at the time of Debbie's disappearance, to her family, her friends and to the police, and just as you have for the past 20 years.'
He went on, 'Only you know how you killed her and where you disposed of her body… I strongly suspect that you dumped her body at sea. As an experienced sailor and former deep-sea fisherman, you knew that stretch of the coast like the back of your hand. It would not have been difficult to weigh her body down so that it sank without trace.'
Griggs was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the judge saying he would have to spend a minimum of 20 years behind bars before he would become eligible to apply for parole.
Finally, the family had the answers they yearned for, and justice appeared to have been done. Davies says, 'There was some closure for the family, but of course Griggs was still maintaining that he didn't kill her and that she was still alive somewhere.'
And despite everything they had heard in court, Debbie's sons still refused to believe their father could be responsible for their mother's murder. Soon after he was jailed for life, they launched a campaign to try to clear his name and prove their mother was still alive. Launching a public Facebook page, Jeremy, Jake and Luke appealed for information that might help locate her.
They wrote, 'This page has been launched for the sole purpose of finding our mum, Debbie Elizabeth Griggs (Cameron) who we believe was not murdered by our father but is still alive. It has not been set up to cause upset or distress. Every human on this planet is permitted to have an opinion. That is their right. We respect that right. All we ask is that you in return respect ours. We are only interested in finding our mum. Anyone posting/sending cruel or malicious, hateful messages will not be tolerated and will be dealt with accordingly. Please like and share so that we can reach as many people as possible in the hope of finding our mum, thank you.'
Griggs wanted to appeal against his conviction. But he missed the application window by two days, and with it his slim chance of exoneration.
It was clearly not something he was willing to accept. Davies says, 'He had 28 days to apply to appeal his conviction or sentence but he misses that window. He is stuck in prison thinking, how the hell do I get out of this.'
Two days later, Griggs contacted Jake, the middle of his three sons and the one he was closest to, and asked him to visit him in prison. In time, he would tell the then 25-year-old that he had something important to explain.
Griggs said that despite everything he had told him since he was four, about his mother having walked out on them and still being alive somewhere, she was in fact dead. He insisted he had not murdered her, explaining that he had actually come across Debbie's dead body in the garden and simply panicked.
Griggs didn't fully explain how his pregnant wife had died, but he appeared to hint that perhaps his own father, Jake's beloved grandad, who had died the previous November, might be the killer. He said that, worried he would be blamed, he had decided to hide the body and invent the story about Debbie leaving.
Two years later, when the family moved to Dorset, he had taken the body, and subsequently buried Debbie beneath a shed, under the patio at their new home.
As if that were not cynical enough, what came next was truly inhuman.
'The most incredibly manipulative man you will ever come across'
Griggs said he was going to need his son's help if he was ever going to be released from prison. He instructed Jake to go home, dig up the patio and exhume Debbie's body.
He said that once Jake had done that, he should cut a lock of her hair from her corpse and then catch the ferry to France. There, he should write a letter to the police purporting to be from Debbie, using the lock of hair as proof of life and telling the authorities that she was living abroad and did not wish to be bothered.
Griggs told Jake that if he really loved his father, he would do this.
Jake returned home carrying the unimaginable burden of his father's revelations. Not only did he have to absorb the fact that his mother had been dead rather than missing all these years, but he had to contemplate having to dig up her body in order to try to get his father off a murder conviction.
Davies says, 'When you know what Jake would have had to do to get that lock of hair, it would have probably destroyed him and resulted in him having to be sectioned. And Griggs would have known all that. There was no thought to his [son's] mental well-being. There is just no thought about anyone else. He is just a very selfish man.'
Following his father's instructions, Jake initially told nobody about their conversation. He did make a cursory attempt to start digging up the body, but understandably found he was unable to go through with it. Bottling up the mental turmoil as the country went through lockdown, he kept the terrible secret to himself. But in October 2022, during a row with his girlfriend, he finally blurted it out. She persuaded him that he had to tell the authorities and so, after telling his stepmother, they all went to the police.
Debbie's body was finally exhumed that month, more than 23 years after she had last been seen alive.
Griggs had gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the body, placing it in a plastic water butt which he had then sealed with the sort of fibreglass used to repair boats – something that, as a keen sailor and fisherman, he had ready access to.
Speaking at the time, Detective Chief Inspector Neil Kimber, from the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said, 'It is now more than 20 years since Debbie Griggs was murdered by her husband but we have never given up hope of one day finding her remains and giving her loved ones some closure.
'Andrew Griggs denied being responsible for his wife's disappearance but this discovery is further proof that he was lying all along, causing even greater anguish for everyone who knew and loved Debbie. Whilst they continue to mourn her tragic loss to this day, I hope they can take some comfort in the knowledge that she can now be laid to rest.'
Despite the fact he was already serving life, Griggs was charged with perverting the course of justice and obstructing a coroner. But even while admitting to having buried her body, Griggs continued to deny killing Debbie.
Extraordinarily, such is his ability to manipulate those around him, his current wife continues to stand by him. To this day, Debbie number three steadfastly maintains his innocence.
'I don't believe any of it,' she says. 'It goes against everything I know about him. I know him and I know he could not have done what they said he did. We've been together for 20 years and I've never had a sign of any suspicions or doubt about him. He's never yelled at me. He's never raised a hand against me. I've got no regrets about marrying him.'
But Davies says Griggs's second wife's loyalty illustrates perfectly how he has spent his life manipulating people. 'I've been involved in some quite horrendous jobs over the years, but my impression of Griggs is that he is simply the most incredibly manipulative man you will ever come across. He knows how to coerce people and he's got no feelings towards anybody. He is just a nasty, nasty manipulative man who has spent his life preying on vulnerable women. He is just a very, very nasty man.'
Following his latest conviction, Griggs today received a three-year sentence for perverting the course of justice. Added to the life sentence he received for Debbie's murder, it seems unlikely he will ever be released. For Debbie's family, this brings some sort of end to a 26-year nightmare. But whether he will finally admit the truth, and whether his current wife will ever accept that he is a murderer, remains to be seen.
Not a day goes by that I don't think of Debbie
Helen Cheeseman
Debbie was a fantastic friend, the best anyone could wish for. We first met when I was 12 years old and being bullied at school – Debbie stuck up for me. She was extremely kind, funny and caring, but wouldn't take any nonsense off anyone – she was quite tough and could look after herself and me. That's how we became best friends. It was always Helen and Debbie wherever we went, we were kind of like a duo, a team.
Although we lost touch briefly when Debbie went off to do her nursing career, we reconnected when she moved back to Deal. We would meet at the local market with our children every Saturday, and often Debbie would collect my children from nursery or school on the days when I was unable to. My children loved going to Debbie's – she was godmother to my daughter Samantha – and Debbie loved them as if they were her own.
When Debbie first introduced us to Andrew Griggs, around 1988, I was unsure what to make of him. He came across as a bit strange, always the odd one out, like a loner. He would never join in with conversation with the adults, or join in with the children's games. Debbie had told us that he did have a bit of a temper, and that he told Debbie he had smashed up his previous business premises on occasions. My husband and I were concerned for her – there was something about him that didn't seem right. But Debbie was my best friend, her heart was set on Griggs, and unfortunately there was no changing her mind. So I didn't want to interfere, however I now wish I had.
Before Debbie was murdered, she broke down in tears at my house and told me that she had found out Griggs was having sexual relations with an underage teenager, and that she had told him to leave the family home. Debbie swore me to secrecy; she was totally devastated. But she said she wanted to try to save her marriage, and I gave her my support.
l did not know that Debbie was missing until the Friday [24 hours on]. Griggs claimed to the police that he rang all Debbie's friends to find out where she was, but he didn't contact me at all, the friend she saw the most! I went straight round to Griggs's fish shop to confront him.
He took me out the back by the alley of the shop where there are no CCTV cameras. I asked, 'Where is Debbie?' To which he replied, 'I don't know, we had an argument, she threw some money at me and said, 'See if you can look after the boys with that,' and drove off.'
Of course I didn't believe a word he was saying.
I told him I knew about him and the underage teenager; he denied it and looked extremely shocked that I knew. As I was talking to him, I noticed two strange marks under his chin that looked like bruises, pressure marks – possibly from Debbie defending herself.
My son had just been diagnosed with cancer in 1998 and Debbie, having her nursing training, immediately stepped in to help. This is why I know Debbie would not have left her family home on her own accord, as claimed by her husband Griggs. Debbie would not have left with my son being so ill, she adored my children as much as her own and was a great friend.
When the police finally got around to interviewing me, I didn't hesitate to tell them about what Debbie had told me about Griggs. Debbie's mother also made a TV appeal with my son sat by her side in the hope that if Debbie was still alive, she would see Barry and get in touch. We didn't hear from Debbie and I think deep down we knew we wouldn't ever again. We all knew Griggs had done something terrible to her.
After Debbie disappeared, I made a few visits to Griggs's new home in Dorset with my family to visit her boys. Griggs was always very nervous and didn't talk much; he just sat at a table and stared out the window at us while the boys said goodbye to us after our visit. Fearing the boys had clearly been brainwashed by their father, our contact with them sadly diminished.
Not a day goes by that I don't think of Debbie. I love and miss her terribly. I miss her laughter, her generosity, her always being there whenever I needed her, regardless of the time. But most of all I miss the great friendship we had, the team that we were that can never be replaced. Griggs never wanted the truth to be shared, he just wanted to drag more people into his sick, twisted world of lies.