Father of toddler who vanished 44 years ago reveals heartache as more than 100 women have claimed to be his missing daughter

Daily Mail​

4 hours ago

The father of a toddler who vanished 44 years ago revealed the heartache of having more than 100 people claim to be his missing child over the years.
Katrice Lee had just turned two when she disappeared on November 28, 1981, during a supermarket trip to buy food for her birthday party.
At the time, her dad, Richard, now 76, who is from Hartlepool, County Durham, was stationed at an NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) army base in Paderborn, Germany - which is where the store was.
The parent - then a sergeant major in the 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars of the British Army - his former wife, Sharon, and Katrice's aunt, Wendy, were in the shop with the little girl, who was refusing to sit in a trolley during the haul.
Placating Katrice, the mother carried the baby around the supermarket in her arms before placing her down at the checkout.
She briefly left the youngster with Wendy - to run and pick up some crisps - but when she returned the toddler, who her aunt assumed rushed off to follow Sharon, was no longer there. Katrice has never been seen since.
The family have never given up their fight to find the girl and their hopes have been raised on numerous occasions, as dozens have come forward alleging they are Katrice.
Speaking on BBC Sounds podcast Katrice Lee: A Father's Story, Richard recalled one instance where a woman, who claimed to be the missing child, harassed the family for weeks.
'She was informed not to contact anybody in the family,' he explained. 'For a long time it went quiet, then the telephone went, like any parent with a missing child you react to that phone because you want an answer. Could this be the call.
'I picked the phone up, I was then asked "is that Richard Lee, father of Katrice Lee?"', I said yes it was, but as I was saying it I realised who it was.
'She turned around and said "oh there is nothing to worry about Mr Lee this is just a line check", I said "what, just after midnight?"'.
The caller rang a further 12 times that night and was later jailed for seven weeks for harassment.
Meanwhile another woman, Heidi Robinson, pleaded guilty to harassment, after sending grossly offensive, indecent and menacing messages to the family on social media.
She was sentenced to 18 weeks in jail, suspended for two years, at Wirral Magistrates' Court - and was ordered to undergo mental health treatment. She also received a restraining order banning her from contacting Katrice's father or sister.
The family have never given up their fight to find Katrice and their hopes have been raised on numerous occasions over the years with more than 100 people coming forward to claim they are the missing child
In another instance, Richard remembered another person who came forward claiming to be his daughter which 'sparked hope' for the family.
'It was New Years Eve, I was sent a picture of Katrice and this person said "I am Katrice, I am your daughter",' he recounted. 'I couldn't believe it.'
Unfortunately, they turned out to be nothing but a cruel troll, when DNA tests showed no relation.
In 2012 the Lee family suffered further heartache when a woman called Donna Wright contacted them claiming to be Katrice.
Yet again, DNA tests showed she wasn't their daughter, which followed with stalking and abuse for the family.
Donna used more than a dozen aliases before admitting an offence under Section 2 of the Protection from Harassment Act and being given a 12-week suspended prison sentence at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court.
'There are loads of people who have honestly come forward and genuinely believe that they are Katrice, for them you are grateful because it took them a great amount of courage,' Richard admitted.
'Then to find out after a DNA test that they are not Katrice they have disappeared back into the background with dignity, with discretion, but it's those people that keep me genuinely going.'
Remembering the painful day that his daughter went missing and the police investigation that followed, he said: 'My mind was blank with pain, the statement I said to Sharon was "this is going to be a long one", I don't know why I said it.'
Breaking down in tears Richard added that he felt 'inadequate' as a father.
'I wasn't getting answers and I wanted them,' he explained. 'I was very resentful, I just wanted my daughter back.'
Elsewhere Richard revealed he considered taking his own life - explaining that it was his vow to older daughter Natasha, who was aged seven when her sister vanished, to solve the mystery of her missing sibling that kept him alive.
'I was struggling with staying on the right path, I didn't know what the right path was,' he continued. 'I went down some very dark avenues and at my lowest point I actually thought about suicide.
However, he said that 'sanity comes back'.
'You turn a corner when you are in those dark places, you see a light and you are given a choice,' Richard added.
'My choice was to continue to fight and I made a promise and that's what brought me back out of the darkness, I made a promise to Natasha that I would continue to fight to get answers until I can no longer fight.'
Richard revealed he still marks his missing daughter's birthday every year and continues to hold out hope that he will see her again
The family believe that the authorities, including the Army, Royal Military Police and successive governments, failed to investigate the case properly.
Border controls were not warned about a missing child for the first 24 hours and authorities acted as though the little girl had just wandered off without considering that she might have been kidnapped.
Nor did they notify hospitals of an eye condition Katrice had that would have helped to identify the little girl.
It was six weeks before staff in the shop where Katrice went missing were questioned by German police, who initially theorised that the two-year-old had walked to the nearby river and drowned.
Speaking to the podcast, Sharon explained: 'Germany police said that my daughter had wondered out of busy NAAFI that morning, past a load of shoppers, down the ramp, passed a lady ticket seller, through that hedge, bearing in mind my daughter was two that morning she is a baby really, walked to the river's edge and threw herself in and not a soul saw her do it.'
On the day of Katrice's disappearance Richard was sitting in the family car outside the base's NAAFI supermarket while Sharon and her sister Wendy took the toddler inside to buy food for her birthday party.
When Sharon realised, at the till, that she'd forgotten to buy crisps, Wendy was left with Katrice while she dashed to fetch them.
Wendy assumed Katrice had run off to find her mother - but when Sharon returned, the women realised she had gone.
Speaking to the Mail Online in 2019, Richard said: 'Our whole world changed.'
The father, who immediately thought the RMP's theory that Katrice — who was wearing a tartan dress, turquoise duffel coat and red wellies — had simply wandered off and fallen into the nearby River Lippe, a tributary of the Alme, was flawed.
'The only way out was via three checkouts,' he says, adding that even if Katrice had somehow managed to escape through a back door with no handle on it, the first question someone would have asked in an area chiefly populated by Forces' families was 'where are your parents?'
Believing the RMP was 'ill equipped to deal with the enormity of the situation', he asked the investigating officer to ensure that hospitals were made aware of Katrice's eye condition, so they could alert authorities if she were admitted. Yet it later emerged that hadn't been done.
He asked the police to inform international border crossings that his daughter had gone missing. They didn't.
Statements from shop workers and other witnesses were not taken for six weeks and when Richard tried to raise awareness of Katrice's disappearance by speaking to the British Press, he was told he had no right to do so because he'd signed the Official Secrets Act.
'I wanted more action. Nothing was being done,' he admitted. 'If I raised an issue I was told, as a soldier, to keep quiet, the military police's attitude was that "we are untouchable".
'I was taught that men don't cry. So I'd go to the toilet, turn the taps on and cry my eyes out in private because I didn't want my wife or daughter to see me.'
Meanwhile, his family life was shattered. Sharon divorced from Richard in 1991 but they stayed united in their desire for answers.
After the couple separated in 1989, Richard left the family's red-brick flat in Paderborn, where Katrice's bedroom, with its teddy bears and toy trunk, had remained untouched for eight years, returned to his home town of Hartlepool and started a new posting in Ripon as a warrant officer.
Sharon, meanwhile, moved to Portsmouth, her hometown. Both continued to lobby their local MPs for more assistance in finding Katrice.
Richard continued to serve in the Army until 1999, notching up 34 years of distinguished service.
However he maintains that the lack of support he and his family were provided had 'devalued' his army medals and he plans to hand them back.
In 2008, a BBC programme featuring a digitally updated picture of Katrice as she might look aged 29 also led to nothing.
In 2012, the family received an apology from the Royal Military Police for failings in the initial investigation and reopened an inquiry under the name, Operation Bute.
Then in 2017, the government agreed to review the case and an e-fit of a man seen putting a child in a car that had been created shortly after the youngster's disappearance was released.
A year later, more than 100 soldiers undertook an excavation of the Alme river, close to where Katrice disappeared, in the hope of finding answers.
In 2019, a man was arrested in connection with her disappearance but was subsequently released without charge.
The man arrested was a 74-year-old former soldier who served at the same base as Richard.
It seems the ex-soldier had no inkling he was under suspicion either. An acquaintance recalled seeing him happy last weekend: 'He seemed his usual self. He's a comedian. He likes to crack jokes.'
Richard says the name of the arrested man was 'vaguely familiar' to him, though he had no definite memories of him.
The ex-serviceman is only the second person to be arrested since Katrice disappeared.
In 2022, a long-promised 'father-to-father' meeting with the then PM Boris Johnson did happen, but Richard says: 'Nothing came of it. I wrote afterwards, asking for an inquiry, and for Katrice's case to be investigated by a civilian force, as it would have been if we'd been any other family.'
He never got a reply. 'Politicians move on,' he says. 'We cannot.'
In a statement to MailOnline, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: 'Our sympathies are with Richard Lee and his family as they continue to search for answers.
'The Defence Serious Crime Command and Unit, which now holds primacy for the investigation, continues to welcome any additional information that could help to determine Katrice's whereabouts.'
Richard revealed he still marks his missing daughter's birthday every year and continues to hold out hope that he will see her again.
Speaking on the BBC Sounds podcast he said: 'I light a candle every year and I let a balloon off with Katrice's picture on and it has "we will never forget you, come home Katrice".
'I ask her questions like "I hope everything is ok, I am your real dad and I want you to come home".
'I firmly believe I will get answers and I believe I will meet her, and I told her I am looking forward to seeing her.
'There are times that you feel like you are getting answers, I get this feeling that she has heard me and she wants to come home.'
Anyone with information about Katrice's disappearance in 1981 can contact the Royal Military Police on social media site X at @operationbute, or by phone on 0800 616888.