Mystery of the missing lawyer
Three weeks after Hull mum Renata Antczak vanished her husband believes she’s joined a cult while her sister claims she may have been having an affair
LIKE the loving mother she was, Renata Antczak couldn’t wait to celebrate her daughter Victoria’s 11th birthday. When the day of the party dawned, the kitchen of their rented home in Hull was ready for the occasion. There was a large cake with yellow fondant icing and a pack of brightly coloured candles. In an envelope with Victoria’s name on it was a pink rosette proclaiming Birthday Girl.
A photograph of the festivities that followed shows the family smiling as Victoria prepares to blow out the candles. But strangely the party was held on April 8, three weeks before the girl’s actual birthday on April 30. And sadly, by the time her real birthday arrived, Victoria’s mother had vanished.
The highly qualified mother of two was last seen more than three weeks ago on April 25 after driving Victoria to school before returning home. The 49-year-old lawyer then left her home on foot at 1pm and has not been seen since. It has since emerged that Renata had filed for divorce from her husband of 22 years in March and her insistence that her daughter’s birthday celebration should be held early has led her husband to wonder if she was planning her disappearance all along.
“Why have the party early?” asks Majid Mustafa, 47, a dentist. “Maybe because she was planning to go? There are so many questions but no answers.”
Victoria and her sister Magda, 20, who is at university, have been involved in the public appeal for their mother to return home and have waived their right to anonymity in the hope she will tell them she is safe. Renata is said to have recently told Magda: “Whatever happens promise you’ll look after your sister.”
DESPITE her lucrative career in law, for the past six months Renata had been travelling to Poland for up to a week every month to train as a therapist for a homeopathic health treatment called TimeWaver. After qualifying she used a room at a friend’s hair salon in Hull for occasional sessions. In a publicity video on YouTube, Renata said she used a TimeWaver machine on her younger daughter which “appeared to have a positive effect” on her health. Her husband has told police of his fears that his wife had become “brainwashed” by a “sect” after becoming obsessed with the alternative therapy.
However, police say there is no evidence to corroborate the theory. The missing woman’s sister has an alternative explanation. She believes her sister may have been having an affair. PARTY’S OVER: (l-r) Renata, Magda, Majid, Piotrek Zaton (Magda’s boyfriend) with birthday girl Victoria (centre) last month Danuta Szulc said her sister was “uncharacteristically reserved” during their last chat. “It’s possible she had found a new man in Poland,” she says. “She was normally a bright and lively person. I asked her what the matter was but she said she would tell me everything when she came back to Poland at the end of May.”
Dr Mustafa says he last saw his wife after she drove home from the school run in her black Mercedes. He was at home ill in bed that day and says they had a “discussion” about the recent seismic event in their lives.
FOR in March, not only did Renata tell her husband she wanted a divorce, she told him of her plans to return permanently to Poland with their younger daughter. It was this factor of their proposed divorce that he says they were discussing before his wife left the house. He said he had been “trying to get her to change her mind”. He added: “I still love her very much, I still miss her very much and I want her to come back. If she doesn’t want to stay with me that’s her choice.”
Dr Mustafa met his wife in Poland after emigrating from Syria. They married in 1995 near the city of Lodz, where they still own a three-bedroom house that they use when visiting relatives, before moving to the UK in 2005. Worried that she was behaving in a way that was so unlike her, Dr Mustafa even travelled to Poland to visit his wife’s family to enlist their support in encouraging her to change her mind.
“I saw how upset he was as the divorce proceedings had started,” said the lawyer’s 84-year-old mother Stanislawa. “Even if she just wanted some peace and quiet, it’s out of character for her not to have given me a call to let me know she’s all right.”
Dr Mustafa says recently his wife had been behaving unusually: “She does love me but there’s something really strange in her behaviour. She put candles everywhere and joss sticks. She started to wear different jewellery, especially a gold necklace which she said took the bad energy from her.”
When she left he found journal entries in which his wife expressed a desire to be independent, which he passed to the police. “It talked about her feeling free from relationships, free from everything,” he says. “One sentence said, ‘I don’t have any obligation to anyone’.”
But hopes are fading that she has simply fled an unhappy marriage to return to Poland. Not only has she not been in contact with her family there, detectives say checks show her passport has not been used.
One thing is certain: her reappearance, safe and well, would be the best birthday present Victoria could ever receive.