Seeking answers, 16 years on
FAMILY OF WOMAN WHO WENT MISSING IN 2004 JUST WANT CLOSURE
THE family of a woman who disappeared 16 years ago say they are still seeking answers.
Anne Simpson had moved from her home in Saffron Lane, Leicester, to a caravan in Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire months before her mysterious disappearance.
The 60-year-old vanished on September 26, 2004.
Her granddaughter, Emma Grant, 41, said Anne was the magnet that pulled the family together.
She said: “The search for my nan has been so painful. We are no further on in getting closure.
“Sixteen years on, it doesn’t get any easier. We still can’t grieve, we have no memorial to go to.
“It’s horrible when you have no closure. Even finding a body would help, then we could grieve.
“We all believe that she is no longer with us – she wouldn’t miss our birthdays. Her family was everything.”
Anne lived with her long-term partner Anthony ‘Tom’ Rogers. The weekend she disappeared, she was visited by one of her daughters, Josie Hill, and her grandchildren.
After waving the family off back to their home in Leicester, she went for a drink by herself at The Bell Inn.
It is reported Mr Rogers heard Miss Simpson return to the caravan they shared at 8.30pm. She went to her room and at about 11pm he heard her leave the caravan.
Next morning, there was no sign of her. Her handbag and all her things were still inside the caravan.
Emma has a caravan at Golden Anchor, close to where Anne went missing.
She said: “When I go to the caravan and go running in the morning I think is today the day we are going to find answers?
“It’s the not knowing that hurts the most and we can’t give up in the search for answers.
“Family occasions are so hard now Nan isn’t with us. Birthdays and Mother’s Day are tough and especially Christmas as we should all be at her house.
“She has great-great-grandchildren she’s never met.
“She was mum to four girls. Two have passed away from cancer and you can tell something is missing from her other daughters – they are missing that person they used to speak to every day.
“We’ve always been a close family, living streets away from each other. My nan was at our centre.”
A social media campaign has been launched in a bid to jog people’s memories who may have seen Anne at the time of her disappearance.
New photos have been released and an online appeal made by Missing People Support UK.
In 2012, a 62-year-old man living in Devon was arrested in connection with Anne’s disappearance and an underwater search of a lake at Sutton on Sea was carried out after a tip-off made from a Wigston phone box. Nothing was found.
Lincolnshire Police said the case remained open and “will be reviewed periodically”.