Riverbank to be dug up in Katrice search
BRITISH investigators are digging up a riverbank in western Germany in the search for a toddler who went missing 36 years ago.
Katrice Lee vanished on her second birthday while out shopping with her mother on the outskirts of Paderborn, near the British military base where her father was stationed.
After a re-evaluation of evidence following a recent media campaign in Britain and Germany, British military authorities in Germany say they are focusing a new effort on the banks of the Alme river.
Among other things, a man was seen with a young girl at the time of the crime getting into a green car, and a day later a green car was spotted on an Alme bridge.
Katrice, from Hartlepool, vanished from the NAAFI shopping centre in Schloss Neuhaus, close to the military base where her father was stationed for the army, on November 28, 1981.
Her parents, Richard and Sharon, have continued to hold out hope that she is still alive and being brought up by another family.
Despite a vast search effort undertaken at the time by the Royal Military Police (RMP), German police, British troops and volunteers, the trail went cold.
Her case was reopened in 2012 by the RMP, which announced on Monday it would be carrying out a dig on the River Alme’s banks at Paderborner Str, Paderborn.
It followed a reanalysis of evidence gathered during the original investigation, which pinpointed the river as an area of interest, the force said.
Senior investigating officer Richard O’Leary, of the RMP, said: “On this basis, a team of military personnel and civilian forensic experts will be carrying out a detailed excavation of the site, which is expected to last approximately five weeks. The aim of the search is to find evidence that could finally shed light on what happened to Katrice.”
He renewed an appeal for information about a man seen at the shopping centre placing a child matching the toddler’s description into a green saloon car.