Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Missing Costa Brits ‘a double murder case’
Family hopes for ‘answers & closure’
THE disappearance of a father and son on the Costa del Sol is now being treated as a double murder by British police.
For the family of Danny and Liam Poole, who vanished three-and-a-half years ago, it means their worst fears have been realised.
Danny had links with the drug world and relatives suspect the pair fell foul of a deal gone wrong. Liam’s sister Lauryn Poole, 23, had been clinging to the hope her dad and brother were alive.
She broke down in tears on hearing the news from Sussex Police and said: “There are more bad days than good days now. On the bad days, I’d been holding on to the idea that maybe everyone had got it wrong. There was hope there but now it’s gone. It’s brought on a whole new level of grief, and I’ve really struggled to accept it.”
Liam’s mum and Danny’s ex-wife Lisa Berwick, 46, said: “I knew it from the start, but it still hurts to hear it.”
Car paint shop owner Danny, 46, and 22-year-old Liam, from Burgess Hill,
West Sussex, travelled to Spanish crime hotspot Estepona on Mother’s Day 2019 with a case containing £20,000 in cash.
They checked into a hotel on the resort’s Valle Romano golf course, but relatives last heard from the pair the following day, April 1. The cash was never recovered and Danny and Liam’s luggage and passports were found abandoned in their hotel room.
It is believed Danny and Liam met two British men – one with connections to Merseyside – in Estepona the night before they vanished.
Earlier this year the Mirror told how ex-met detective Peter Bleksley thinks the gangsters he believes are shielding Liverpudlian fugitive Kevin Parle were behind the pair’s disappearance.
Sussex Police are negotiating with Spanish counterparts – who wound up their investigation after just five months – to obtain the case files.
Despite the heartbreak, Lauryn said that Sussex’s Police decision to treat the case as a murder inquiry was “progress”.
She said: “We’re just hoping it brings us answers – and closure.”