How did Lisa vanish and why did her violent boyfriend flee?
A loving mum disappears in Spain, then her tattooed thug of a lover goes on the run. Now her fearful family are certain he holds the key to her fate...
IT was the little details that proved the most disturbing – a make-up bag abandoned on a table, fruit decaying in a bowl, washing still in the washing machine. Ordinarily, it might have been dismissed as daily life, briefly interrupted – as if someone had popped out to run a quick errand and would be back at any moment.
Except that this house in the far south of Spain has stood frozen in time like this for weeks ever since its occupant, Scots expat Lisa Brown, vanished without trace.
So when Lisa’s older brother and sister approached the front door of her home in the whitewashed Andalusian village of Guardiaro late last year, it was with a sense of deep foreboding.
With the mother of one officially listed as a missing person, the house’s uncharacteristic quiet, which should have been filled with her laughter and the joyful squeals of her eightyear-old son, Marco, took on an unsettling air.
Her sister, Helen Jordan, still struggles with the implications of that trip.
‘A friend who was with us turned round and said, “It doesn’t look as if she planned on going anywhere”,’ she said.
The more they have looked into the shocking case of their sister’s sudden disappearance, the more convinced they have become that one man, current partner Simon Corner, holds the key to solving this mystery. Lisa’s brother, Craig Douglas, said: ‘I think it was through her relationship with Simon Corner. I don’t think we are under any illusions about this.’
Mrs Jordan added: ‘We are 100 per cent sure that he is the key to this mystery.’
Their certainty that this one individual holds the secret to their sister’s current whereabouts is startling given that they have never met Simon Corner and had never even heard of this self- styled ‘ yacht dealer’ before Lisa’s disappearance.
But after spending three months playing ‘catch-up’ on their sister’s life abroad, Corner has come to dominate their waking thoughts. They have spoken to the Guardia Civil, Police Scotland, all of Lisa’s friends and work colleagues in the expat idyll where she made her home in the shadow of the British territory of Gibraltar. Yet, it has become painfully clear that things only started to go wrong for Lisa after she hooked up with Corner.
A trawl through his murky past has revealed disturbing details of a violent criminal with multiple aliases and connections to his native Liverpool and south-east Asia. Unsavoury rumours abound about how he makes money operating a yacht business that only rarely seems to buy or sell any boats.
The family learned he had been seeing Lisa for up to a year and that, unknown to any of her family, he had recently moved in to her smart townhouse close to the golfing paradise of Sotogrande.
But trouble seemed to follow Corner – there were complaints of furious rows and Lisa’s car was vandalised. Most worryingly of all, less than a week after Lisa went missing, Corner, too, was no longer to be found anywhere on the Costas.
The heavy-set 33-year-old popped up later in Cambodia vowing to return to Spain to clear his name. The family are still waiting.
‘We’ve no doubt he has the answers,’ said Mr Douglas. ‘We just need to find him. To turn your back on someone you were in a relationship with makes no sense.’
Mrs Jordan added: ‘I don’t think I have heard one person saying anything nice about Corner. We know he has been in prison and in fights. If he has panicked and run, you have to ask why, if he has nothing to hide?’
They have found it particularly tough trying to explain to Lisa’s distressed and confused young son, Marco, that his mother is missing and they cannot say how long she might be away.
Mrs Jordan said: ‘ He knows his mum’s missing now and obviously we haven’t really gone into the whys and wherefores. He’s only eight. This has been hard on all of us – especially our mother Cathy.’
She added: ‘ Christmas and New Year were terrible. It was mum’s 71st birthday this week and she just didn’t want to go out. And I’m thinking, “Is she waiting on a call..?”’
It is clear from talking to this closeknit family, most of whom still live within a stone’s throw of Dumbarton’s own Rock, that they are having a hard time piecing together how their carefree sibling ended up at the heart of an i nternational police investigation.
‘We were all grown up when Lisa was born so she was very much spoilt,’ recalled Mrs Jordan, 49. ‘My other brother Martin calls her princess. She was doted on by the whole family. When she says jump, we say “How high?”’
MR Douglas, 45, smiled: ‘She was a wee madam. She was into horseriding and stuff. My papa, who is now dead sadly, adored her and it would be a case almost of “How many horses do you want?”. We were an ordinary family, not well- off, but she would get everything, really.’
But despite an indulgent home life, she struggled to settle. After leaving Our Lady and St Patrick’s High in Dumbarton, she worked in the family greengrocery business, HD Caulfield, before toying with the idea of studying nursing.
She did shifts in care homes but her heart wasn’t in it. Soon after her 18th birthday in January 2001, she produced a plane ticket and announced she was going to live in Spain. ‘It was Scotland’s bad weather that made her go,’ said Mrs Jordan. ‘It was a rainy, horrible day and she just thought, “I’m away”. She came home with a ticket in her hand and we were devastated.
‘We were all taking bets as to how long she would last – some said a week, some said a month – but we were all proved wrong. She tried to come back and stay when Marco was small, but even then she said, “I’ll not be back for good”.’
Mr Douglas added: ‘ She wasn’t really complete here. We would have loved for her to come back as we missed her, but we understood that’s what she wanted.’
Although she worked as crew on sailing ships in the Caribbean for a while, she eventually settled near Gibraltar, which she had once visited as a child on a family holiday.
SHE picked up bar work before meeting a local carpenter, Tony Tomillero, with whom she had her son. ‘Without exaggerating things, Marco was Lisa’s life,’ said Mr Douglas. ‘ She could be so overprotective to the point we were saying “Let the kid breathe”. Whenever she came back to Scotland she had five scarves and three jumpers on him. It’s just the way she was.’
Mrs Jordan said: ‘She could be over the top. If he fell, he was going to the hospital. So when she didn’t pick him up from school that day, it raised a big red flag.’ Lisa had been due to take up a job with betting firm, Bet365, on Gibraltar, the day after she was reported missing after leaving her previous post with rival Ladbrokes in August.
By then, however, a major missing persons inquiry had swung into action which would eventually involve helicopters, sniffer dogs and divers joining an extensive search along the banks of the nearby Rio Guadiaro.
The alarm was raised on November 9 by Mr Tomillero, who was questioned by police before interest quickly shifted from Lisa’s ex to her current partner.
Corner, who is also known as Dean Woods and Dean Tripp, had been living on a boat – Rosa of London – moored in nearby Alcaidesa marina. Lisa was regularly seen sunbathing on deck by fellow boat-owners who recall an ‘ affable girl with a lovely, soft, Scottish accent’.
Corner – who is understood to be known to police in Liverpool – was picked up by Guardia Civil officers soon after Lisa vanished. But after giving officers a statement, he was not held. When police went back to the boat to request a further interview, they found Corner had gone.
The Royal Gibraltar Police, who have been working with the Guardia Civil, confirmed they are also interested in speaking to her boyfriend.
A source at Alcaidesa marina office described Corner to local reporters as a ‘wheeler dealer’, who had docked a number of different boats there over the past year. He added: ‘He was often in and out of the port and you have to be suspicious about exactly what he was up to.’
What is incontestable is that in 2014 Corner served three months in jail for possessing an offensive weapon – a knife – in a Gibraltar nightclub. He was also convicted of common assault, death threats and disorderly conduct in a police station.
Friend and former Ladbrokes colleague, Jacqui Bush, said she had real concerns for Lisa’s safety: ‘Lisa’s
a real little sweetie. She hasn’t got a bad word to say about anyone. She loves life, a fun-loving person and hasn’t got a bad bone in her body. She would never take off like that.’
She added that she noticed a change in Lisa the summer before her disappearance: ‘Lisa’s whole demeanour changed over the last couple of months she worked here and she came in to work a number of times with lots of bruises, including a black eye.
‘There was a time when she went back to stay with Tony and he said she was covered in bruises. They went down to the beach and Tony asked her to put a T- shirt on to cover herself up. He told her, “If you don’t, I’m going to have to leave the beach because people will think I’ve done that to you”.’
She added that the day Corner moved in with Lisa, neighbours reported seeing the shutters go down in every room apart from Marco’s: ‘That’s when the rows started and he used to go in and out of the house like he was undercover. He would have his hood up and would sneak about. I don’t know how on earth she got in tow with someone like him, but love is strange.’
Later, Lisa’s blue Ford was dam- aged with a big ‘DW’ scratched into it. One of Corner’s aliases is Dean Woods.
Miss Bush claimed Corner was well known for making regular trips to Ceuta – a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast notorious for drugs smuggling. ‘You don’t go to Ceuta on a day trip if you are looking to sell a boat,’ she said.
She added: ‘He has got form for being very violent but nobody will come forward. But this guy is running out of friends and money and places to hide because he’s notorious now, isn’t he? I mean, what person in their right mind goes off to Cambodia just days after their girlfriend goes missing?’
At Christmas, Miss Bush published an open letter on the family’s ‘Find Lisa’ Facebook page challenging Corner after he issued a statement through a Spanish-based legal adviser, Jason Coghlan, that he was not involved in Lisa’s disappearance and was ‘unable to assist police’.
Miss Bush’s letter prompted a strange reaction. At New Year, Mrs Jordan received a phone call out of the blue from someone claiming to be Simon from a number in Cambodia, complaining about his treat- ment on social media. She said: ‘I felt physically sick but was quite calm. I said if you’ve nothing to hide come forward and prove your innocence. And if you’ve nothing to hide, you will walk away.’
In January, Corner announced he intended to fly back to Spain ‘to prove his innocence’ but his movements continue to be shrouded in mystery. Documents suggest that flights were booked in the name of Simon Corner from Phnom Penh in Cambodia via Paris to arrive at Malaga airport on January 19, and a photograph has surfaced purporting to show Corner in the airport’s arrivals hall.
Corner was due to present himself to police the following day for questioning but failed to appear. His mobile has r eportedly been switched off ever since. Mr Coghlan has also now cut ties with Corner, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’. It is thought to relate to unpaid bills.
THE family have their own thoughts on what to believe about Corner’s real life, but Mr Douglas said: We are not interested in whether he stole sweeties at school, we only have two priorities – find him and find out what’s happened to Lisa.’
To that end they have already gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the pressure up, securing both First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s support and David Cameron’s when he promised to intervene after the matter was raised at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions.
The family has also raised £12,500 towards a reward to ‘loosen tongues’ and get to the truth. As Mr Douglas put it: ‘Greed is often stronger than loyalty.’
Meanwhile, a little boy waits with his father in Spain for his mother to come home and Lisa’s own mother waits by the phone for a call that never comes. Lives are locked in limbo until the man with the key to the mystery decides finally to show his face.
Anyone who wishes to help the family raise funds can donate via Missing Lisa Brown site at www. gofundme.com/7vc62qzw