Missing Esther: The saddest end to Pyrenees mystery
After boyfriend scoured 700 miles looking for her, the family’s harrowing wait is over
MISSING hiker Esther Dingley’s boyfriend and mother were yesterday devastated ‘beyond words’ after a skull found in the Pyrenees was confirmed to be hers.
Daniel Colegate, 38, had scoured more than 700 miles of treacherous terrain in a desperate bid to discover what happened to his 37-year-old girlfriend, who had been walking solo in the mountains near the Spanish and French border when last seen on November 22 last year.
Having examined every stretch of mountainside near her intended route, just two weeks ago he had told of his growing fears that his partner of 18 years had been kidnapped or killed by hunters.
But yesterday it was revealed that DNA tests on a skull – reportedly with hair attached – found by a runner last week near her last known location had confirmed it was Miss Dingley’s.
With no sign of any other remains or her brightly-coloured clothing and equipment, search teams who have combed the surrounding area with the help of remote-controlled drones fear the skull was moved by bears or wolves.
As a result, her family’s heartbreaking wait for an explanation of her disappearance more than eight months ago goes on.
‘We are distraught to report that we have received DNA confirmation that one of the bones found last week belongs to Esther,’ Mr Colgate and Miss Dingley’s mother Ria Dingley-Schoneveld, 74, said yesterday.
‘We have all known for many months that the chance we would get to hug our beloved Esther again, to feel her warm hand in ours, to see her beautiful smile and to watch the room light up again whenever she arrived was tiny, but with this confirmation that small hope has now faded. ‘It is devastating beyond words.’ The Oxford University graduates had embarked on an extended campervan adventure around Europe in 2014 to dedicate themselves to their shared love of cycling and hiking.
They lived off a combination of savings, rental income from their home in Durham and money earned doing odd jobs.
Last November Miss Dingley went on a month’s solo hiking trip in the Pyrenees while her boyfriend was house-sitting at a French farmhouse 100 miles away.
She sent him a selfie from a mountain peak at 4pm on Sunday, November 22 accompanied by a message expressing hope that a nearby refuge would be open and that she might ‘dip into France’.
But he raised the alarm when she failed to turn up three days later and a massive search operation was launched.
It had been assumed she had suffered an accident on the way down the 9,000ft Pic de Sauvegarde mountain. But teams failed to find any trace of Miss Dingley before the winter snows set in.
With her disappearance unresolved, theories abounded, including claims that she could have walked off deliberately due to being unhappy in her relationship. But Mr Colegate rubbished the idea that she would have failed to make contact to reassure loved ones. Saying the area where she was last seen was criss-crossed by easy paths and had good mobile phone reception, he expressed fears that someone else was involved – although conceded she could have lost her footing and fallen to her death.
Describing his frantic search which has seen him ascend the equivalent of 11 Everests, Mr Colegate told the BBC earlier this month he had ‘zigzagged through the forests, picked my way through boulder fields and explored every little recess on the plateaus’ without finding any trace of her.
Miss Dingley’s skull was found close to the summit of the mountain – known as Pico Salvaguardia or Safeguard Mountain on the Spanish side – last Friday. Mr Colegate and Miss Dingley’s mother said that with no sign of her distinctive and hard-wearing yellow tent or bright red-and-grey rucksack, the details of what happened remain unknown.
They thanked search teams who continue to comb the mountain as well as LBT Global, the missing persons charity supporting them.
Police commander Jean-Marc Bordinaro, who has been involved in the search from the start, said earlier in the week ‘everything suggests that these bones were recently moved by animals’.
Brown bears, wolves and birds of prey such as vultures are among the animals which roam freely in the Pyrenees.
‘Small hope has now faded’