Missing woman’s parents say police withheld vital footage
POLICE refused to show the parents of a British woman feared killed on a Caribbean island a key section of vital CCTV footage showing her last known movements, it has been claimed.
Sarm Heslop has not been seen since leaving a bar on the US Virgin Island of St John with her boyfriend Ryan Bane 20 months ago.
US Virgin Islands Police Department (VIPD) initially said “the CCTV cameras were not working” in the area where the couple left the bar on March 7 2021.
But Ms Heslop’s parents have now said that in a meeting in the Virgin Islands arranged by the British Consulate in Miami a year after she disappeared, officers showed them CCTV footage of the couple leaving the bar.
According to the Find Sarm group set up by Ms Heslop’s friends, Brenda Street, Ms Heslop’s mother, said the video was stopped by officers before the end, obscuring a final section.
Mrs Street and Peter Heslop, her exhusband, have appealed for VIPD to release the tape, but the force previously declined, saying it would jeopardise the investigation.
Ms Heslop’s parents also said the clothes their daughter was wearing in the video did not match Mr Bane’s report. In the CCTV, Ms Heslop is seen wearing either a skirt or shorts and a top, but her friends said Mr Bane told police “she was wearing a black dress with flowers on”. They added: “There was not a black dress with flowers on in her belongings when these were returned to her parents some months after her disappearance.”
Ms Heslop, a former flight attendant from Southampton, had been working with Mr Bane on his catamaran. He reported her missing to police at
‘There was not a black dress with flowers on in her belongings when these were returned to her parents’
2.30am on March 8 and called the coastguard shortly after 11.45am.
In April 2021, VIPD said it was unable to confirm if she was on the boat, as Mr Bane reported. He has previously declined requests for an interview, according to the force.
A full forensic search of the boat was never done and it has since been sold by Mr Bane, who denies responsibility for her disappearance. Ms Heslop’s friends have previously offered a reward of up to $10,000 (£8,800) for information. VIPD have not responded to The Sunday Telegraph’s requests for comment.