Terry McSpadden

At the time of his disappearance, Terry was staying with a friend in Elm, two miles from Wisbech. A few weeks previously, he shared a traumatic incident with family, friends and his probation officer that had occurred at this house. He told them he had been relaxing on the sofa and felt like he was going to lose consciousness and die. When he came round he was alone in the house, struggling to breath feeling like he was being suffocated, completely encased in industrial cling film, with the sofa propped up to form a cocoon. The friend who he was staying with came home and cut him free, but the incident had really shaken him. Terry was terrified and was convinced he must have been drugged either via injection or by someone covering his face with chloroform.

It was for this reason, as soon as Terry didn’t arrive at work, the alarm was raised immediately and officers were made aware of the recent incident. He had had a minor brush with the law a few months earlier and had an electronic tag that was due to be removed only weeks later. The monitoring device went out of range at 08.43hrs on that morning. Despite the high profile investigation with extensive enquiries and searches, Terry has never been found, nor has the tag or his black mountain bike.

Police charged a man with Terry’s murder in 2012 but the trial collapsed due to insufficient evidence. A full scale search at The Locomotive also failed to reveal any clues. The Major Investigation Team strongly believe there are people who know how and why he has disappeared. Despite his minor offence, investigators say he was known as a reliable and hard worker by his employers and was well known and liked in his community.

Terry was a devoted father to his two children Kayce and Charlie. It is completely out of character for him to disappear and he definitely would not have voluntarily walked away from his children and family. The consensus is that Terry was murdered soon after the last confirmed sighting. An inquest in November 2016 recorded an open verdict, on the understanding should any further evidence come to light it was possible another inquest could be heard in the future.

Despite a lengthy investigation by Norfolk Constabulary the case remains unsolved and regular reviews are performed to include further consideration to searching for and locating Terry.