Tuesday, December 11, 2020
Ruth Wilson’s mysterious disappearance on Box Hill
Ruth Wilson was last seen through the rear-view mirror of a taxi. The taxi driver was watching the 16-year-old fade into the fading light on a cold, wet night in November 1995. He’d just dropped her off at a local beauty spot on Box Hill, a 224-meter (735-foot) hill that dominates the landscape around the Surrey commuter town of Dorking in southeast England.
The driver later told police that he was surprised to see the schoolgirl standing there, rather than walking towards some rendezvous, possibly at a nearby pub called the Hand in Hand. Surprising, but not alarming. The driver proceeded to his next pickup. Ruth Wilson would never be seen or heard from again. Her absence was complete. She would not make a phone call, send a letter, or withdraw money from the bank. She’d just vanished.
Ruth Wilson’s Personal Information and Family Tree
Ruth Wilson, the daughter of Ian and Nesta Wilson, was born on January 31, 1979. The family lived in a picturesque 17th-century cottage on Wonham Lane in Betchworth, Surrey, England, about 21 miles south of London. Her mother was born on May 1, 1948, in Wellingborough, and was given the name Nesta Landeg by her adoptive parents. Nesta and Ian married in 1976 in Newport, Wales. Nesta died in tragic circumstances when Wilson was three years old and her sister, Jenny, was only a few months old. Ruth was told that her mother died in an accident when she fell down the stairs on December 4, 1982, but her actual cause of death, as stated on the Death Certificate issued on December 10, was suicide by hanging. Ian G. Wilson, Ruth’s father, remarried Karen Bowerman near the end of 1983. Ian and Karen both worked as teachers, and Ian was also a member of the parish council.
Ruth liked to read, ride her bike, and play the electric guitar and piano. She also worked on Saturdays in a music store and babysat in the neighborhood where she lived. She was described as intelligent, “not cool,” and possibly nerdy. Ruth was a typical adolescent with many interests and a small group of close-knit friends who were all described as quirky but similar. She was a student at The Ashcombe School Sixth Form in Dorking, taking A levels in Biology and Chemistry. She went to St Michael’s Church in Betchworth, where she was baptized. She sang in the choir, played the organ, and rang the church bells. According to Ruth’s friend, Catherine Mair, she developed the belief that her biological mother’s death was not as she had been told around October 1995. She went to London to look over Nesta’s death certificate. Ben Anderton, a classmate, claims she ran away from home a month before her finals.
Catherine Mair was about to relocate to Sheffield, South Yorkshire, and Ruth had asked if she could accompany her. But she never had the chance because she went missing a few weeks after Catherine left. Wilson had slept over not long before Catherine vanished, and she was adamant that she did not want to return home, according to Catherine’s mother. Ruth did not elaborate. Ruth Wilson’s parents have denied that her home life was unhappy, and friends and family have stated that she was not suicidal.
Ruth Wilson’s disappearance
Ruth worked at her usual job in a music shop in Dorking on the Saturday before her disappearance, then went out for an Indian meal with her ex-boyfriend, Will Kennedy, and another friend, Neil Phillipson. Wilson paid for the meal, according to both Kennedy and Phillipson, and told them it would be “something to remember her by.” Despite their split, Ruth and Will remained friends, and Ruth is thought to have signaled her intention to leave home.
Ruth then went to the local church for handbell practice on Sunday, then to Dorking for a youth group before returning to Will Kennedy’s for supper. Ruth’s parents left early for work on the day of her disappearance, Monday, November 27, 1995, leaving her and her sister Jenny to catch the school bus. Ian Wilson, the head of science at the secondary school where he taught, was preparing for an Ofsted Government inspection, and Karen, the deputy head of a local primary school at the time, was also preparing. Ian recalls being in a rush and pushing past Ruth, who was listening to her Walkman. ‘I remember being irritated with her,’ Ian said. ‘I said something like this: “Get out of my way. I’m in a rush.” Those were the last words I ever said to her, and I’ll always regret it.’
The two sisters were used to taking the bus to school together, but at the last minute, Ruth informed her sister that she would not be attending. ‘I wasn’t surprised because she was in the sixth form and didn’t always come in for the entire day,’ she explained. ‘I thought it was odd that she waited until the last minute to tell me, but that was all.”
Will appeared in his car shortly after Jenny left for school and offered Ruth a ride. She declined, telling Will she’d see him later. Will assumed this meant she’d be arriving at school after lunch. Ruth was not one to skip school on purpose, so he expected her to show up at Ashcombe School later in the day. Ruth, on the other hand, never showed up.
She took a taxi from Betchworth to Dorking around 11.30 a.m., and by midday, she had ordered flowers for her stepmother from Thistles Florists on Dorking High Street. She requested that they be delivered the following Wednesday.
Ruth then spent the afternoon at Dorking Library before taking a taxi from Dorking railway station to the nearby beauty spot, Box Hill, around 4-4.15 p.m. After a 10–15-minute ride up a winding road to the top of the Hill, she was dropped off on a bridleway near the Hand in Hand pub (now called The Box Tree).
Ruth, according to the taxi driver, exhibited unusual behavior in that she simply stood still in the rain as he drove away, and she did not walk away as he observed her in his mirror. The taxi driver was the last person to see her at 4.30 p.m., and at that time of year, it would have been dark.
Ruth was wearing a red knitted jumper, black velvet trousers, black pixie boots, and a small lady’s watch on her left wrist when she went missing. She was carrying a small blue duffel bag containing a personal stereo and tapes.
Wilson was “dressed to get into another car,” according to Liam McAuley, a 58-year-old retired police officer investigating the disappearance, implying that a third party may have been involved, and running away seemed more likely than suicide.
Box Hill’s search for Ruth Wilson
Later that night, Ian and Karen became concerned that Ruth had not only not gone to school, but had also not returned home, and they called the police. The possibility that Ruth was a runaway was raised, and police launched a missing person’s investigation.
With the information from the taxi driver who dropped Ruth off on Box Hill reported fairly early on, police conducted a search of approximately 100 acres in the surrounding area. The search included the use of sniffer dogs, helicopters, a large group of police and volunteers, and heat-seeking equipment. However, there were no leads as to Ruth’s whereabouts.
Ruth was later discovered to have frequently gone to Box Hill after school to hang out with friends. She was also concerned about her academic performance and had kept a school report from her parents the weekend before she went missing. Ruth’s flowers were delivered to her stepmother Karen on November 29, two days after her disappearance. In subsequent reports, Ian Wilson described the flowers as an expensive bouquet, but there was no note attached to the flowers.
Wilson’s friend Mair saw this as “sticking two fingers up” to her stepmother. Police discovered three notes hidden under a bush in the undergrowth at the top edge of Betchworth Quarry on Box Hill on Friday, December 1, four days after the disappearance. Empty packets of paracetamol tablets and a half-empty bottle of Vermouth were discovered nearby. The police have never revealed the contents of the notes to the public, but they are thought to be goodbyes to her parents, best friend, and a teenage boy. Ruth’s handwriting was apparently confirmed, but this is purely speculative.
The discovery of alcohol and paracetamol tablets suggested to the police that this could be a suicide attempt, but Ruth’s body was not found nearby. Even after a thorough search.
Police were also unable to determine whether the notes were left on the day of her disappearance or earlier. Did she leave the notes and these items to throw the cops off?
On Saturday, December 2, 1995, five days after her disappearance, Surrey police and the fire and rescue team conducted another large-scale search. This time, the search took place at the Betchworth Quarry end of Box Hill. Local residents, school friends, colleagues, National Trust wardens, and employees of the quarry’s owners, Nionisle Ltd., were among the 60 volunteers who took part. Ruth was not found, and no new leads were developed as a result of this search.
Mark Williams-Thomas, the family liaison officer in Ruth’s case, stated that extensive searches across Box Hill had turned up no evidence that she had been murdered or committed suicide. He also stated that he was certain Wilson had not been kidnapped by a stranger. Williams-Thomas went on to say “Based on my observations, I believe one of two things occurred. She either went up there to meet someone and then left, or she went up there and died in some way.”
Ian and Karen Wilson appeared on the Granada TV breakfast show “This Morning” on Friday, December 8, 1995, to request information. They stated that they believed Ruth was still alive but was too afraid to return home.
Catherine Mair was visited by police at her new home in Sheffield eight months after her disappearance. The officers took a break from questioning her to search her wardrobe as if she was harbouring Ruth. The case was given the code name Operation Scholar by the police.
Catherine, who was close to Ruth during their brief friendship, stated that things were not going well at home: “She was unhappy, really unhappy.” She cried with me about various issues. She wasn’t looking forward to being there. It is unclear why this is the case. “She was tight-lipped about it.” Catherine, who never went to Ruth’s house, adds, “she didn’t go into details.”
Stuart Qualtrough wrote in The People newspaper on October 6, 1996: “It is believed Ruth was spotted on the outskirts of London on Tuesday, October 1, 1996, after cable station LIVE TV appealed for help on their Missing Persons’ program.”
On the first anniversary of Ruth’s disappearance, a person who resembled Ruth was seen on CCTV in a Dorking newsagent’s shop two miles from Box Hill. The female adolescent was distraught and asked for a copy of each of the local newspapers, becoming visibly upset when she was told that one had sold out. The owner of the newspaper shop reported the incident to the police and saved the CCTV footage. Ruth’s disappearance was mentioned in the local newspapers. In an article published in The Times on January 2, 1997, her parents stated that they believed the girl in the video was Ruth.
Sgt Shane Craven, head of East Surrey police’s missing person team, stated on the tenth anniversary of her disappearance in 2005, “In the weeks following Ruth’s disappearance there were some fairly reliable sightings of her in the Dorking area by people who knew her well.” Sightings have been reported all the way from Canada. Rebecca Younger’s (9 December 2008) Surrey Advertiser article announced an appeal to commemorate the 13th anniversary of the disappearance. Surrey Police revealed in this appeal that they were looking into a MySpace posting about a possible sighting in Canada. According to the missing person team, they followed up on every lead.
A local newspaper issued an appeal in 2018 for anyone who knew Ruth at the time to come forward with any information that could shed light on her disappearance. Roxy Birch, who knew Ruth from school and played her in a police reconstruction video, claimed Ruth didn’t drive and didn’t have a passport at the time of her disappearance, making long-distance and international travel more difficult. ‘My belief is that she had planned to do something,’ said another friend, Kay Blenard. I’m not sure if that would be permanent or temporary. I’d also like to believe that someone is aware of what occurred.’
The same year, Jon Savell, Surrey police’s chief superintendent of public protection, gave a review of the case, stating, “There are five explanations for Ruth Wilson’s disappearance: a tragic accident, abduction, suicide, murder, or that she had absented herself to start a new life.”
‘We still have the presents we bought you for Christmas in 1995,’ Ian Wilson wrote in an open letter to his missing daughter in 2006. They’re safe in a drawer, waiting for you to return, though I’m sure your tastes have evolved so much that you’d laugh at the music and clothes. We can’t bear moving, even though the house is too big now that your sister Jenny has moved out. After all, it is your home. Your disappearance remains unsolved. You were self-assured, independent, and seemed content at home, despite the usual adolescent quarrels. You can imagine our terror and how we searched for months on end. I scoured London, hoping against hope that I’d come across you. We wondered if you were hiding something, but your Filofax revealed nothing. The police discovered that you had previously visited Box Hill, but they have no idea why. There have been a lot of false leads. Every time our spirits are lifted, they are quickly dashed. It’s inhumane. Even now, I find myself staring as I drive past bus stops. Could that young woman — you’re now 27 years old — be you?’
The Wilsons also stated, in response to reports that Ruth had a difficult family life, that ‘her family… do not recognise this view of Ruth’s childhood.’ Ruth had always been aware of her biological mother’s death, but not the precise cause. Sadly, we now know that Ruth had discovered the tragic circumstances of her mother’s death prior to her disappearance — but equally sadly, she chose not to discuss or question this with any family members.’
Suicide – Alcohol, paracetamol, and farewell notes were discovered near Box Hill, but no remains have ever been discovered.
Abduction – This seems unlikely given that she planned her trip to Box Hill and took a taxi there. Ruth appeared to be waiting for someone else, according to the taxi driver.
Did she intend to flee? There were unconfirmed reports that she was seen, but her bank account and passport were not taken from her home.
