These are the real-life grisly stories behind BBC series The Missing, according to the show’s creators
The writers said desperation can play bizarre tricks on the mind
THE highly-anticipated finale of the BBC's gripping crime drama The Missing is just around the corner and there's no doubt viewers will be left on the edge of their seats as the series draws to a close.
The story is the stuff of nightmares, but creators Harry and Jack Williams have revealed that the show is based on several real-life abduction cases.
Three cases in particular shaped the story: the Ariel Castro abductions in Cleveland Ohio; the eight-year ordeal of Natascha Kampusch; and French serial impostor Frederic Boudin, who convinced a family he was their missing son even though he looked completely different.
Last week on The Missing, it was revealed that fake Alice Webster - who is actually Sophie Giroux - didn't perish in the shed fire, but escaped to a Swiss cabin to live with Adam Gettrick and the child Lucy.
Alice had been kept prisoner in the basement of Adam's house for years, while Sophie lived upstairs and Adam lived a normal life, going to and from work.
Not dissimilarity, in August 2002, Castro kidnapped the then 21-year-old Michelle Knight and locked her in his basement. Eight months later, he kidnapped another girl, 17-year-old Amanda Berry, before also abducting Gina De Jesus at just 14 years old.
Sick Castro kept the three women locked in his basement, just streets away from their own home, and invited his friends into the house to play music - with his prisoners below terrified into silence.
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Even his family would come and stop by - and yet no-one noticed the girls under the floorboards.
The three women found freedom in May 2013, when Amanda's six-year-old daughter by Castro helped the women to escape the house and alert police.
He pleaded guilty to 937 counts of rape, kidnapping and aggravated murder in 2013 and was sentenced to life plus 1,000 years before hanging himself.
Natascha Kampusch was the girl in the cellar - kidnapped at the age of ten and held for eight years by her evil captor Wolfgang Priklopil, whose aim was to make her love him.
Natascha managed to escape when she attracted the attention of a woman in a house nearby who called the police.
Another story which mirrors The Missing, is so strange that, if it wasn't true, viewers would think it was too far-fetched to be taken seriously as a plot.
Harry and Jack told the Sunday People: "In another case that influenced us, a confidence trickster convinced a family in Texas he was their long-lost son, despite the fact that his hair and eyes were a different colour.
"He even had a french accent, not American.
"The parents were desperate to believe him and, as we have tried to show, desperation can play bizarre tricks on the mind."