YOUNG LIFE TAKEN
Our daughter, 13, went to buy cornflakes & never came home… killer been free for decades but we won’t stop searching
The sisters of the murdered teen are urgently appealing for people to come forward with any new information
A FAMILY'S hunt for their daughters killer has been ongoing for 30 years and they show no signs of giving up.
Teenager Lindsay Rimer had gone to her local corner shop in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire to buy Cornflakes on this day in 1994, but the young girl never returned home.
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Months later, her body was discovered weighed down in the nearby Rochdale Canal.
But 30 years on, her family are still hunting for her killer, and are appealing for help.
Lindsay's younger sister Juliet said: “We want someone to come forward with information, because you never know that tiny piece of information might be the missing piece in the puzzle and might just fit everything together and put this to rest.”
Older sister Kate added: “If you know something about my sister’s murder and the person who killed her, you have a moral obligation to come forward because this needs to end for our family, and it needs to end for Lindsay as well.”
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The police investigation has struggled with little evidence and dead ends over the past three decades.
The night it unfolded had been like any other for the Rimer family.
"We were just a normal family before that night. Then it all exploded," recalls Kate, Lindsay’s elder sister who was 20 when she disappeared.
Having realised the family were out of cornflakes for breakfast the next day, Lindsay set off for the Spar on Crown Street.
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She began the less than a mile journey at 22:00 on 7 November and had called her mum at a nearby Trades Club to get some money for the purchase.
However, after her mum returned later, both of Lindsay's parents went to bed, assuming their daughter had come home and gone straight up to her attic room.
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But a phone call from the newsagents where Lindsay worked the next morning was the first sign that this had not happened.
The newsagents said she hadn't turned up for work, and it was then the family discovered her paper delivery bag still in the kitchen with her school money.
Running up the stairs, they realised she hadn't slept in her bed and that "something had happened."
Lindsay had been caught leaving the shop at 22:22 on patchy CCTV footage, and then was spotted by two bus passengers as she leant against a wall.
This was the last confirmed sighting of her alive.
The police and community joined forces soon after her reported disappearance.
A week into the search, Kate, who describes being "plucked from normality into a world of crime and press," played the role of her sister in a televised reconstruction.
It was hoped tracing her last movements would jog people's memories.
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Kate recalls being "insistent"; to take part to try and find her beloved sister.
She added that all she can recognise in pictures of herself in the past is the "terror" in her face.
As the investigation wore on, Kate says she remembers when officers, in a desperate attempt to find evidence, searched the home of every man in the town.
Rumours also emerged of Lindsay's sighting across the country.
Timeline of events
November 7, 1994 - 10pm. Lindsay leaves her home on Cambridge Street in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire.
The teenager meets her mum in Trades Club but doesn't stay for a soft drink.
10.22pm - She is seen shortly afterwards on CCTV in SPAR shop on Crown Street buying cornflakes and then by two people at a bus stop - this is the last time she is seen alive.
November 8 - Police are called when Lindsay doesn't show up for her paper round. Huge search gets underway by police, family and members of local community.
April 12, 1995 - Two canal workers find Lindsay's body in Rochdale Canal.
November 2016 - A 63-year-old man from Bradford is arrested. He is released on police bail.
April 2017 - A 68 year-old man from Bradford is arrested. He is released without charge.
One man claimed he saw the teenager being dragged into a car and had followed it to a nearby reservoir, but this was later disproved.
Then a detective superintendent in the murder squad, Tony Whittle described the difficulty of trying to find Lindsay with such little to go off.
He noted that since people were around at the time, any attempt to kidnap her would have likely resulted in noise and a commotion that would have been either seen or heard.
The investigation turns to vehicles
Detectives were then led to believe that Lindsay may have gotten into a vehicle with someone she knew.
She was described as an "intelligent, cautious girl" who would not have gone off with a stranger.
An offender profile drawn up by a psychiatrist indicated the suspect was likely a driver, aged 17 to early 20s, and perhaps someone Lindsay would find attractive.
A breakthrough came several weeks into the inquiry when Tony received a call to say officers had tracked down the driver of a stolen red Honda Civic.
It was thought the driver of the vehicle, which was spotted in town when Lindsay disappeared, had attempted to talk to schoolgirls.
While Tony thought this was the perpetrator, the man had an alibi and was ruled out.
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As the months wore on, and with the absence of any concrete leads, the inquiry began to wind down.
Then in April 1995, five months after her disappearance, Lindsay's body was discovered.
It was found a mile out of the town centre in the Rochdale Canal by two council workers who had been clearing debris from the waterway.
Kate recalls the "sad" moment she was told.
A 'life sentence' for Lindsay's family
IN 2015, 20 years after the discovery of her sister’s body, Lindsay’s sister, Kate, said her family had been given a ‘life sentence’ while her killer had gone unpunished.
Kate, who was 20 when Lindsay disappeared, said: “I still remember when Mum called me to say my little sister was missing.
“I felt instantly that something was wrong.
“From the beginning we have been filled with grief and we cannot stop the grief and instead remember her with love until this comes to an end.
“We miss her so much but every memory of her is tainted – it is so painful and bleeds into everything we do.
“It is about time this came to an end – it is a life sentence for this family.”
The following year, in April 2016, there was renewed hope for the family when West Yorkshire Police sent DNA evidence to Canada to be analysed using the latest scientific techniques.
Lindsay’s younger sister, Juliet, who was 17 months old when Lindsay went missing, also spoke out for the first time.
She said: “There will always be a void.
“A piece of everyone’s soul is missing and I often wonder how our lives would have been if we were not a ‘broken’ family – the advice Lindsay would have given me, the fights we might have had, the things we may have shared.
“Getting the answers wouldn’t change the hurt, but it would help bring closure to us all.”
No further details about the DNA testing were revealed but then, in November 2016, a 63-year-old man from Bradford was arrested.
Speaking at a press conference after the arrest, Lindsay’s mother, who divorced Lindsay’s father, Gordon after their daughter’s death, said: “My little girl deserves justice.
“My little girl does not deserve to be dead.
Lindsay had been strangled and likely killed on the night she vanished, with her body then dumped in the canal.
The arms of her jumper had been tied together in a sling with a stone used to weigh her down.
There was no suggestion of a sexual assault.
As her body had been submerged for so long, any hope of forensic clues had been erased.
Despite taking hundreds of witness statements, speaking to thousands of people and examining hundreds of vehicle, officers made no progress.
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Case updates
Over the years the case has remained open, breakthrough moments have appeared within touching distance.
In April 2016, police believed that scientific advances had enabled them to create a DNA profile which may lead them back to the killer.
In November that year, a 63-year-old man was arrested, with a 68-year-old from Bradford then arrested in April 2017.
However, both were later released without charge.
Three decades on, Lindsay's younger sister Juliet reflects on how she has no living memory of her sibling.
A baby when she disappeared, Juliet has grown up knowing Lindsay to exist only in the context of murder and death.
She talks about a childhood where her family were in a ";perpetual cycle of grief".
The shadow of Lindsay's murder still looms across the picturesque town and the officers who investigated it.
Graham Sunderland, a detective inspector on the investigation, says he often thinks about the case and how it was the only one in his career that officers hadn't solved.
Although now retired, he is desperate for the case to be solved.
He's in a desperate plea for information, "no matter how insignificant," to try and bring justice to Lindsay's killer.
Det Ch Insp James Entwistle, who is now heading the inquiry, says: "Loyalties change around people who know things, science moves on.
"There is always an opportunity and always a drive because this is a relentless pursuit for the truth."
The family's grief continues
Lindsay’s family continue to grieve her loss.
Kate describes her parents as "broken" with the whole family "exhausted by grief".
They have created a memory box of their sister.
They remember how the young teenager, who loved fashion, Nirvana and the Prodigy, was keen to go to university.
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But Kate and Juliet try not to focus too much on what Lindsay's life may have been like, as it would be "too painful".
The family’s only way of finding peace is to find the killer.
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