Missing - Every Year, Thousands of People Vanish Without Trace. Here are the True Stories Behind Some of These Mysteries. Rose Rouse
paid for the funeral. There was even a video of the funeral, which Jo eventually got hold of. ‘For me, finding Ami was the biggest breakthrough,’ she says. ‘Eddie is on that video and he doesn’t look like he’s on drugs or anything. He looks like Eddie. He has his arms round Ami from time to time and they look as though they were close. Eddie was obviously trying to help her out. At her father’s wake, they look very happy together.’
Not long afterwards, Mike went back to Cambodia with Eddie’s godfather. They met up with Ami and asked her questions about what Eddie had done during that time. She confirmed that she had been with him until 24 October. The other significant person was a young man called Trip. Eddie had befriended him on his first visit. ‘Trip hangs around the border next to Thailand,’ says Jo, ‘and he organised for Eddie and his friends to go to Angkor Wat, which is when they became friends. Trip is one of the individuals Eddie had talked about when he came back to England. Mike even eventually got the police to interview him, but he did not have any information.’
Meanwhile, Ami told them that Eddie had said he was going to Thailand with two friends after he left her on 24 October. He promised her that he would come back to see her in three weeks time. Ami also told Eddie’s father that they had been thinking of living together and even having babies. ‘He would say that,’ says Jo, ‘because he didn’t want to be unkind. He had a string of different women around the world, so I don’t take that too seriously.’ The wooden shack where she lived had not had any improvements made to it. Ami wasn’t living the high life. Of course, during this time, the possibility that Eddie had been murdered remained.
In November 2005, Mike went out again and this time met the Prime Minister of Cambodia. Jo and he had the idea that the best course of action would be to get some British detectives out there to do an investigation. They were disillusioned with the Cambodian police and thought the British would do a better job, but Cambodian protocol dictated that they had to have a Prime Ministerial invitation. They were successful. ‘Mike also met up with a private detective from Australia who said he could help us,’ she says. ‘We ended up taking him on and he’s been on the case now for two years. But he hasn’t come up with anything useful and we have paid him a lot of money.’
Neither Mike nor Jo went out to Cambodia in 2006. They left the enquiries to the private detective. And finally in the June of that year, a team of British detectives did go out to look for Eddie. ‘This was great news for us,’ she says. ‘We had to work so hard to enable it to actually take place. In fact, it was the first time ever that British police had been allowed in the country. That felt like a major coup.’
The British detectives were there for two weeks and Mike and Jo were sure they would find out what had happened. ‘They were a crime investigation unit,’ she says, ‘so they knew what they were doing and they did interview a lot of people.
‘But in the end, frustratingly, they concluded that they didn’t know what had happened and they didn’t come up with any new information.’
Jo was disappointed but decided to take no news as good news. Maybe Eddie’s still there, she thought to herself, and too scared to come home. Even as a small child, Eddie had been adventurous. He was in and out of cupboards at home.
‘That was the beginning of his personality,’ says Jo. ‘He also always used to make people laugh. Eddie was always the centre of attention without quite meaning to be.’ As Eddie grew up, he was also fearless. He was always willing to take risks. At school, he was a character, intelligent but often in trouble. ‘Like when he was a teenager, he went on a school trip to France and the teachers couldn’t find him or his friend. He was eventually found in the girls’ changing room. Not that the girls minded. He was a mischievous boy but everyone loved him.’
However, Eddie went on to get ten GCSEs, mostly As and Bs, then three As at A-level in Business Studies, IT and Communication Studies. ‘He worked really hard for them,’ says Jo. ‘All his friends would be on the beach but he’d shut himself in his room so he deserved his results. When he wanted to be, he was utterly focused. In this case, he wanted to beat Elliott’s results. Elliott got two Bs and a C, so Eddie had to do better. He was competitive with himself. He was very happy to have succeeded but he didn’t brag; that wasn’t his style.’
His gap year was a huge success. Eight of them, girls and boys, all old school friends, went off travelling together. Eddie was always a bit of a wheeler and dealer so he made money for his trip by selling whatever he could on eBay. He’d go to car boot sales, he’d buy his friends’ unwanted possessions and he’d make money from them. When Eddie wanted to do something, he would make sure it actually happened.
One of Jo’s favourite memories is of joining Eddie in Australia earlier in 2004. ‘He was there as part of his gap year and it was his birthday. He was 19 so Tony and I went over to visit him there, ‘she explains. ‘Mike and Max had already been. Eddie had bought a Cadillac while he was there and they’d travelled up the east coast to Cairns and stayed quite a few weeks in Surfer’s Paradise on the way. He loved Australia but he was really looking forward to some real travelling in the Far East.’
In fact, Jo had some of the happiest days of her life with him there. ‘I took Eddie to the hairdressers. He wanted a few blond highlights put in. He was so handsome and charming, and all the stylists clustered around him. I felt immensely proud,’ she says. Afterwards, they lunched beside Sydney Opera House and talked and talked. ‘He was my son but he was also my friend,’ she says movingly. ‘He held my hand in his enormous hands. It was so sweet.’
Jo also took him to hospital because he’d broken his wrist up on the Gold Coast and it needed more attention. ‘Eddie told me that he’d broken his wrist playing football on the beach,’ she says. ‘But five months after he’d gone missing, I found out from his friends that he’d actually fallen twenty-five feet from an apartment onto the beach. They were having a party and the balcony was very low, which explains why the break was so bad. I’m sure Ed didn’t tell me these details because he didn’t want me to worry.’
After that, he and his friends went off to Bangkok, Laos, Burma, Vietnam and Cambodia. As his family was to discover, it was Cambodia that really affected him. ‘The people there have nothing,’ he would say when he got back, ‘but they are happier than us with everything.’ It was an attraction that cost him and his family very, very dearly.
In January 2007, Jo and Mike went back to Cambodia once again. ‘We’d just had another Christmas without Eddie, ‘she says, ‘and I really felt it would be good to get on TV and radio out there again and appeal to everyone as a mother who was being tormented by the disappearance of her son. I wanted to implore anyone who knows anything to come forward. I want to stop living in limbo and discover what happened to Eddie. Even if he’s dead, it’s better than living like this.’
His parents offered US $20,000 for information. ‘We decided to put a figure on the money,’ she says, ‘so it’s more real to people. That’s a lot of money in a country where the average policeman earns just US $300 a year. We desperately hope it will tempt people to tell the truth. Someone must know something.’
Jo’s biggest fear is that someone killed Eddie for his money. He had £3,000 when he left the UK, but what did he do with it? Jo really wants to establish how he was carrying his money and if he had traveller’s cheques or had opened a bank account out there. This information will help them form an opinion at least about whether Eddie was simply murdered for his cash.
‘I don’t know how discreet he was with it. He was always very careful with money,’ she says, ‘but life is cheap in Cambodia and, as a result of so much violence and death in their culture, people are hardened to killing.’
At the moment, Jo and Mike cannot move forward. They still do not know what happened to their son. It seemed that he was planning to leave Cambodia and go to Thailand, perhaps to catch his flight home. However, there is no evidence that he ever left Cambodia. They’ve been up to the border between Thailand and Cambodia and seen how lawless it is. But they still don’t know if Eddie made it there.
Jo keeps his room at home unchanged. It’s full of