Disappearance of Martin Allen

Martin Allen and his brothers grew up in a council flat in Hornsey, where their mother was a secretary at Tufnell Park Primary School.[2] When Martin was 12 his father gained employment as a chauffeur to the Australian High Commissioner and the whole family moved to a cottage in the grounds of the Australian High Commission in Kensington, London.[3] This was a significant change in circumstance and their new neighbours included the De Beers jewellery family.[2] Margaret Thatcher and Ted Heath were regular visitors to the street and Thatcher had a passing acquaintance with Allen's father.[2]

Martin attended the Central Foundation Grammar School in Old Street and was described as intelligent, good at French, maths and drawing.[2] Martin was a shy boy, young for his age, and not the type to run away from home.[4]

On 5 November 1979, Allen travelled home from school on the London Underground. His intention was to go to see his older brother, Bob, who lived near Holloway Road, but he needed to go home first in order to collect some money.[2] At around 3:50pm he said goodbye to some school friends at King's Cross station and set off in the direction of the Piccadilly line platform to travel home.[5] Initial reports state that this was the last confirmed sighting of Martin. Later reports state that Martin came home around 5pm as witnessed by his brother Kevin but went straight out again.[2] Allen failed to reach his brother Bob's home.[6] The family were not alarmed that Martin did not come home that night as they knew that if it got too late Martin would stay at his brother Bob's house.[2] The next day the family had not heard anything. At 7pm Mrs Allen rang Bob.[2] The parents phoned Martin's best friend, Robert, who told them Martin had not been at school. The parents then called the police.[2]

When he was reported missing, a large-scale police operation was launched supported by a media campaign. This failed to locate Allen. The police searched Martin's bedroom in the family cottage for 9 hours but did not find any fingerprints, not even any belonging to Martin himself.

After a TV appeal five weeks after the disappearance,[4] a male witness came forward to report seeing a man accompanying a boy acting suspiciously at Gloucester Road tube station at 4:15pm on the day of the disappearance.[5] This was about half an hour after Martin disappeared.[7] The witness reported that the man was standing with his arm around the shoulder of a boy resembling Martin.[7] The boy appeared distressed and both parties appeared to be nervous as they got onto a Tube train.[7] The witness saw the man prod the boy in the back and overheard him tell the boy not to try to run when the pair left the train at Earl's Court station.[8] The witness described the man as 6 ft tall, in his 30s, well built, with very blonde hair and moustache and was wearing a denim jacket and trousers.[5]

The investigation to find the identity of the man was described at the time as London's biggest ever house-to-house search.[4] It included a visit to every property in Earls Court, the publication of an artist's impression[9] and the wide circulation of Identikit pictures of the man.[7] Investigators eliminated 200 possible suspects, spoke to 50,000 people and collected 600 statements during the inquiry.[9] The identity of the man was never discovered.[9]

Allen's brother Jeffrey alleged that in the early stages of the police investigation the detective responsible for the original 1979 investigation had told the Allen family that there were "high-up people involved" and that they should stop talking and "not take it further because someone will get hurt".[10]

In 1984, a book on the case by writer Anton Gill was published by Corgi Books.[11]

In 1998 it was reported that police in Liverpool, acting on an anonymous tip off, had discovered a ‘shrine’ dedicated to Martin at the home of an alleged paedophile.[6] Officers reportedly visited the house of the 62-year-old man and found a makeshift shrine including newspaper cuttings, pictures and a headstone engraved "In Memory of Martin Allen".[6] This bizarre development prompted a brief resurgence of interest in the case, but no new leads were forthcoming.[12]

In 2009, police told Kevin and Jeffrey that the files on the investigation had been destroyed in a flood.[3] In 2009 Allen's parents conceded they had no hope of seeing him alive again, believing him to have been abducted; they stated their wish simply to know what had happened and why.[8]

Martin's father, Tom, died in 2012.[2] His mother has since also died.

The case was closed in the 1980s, but reopened in 2009 in light of new information.[10] The officer leading the new police investigation admitted that police were baffled by the case and that, despite a massive initial inquiry and a good response from the public, they had few leads.[8] The police interviewed serial killer Dennis Nilsen twice about Martin's disappearance. No evidence of a connection was found.[9]

In 2012, British police initiated a number of new investigations into child abuse allegations dating back over the previous 20–30 years. This included a re-investigation of claims of child abuse at the Elm Guest House. Elm House was a London guest house where it was known that exploitation and abuse of children had taken place repeatedly over a prolonged period of time during the 1970s and 1980s.[10] The location of Elm Guest House, along with the known predatory activities of the individuals involved there, have led to media speculation that Martin and another boy, eight-year-old Vishal Mehotra, could have been abducted (and later murdered) by paedophiles active at the guest house around that time.[13]

In 2015 Operation Midland officers told Kevin to “prepare for the worst” as they had “credible evidence” from a VIP gang survivor that Martin had been murdered.[14] Operation Midland interviewed Carl Beech, then known publicly under the pseudonym "Nick", who falsely claimed that he saw three boys being murdered by the paedophile network: one was run over, another strangled by a Conservative MP and the third killed in front of a government minister.[3] Beech told police that former Tory MP Harvey Proctor had been responsible for two of the murders and had been implicated in the third.[15] Proctor denied any and all allegations and did not recognise an E-FIT photograph of the boy when questioned.[15] The allegations were proved false and Beech was proved to be a fantasist.[16] Beech was convicted of crimes related to lying to police in July 2019 and was jailed for 18 years.[17]

In April 2015 it was announced by the police that some of the lost evidence had been rediscovered.[14] In May 2016 Operation Malswick superseded Operation Midland and was formed specifically to re-investigate Martin Allen's case. Police questioned Sidney Cooke, a paedophile gang leader who was jailed for life in 1985.[18]

• List of people who disappeared