Murder conviction without a body

In 1984, Mark Tildesley, a seven-year-old schoolboy, disappeared after leaving his home to go to the fairground in Wokingham, Berkshire, England. In 1990, it emerged that on the night he disappeared, Tildesley had been abducted, drugged, tortured, raped and murdered by a London-based paedophile gang, led by Sidney Cooke. Another man named Leslie Bailey was charged with murder in 1991 and the following year was given two life sentences. Bailey was murdered in prison by other inmates shortly afterwards.[12][13] The case remains officially unsolved despite being featured heavily in the national press and on BBC TV's Crimewatch.[14]

In 1988, Helen McCourt, a 22-year-old insurance clerk from Lancashire disappeared.[15] Ian Simms, a local pub landlord, was subsequently charged with and convicted of her murder. This case was also one of the first in the UK to use DNA fingerprinting.[16]

American courts have also been allowed to press murder charges even if a body has not been recovered. In 1990, a Connecticut jury convicted Newtown airline pilot Richard Crafts of killing his Danish wife, Helle, in the 1986 "woodchipper murder", so called for the machine he had rented to dispose of her body in nearby lakes and streams. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The state police's forensic unit, led by Henry Lee, was able to match the DNA of some of the fragments that were discovered to Helle Crafts and the wood chipper her husband had used. It was the first bodyless murder trial in the state's history.

In April 1994, Heidi Allen, 18, of the town of New Haven, was abducted from the Oswego County convenience store where she worked. Her body has never been found. Two brothers, Gary and Richard Thibodeau were charged with kidnapping and murder. Separate trials were held for the brothers. Gary was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years to life, while his brother Richard was acquitted.[17]

In 1996, Thomas Capano was convicted of the murder of Anne Marie Fahey, his former lover. Investigators did not have a murder weapon or body, nor any evidence that Capano had purchased a gun. He was convicted of first-degree murder in part due to the evidence given by his brother, Gerry, who had admitted to helping Capano dump Fahey's body in the Atlantic Ocean.

In May 1999, the New Zealand High Court convicted Scott Watson of the murder of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope. Their bodies have never been found.[18]

In 2000, prosecutors in Orange County, New York, secured that jurisdiction's first-ever bodyless murder conviction. Gregory Chrysler and Lawrence Weygant were found guilty of beating Dominick Pendino, a coworker they mistakenly believed had given police the tip that had led to their arrest on drug-dealing charges, to death with a baseball bat and disposing of his body. They relied on eyewitness testimony from a former girlfriend and police informant, as well as forensic evidence showing that enough of Pendino's blood-stained a car seat for him to have died without immediate medical attention.[19] Neither the body nor the bat have been discovered: Chrysler and Weygant remain in prison and have rebuffed efforts to elicit the body's location from them.

In June 2001, Essex teenager Danielle Jones went missing and despite a body never being found, the required circumstantial evidence was provided by forensic analysis of text messages sent by the accused, her uncle Stuart Campbell, who was convicted of her murder 18 months later. Police determined that Campbell had sent text messages from Danielle's mobile phone to his own after she disappeared, to make it appear that she was still alive, and noted that the spelling of several words in the text messages sent from Danielle's mobile phone had changed after she was reported missing. Their suspicions were also supported by mobile phone records which showed that Campbell's mobile phone, and that of his missing niece, were within a short distance of each other when the messages were sent.

In October 2001, in Neuburg an der Donau (Germany), Rudolf Rupp vanished. He drank excessively, and he was not a likeable person. After the police coerced confessions from his wife, her two daughters and the fiancé of one daughter, they were sentenced for murder. There was no physical evidence of a crime. In 2009, Rupp's car - and his body - were found in the Danube river, having suffered an apparent car accident.

In 2002, Girly Chew Hossencofft's husband and his mistress were convicted of her murder, which occurred in 1999. Hossencofft's remains have never been located.[20]

In spite of advances in forensic technology, the possibility of the supposed victim turning up alive remains. In 2003, Leonard Fraser, having allegedly confessed to the murder of teenager Natasha Ryan, was on trial for this, and other murders, when she reappeared after having been missing for four years.[21]

In 2006, prosecutors in Nashville, Tennessee, had Perry March arrested and extradited from Mexico after he had been secretly indicted on charges of murdering his wife Janet, who had disappeared in 1996. An attempt to have March's in-laws killed while March was awaiting trial led to the arrest of his father, who as part of a plea agreement confessed to burying his daughter-in-law in a pile of brush near Bowling Green, Kentucky, but he was unable to lead police to the body after the intervening nine years. Perry March was convicted in 2006 almost ten years to the day after his wife disappeared.

In the Australian no-body murder of Keith William Allan, evidence from forensic accountants established a motive for his murder. The chance police finding of one perpetrator driving Allan's car and the conduct of all perpetrators, in particular mobile telephone records, were also important factors in their conviction.[22]

In 2007, in Omaha, Nebraska, Christopher Edwards was convicted of murdering his girlfriend Jessica O'Grady, whose body has never been found. His mattress was soaked with her blood.

In 2008, Hans Reiser was convicted of first-degree murder of his wife, Nina Reiser. After conviction and before sentencing, Reiser pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder in exchange for disclosing the location of his wife's body.[23]

In 2012, in Scotland, the prosecution twice won a conviction without a body in the murder of Suzanne Pilley and the murder of Arlene Fraser.

In May 2013, Mark Bridger was convicted of the murder of April Jones, a five-year-old girl from Machynlleth, Powys, Wales, who disappeared on 1 October 2012. At his trial, Bridger claimed to have run her down in his car and killed her by accident, and to have no memory of what he did with her body after drinking heavily. The jury rejected his version of events, as bone fragments and blood discovered in Bridger's house within days of her disappearance were matched to the DNA of April Jones. The body of April Jones was not found, despite the largest missing person search in UK history. Bridger claimed in court that April's DNA was found in his house as he had held her body there before disposing of it, but his claims were not believed by the jury.[24]