Vanished

A dad whose son has been missing since 1988 told his story on ITV’s This Morning

A father has told how his life became “a living nightmare” after his 15-year-old son vanished without a trace.

Lee Boxell was last seen on September 10, 1988 after he left his home in Sutton, south west London, to meet a friend. He was seen on the High Street in the town that day, but there have been no confirmed sightings since.

Police have theorised that Lee could have been killed after stepping in to stop or threatening to report an assault in the grounds of a church where an unofficial youth club took place.

Appearing on ITV‘s This Morning, his dad Peter Boxell shared how the family were “panic-stricken” and went through their “worst nightmare” after Lee didn’t come home that day.

“It was just like a living nightmare from then on,” he said. “I think it’s every person’s, every family member, every parent’s worst nightmare. And for us, it was a living nightmare.”

He told hosts Josie Gibson and Paddy McGuinness: “We couldn’t sleep for weeks after that. We thought, we didn’t want to miss a phone call or a knock on the door if Lee could come home.”

Paddy asked how Peter had carried on through the years, and he replied: “Well, we’ve been essentially living in limbo, not knowing what’s happened to our son, Lee. And we desperately want to know what happened to him. I mean, I’m old now. I’m 80. His mother’s a few years older than me.

“Most of Lee’s relatives have passed on. And he has a sister who desperately wants to know what happened to him. And she has her own children. So Lee’s now got a niece and a nephew. They know all about Lee. And they want to know what happened to Lee.”

Asked what he thought had happened, Peter said: “I think that the police’s theory is correct, that Lee went to the unofficial youth club at the back of the church in the graveyard at St Dunstan’s in Cheam. And I think he went there, maybe only once.

“And I think he may have seen something, some criminal activity going on. Maybe he saw somebody assaulting a child there. And he would either have gone to the aid of that child or he would have gone for help.

“And I’m only guessing. I just think that the adults who were carrying out that crime may have tried to silence Lee. They may have unintentionally killed him. I don’t know, but I think they may have killed him. That’s what I think has happened.”

Josie also read out a comment from the Met, saying: “They have said, ‘We’ve never stopped our investigation into what happened to Lee. And it remains ongoing within the Met’s cold case team.

“We would urge anyone who did not feel able to speak to police in the past to come forward and tell us what they know. If you can help, whether anonymously or otherwise, please, please, please get in touch’.”

This Morning airs on ITV at 10am on weekdays.

July 2 (UPI) — A young World War II pilot who disappeared during a flight in1944 has been accounted for, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Thursday.

The remains of 1st Lt. Franklin H. McKinney, 21, of the U.S. Army Air Forces were identified May 15, nearly 82 years after his plane vanished on a mission, the agency said.

McKinney was a pilot with the 35th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, 14th Air Force, the announcement said. On Nov. 5, 1944, he left a U.S. base on a reconnaissance mission from Yunnanyi, China, over Burma and Thailand.

“Photo reconnaissance work by the 35th and the intelligence derived from it helped turn the tide of the war in China,” an Air Force article on the squadron noted.

McKinney, who was flying an F-5 Lightning aircraft, failed to return from the mission. Personnel from the American Graves Registration Service searched along his planned flight path to the Chinese/Thailand border, but found no sign of a crash, the DPAA report said.

His remains were not recovered immediately after the war, and his name was engraved on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

McKinney’s personnel profile on the DPAA website says that a wartime report from the Royal Thai Air Force Museum later led researchers to new information. The report said that a plane was hit by lightning, exploded and crashed in a wooded area in Lampang Province, Thailand, near the time McKinney’s aircraft vanished.

In 2018, the profile said, third-party researchers found a crash site in the region that they matched with McKinney’s plane. In 2022, a recovery team excavated the site and found human remains. Modern forensic techniques eventually identified them as McKinney’s.

The pilot’s family will be briefed by the DPAA, CBS News reported. A rosette will be added next to his name on the Tablets of the Missing. McKinney will be laid to rest with full military honors.

McKinney’s home of record is listed as Rhode Island. This does not necessarily mean he from the state, but that he joined the service there, the DPAA said.

The agency is a department within the U.S. Department of Defense. It identifies its mission as providing “the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and the nation.”