Father of Teen That Vanished 30 Years Ago: 'I Don’t Want To Go to My Grave Without Knowing'
Why do people want to be a part of televised talent competitions? I think most of us believe that such participants think they’re springboards to easy fame and stardom.
You practice really hard beforehand and polish up a few routines or songs until they positively shine. You endure the ribbing of Simon Cowell or some other celebrity.
Then as long as you land in the competition’s upper echelons, you’re set. Congrats! You have a new career in entertainment.
But that’s not why everyone wants to appear on a variety show. Just look at Sutton, England, resident Peter Boxell.
The Sutton Guardian reported that the 70-year-old Boxell performed with a choir on “Britain’s Got Talent” in 2017 and reached the finals. Only this wasn’t just any choir, and its choristers didn’t want to draw attention to themselves.
It was the Missing People Choir, and members hoped that their efforts will bringing them news about their vanished loved ones. Boxell himself has searched for his son, Lee, for 30 years.
“It’s not about us winning,” he said. “It’s about raising awareness about the Missing People’s Charity…
“My hope is that we are going to reunite a few families, and if we do win then it would be amazing because the prize money would go to the charity.” Boxell had another reason for performing, too: He hoped to find some closure regarding Lee.
Everything started on Sept. 10, 1988. Lee was 15 at the time and an avid fan of everything football (or soccer, as we call it in the United States).
The last anyone heard from him was when he told a high school friend that he was planning to go watch a team at a nearby park. Police soon opened an investigation, but it went cold in 1989.
Scotland Yard began looking into his disappearance once again in 2013. They grilled a known sex offender and spent £1 million excavating a churchyard where they believed Lee was buried, all to no avail.
In 2014, they arrested three men and a woman, believing that Lee was murdered and they had something to do with it. However, none of them were ultimately charged.
The case is still ongoing as of 2018. Boxell, though, expressed doubt that much will come of it.
“I think each year that goes by, our hopes of finding Lee alive diminishes,” he told The Sun. “Every anniversary is a quiet and sombre day for us.
“I think he may have been murdered and as each year goes by we have less hope of finding his remains.”
“I’m 72 now,” he explained. “If we don’t find out soon, it will be too late for us, and I don’t want to go to my grave without knowing what happened.”
Still, Boxell and his wife Christine have never entirely given up hope and still keep Lee’s old bedroom exactly the way the teenager left it.
“I think it’s made us stronger, as we’ve had to learn to cope with our pain, our loss and our suffering. It’s been very hard,” Boxell said.
“But everywhere in the world there are people with much worse things to deal with. It helps me think we’re not alone…there are lots of other people with missing family members.
“I just know I have to be strong and carry on as normal as best I can for the sake of my family.”
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