14 h. ago The chilling handwritten letters discovered in missing Blackpool schoolgirl Charlene Downes' bedroom

Charlene Downes, 14, went missing on 1 November 2003. Despite a £100,000 police reward for information leading to the conviction of her killer, no one has ever been brought to justice.

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6 d. ago Vile paedophile friend of Charlene Downes's father was probed 'for abusing' the missing schoolgirl

Police investigated Ray Munro and passed a file to prosecutors about his alleged abuse of Charlene and another girl, two years after she disappeared.

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7 d. ago Grim urban myth derails search for missing Blackpool teenager Charlene Downes

Nicola Thorp has put to rest the baseless tale - even amplified by Elon Musk - surrounding Charlene Downes' disappearance in Blackpool more than 20 years ago

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7 d. ago The truth behind the disappearance of Charlene Downes: ‘She was reduced to this salacious, shocking story’

When Nicola Thorp was growing up in Blackpool, the ‘kebab girl’ who had gone missing less than a mile away, aged 14, was spoken of as a cautionary tale. But what really happened to her? For the last three years, Thorp has been finding outIt has been more than 20 years since 14-year-old Charlene Downes went missing in Blackpool. Last captured on CCTV on a Saturday night in November 2003, Charlene still hasn’t been found, and the truth of what happened to her remains unsolved. Nicola Thorp, an actor, writer and broadcaster, who grew up in the town, describes Charlene’s disappearance, considered to be murder, as “a wound for Blackpool”. Over the last couple of decades, the case has been clouded by rumour, far-right rhetoric and police failures. In a new podcast, she has set out to clear up some of the speculation, and expose how Charlene was repeatedly failed by those around her.Many in the town, she says, still believe the two men who were first tried in 2007 – a retrial was ordered, ...

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7 d. ago How a gruesome urban myth derailed the search for missing Blackpool schoolgirl Charlene Downes

Charlene Downes, 14, vanished without a trace from her home town of Blackpool more than two decades ago.

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1 week ago WH Auden formed ‘intense friendship’ with sex worker who burgled him, unseen letters reveal

Exclusive: the newly released correspondence reveals how a strong bond developed between the Funeral Blues poet and the sex worker who broke into his homeA “once in a century” discovery of a cache of long-lost letters has revealed how the English poet WH Auden developed a deep and lasting friendship with a Viennese sex worker and car mechanic after the latter burgled the Funeral Blues author’s home and was put on trial.York-born Auden, a prominent member of a generation of 1930s writers that also included Christopher Isherwood, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender, described his unconventional arrangement with the man he affectionally called “Hugerl” in the posthumously published poem Glad. Continue reading...

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