Full Transcript for December 27 - The Disappearance of Patrick Warren and David Spencer

WEBVTT 00:00.537 --> 00:07.728 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, and welcome to Day by Day True Crime Stories, the podcast or we explore a different crime or just a milestone from this day in history. 00:08.348 --> 00:12.234 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Kona Gallagher, and today is December 27th. 00:13.155 --> 00:21.888 [SPEAKER_00]: On this day in 1996, two best friends from a housing estate near Birmingham headed out for a bit of freedom during the Christmas holidays. 00:22.609 --> 00:23.811 [SPEAKER_00]: But they never made at home. 00:25.040 --> 00:38.863 [SPEAKER_00]: 11-year-old Patrick Warren and 13-year-old David Spencer vanished in the early hours of December 27, after being seen at a petrol station near their homes in Chelmsleywood, Soahal. 00:39.097 --> 00:43.344 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, almost 30 years later, there has still been no trace of them. 00:44.366 --> 00:54.604 [SPEAKER_00]: Today, we're talking about the disappearances of Patrick Warren and David Spencer, the boys now remembered in the UK as the milk carton kids. 00:55.485 --> 01:02.978 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's get started. 01:04.038 --> 01:11.617 [SPEAKER_00]: Patrick Warren was born on January 4, 1985, and in December of 1996 he was about to turn 12. 01:12.479 --> 01:19.397 [SPEAKER_00]: David Spencer was born on December 14, 1983, and had just celebrated his 13th birthday. 01:19.664 --> 01:27.974 [SPEAKER_00]: The boys were inseparable, growing up together on the Chelmsley Wood estate, they were often seen riding bikes and hanging out in parks. 01:28.775 --> 01:36.344 [SPEAKER_00]: Like many kids who are off for the holidays, on boxing day 1996, Patrick and David spent the day playing outside. 01:37.205 --> 01:49.300 [SPEAKER_00]: That afternoon, they were among a group of kids seen by a police officer skating on frozen water in Merit and Park. 01:49.803 --> 01:55.488 [SPEAKER_00]: That evening, Patrick proudly showed off his brand new Christmas present, a red Apollo bicycle. 01:56.209 --> 02:01.233 [SPEAKER_00]: The two boys told their families that they planned to stay the night with Patrick's brother who lived nearby. 02:01.293 --> 02:05.017 [SPEAKER_00]: Patrick left on his bike and David walked beside him. 02:05.918 --> 02:08.240 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometime later, the boys were spotted again. 02:08.300 --> 02:18.409 [SPEAKER_00]: Just after midnight, and the early minutes of December 27th, a woman working at a nearby petrol station saw them and gave them a pack of biscuits. 02:18.693 --> 02:26.232 [SPEAKER_00]: She later recalled them heading off in the direction of a local shopping area, but they never made it to Patrick's brother's home. 02:27.114 --> 02:29.600 [SPEAKER_00]: By the next day their family's news something was wrong. 02:30.302 --> 02:32.668 [SPEAKER_00]: Patrick's older brother went out searching. 02:33.188 --> 02:39.020 [SPEAKER_00]: After confirming that the boys had not turned up where they said they were going, the family's contacted police. 02:40.083 --> 02:42.809 [SPEAKER_00]: Soon after, he made chilling discovery. 02:43.550 --> 02:49.122 [SPEAKER_00]: Patrick's Red Bicycle was found behind the same petrol station where they were last seen. 02:49.102 --> 02:53.986 [SPEAKER_00]: It had been dumped near a bin area and was only later confirmed to be his. 02:55.388 --> 02:57.890 [SPEAKER_00]: From that point on, the trail went cold. 02:58.751 --> 03:03.896 [SPEAKER_00]: There are no more sightings, no phone calls, and no signs of what could have happened. 03:04.957 --> 03:08.640 [SPEAKER_00]: Initially, police believed that Patrick and David were runaways. 03:09.501 --> 03:16.307 [SPEAKER_00]: They were young from a working-class area and some officers just assumed that they'd come back after a few days. 03:17.317 --> 03:24.053 [SPEAKER_00]: senior officials said that there was no reason to suppose and quote that they were in danger. 03:25.035 --> 03:32.052 [SPEAKER_00]: Looking back, many including criminologists David Wilson believed that attitude was shaped by class bias. 03:32.251 --> 03:39.829 [SPEAKER_00]: Patrick and David growing up in a countless state weren't seeing as vulnerable in the way that children from wealthier families might have been. 03:39.869 --> 03:49.973 [SPEAKER_00]: Wilson argued that the boys weren't given the urgency that their disappearance deserved, and then timing just worked against them. 03:49.953 --> 03:54.801 [SPEAKER_00]: Just a few days after they went missing, a major crime gripped the area. 03:54.841 --> 04:02.493 [SPEAKER_00]: A teenage girl, Nicola Dixon, was found raped and murdered in a church yard just eight miles away. 04:02.533 --> 04:11.869 [SPEAKER_00]: That case rightly demanded police attention and media coverage, but it meant that Patrick and David's disappearance was pushed aside. 04:12.390 --> 04:15.775 [SPEAKER_00]: For a long time, it barely made national news. 04:20.834 --> 04:31.370 [SPEAKER_00]: In April 1997, around four months after they vanished, the boys' faces appeared on Milk Cartons as part of a new campaign by the National Missing Person's Helpline. 04:32.111 --> 04:37.840 [SPEAKER_00]: They were among the first UK children to be featured this way and the name Milk Carton Kids, stuck. 04:38.601 --> 04:42.707 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet, despite the exposure, tips dried up. 04:42.687 --> 04:44.390 [SPEAKER_00]: Appeals yielded nothing. 04:44.410 --> 04:50.982 [SPEAKER_00]: In 2006, a BBC Crime Watch appeal renewed interest, but, again, there was no breakthrough. 04:52.004 --> 04:56.412 [SPEAKER_00]: By the early 2000s, police began to fear that Patrick and David weren't missing. 04:57.293 --> 04:58.015 [SPEAKER_00]: They'd been murdered. 04:58.956 --> 05:06.450 [SPEAKER_00]: In 2001, a major development in another case pointed investigators to a new and disturbing possibility. 05:07.004 --> 05:14.555 [SPEAKER_00]: Brian Lundfield was convicted of the 1968 rape and murder of 14-year-old Roy Tudel. 05:15.516 --> 05:20.363 [SPEAKER_00]: He had escaped