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Next Saturday it will be exactly 10 years since Louise
Kerton was reportedly dropped at Aachen train |
THE father of a British woman who vanished in Germany 10
years ago has called for David Cameron to help in reactivating the
investigation into her fate.
Phil Kerton, 66, wants the Prime Minister to ask the German
authorities to allow British detectives to review their investigation
into the disappearance of his daughter Louise, who was 24 when last seen
in Aachen.
“David Cameron has backed a review of Madeleine McCann’s case by
Metropolitan Police officers,” said Mr Kerton. “We want the same
treatment for Louise so that we know every piece of evidence has been
put through proper scrutiny.”
Aachen’s state prosecutor closed his investigation last November, saying
there were no more leads. The move, just months after Louise’s mother
Kathleen died from stomach cancer aged 64, devastated Mr Kerton and
Louise’s brother Simon, 35 and sisters Angela, 39, Francesca, 37, and
Marie, 26.
Next Saturday it will be exactly 10 years since Louise was
reportedly dropped at Aachen train station, where she was due to board a
train to Ostend in Belgium, to catch a ferry back to Kent.
David Cameron has backed a review of Madeleine McCann’s case
by Metropolitan Police officers
Phil Kerton |
Her family accept she must be dead but remain desperate to know
what happened to her and where her body is. It was eight months after
the disappearance of the nursing student before the German police agreed
to treat her case as a criminal matter.
They initially viewed Louise as a missing person and under German
law such cases are not actively investigated unless authorities believe
the subject has been harmed or is in danger.
Mr Kerton, of New Ash Green, Kent, said: “The German police have
never worked closely with British officers to share information.
“The detectives working on the case in Kent, where the
investigation is still open, have never seen what is in the German
files.”
Mr Kerton said his family fear vital evidence was missed in the
first months after Louise’s disappearance and want police to look at
whether she ever left the village of Strassfeld, near Bonn, where she
had gone with her fiance Peter Simon to stay with his mother Ramana.
Peter came back to the flat they shared in Broadstairs, Kent, a
few days before Louise vanished, following an argument.
Mrs Simon claims she dropped Louise at the train station on July
30, 2001. Louise, a schoolfriend of Lucie Blackman, the British air
stewardess raped and murdered in Japan a year earlier, has not been
seen since. |