Parents of missing Louise Kerton demand Maddie-style case review

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.

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.

Express

Dimsie wrote:Sadly, I think Louise's family will find there won't be any Maddie-style review for them, nor will any of the other families of missing people get any help from the government. David Cameron caved in to what he thought was public pressure in Madeleine's case, but it wasn't the public who were demanding a review, it was the McCanns and the News Int gutter press. The public are as bemused as we are as to why one child's disappearance is being reviewed while other missing persons, both children and adults, are effectively ignored. At least there appears now to be a determination among the families of other missing people to speak up, not to be sidelined or meekly accept their missing family member to be deemed of lesser importance than Madeleine.