The anguished father of a toddler who vanished more than 40 years ago will march to Downing Street and hand back his Army medals in protest over what he believes to be failures in how the case was handled.
Katrice Lee was celebrating her second birthday on November 28, 1981, when she disappeared from a supermarket close to a British military base in Paderborn, West Germany.
At the time, her father, Richard, was stationed there as a sergeant major in the 15th/19th The King’s Royal Hussars of the British Army.
He, his wife, Sharon, and Katrice’s aunt, Wendy, drove with the youngster to the nearby Naafi (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) supermarket, to buy items for her birthday party.
As Katrice refused to go in a trolley, her mother carried her around the supermarket, before placing her down at the checkout.
Richard Lee, whose two-year-old daughter Katrice went missing more than 40 years ago, will hand back his Army service medals to Downing Street in protest over what he believes are failures by the authorities to investigate the case
Katrice Lee was celebrating her second birthday on November 28, 1981, when she disappeared from a supermarket close to a British military base in Paderborn, West Germany
Sharon briefly left the youngster to purchase some crisps, but when she returned the toddler was no longer there.
Katrice has never been seen since, with an initial investigation drawing a complete blank.
The family believe that the authorities, including the Army, Royal Military Police and successive governments, failed to investigate the case properly.
But even more than four decades on, Mr Lee, of Hartlepool, still wants answers.
He believes someone took his daughter and has called for an independent inquiry into what really happened on that fateful day.
Mr Lee is now planning to march to Downing Street on 31 May, joined by other veterans, where he will return two of the medals he notched up over 34 years of distinguished service, BBC reports.
These include his Northern Ireland general service medal and another awarded for 30 years of service and good conduct.
He maintains that the lack of support he and his family were provided had ‘devalued’ his medals.
Speaking about events at the time of his daughter’s disappearance, Mr Lee said: ‘We were on a lifeboat cut adrift, floundering with no one to guide us and hold our hand.’
In an interview with the Daily Mail in December, the family spoke about how they had wanted an independent inquiry, and for the search for Katrice to be handed to a civilian police force — as would have happened had the family been in Germany on holiday.
Mr Lee said: ‘This has always come under the jurisdiction of the Royal Military Police, who were out of their league from the start.
The family believe that the authorities, including the Army, Royal Military Police and successive governments, failed to investigate properly what happened to Katrice
‘The lies and the cover-ups since have beggared belief, and all the while there is a chance that Katrice is still out there, living with another family, unaware that she is even Katrice.’
Katrice’s sister Natasha said: ‘My dad was prepared to give his life for Queen and Country, so those medals mean everything to him.
‘But Katrice, and the truth about what happened to her, means more.’
The disappearance of their daughter took its toll on the Lees and the couple split up in 1989, but they remain united in their search for Katrice.
Natasha said: ‘Both my parents are in their 70s. I don’t want them to go to their graves never knowing what happened.
In the years since her disappearance, little progress has been made in the investigation.
Mr Lee had been given a planned meeting with the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, but it was cancelled because of the Falklands War.
Richard Lee still maintains hope that his daughter is alive: ‘ The lies and the cover-ups since have beggared belief, and all the while there is a chance that Katrice is still out there, living with another family, unaware that she is even Katrice’
In 2012, the family received an apology from the Royal Military Police for failings in the initial investigation and reopened an inquiry under the name, Operation Bute.
Then in 2017, the government agreed to review the case and an e-fit of a man seen putting a child in a car that had been created shortly after the youngster’s disappearance was released.
A year later, more than 100 soldiers undertook an excavation of the Alme river, close to where Katrice disappeared, in the hope of finding answers.
In 2019, a man was arrested in connection with her disappearance but was subsequently released without charge.
In 2022, a long-promised ‘father-to-father’ meeting with the then PM Boris Johnson did happen, but Richard says: ‘Nothing came of it. I wrote afterwards, asking for an inquiry, and for Katrice’s case to be investigated by a civilian force, as it would have been if we’d been any other family.’
He never got a reply. ‘Politicians move on,’ he says. ‘We cannot.’
In a statement to MailOnline, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson: ‘Our sympathies are with Richard Lee and his family as they continue to search for answers.
‘The Defence Serious Crime Command and Unit, which now holds primacy for the investigation, continues to welcome any additional information that could help to determine Katrice’s whereabouts.’
- Anyone with information about Katrice’s disappearance in 1981 can contact the Royal Military Police on social media site X at @operationbute, or by phone on 0800 616888.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk