The next day I sober up from the call, I’ve taught myself to become detached when it comes to sifting through evidence and laying out what I think happened to Katy that night. Emotions just got in the way, so I had to separate them entirely, almost treat Katy’s investigation like a day job.
But I’ve allowed myself brief moments to grieve, a respite from the dwindling hope. I refused to grieve at first, but then slowly, I started to grieve for the loss of Katy from my life, not whatever happened to her.
I know there are many theories about Katy. People really fancy themselves as amateur detectives, especially with the boom of true crime dramas. I saw forums and pages set up for people to share their findings and thoughts, each one of them eager to play vigilante. I scoured them all, silently, under the name REDTURTLE: Katy’s favourite animal and colour. Sometimes I’d contribute, never sharing anything vital or important, but just quietly probing for anything useful they could give me.
I was surprised by it all, how thorough and deep the internet was willing to go. But with self-congratulatory citizens comes a whole other spawn of humans, people dredging Katy’s name through the mud, saying nasty, cruel things. It stung, at first, but now the words only prick me slightly, never really perforating the thick skin I’ve built up.
It wasn’t all bad. I found a group that seemed invested in Katy; whether it was because they cared for her or they had their own selfish motivations, it didn’t matter. Over the years a lot of forum members fell away, they lost interest, but not these three people – they stayed, they theorised, and, in my own selfish motivations, they kept me company, and they kept Katy’s case alive.
Even when the police decided to stop investigating Katy’s case, and it haunted the records as a cold case never to be solved, there was always hope in these forums. I enjoy the anonymity of it, they’ll never know who I am, like I’ll never know them, but we’re such big parts of each other’s lives.
I sometimes wonder who they are, though, where they live, if maybe one of them lost a daughter or sister or loved one and finding Katy would be some sort of consolation.
LAINDON24
Anyone up? It’s freezing here and I’ve just caught wind that some studios are sniffing around about making a doc of Katy’s disappearance
IN_THE_SHADOWS
Would that be so bad?
LAINDON24
I just can’t bear for the mum to be put through it all again
AMA
Where did you hear that?
LAINDON24
I can’t disclose my sources
AMA
Sorry I asked
LAINDON24
OK. It was a friend of a friend who works at a studio in London
AMA
What could they possibly have to say that hasn’t been said?
LAINDON24
They don’t have anything to say, they just want to drag Katy’s name through it and point fingers at all the suspects without saying anything
IN_THE_SHADOWS
Agreed. That’s what all these true crime documentaries do, they want drama
LAINDON24
And Katy’s case is as dramatic as they come
The tame, relatively normal theories involve the three people the police questioned at the time. The first being her ex-boyfriend, Graham, someone who maintains his innocence even though his and Katy’s relationship was more than volatile. I never liked him, but separating my emotions from it only made me hate him more. I don’t know what happened to him, I did check social media a few times in the years that followed, but I couldn’t find him. I don’t know what I’d say or do to him if I ever did.
Graham’s name was plastered across these forums, the chief suspect to the frequent detectives online that still talk about this case even ten years later. But there was never any evidence against Graham, never anything tying him to the place where Katy went missing, just rumours. The biggest one being that Katy and Graham split up the night before she went missing. Out of all the things that were said on the forum, this was by far the most interesting to me.
The other suspect was Katy’s English professor, a stuffy young man who was in trouble with the university for sending inappropriate messages to female students. I saw his face in the paper a few times, but the forums didn’t seem overly interested in him.
LAINDON24
The English professor is the biggest true crime cliché I’ve ever seen, it’s not him
IN_THE_SHADOWS
I agree, where’s the motive in being a dickhead
REDTURTLE
Isn’t the boyfriend too obvious?
LAINDON24
Welcome back REDTURTLE, where have you been? We thought about this, but no, he’s a prosecutor at City Hall, he aint going to involve himself in shit
Katy’s English professor looked suspicious, in the way that he looked so harmless, but I agreed with the forum, Katy would tell me if her teacher was sending inappropriate messages or if he tried anything. She wouldn’t keep that from me.
The final suspect and the person who caused most contention in these groups is Peter, a guy younger than Katy at the time she went missing, who worked with at her at NTV, a place where she had a part-time job.
LAINDON24
Absolutely obsessed with her, in love with a girl he couldn’t have
IN_THE_SHADOWS
Clear motive to me
AMA
What were his movements that night
IN_THE_SHADOWS
He was working with her, can you believe it, pretty sure he was the last to see her alive
LAINDON24
I’m not saying he did it, but he must know something, right?
AMA
I don’t think so
The question of who Katy’s dad is caused the most speculation, but no one ever got to the bottom of that, because Katy doesn’t and didn’t have a dad.
IN_THE_SHADOWS
They could have found out they had a daughter and gone looking for her, seems like an avenue the police didn’t explore properly
They explored it, but I wouldn’t tell them that. A man did come forward a year after Katy’s disappearance and they told – assured – me that he had nothing to do with it. The man wanted a paternity test, spent years asking, even tried to get it through courts, but he was blocked, criticised even, for trying to grieve for a daughter he never knew.
I check the forums every now and then, but Katy’s case isn’t being actively investigated, so there’s nothing to say anymore. I never drew conclusions from any of my own findings or from anything anyone said on the forums. But if I did think of anything, I’d send it straight to Detective Harrison Lane, the lead investigator on Katy’s case.
I haven’t spoken to him in a while, though, – there’s been nothing significant to share – but this documentary … it could unearth new findings, it could be the revival Katy’s case needs.
I take my laptop into the lounge and flick on the TV. Sometimes I put NTV on in the background to remind me of Katy. She’d only been working there a year, but she had plans to become an investigative journalist, working in the research department for reporters and fact-checking documentaries.
I imagine she’d have her own platform by now, be a household name, a famous journalist. Everyone would feel safer, more at ease, when they saw her name next to a column or her face on their TV. She would have gotten to the bottom of whatever it was, every time, without failure. I can’t help but think she would have found herself by now, that she would have solved the mystery of her disappearance.
There are so many documentaries and series about missing girls, but none of them ever get to the heart of what’s so painful and important. It’s something that Katy spoke about often, the vulnerability, the exhaustion of being a woman, of never knowing if, in a split second, your life might be taken from you.
Always crossing roads and walking the other way, choosing the long, lit-up route home. Having one earplug always removed and one eye open. She was so careful that some people believe none of those suspects were involved, that it was just as simple as a man taking advantage of a woman on a dark road … the night she was supposed to come back to me.
Out of everything, that is the theory that makes the most sense. That someone out there knows what happened to her and they’ve gotten away with it and they will continue to hide in the shadows until they make a mistake, if they ever do.
Katy was careful, but all it takes is to look the other way, to get distracted by a text message, to think that you’re safe, to let your guard down for a second.
I open the forum up on my laptop and type out a message, more to cleanse myself of the thought than to ask the question.
REDTURTLE
What if it was none of the suspects? What if it was someone else?