My brother vanished 31 years ago – police accused my parents of murder
My brother vanished without a trace 31 years ago after going into a public loo – 18 years later cops arrested my elderly parents for murder: Sister of missing Steven Clark tells of her three decades of agony and fury at ‘diabolical’ police
- EXCLUSIVE: Victoria said she has lost ‘all faith in police’ over her brother’s case
- Steven Clark went missing at the age of 23 in Saltburn on December 28 1992
The loving sister of a man who vanished without trace 31 years ago has lambasted a ‘diabolical’ police operation which arrested her elderly parents on suspicion of his murder before clearing them of any involvement.
Victoria Orr, 52, grew up with a protective instinct towards her disabled brother Steven, who was 14 months her senior.
So her life was torn apart when, on December 28th 1992, Steven, then 23, disappeared from public toilets after taking a walk along the beach with his mother, Doris.
Even now, decades later, Victoria, a professional development consultant who coaches executives, instinctively scans the faces of crowds in an undying hope that she will catch a glimpse of him.
The family learnt to live with the unexplained loss, but in September 2020 their world was turned upside down all over again when Charles and Doris, aged 80 and 83 respectively, were arrested for his murder.
Stephen Clark disappeared in December 1992 after taking a walk with his mother
Doris and Charles Clark were arrested during the Covid pandemic in September 2020, but have since been cleared of all suspicion
They spent five days in a hotel in Redcar, North Yorkshire, while their home in nearby Marske-by-the-Sea was searched and their garden dug up in a quest for clues or remains.
The couple, both former police officers, were cleared of suspicion in February 2021 when no evidence was found that they had anything to do with Steven’s disappearance.
But the trauma of the arrest and resulting publicity has left an indelible stain on the family.
Victoria, of Hexham, Northumberland, has told of her anger that her parents became the focus of police officers when they should have been using their resources to look for Steven.
She told Podimo’s The Missing podcast: ‘I have lost all faith in the police. The police are the people you are supposed to be able to go to for help or if you have a problem.
‘Let’s face it in a missing persons case we all know that the police have a job to do and ultimately families are going to be under scrutiny when someone goes missing, but the total lack of empathy and kindness and that guilty until proven innocent approach was unacceptable.
‘The one positive that could have come from all that media attention would have been finding out what happened to Steven and where he was but it didn’t. All of that negative media attention and still no news of Steven.’
She recalled the day that two Cleveland Police detectives turned up at her home and grilled her for four four hours at her kitchen table – while Charles and Doris were simultaneously being ‘interrogated’ in a police station.
ictoria said: ‘About two and a half years ago I was on a conference call with work and there was a knock at my front door so I went to open the door and there were two detectives standing on the doorstep and said to me ‘can we come in?’
‘You see this kind of thing on TV but when it’s happening to you, you feel as though the whole world is spinning’
After police arrested her parents in their search for Steven, Victoria told how she was interrogated for four hours at her kitchen table
‘When you have two detectives on your door asking to come in you are really panicking about what has happened. I had just dropped my kids at school so I knew they were there and safe and I knew my husband was upstairs working in his office and I thought ‘God something has happened to my mum and dad,’ so I was on edge.’
They said to me ‘look there is no easy way to say this so we might just as well come out with it, we have just arrested your parents on suspicion of murdering Steven.’
‘You see this kind of thing on TV but when it’s happening to you, you feel as though the whole world is spinning. I could not believe what was happening.
‘My first response was ‘where are my mum and dad, are they ok?’ because I know this whole thing is ridiculous, there is absolutely no way they would hurt Steven because of the family we have and the relationships we have, it was just utterly unreal.
‘They told me they had been arrested and taken to police cells for interview and they said ‘we recognise we never spoke to you at the time Steven went missing so are you OK to do an interview now?’
‘And I said ‘yes I can of course, do you want me to go down to the station?’
‘They said ‘no we have the equipment here, we can do it here.’
Victoria was not prepared for the gruelling hours that were to follow as the officers went through her recollections of childhood and Steven’s disappearance.
READ MORE: Moment mother, 81, of man who’s been missing for 30 years broke down in tears and claimed the police were ‘determined to incriminate us’ after she and her husband were arrested on suspicion of their son’s murder
She said: ‘It was just horrific and the whole time I was thinking ‘I want to talk to my mum and dad, how are they coping?’
‘They are in their eighties now, this is just a horrific shock. It was the beginning of a very long nightmare.
‘They went about this questioning so many times, asking about my childhood and if my mum and dad were violent which is absolutely not the case and couldn’t be further from the truth.
‘So it was actually quite a terrifying experience, I was really quite traumatised by this and I woke up for many, many months hearing the words that the police officers said to me in the middle of the night.
‘It was just awful, they just went on and on and on and at the same time I found out later my parents were being interrogated in a police station and one the basis of what? It was the most horrific situation I would not wish on my worst enemy.’
Detectives were acting on a re-examination of an anonymous letter sent to Guisborough police station in 1999, which alleged the Clarks had mistreated Steven.
Victoria said: ‘The letter addressed to the police force, his name is wrong and it went to a different police force. Why it was taken so seriously I do not know but it devastated our family.
‘Mum and Dad were in a state of shock. They had been pitted against each other. It was just awful, the way they were treated was diabolical. My parents are actually in the process of a formal complaint against the police through their solicitor and I think that is absolutely the right thing to do.’
The couple were released on police bail, only for police to return with a warrant to search their sea-front home.
Victoria said: ‘They then got a warrant to search my mum and dad’s house and garden and they turned up one morning and told my mum and dad they had two hours to get out of the house because they were sending in forensics and diggers and what have you.
Detectives were acting on a re-examination of an anonymous letter sent to Guisborough police station in 1999 when the arrested his parents and searched their home (pictured)
‘At one point there were about nine police vehicles outside my mum and dad’s house and a forensics tent in the garden. They dug up the garden looking for who knows what and of course didn’t find anything.
‘This was during Covid, we were in the middle of lockdown. My mum and dad had to go and stay in a hotel, they couldn’t stay with me even though I wanted them to because it was in breach of the rules at the time.
‘They were in the hotel for five days while the police searched their house and had everything dug up and rummaged through.
‘For Victoria, the arrest of her parents deflected attention from the effort to find Steven, who she still believes may be alive.
She said: ‘Steven did not have his wallet or his glasses he took nothing he would have needed. His bank account has never been touched, his national insurance number has never been used, his passport hasn’t been used so he has just vanished.
‘There is no evidence, nothing to say he went into the water, nothing to say he got on a train, there is just no evidence, there is nothing.
‘So you are constantly looking, I would watch rugby matches on TV and I would be scanning the crowds, you are constantly looking and looking for a face in crowds all of the time just hoping you are going to spot him.’
On December 28th 1992 Steven’s disappearance changed the family’s lives forever. Charles had gone to watch his beloved Middlesbrough, while Steven, an Arsenal fan, chose to walk from Marske to Saltburn and back with his mum along the beach, a journey they had made countless times.
On arriving at Saltburn, Steven went into male toilets while Doris went to the female loos.
She came back and waited for him to re-emerge – but he never did.
Doris went home, expecting to find him there waiting for her but as darkness fell there was still no sign on Steven.
At this time Victoria was living in Guildford, Surrey, where she worked as a hotel receptionist, and she caught a train to travel the 250 miles home to join the search.
She said: ‘I went back to Guildford after the Christmas break and had gone back to work.
‘I had a phone call from my mum or dad, I can’t remember which of them called me, and they said ‘don’t worry, but Steven hasn’t come home and we don’t want you to panic but we just want to let you know.’
‘As a person I am a worrier so I’m pretty sure I would have been very worried because it is so out of character for Steven to do anything like that
‘Steven was not a worrier at all and he used to say to me ‘if you worry you die and if you don’t worry you die, so why worry?’ He could never understand why I worried about things, we were very different like that.
‘I can remember going back on the train and some guy, a stranger, said ‘you just look sadder than anyone I have ever seen’ and that conversation has stuck with me.’
Despite relentless searching, postering and media appeals, the family could find no trace of Steven and three decades later the trail has gone cold.
It has left a huge hole in the lives of his parents and a sister who had looked out for him throughout their childhood.
Steven was injured in a car accident at the age of two, spending six weeks in a coma.
It meant Victoria had never known her brother before he suffered the accident, which left him living with disability.
Victoria said: ‘My parents were told he would never walk or talk that sort of life for him was over. Against all odds he recovered really well and a lot of that was down to my mum and dad and the amount of help they gave him in terms of physio and exercise and a really positive outlook.’
He could not use his left arm and walked with a very pronounced limp. He saw a lot of specialists and spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals.’
As a person Steven is very determined, enthusiastic, happy go lucky and had a really positive mindset in terms of not letting his disability get in his way.
As a family we tried to overcome his problems and live as normal a life as possible.
‘In the seventies and eighties it was a very different world growing up than it is now. I have a memory of walking in front of him when I was very young and sticking my tongue out and pulling faces so that people would look at me instead of him.’
She continues to appeal to anyone with information about his disappearance to come forward.
Victoria said: ‘I want to set the record straight, I want people to be searching for Steven and to know that he came from a good home and from a family that love and care for him and just want him to come back.
‘I would like to say please come forward and just talk about anything you might have seen or anything you can remember about Steven’s disappearance, it doesn’t matter how insignificant you think it is something might make sense and be a lead that can be followed up on.
‘Steven being missing has left a huge hole in our lives so anything someone could do to help us find him would be amazing.’
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