Two north men still have the agony of not knowing what happened to their missing loved ones after their DNA failed to match a mystery murder victim in North Yorkshire.
Jim Lawson from Aboyne, and Archie Moody, living in Inverurie, gave DNA samples to North Yorkshire police in January to run for a match with the body of a woman found on the edge of the North York moors and still unidentified after more than forty years.
Jim’s older sister Penuel Sheriffs, known as Dolly, disappeared without trace in Spean Bridge in October 1958, while Archie’s mum Margaret Bell Poland Docherty Moody disappeared from her Motherwell home in the summer of 1977.
The mystery murder victim, dubbed the Nude in the Nettles by the Yorkshire media, had certain similarities to Dolly and Margaret being a mum, the right general build and age group.
Jim got in touch with North Yorkshire police after a spotting a Crimewatch appeal last year looking to identify the mystery woman.
He was four when his sister Dolly, originally from Aboyne and mum to two small boys, disappeared from her home at the railway cottages at Achindaul one Saturday afternoon.
Her husband, railway signalman Sandy Sheriffs said he was at home asleep after nightshift, and when he woke that afternoon she was gone.
Dolly disappeared into thin air
He said he thought she had gone into Fort William on the 2pm bus, as the women of Spean Bridge tended to do on a Saturday afternoon.
But witnesses noted she wasn’t on the bus that day.
Despite police and community searches, it was as if Dolly had disappeared into thin air.
The case caused shockwaves locally, and still haunts people in the close-knit area.
When he heard of the negative DNA match to the North Yorkshire case, Jim Lawson, who now lives in Dundee, said: “Part of me was hoping it was her, part of me wasn’t.
“Even if it had been her it wouldn’t have been a nice thing to deal with.
Needle in a haystack
“I don’t know where to turn now. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Police Scotland have said they can’t review Dolly’s case as she was never reported missing.
Both Jim and Archie have found the not-knowing hard.
Archie’s mum disappeared when he was 10, and the family’s chaotic lifestyle led him to a life of crime.
He has nursed his heartbreak about his mum for decades, and the anguish of it is no less now that he has long abandoned his life of drugs and crime.
He didn’t want to comment on the DNA findings.
North Yorkshire police say they are now closing their files on both cases.
Retired crane driver David Sutherland has been troubled by the case since hearing about it as a child from relatives in the area.
He, along with the rest of the community who knew Dolly, has his own dark theory about what happened to her.
“The peat close to the house could hide a multitude of sins,” he said.
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