STUART CAMPBELL
WHEN TEENAGER DANIELLE JONES DISAPPEARED, SUSPICION FELL ON HER UNCLE. WHY WOULD HE KILL HER? AND COULD POLICE PROSECUTE WITH LITTLE PROOF AND NO BODY?
As the schoolgirl made her morning walk to the bus stop, perhaps she would have been thinking of her timetable of lessons for the day ahead. Or maybe her mind was elsewhere.
Was the confusing logic of teenage life scrambled further by recent events?
Danielle Jones was studying for her GCSEs. She was a ‘normal’ teenager. Danielle loved her music, particularly Robbie Williams. She adored her rabbits. And although like every adolescent she had moments of conflict with her parents, Danielle loved her family.
But one of her relatives was making her angry. It wasn’t right what he was doing… was it? Danielle was only 15. This man was getting too close to her. Did her mother and father know?
Did his wife – Danielle’s young aunt? The way he talked to her was strange too. Then there were the messages in her room. And then there was that moment when it all got out of hand.
Danielle strolled through the streets of East Tilbury, a village in the southernmost part of Essex, England. It lies 32 kilometres east of central London, near the Thames Estuary. The street names speak of a monarchical grandeur: Princess Margaret Road, Queen Elizabeth Avenue, King George VI Avenue. These fail to shroud the fact that parts of the district have fallen on hard times. Many of the homes are modernist blocks – square, with flat roofs – and designed by a Czech shoemaker who set up a factory there in the 1930s and had big plans that didn’t quite work out for the neighbourhood.
The giant historic Tilbury Docks sit just nearby. And while it has good links with the capital, and in the distance you can see Kent across the Thames River, there is little to draw you to East Tilbury unless you have a good reason to go.
Danielle Jones was 15. She lived with her mother and father and two younger brothers, Mitchell and Ryan. The family got on well, Danielle’s mother Linda would later say. As with all teenagers, there were ups and downs. Linda and Danielle had a blazing row a few months earlier over her daughter’s refusal to perform household chores, but Danielle apologised and they made up. “She wasn’t the cleverest person in the world but she always did her best,” her father Tony would later say. She dreamt of working with children when she grew up, perhaps as a nursery nurse. Danielle was not streetwise but a homebody, shy with st
