THE small handmade clay ashtray in her spare bedroom isn’t much to look at - but for Suzie Ratcliffe it’s one of her most precious possessions. Her sister Joanne had made it at school for her parents when she was little yet for Suzie, now 49, its significance is bittersweet. That’s because 50 years ago, 11-year-old Joanne went missing from a football match, along with a four-year-old girl called Kirste Gordon, and they were never seen again.
For Suzie, her sister’s disappearance is all the more heartbreaking because she was born 14 months after Joanne disappeared, so she never met her. Suzie’s family’s nightmare began on 25 August 1973 when Joanne went to a local football match with her parents, Kathleen and Les, and her older brother. There, they bumped into another local family, four-year-old Kirste, who was there with her grandmother.
Towards the end of the match, Kirste needed the toilet and Joanne offered to take her. She’d taken Kirste to the toilet earlier in the game, so her parents agreed, providing they came straight back. But ten minutes later, they hadn’t returned and Joanne’s parents knew something was wrong.
After a frantic search of the ground and unable to find the girls, they raised the alarm with security and called the police. But the pair had simply vanished into thin air. From the outset, Suzie’s family and the police believed the girls were abducted.
“It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, their whole world was torn apart in minut.
